During the 20th century, Ireland routinely locked up one in 100 of its citizens in Magdalene laundries, industrial schools, mental hospitals and ‘mother and baby’ homes, where women pregnant out of wedlock were placed and forced to give their babies for adoption. That is the most sobering statistic in a recent book on coercive confinement in this country.
During the 20th century, Ireland routinely locked up one in 100 of its citizens in Magdalene laundries, industrial schools, mental hospitals and ‘mother and baby’ homes, where women pregnant out of wedlock were placed and forced to give their babies for adoption. That is the most sobering statistic in a recent book on coercive confinement in this country.
At any given time between 1926 and 1951 there were some 31,000 people in these institutions – only a small fraction of whom committed any crime. This also applied to children: one child in every 100 was enslaved in an industrial school. Children in these schools, run by female and male Catholic orders, were treated with cruelty, not given proper food or education, made to work for the nuns or the brothers and, as documented in several report, were often horrifically physically and sexually abused. Their sole ‘crime’ was belonging to so-called ‘problem families’.
This history of incarceration, writes Fintan O’Toole, was Ireland’s way of establishing religious, social and moral “purity” by locking up and “correcting” potential deviants. And this continues today. Between 2000 and 2012 Ireland essentially ‘locked up’ in direct provision centres some 51,000 asylum seekers, whose sole ‘crime’ was legally applying for Geneva Convention refugee status.
Between 1991 and 2012 there was a total of 68,847 asylum applications, of which only 4,130, or six per cent, received positive responses. In November 2012, 4,822 people were housed in these hostels, 75 per cent of them from Africa. Although intended for a maximum stay of six months, the average length of resident in these ‘holding camps’ is 44 months – almost four years – although many are held for six years or more. And as we know, living conditions in these centres are dire. Direct provision centres are also ideal places from which to effect deportations. According to the Department of Justice, in 2012 nearly 2,700 individuals were deported or removed from Ireland, including 2,260 persons who were refused entry, plus 298 ‘unsuccessful asylum seekers’ and ‘irregular’ migrants.
The State says that asylum seekers cost too much. Indeed they do. According to figures published by the Minister for Justice, in 2011 the State spent €69.5 million housing and ‘caring’ for asylum seekers, with the majority of the money paying for a small cluster of private contractors who run these centres and who have seen their annual turnover soar.
In addition, in 2011 the Irish State was facing a bill of over €100m to fight injunctions granted by the High Court to 2,000 asylum seekers who are fighting enforced deportation. However, many asylum seekers are highly educated, and if allowed to work they would not cost money, but rather work, start businesses and pay taxes.
If the direct provision system is costly, deportations are even costlier. Justice Minister Alan Shatter said in the Dáil that in 2011 the overall cost of removing 280 persons from the State was more than €1m; between 2005 and 2010 the cost of deportations was more than €6.8m. These costs do not include overtime or subsistence payments for Garda escorts.
My point is that holding people in direct provision hostels is a direct continuation of Ireland’s historical culture of institutional confinement, which over the years has created very deep habits of secrecy, collusion, evasion and adaptation. This is why most Irish people never questioned the incarceration of women, men and children in Magdalene Laundries, industrial schools and mental hospitals, and why they are not aware of – never mind question – the housing of asylum seekers in these centres.
But there is a difference. If in the past Irish people were incarcerated to rid society of its misfits, asylum seekers are held in direct provision centres because of State racism and left to rot out of sight, out of mind.
Ronit Lentin is associate professor of Sociology at Trinity College Dublin. Her column appears fortnightly in Metro Éireann.
