GRAMNet Film Series Everyday Borders and Detention Without Walls

Everyday Borders explores how increasing numbers of people are becoming border-guards as employers, landlords, health workers and educators are legally required to administer the UK border as part of their everyday lives. As the 2014 Immigration Act pulls more people into border-guard roles, their subjects experience being denied jobs, accommodation, healthcare and education because these border administrators may not be able or willing to understand the complexities of immigration law, may act on racist stereotypes or, threatened by fines and raids, exclude racialised minorities in order to minimize risk to themselves. What are the implications of these developments to all of us in our daily lives and for British society as a convivial pluralist society?

Detention Without Walls is a self-portrait of people caught in the cracks, between borders, without status. Made from interviews, poems, photos and material collected through a participatory research project, the film follows the moving story from immigration detention to life after detention, described as 'Detention Without Walls'. Abandoned at train stations, separated from family and friends, unable to work or travel, fearful of return but determined to stay in the UK, the film explores how ideas of crime, citizenship and community combine in ways that multiply rather than remove the differences between us.