Defining the Norms of Sexual Relationships

Based on ethnographic observations, this contribution deals with the control of sexual behaviors and gender relations in an immigration detention centre where deported aliens await their removal. Managing sexual difference is all the more difficult here that detention centers are supposedly non-penal devices, where discipline should be lighter than in jails. After describing this “liberal” confinement regime, the article draws to situations where members of the center’s staff had to define for themselves the “norm” for relationships between sexes. In those cases, officials are split between stigmatizing practices generally regarded as “deviant” – such as prostitution – and accepting them on behalf of the peculiar context of long-term confinement.