The Transparency/Opacity Conundrum: Locating Dutch Deportation Regimes at Schiphol Detention Center

Abstract

Airports are often regarded as sites of transition, and thus devoid of meaning. This view obscures various articulations of power and exclusionary practices involved in border and migration management. I posit that one very vital site that exist in this obscurity is Schiphol airport’s immigration detention center. On facing several blocks in communication and inaccessibility of information I give a reflexive account of employing the feminist ethic of ‘sticking with’ failure, marking this as a feature of the site of inquiry. Using scavenger methodology (Halberstam 1998), I read visual, digital, autoethnographic and interview content for Dutch self-representative narratives that inform contemporary organization of power. Utilizing the notion of white innocence (Wekker 2016), I argue that these representations are premised on migrant exclusion which is bolstered by a cultural denial of histories of racism and colonization. I consider the implications of excluding the presence of a detention center in Schiphol airport’s self-representation and trace my search for the Schipholbrand monument as a haunting reminder of the history of immigration detention at the airport. Through the informational video by the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Defence, Immigration detention in the Netherlands (2019) I observe that there are visual contradictions in the self-representative portrayals of logical objectivity and legality. The absenting of the centrality of airports, or what I call the transparency/opacity conundrum, made evident through the process of asylum at Schiphol cloaks the deportation regimes that inform immigration detention and deportation in the Netherlands.