ABSTRACT Buildings and landscapes are crystallizations of dominant societal beliefs and practices. Architecture also shapes peoples’ experiences of places and institutions, and provides a unique source of evidence of historical change. This article describes how students from the School of Architecture and the Humanities at the University of Texas at Austin researched the spaces of migrant detention in Texas, which is a critical part of America’s larger story of mass incarceration. Students mapped the physical locations, architectural forms, and building histories of Texas’ detention centers, and worked with migrants who had been detained to create visual stories of their migration journeys and experiences in detention. These methods support the argument that the spaces of immigrant detention – the material forms, geographic locations, institutional structures, and nested experiences – are critical to understanding a disjuncture between detention policy and detention practice. The US government asserts that immigrant detention is civil in nature, yet detention centers owned by private prison corporations and located in unpopulated rural localities with limited public access replicate US prisons, and are experienced by migrants as punitive environments. These methods also contribute to a more robust and expansive public “spatial imagination” regarding the relationship between immigrant detention and the environment, which is necessary to envisioning alternative systems of (and to) immigrant detention.

中文翻译：

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监禁状态：德克萨斯州移民拘留的建筑视角

摘要 建筑和景观是主要社会信仰和实践的结晶。建筑还塑造了人们对场所和机构的体验，并提供了独特的历史变化证据来源。本文描述了德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校建筑与人文学院的学生如何研究德克萨斯州移民拘留的空间，这是美国大规模监禁故事的重要组成部分。学生绘制了德克萨斯州拘留中心的物理位置、建筑形式和建筑历史，并与被拘留的移民一起创作了他们的移民旅程和拘留经历的视觉故事。这些方法支持这样的论点，即移民拘留的空间——物质形式、地理位置、体制结构和嵌套经验——对于理解拘留政策和拘留实践之间的脱节至关重要。美国政府声称移民拘留本质上是民事拘留，但私人监狱公司拥有的拘留中心位于人口稀少的农村地区，公众访问受限，复制了美国监狱，移民将其视为惩罚性环境。这些方法还有助于对移民拘留与环境之间的关系产生更强大和更广泛的公众“空间想象”，这对于设想（和）移民拘留的替代系统是必要的。美国政府声称移民拘留本质上是民事拘留，但私人监狱公司拥有的拘留中心位于人口稀少的农村地区，公众访问受限，复制了美国监狱，移民将其视为惩罚性环境。这些方法还有助于对移民拘留与环境之间的关系产生更强大和更广泛的公众“空间想象”，这对于设想（和）移民拘留的替代系统是必要的。美国政府声称移民拘留本质上是民事拘留，但私人监狱公司拥有的拘留中心位于人口稀少的农村地区，公众访问受限，复制了美国监狱，移民将其视为惩罚性环境。这些方法还有助于对移民拘留与环境之间的关系产生更强大和更广泛的公众“空间想象”，这对于设想（和）移民拘留的替代系统是必要的。