What’s in a Name? Holot, an « Open Detention Facility » for « Infiltrators » in Israel
Political discourse and public debate are sites where exclusionary and criminalizing rhetoric about migrants emerges in visible and often explicit forms. A more “mundane” site of analysis is the everyday language of state bureaucracy: Administrative detention, “infiltrators”, and “open detention facility”. Officially, these terms are chosen based on technical or bureaucratic considerations. However, the way these choices are experienced, and their symbolic significance, cannot be ignored: They construct a punitive, criminal aura.
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