Miriana Cascone’s Detain(ed): Media Technologies and Migrants in Swedish Detention Centers could not be more topical. In the winter of 2026, deportations have become public spectacles in the US, and in Europe – including the Nordic countries – the desire to deport ever more non‑citizens has grown. The EU will implement the Migration Pact in June 2026, which will allow member states to deport people to so-called safe third countries. This means that deportability of certain nationals will increase. Detain(ed) provides insights into this political moment from Sweden, a country that used to be known as one of the most welcoming for asylum seekers and refugees in Europe.
The book that is Cascone’s doctoral dissertation analyzes the intertwining of digital media technologies and immigrant removal centers in Sweden. Cascone investigates what people in detention do with media, and what detention does to those people through media technologies. Situated in the intersection of media studies and migration studies Cascone contributes to both fields by successfully connecting the autonomy of migration framework (see, e.g., Papadopoulos & Tsianos, 2013) with media practice framework (Couldry, 2004). This work builds on research done in the Nordic region on immigrant detention and deportation that recognizes a specific Nordic exceptionalism. A sanitized and seemingly non-emotional deportation regime in the Nordic context, however, resorts to slow violence. It is a condition that can persist over time and expand across space. Deportability involves a cruelty that does not carry the appearance of violence in the conventional sense (see, e.g., Horsti, 2018; Khosravi, 2018; Könönen, 2021; Horsti & Pirkkalainen, 2021, 2023; Backman, 2023, 2024).
The focus in Detain(ed) is on the experiences of those detained or deported, on the 21 persons she interviewed inside detention centers and outside, including online when a person had already been forced to leave the country. Conducted between 2022–2024, these interviews are situated in a particular time frame: just 6–7 years after the refugee reception crisis of 2015–2016 in Europe. Sweden’s tightening of asylum policies in 2016 produced increased numbers of deportable people, and it is within this policy context that Cascone’s doctoral research takes place.
The focus in Detain(ed) is on the experiences of those detained or deported, on the 21 persons she interviewed inside detention centers and outside, including online when a person had already been forced to leave the country.
The book opens with a vignette in which Cascone describes a scene where she enters an unnamed detention center. She hands in her bag and mobile phone and is allowed to carry only a notebook and a pencil as she goes to meet one of her research participants in the center’s visitors room. She overhears two detainees asking the staff: “Why can’t we have our phones? What are we supposed to do here and for how long?”
Cascone’s research participants described in the interviews how during detention they were prevented from many mundane activities, such as seeking information online, moving outdoors, cooking, playing instruments, or making video calls. Smart phones were prohibited. However, phones without cameras and audio recording were allowed, and people could book one hour at a communal computer room. These were important moments, and so, people multitasked. They simultaneously were on zoom calls and checked social media, news, and email. The precious computer time could be also donated to a fellow detainee as a sign of solidarity. One such case was when there was an earthquake in Turkey, which created stress among those who had family in those regions. Others would let them use their computer time to check the latest news. Other popular media used in detention were television and CD players. The television room was shared by several people who negotiated about which channel to watch. People received music on burned CDs curated for them by friends and family.
Restricted use of media in detention was more than restrictions to everyday life, Cascone writes. Many of the detainees described to her how these practices made them feel distant from the people outside the centres; “distant not only from family or friends but also from those they did not know – from everyone, as if there was no longer a common, shared experience of reality” (pp. 20–21). To me, this insight of transformed sense of reality in detention is one of the most significant findings in Cascone’s research.
Restricted use of media in detention was more than restrictions to everyday life, Cascone writes.
Media technologies, including restrictions to some devices and technologies, affords how detention shapes the sense of reality. The splitting of the present moment is one example. Detained migrants experience a split between the present inside the detention center and the present outside of the facility. This observation makes me think if there are additional splits in how detained migrants experience the present in the outside. Could we think that the outside is further split between what happens in the outside in Sweden and the outside that is beyond Sweden, in the lives of transnational family and the country of origin? Isn’t this splitting of the present a condition in migration more broadly? Or rather than splitting, should we conceptualize this experience during migration as a mediated connection in the present moment (rather than a split)? Migrants have intimate lives that extend beyond the everyday face-to-face connections through mediation. As a dissertation opponent to Miriam Cascone, I had the opportunity to discuss this with her in the public defence at the University of Södertörn. She agreed with my analysis of migrant conditions as having a continuous connection to “here” and “there”, an aspect that is central to the notion of a connected migrant (Diminescu, 2008). In the context of detention, however, Cascone highlighted, there is a split produced by the semi-disconnection with the outside world that the detention system deliberately produces.
The book’s structure reflects that it is published as a doctoral dissertation. It is divided into two parts. Part I introduces the topic and research context: detention and deportation systems in Sweden, the relevant academic literatures, methods, and materials. This section is rather long for an academic book as such. Part II presents the empirical analysis in three chapters followed by discussion and conclusions. In addition to the vignette in the beginning, an interlude on the theme of waiting and a postlude on exit (from the field and otherwise) offer more personal reflections of the researcher.
In the introduction, Cascone places her work at the intersections of media studies and migration studies by discussing key concepts. Mobile people is a term she prefers instead of terms that are also used to categorize people administratively and legally: asylum seeker, refugee, or migrant. However, the paradox in the context of detention is that the participants in this study were not mobile; they were detained migrants, a term Cascone chooses to use alongside, both by her research participants and by Migrationsverket, the Swedish Migration Agency. Furthermore, another key migration studies concept, the connected migrant that underscores the idea that digital media enable people to be here and there simultaneously contrast with what emerges in detention: the semi-disconnected migrant.
Chapter 4 outlines Cascone’s constructivist grounded theory approach and ethnographic methods, and discusses the ethical underpinnings of her study. She distinguishes procedural ethics, which refers to formal ethical clearance from ethics in practice, the continual adaptation of ethical principles as research unfolds. Cascone describes her approach as not a complete ethnography, but an “ethnographic puzzle” informed by grounded theory approach that allows the researcher to enter the field with an open mind without clear research questions nor structure influenced by theory. This methodological design remains a bit confusing, however. First, theoretical literature on waiting that has been fundamental in research on migrant detention, has clearly shaped Cascone’s attention in the field. Second, the notion of ethnographic puzzle to describe an approach that applies observation in conditions that are highly restricted as she was not granted full access to detention centers. She does apply the spirit of ethnography and grounded theory in her interviews, restricted by the one-hour visiting time given by the Migrationsverket. Interviews are more like conversations and she observes her surroundings and embodied movements while entering the centers, while waiting for her participants and during interviews. Research findings on the media in detention and for detention, however, are mainly based on what the participants tell her and not on what she observes. As grounded theory expects a rather unfixed approach to the topic, the metaphor of a puzzle that presumes an image that already exists (a point made by one of the external examiners of the thesis, Shahram Khosravi) is therefore not the most appropriate one. To follow up on the discussion during the defence, perhaps what Cascone has done, is an ethnographic patchwork, a compilation of methods inspired by ethnography, grounded theory and certain key theoretical migration studies concepts, such as waiting, connected migrant, and autonomy of migration.
Chapter 5 makes an important distinction between media technologies in detention and technologies for detention. Old media technologies allowed in detention, such as “dumb phones” and burnt CDs, require “new” knowledge, which is unknown particularly to younger generation of detained migrants. SIM cards, phone plans, and communication apps that can be accessed through a computer require new skills. These technologies produce the condition of semi-disconnection.
Technologies for detention include CCTV cameras, keycards, electronic locks, and scanners. Ironically, Migrationsverket communicates with detainees through paper letters. Research participants described surveillance technology as “creepy”, producing suspicion toward staff and the institution. Some detained migrants, however, found ways in which they resisted these technologies and their creepiness. One such example is a story of a detainee who tested the CCTV camera in an isolation room. The person began to stand on their bed, and soon the staff rushed in. He thought, “yes, the camera was working”. This playfulness with technologies for detention eases the stress that comes from submission in detention.
Chapter 6 focuses on waiting as an organizing principle in detention. Media use is one major activity around which days revolve around. Waiting stretches before and after the computer hour: dressing up for Zoom calls, anticipating access, and then, waiting for the next opportunity to connect with the world outside. Boredom emerges from waiting, but also creativity. One person started to write a diary while in detention. Waiting is experienced as violence, but it can also be a form of resistance. Some detained migrants wait out the maximum 12‑month detention period, refusing the so‑called voluntary return, which is rarely voluntary.
Chapter 7 examines waiting in relationships. Detention creates solidarities as the example of sharing the computer hour time during the earthquake in Turkey illustrated. Furthermore, transnational relationships shift during detention. Before detention, a migrant might have used the latest technology, now family members outside detention have better access and more information.
Detain(ed) contributes to media studies, migration studies, and its subfield, deportation studies. The book’s strength lies in its attentiveness to lived experience and in its careful rethinking of migration studies concepts in the context of detention.
Detain(ed) contributes to media studies, migration studies, and its subfield, deportation studies.
The book demonstrates how technologies for detention and the restriction of digital media technologies in detention produce a waiting institution. However, detained migrants navigate these conditions and manage to form solidarity and resistance. The book challenges both media studies and migration studies to think about technologies not just as tools that enable mobility and connection but also as instruments of governance, immobilization, and dis-connection.
References
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