Riotous Refugees or Systemic Injustice? A Sociological Examination of Riots in Australian Immigration Detention Centres LUCY FISKE Centre for Human Rights Education, Curtin University, Australia L.Fiske@curtin.edu.au MS received August 2012; revised MS received August 2013 This article draws on testimony from refugees formerly held in Australian immigration detention centres who either participated in or witnessed riots in detention, alongside academic literature examining riots in a range of settings, to elucidate how and why riots happen in immigration detention. The article outlines a model of contextualizing and immediate preconditions for riots and then uses this model to analyse a series of riots which occurred in Australian immigration detention centres between 1999 and 2011. The author proposes that conditions in immigration detention centres almost guarantee riots and that while practices such as arbitrary use of solitary confinement and excessive use of force commonly act as the immediate triggers to riot episodes, the daily regimen of detention produces the preconditions necessary for riots to occur. Keywords: Immigration detention, riot, protest, refugees It is no coincidence that riots occur in a system that lacks accountability. We do not have riots in our detention centres because we have a riotous group of refugees; we have them because we run appalling systems (Harding 2001). This article examines how and why riots happen in immigration detention centres with a particular focus on the perspectives of detained asylum seekers, a view rarely heard in the public sphere. It forms part of a larger research project exploring refugee protest against immigration detention in Australia including acts of everyday resistance and non-compliance, hunger strike, lip-sewing, escape and riot (see Fiske 2012). Fieldwork was conducted with approval from Curtin University’s Human Research Ethics Committee. The material presented here is drawn from interviews with 13 men who participated in or witnessed riots while held in an Australian immigration detention centre. The interviews were conducted in 2009 with people detained Journal of Refugee Studies ß The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com doi:10.1093/jrs/fet047 by guest on March 3, 2014 http://jrs.oxfordjournals.org/ Downloaded from