“It is better to die of your own will”: Black women's rebellions against the forces of im/mobilization

• In Event: The politics of anti-carceral rebellion

Abstract

Attending to Black women’s insurgent rebellions inside of Yarl’s Wood ––the UK’s most infamous detention centre ––this paper argues that through the words and deeds of its captives, detention emerges as a site of anti-Black carceral statecraft marked by acute bodily violation, the severing of kinship ties, and the denial of political agency. Just as importantly, I position Yarl’s Wood as a space of insurgent Black life, a powerful node of struggle in the “imprisoned radical tradition,” and a key site of abolitionist world-building where powerful visions for Black liberation are produced in and through the struggle against im/mobilization.

Author

• Robyn Maynard, University of Toronto