Reaching from the Inside Out: Immigration Detention, Health and Wellbeing2003 – 2004
The central Bangkok immigration office was bursting with tourists daily. Behind it, was an immigration detention centre. Here, long and short-term detainees had to wait for an opportunity to return to their home countries.
The reasons why people had been incarcerated varied from overstaying visas, to working in Thailand without documentation, to transfers after prison sentences, to waiting while asylum claims were submitted to the UNHCR. Pressed into large cells, living literally adjacent to one another, risks of communicable disease were high. There was very little space to move around.
Invited to join a pre-existing project set up by the International Organization for Migration, The Drama Works ran workshops for detainees; providing exercise to get their blood circulating after near stasis, voice work to unite cell groups and lift their spirits, while also offering TB and HIV information, time to share personal stories through art, and basic material supplies to help with personal care and hygiene.
One unusual element to this project was that we ran a training for Thai Immigration Police Officers. This introduced them to the work we were doing, while also opening a space for them to express their experiences of everyday life in the immigration detention centre.
The situation presented significant problems for everyone involved. A dialogue about those problems was initiated by the project leader, which helped with gaining funding to keep providing psychosocial and material support to detainees.
Our involvement only occurred over a few months. But it highlighted the value of a theatre-based approach to working within immigration detention centres, if the potential for it is courted, and then supported, by senior decision-makers.
