From the outside Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre looks like a Travelodge. On an industrial estate in the middle of the Bedfordshire countryside, somewhere between London and Milton Keynes the detention (sorry we’re supposed to call it a removal centre aren’t we) centre is nestled between a pet crematorium and a Red Bull racing’s headquarters.
It’s no coincidence that Yarl’s Wood is so unremarkable and easy to overlook, this is both fitting and practical. If it weren’t for the barbed wire and CCTV cameras you really would think it was a conference centre.
In 2015, the outgoing Chief Inspector of Prisons, Nick Hardwick, branded Yarl’s Wood as being ‘of national concern’. The centre, which is managed by private firm Serco, is supposed to be a place where people who are about to be deported are taken but, in reality, Hardwick’s report found that three-quarters were eventually released. Indeed, three of the women The Debrief met when we visited Yarl’s Wood have now been released.
This is a scandal. One that we should all care about because Britain is (or, rather, was) the only EU member state where there is no limit on the time that asylum seekers can be detained. At Yarl’s Wood and in other institutions like it, already vulnerable people are, effectively, being held indefinitely despite the fact that the majority of them have committed no crime.
This can take a huge toll. As Hardwick’s report found, 54% of the women held said they felt depressed or suicidal when they first arrived at Yarl’s Wood and 45% of women said they felt unsafe, ‘due to the uncertainty of their immigration status, a poor introduction to the centre, very poor health care and having too few visible staff on the units.’
Because no cameras are allowed inside, it’s difficult to shine a light on what’s really going on at Yarl’s Wood. This is why filmmaker Jade Jackman’s new documentary, Calling Home, is so important. Setting out to make a film about ‘the women the government doesn’t want you to see’ Jackman, 23, has made the ‘invisible’ women of Yarl’s Wood visible.
Calling Home from Jade Jackman on Vimeo.
Speaking to The Debrief, Jade explained that she first became involved with Yarl’s Wood while studying law at the London School of Economics. ‘It was when all legal aid was being cut and I wanted to get involved with people who weren’t getting representation. This was when I found out about the extent of the situation at Yarl’s Wood.’ She then complied a dossier of the sexual abuse claims of women at the ‘immigration removal centre and says something one of the woman in particular said stuck in her mind. ‘She described the women inside Yarl’s Wood as “invisible women”’, Jade recalls. ‘I was really shocked by how any country could enforce invisibility on anyone, just by taking their passport away, for something as arbitrary as border control.’
At a time when audiences are being hit with wave after wave of bad news on a daily basis, Jade set out to make something that showed refugees in a different light, that wasn’t reductive and hopeless but, instead, ‘would emotionally resonate’. Calling Home uses recorded phone calls with women inside Yarl’s Wood and performance art to tell its story. Jade says she hopes it ‘speaks to people in a new way and represents the women inside in a new way.’ By using a single female figure visually, she wants to ‘humanise these disembodied voices’ and, in a similar way to feature film, ‘use an actor to bring viewers closer to the subject matter.’
Report after report has shown that Yarl’s Wood is failing the women it holds, not meeting the needs of vulnerable women and not in step with the actions other countries take when it comes to asylum seekers and, yet, nothing changes. Perhaps this film will go one step closer to showing people why they should care about the invisible women of Yarl’s Wood.
You might also be interested in:
What Goes On At Yarl's Wood Should Be A National Scandal - So Why Isn't It?** **
Why Was This Woman Locked Up In Yarl's Wood For 18 Months For No Reason?
Follow Vicky on Twitter @Victoria_Spratt
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.