MArch Dissertation - Immigrant Detention in Western countries and the representation of architecture in graphic novels as a method to investigate traumas in detention facilities

Project Abstract

“Trauma is slippery, elusive, spectral; for many, it is unrepresentable.” (Davies, D. 2020), Migrant detention is an often unseen and undiscussed part of society and architecture, and the traumatic experiences of those both in and out of detention are unheard and uncontested examples of injustices facilitated through architecture. Graphic novels are a useful tool to the architect as methods of representing the stories architectures can tell, and many artists recording the injustice of detention have begun to use them as a medium to raise awareness of the injustice of migrant detention, from Mine Okubo’s TREK (1942) to Safdar Ahmed’s Still Alive (2021), the struggles of migrants as well as the traumas related to the architectures of detention are recorded and represented through these novels. This dissertation investigates the reasons for using graphic novels as an architectural tool, as well as how architecture contributes to trauma in migrant detention through its representation in graphic novels of detention experiences.