Control Through Violence: A situational analysis of embodied practices of violence in a refugee reception centre

Abstract

This paper explores how violence is mobilised for control purposes in organisations. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted at the total institution we name Arrival – a German refugee reception centre – we develop how private security guards engage in practices of signalling and exerting violence vis-à-vis Arrival’s residents to enforce rules. Our research contributes to the extant literature in three ways. First, we elucidate how practices of violence, following a logic of escalation and deterrence, work for organisational control purposes. Second, our research shifts the extant focus from discursive to embodied forms of invisibilisation by showing how violence is made simultaneously visible and invisible in its very enactment. Third, it provides insights into situational interactions rather than conditions of violence in total institutions.

Keywords

body ethnography invisibility organisational control refugees total institutions violence

Introduction

The queue for the cantina is a classic example where something of high value for the residents is distributed . . . Sometimes, because of the building layout, they have to wait outside when it’s cold in winter and people start jumping the queue . . . It’s tough to develop a specific culture for the facility. People come and go . . . Because you can’t develop a culture so quickly, you need counter-violence to contain that, to enforce a certain discipline that is in the interest of all residents.

–Torben, head of management at Arrival

Recent studies have started to explore the connection between violence, order and control (Costas & Grey, 2019; Crawford & Dacin, 2021; Gill & Burrow, 2018) – something that has been largely neglected in control research in management and organisation studies (e.g. Cardinal, Kreutzer, & Miller, 2017; Sitkin, Long, & Cardinal, 2020). Building on this emerging research, we empirically explore and conceptually develop how ‘violence’ is practised in everyday organisational life in the total institution (Goffman, 1961) of a refugee reception centre ‘to enforce a certain discipline’, as Torben above puts it, that is, to exert control.

Violence can be defined as ‘that which violates or causes violation, usually performed by a violator upon the violated’ (Hearn, 1994, p. 735). Our paper focuses on physical violence, which refers to the harming of bodies and the body’s potential to harm others (Popitz, 2017). Such violence is often approached as something past, distant, or exceptional (Costas & Grey, 2019), an approach consonant with the idea that contemporary societies in the Global North are violence-averse (Schinkel, 2013). Yet dispersed studies point out how violence persists even as it is discursively invisibilised through othering (Varman & Al-Amoudi, 2016), normalisation (Baines & Cunningham, 2011; Varman, Al-Amoudi, & Skålén, 2023), and relabelling (Sandman, 2023) in organisations such as hospitals (Johnston & Kilty, 2016), factories (Varman & Al-Amoudi, 2016), and job centres (Bishop, Korczynski, & Cohen, 2005), as well as in occupations such as elite cooking (Nilsson, 2012), policing (Manning, 1980), and private security (Monaghan, 2004).

Studying violence is important not only because it interrelates with marginalisation (Chowdhury, 2021), discrimination, and vulnerability (Kenny, 2016), therefore carrying ‘broader societal relevance’ (Martí & Fernández, 2013, p. 1216; see also Clegg, 2006; Munir, 2011), but also because it invites a fuller understanding of ‘what is happening in organizations’ (Hearn, 1994, p. 737), and how organisational control can manifest. Our paper draws on an ethnographic study conducted at a German refugee reception centre we call Arrival. This ‘total institution’ – a ‘prison-like’ (Goffman, 1961, p. xiii) organisation cut off from wider society – constitutes an extreme context, allowing us to explore ‘hard-to-get-at organizational phenomena’ (Hällgren, Rouleau, & de Rond, 2018, p. 112), namely, violence, more easily than in conventional organisational settings. Indeed, previous research has demonstrated how total institutions provide a fertile ground for violence (Clegg, 2009; Clegg, Cunha, & Rego, 2012; Cunha, Clegg, Rego, & Lancione, 2012; Martí & Fernández, 2013). Based on our ethnography, we analyse interactions with residents in which security guards engage in what we term signalling the potentiality of violence and exerting actual violence. These embodied practices, intended to foster rule compliance, involve different intensities and visibilities of violence.

In shedding light on the interrelations between control, violence, and its (in)visibility in the context of a total institution, we make three contributions to extant research. First, we add to studies of violence and order (Crawford & Dacin, 2021; Gill & Burrow, 2018) by developing how violence as an organised phenomenon, following a logic of escalation, is practised for control purposes. Second, our paper contributes to research on the invisibilisation of violence (e.g. Chowdhury, 2021; Kenny, 2016; Varman & Al-Amoudi, 2016) by shifting the focus from discursive to embodied forms of invisibilisation, and by showing how invisibilisation relates to violence’s situational visibility. Third, while existing total-institution research has revealed conditions for violence and focused on cases where extreme violence in the form of crimes against humanity becomes the organisational end in itself (Clegg, 2009; Clegg et al., 2012; Cunha et al., 2012), we explore a total institution where more moderate forms of violence are exercised in face-to-face interactions for control purposes. Thereby, we elucidate the need to go beyond the predominant focus on conditions towards a situational analysis to explain how and when violence takes place in face-to-face interactions.

Control in Organisations: The Role of Violence

The exercise of control for achieving certain ends is a central question in organisational practice and research (see the classic works of, e.g., Blau & Scott, 1982; Etzioni, 1964, 1975; Taylor, 1947). What is largely absent in recent discussions of control (see, e.g., two extensive literature reviews by Cardinal et al., 2017; Sitkin et al., 2020) is the interrelation of control and violence that classic studies refer to. For instance, Blau and Scott (1982, p. 57) describe how control is backed up by violence in organisations, such as prisons, that ‘deal with society’s outcasts’. Etzioni (1975, p. 28) points out how in ‘coercive organizations’, such as mental hospitals, the control of inmates relies on ‘the potential or actual use of force’.

Violence refers to the actual or potential ‘force by the violator’ and ‘the violation of the violated’ (Hearn, 1994, p. 735). Hearn (1994, p. 732) speaks of plural ‘violence(s)’: violence may be symbolic (Bourdieu, 2000), structural (Galtung, 1969), or physical (Collins, 2008; Popitz, 2017). Whereas these violence(s) can overlap and may be difficult to distinguish empirically, we can nonetheless seek to differentiate between them analytically. Physical violence brings into focus the body, its ‘vulnerability’ (Popitz, 2017, p. 19) to be harmed and potential to harm others. For the sociologist Popitz, the body’s vulnerability constitutes a human condition: we cannot separate ourselves from our bodies, thus pain inflicted upon it by violence can hardly be ignored.

Already 30 years ago, sociologist Hearn (1994, p. 737) pointed out the need to study violence, as we understand organisational life ‘more fully by bringing violence into the picture’. His work explicitly takes an interest in the gendered nature of violence (Hearn, 1998), showing how violence is historically, culturally, socially, and politically embedded in gendered (for more recent feminist work on violence, see also, e.g., Das, 2008; Vergés, 2022), and we might add, post-/colonial power relations (von Holdt, 2013). However, violence’s existence is often negated by organisation scholar’s use of ‘euphemisms for violence such as ‘“power”, “domination”, “control”, even “authority”’ (Hearn, 1994, p. 737).

Recently, there has been a renewed interest in violence in organisations (e.g. Böhm & Pascucci, 2020; Chowdhury, 2021; Costas & Grey, 2019; Crawford & Dacin, 2021; Gill & Burrow, 2018; Kenny, 2016; Varman et al., 2023). A growing number of studies have picked up insights from social theory to explore how violence constitutes a fundamental way to create and maintain social order (Benjamin, 1996; Durkheim, 1973; Popitz, 2017) that persists in today’s organisations, alongside more disciplinary and/or bureaucratic forms of control (Costas & Grey, 2019). Crawford and Dacin (2021) show how fly-fishing guides use violence in individual hidden acts of vigilantism to enforce fishing regulations. Such ‘policing work’ (Crawford & Dacin, 2021, p. 1220) serves to maintain and reinforce the institutional order of fly fishing. Gill and Burrow’s (2018, p. 453) study of elite cooking demonstrates how institutional maintenance can take place through ‘fear work’, which refers to ‘the deliberate efforts of chefs to instil fear into other chefs, connecting institutionalized rules of fear to individual experiences’. Varman et al.’s (2023) study of domestic workers in India develops how humiliation can involve physical violence, stabilising the exploitative, oppressive cast-based power relationships. The resulting annihilation of the ‘worker’s corporeality and subjectivity’ makes them docile and compliant, showing how ‘degraded workers are controlled through workplace oppression’ (Varman et al., 2023, p. 1871).

Building on this emerging literature, our paper aims to develop a deeper understanding of the ongoing presence of violence in organisations and its connection to control. In exploring specific situations, we add to the literature an understanding of violence as an organised phenomenon rather than individual acts (Crawford & Dacin, 2021), one that is mobilised directly rather than indirectly (Varman et al., 2023) for control purposes. Moreover, we develop how different violence(s) (Gill & Burrow, 2018) relate to each other through a logic of escalation, bringing about control effects.

The Invisibilisation of Violence in Organisations

Costas and Grey (2019, p. 1577) present violence as an absent/present phenomenon, ‘lurking in the background’ of organisations. Crawford and Dacin (2021, p. 1220) describe it as ‘veiled, lying in ambush’. This (in)visibility of violence seems indicative of how societies in the Global North understand themselves as violence-averse (Schinkel, 2013). The underlying assumption is that, over the course of what Elias (1978) famously terms ‘the civilizing process’, violence has been contained by the ‘state monopoly of violence’ (Weber, 1922), namely, the police or military, and thus no longer features prominently in social and organisational life.¹ For Elias, violence has vanished from the front stage but continues to be present and efficacious: ‘physical violence and the threat emanating from it have a determining influence on individuals in society, whether they know it or not’ (Elias, 1998, p. 57). As public torture and physical punishment are no longer prevalent and broadly accepted modes of social control, violence has moved to the invisible realm. But how can violence remain ‘potentially present . . . as an agency of control’ (Elias, 1998, p. 57) in organisations that largely consider themselves violence-averse?

A dispersed literature has explored the invisibilisation of violence in organisations. Such invisibilisation serves to make occurrences of violence ‘inconsistent with the ideological scheme’ – in our case the idea that organisations are civilised and violence-averse – ‘either go unnoticed or get explained away’ (Irvine & Gal, 2000, p. 38). Othering constitutes one central way in which this takes place. Varman and Al-Amoudi’s (2016, p. 1910) study of Coca Cola’s Indian factory shows how workers are considered ‘ungrievable lives’ to justify covert and often illegal violence against them. Kenny (2016, p. 939) develops how 19th-century Irish industrial schools othered children from impoverished families as ‘abject boundary objects’, the unwanted part of Irish identity, making violence against them acceptable and suppressing resistance against it. Chowdhury (2021, p. 133) conceptualises such violence as ‘insensitive’ due to its ‘ideological influence’ and ‘limited traceability’, which brings about ‘invisible harm to the families or community members’ of marginalised groups.

Another set of studies explores the normalisation of violence. Discourses on customer sovereignty can put workers into servile positions vis-à-vis customers, thereby constructing violence as a normal feature of customer interactions (Baines, 2006; Baines & Cunningham, 2011; Good & Cooper, 2016). Bishop et al. (2005) point out that, beyond management and formal organisation, staff itself may actively render violence invisible. Varman et al. (2023, p. 1865) show this in relation to a female domestic worker who had her hand broken by her employer. Instead of reporting this to the doctor, she remains silent. The moral climate of fear and humiliation characterising the caste-based worker–employer relationship serves to normalise violence. Such normalisation can also be inscribed into occupational cultures, for instance in care work (Baines, 2006; Baines & Cunningham, 2011) or cooking (Nilsson, 2012), so that workers’ identities become tied to being able to endure it. This can affect perceptions in that ‘the more violence in an organisation, the higher the threshold for what counts as violence’ (Nilsson, 2012, p. 653).

Violence’s invisibilisation is particularly salient in extreme occupations (Granter, McCann, & Boyle, 2015) such as in the police, the military, or private security. Seen as a necessary and acceptable feature of police work (Manning, 1980), violence centrally shapes an occupational culture constructed around masculinity (Dick, 2005; Waddington, 1999), ‘war stories’ (Van Maanen, 1973, p. 410), and hostile environments and threats (Branch, 2021). Police violence typically collides with social norms, and this ‘necessitates rules of secrecy’ (Manning, 1980, p. 143) and administrative processes (Van Maanen, 1980) to explain away its use. As such, violence is normalised as necessary based on the ‘“god” [of] discourse of policing: “officer safety”’ (Lande, 2010, p. 88), or invisibilised through othering of frequent victims of violence such as Black women (Joseph, 2022; Ritchie, 2017) or impoverished Brazilian civilians (Huggins, 2000; see also Alcadipani, Lopes da Silva, Bueno, & de Lima, 2021).

Critical military studies (Basham, Belkin, & Gifkins, 2015), similarly, point to the prevalence of violence and its invisibilisation (Hast, 2022; Millar & Tidy, 2017). Studies refer to wartime remembrance invisibilising ‘militarized state violence against the racialized populations of many parts of the world’ (Reeves & Heath-Kelly, 2020, p. 247), the ‘normalization of violence’ (Pomarède, 2018) in popular culture representations of soldiers’ battlefield experiences (see also Lucaites & Simons, 2017), and the relabelling of violent interventions as ‘peacekeeping’ ones (Sandman, 2023; see also Chwastiak, 2015 on the relabelling of torture).

Private security guards, the focus of our paper, engage in comparable forms of invisibilisation, though under radically different occupational circumstances. They conduct low-status, stigmatised work (Johnston & Hodge, 2014; Löfstrand, Loftus, & Loader, 2016; Thumala, Goold, & Loader, 2011) and, in contrast to police and military, lack a legal mandate to exercise violence (Button, 2007; Kupka, Šmíd, & Walach, 2017; Monaghan, 2004). Despite this, the firms contracting security guards often explicitly expect bouncers (Hobbs, Hadfield, Lister, & Winlow, 2002; Monaghan, 2002) or hospital security guards (Johnston & Hodge, 2014) to use violence, if necessary. Guards’ occupational culture is typically constructed around masculine notions of physical strength, toughness, the display of an intimidating body (Hobbs et al., 2002; Monaghan, 2002), and the ability to defend against attacks (on guards as victims, see Ferguson, Prenzler, Sarre, & de Caires, 2011; Koeppen, 2019; Koeppen & Hopkins, 2021). The expectation to use violence while lacking a legal mandate puts pressure on guards to invisibilise it (Monaghan, 2004). Thus, guards attempt to discursively neutralise violence; for example, as necessary to protect psychiatric patients from themselves (Johnston & Kilty, 2016). When using violence, guards watch out for potential witnesses to avoid being identified (Monaghan, 2004).

Taken together, dispersed studies demonstrate how violence continues to be ‘present’ (Elias, 1998, p. 57) in various organisations. Through othering, normalisation, and/or relabelling, organisations, violators, and even the violated discursively invisibilise violence. Building on these insights, our paper aims to draw attention to the (in)visibilisation of violence in its very enactment. We shift the focus from discursive to embodied forms of (in)visibilisation – something that is important for understanding how violence can have control effects and why it is often difficult to grasp in today’s organisations.

Total Institutions and the Conditions for Violence

We explore control through violence in the ‘extreme context’ (Hällgren et al., 2018, p. 111) of the total institution of a refugee camp (on refugee camps, more generally, see also Alkhaled & Sasaki, 2022; Dykstra-DeVette & Canary, 2019; Kodeih, Schildt, & Lawrence, 2023). In Asylums, Goffman (1961) develops how total institutions constitute an ideal-type for a range of organisations, such as ‘army barracks, ships, boarding schools’ (p. 5) – and, we would add, refugee camps (see also La Chaux, Haugh, & Greenwood, 2018). The ‘barrier to social intercourse with the outside and to departure that is often built right into the physical plant, such as locked doors, high walls, barbed wire, cliffs, water, forests, or moors’ (Goffman, 1961, p. 4) symbolises total institutions. Goffman’s (1961) writings are rife with descriptions of violence against inmates, such as force-feeding (p. 28) and forced undressing and showering (pp. 20–21).

A growing number of studies have explored violence in total institutions. In the context of crimes against humanity, research has focused on the ‘very material conditions of organizational power’ (Clegg, 2009, p. 326) that foster violence. Clegg (2009) has identified bureaucratic forms of organising, routinisation, spatial confinement, segregation and the symbolic marking of victims as conditions for the extreme violence apparent in the total institution of concentration camps. Martí and Fernández (2013, p. 1199), also studying the holocaust, draw attention to the role of ‘institutional work of oppression’. Institutionalised knowledge on Jewish ancestry in the profession of ‘family researchers’ (Martí & Fernández, 2013, p. 1199) served, for example, to decide whom to deport, granting credibility and legitimacy to the use of extreme violence. A series of studies on the total institution of the Khmer Rouge’s S-21 extermination camp have identified further ‘conditions that enable the organization of genocide’ (Clegg at al., 2012, p. 1735). These include the Khmer Rouge’s utopian vision, ‘extreme hierarchy’ (Cunha, Rego, & Clegg, 2010, p. 298) and a culture of unquestioned obedience based on fear and uncertainty (Cunha et al., 2012).

Whereas this line of research has focused on organisational conditions fostering violence aimed at the annihilation of human lives, there are few studies hinting at the presence of less extreme forms of violence in more conventional organisations. Without discussing violence in any detail, research of the contract manufacturing company Foxconn has pointed to a ‘military culture’ (Chan & Ngai, 2010, p. 16) and a style of leadership understood as ‘righteous dictatorship’ (Ngai et al., 2016, p. 172) backed by private security guards’ use of violence against factory workers. Geppert and Pastuh’s (2017) study of the food retailer Lidl indicates how a ‘militaristic . . . style of management’ and a ‘climate of fear’ (p. 264) enable and maintain a ‘system of total control’ (p. 255).

In line with such indications, our study aims to add to extant total-institution research in three ways. First, we explore the under-researched phenomenon of how violence is practised in interactions in a total institution where it does not constitute an end in itself but a means of control. In so doing, we show how violence remains a crucial characteristic of total institutions despite theorising that has de-emphasised its importance, highlighting inmate discipline instead (Murphy, Pardeck, Chung, & Choi, 1994; Scott, 2010). Second, in focusing on violence in face-to-face interactions, we move beyond the predominant analysis of organisational conditions. As Randall Collins (2008) argues in his landmark study Violence: A Micro-sociological Theory, even when conditions for violence are present, these do not explain in themselves why and how face-to-face violence takes place in a particular situation. It is important to study interactions as violence ‘is not easy [to do], and the key [. . .] turning points are at the micro level’ (Collins, 2008, p. 34). Violence ‘goes against the interactional grain’ (Collins, 2008, p. 25), involving physical and emotional stress. Contemporary readings of the (in)famous Stanford Prison Experiment (Zimbardo, 1972) or Milgram (1963) Experiment confirm Collins: during the experiments, participants did not easily engage in violent acts but had to be explicitly pushed into these (Le Texier, 2019) whereas defiance and disobedience were common (Perry, 2012; see also Bregman, 2021).

Third, the situational lens we take allows us to reveal how violence can shape interactions without visibly breaking out. Following Collins (2008, pp. 24–25), ‘quarreling . . . fearful, tense, and hostile emotions’ and, indeed ‘threats’ are part and parcel of violence in interaction, and thus need to be ‘put [. . .] into the model of situational dynamics’. In the remainder of this paper, based on a situational analysis, we develop how violence for control purposes is mobilised in the total institution of a refugee camp, involving different degrees of intensity and visibility.

Methods

Introduction to the setting

Our study draws on ethnographic insights from Arrival, a refugee reception centre in Germany. Refugees and asylum seekers are legally required to spend the first months after their entry into Germany in such centres, where their residence status is decided. Residents are heterogeneous in every aspect; for example, gender, age, marital status, ethnicity, religion, and nationality.

Arrival constitutes a total institution, ‘a place of residence and work where a large number of like-situated individuals, cut off from the wider society for an appreciable period of time, together lead an enclosed, formally administered round of life’ (Goffman, 1961, p. xiii). While residents are not forcefully contained – they may leave the premises² – Arrival separates them from the outside world. Security guards describe it as a self-contained city separate from the outside world. Various facilities and institutions are located under Arrival’s roof, such as the state and federal office for migration and refugees, where hearings and consultations for the asylum procedure take place; medical facilities for screenings and first aid; facilities for the provision of social welfare, including food, housing, and clothing; and recreational facilities.

Typical for a total institution, boundaries between ‘sleep, play, and work’ are broken down and ‘a system of explicit formal rulings and a body of officials’ (Goffman, 1961, p. 6) – from house rules to the federal Asylum Act – govern residents’ daily lives. Another ‘distinctive characteristic of total institutions’ (Lucas, Kang, & Li, 2012, p. 9) is the presence of private security guards. The contracted guards from Secure – a pseudonym – work around the clock in 12-hour shifts. Secure is a typical German security contractor (see Confederation of European Security Services, 2013). Their guards are largely physically capable, younger to middle-aged White men with backgrounds in skilled crafts, such as construction, and/or periods of unemployment. Few qualifications are required for working at Arrival: a basic six-week legal training and workshops on de-escalation and intercultural competency. Of the 80 guards employed at Arrival, around half of them are present at each shift. Apart from patrolling the premises and residential buildings, their tasks include overseeing food and clothing distributions, social events, and disciplinary hearings and consultation hours at the state office for migration and refugees. They are frequently called upon by camp management when conflicts arise with or among residents.

As a total institution, Arrival constitutes an extreme context (Hällgren et al., 2018) that may make visible aspects that otherwise remain largely invisible in more conventional organisational settings (Bamberger & Pratt, 2010). It is therefore an illuminating setting to explore the use of violence for control purposes.

Data generation

Our ethnographic approach is apt for studying practices of violence in interactions. Such an ‘ethnographic grounding’ (Collins, 2008, p. 38) allows generating ‘data that gets us as close as possible into the dynamics of situations’ (Collins, 2008, p. 1). Field access was granted after nine months of negotiations with Secure and with the state officials responsible for Arrival. The field research generated in-depth data on multiple situational arrangements where violence was practised (Nicolini & Monteiro, 2017).

The first author was present in the field for more than 400 hours over one year. His presence was publicly announced in a Secure newsletter. In field interactions, he made his role as researcher clear whenever possible in order to ensure consensual participation. During two to four shifts per week, including both day and night shifts, he shadowed more than 40 security guards in their various shifts, and further interacted with actors such as state employees, the facilities’ management, social workers, and a limited number of residents.

Taking part in patrols, supervisions, transports, or inspections, his role oscillated between non-participant and ‘observer as participant’ (Gold, 1958). As the guards and camp employees expected him to do ‘researcher stuff’, it proved unproblematic to take voice recordings with verbatim quotes and to write down first analytical ideas and reflexive observations during fieldwork. The first author wrote down his emotions in a field diary (Spradley, 1979), especially after observing incidents of violence. Overall, more than 600 pages of field reports were produced.

During smoking or coffee breaks, the first author conducted informal ethnographic interviews (Spradley, 1979) with security guards, social workers, state authority employees, and, to a limited extent, residents of Arrival. Thirty-four formal interviews were also conducted: 20 with security guards, three with managers in Arrival’s administration, four with frontline managers, three with middle managers, and four with senior managers of Secure. Close contact with the security guards and key managers facilitated recruitment of initial interviewees, after which snowballing and purposeful sampling took place. All interviews were recorded, transcribed, and anonymised.

Documentary data included shift plans, patrol plans, layouts of the compound, and ‘wanted posters’ of residents. Further sources were official regulations concerning objectives, authority, and behaviour of security guards; specifications of contractual obligations; incident reports; and unofficial notes.

The data generated provide complementary insights. The researcher’s immersion in the field allowed him to engage with different actors and to trace violent situations in situ. His presence enabled him to ‘capture the process of violence as it actually is performed’ (Collins, 2008, p. 4), that is, the interactions and embedded nature of the practices (Nicolini, 2017; van Hulst, Ybema, & Yanow, 2017). Interviews focused more directly on actors’ meaning-making of violent situations. Documentary data allowed for further contextual insights, learning official terminology, and focus on the contrast between violence’s absence in official accounts and its unofficial presence at Arrival.

Data analysis

The first author coded the data, using the computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software Atlas.ti. We followed the ‘methodological rule . . . to let the research process find its own borders’ (Collins, 2008, p. 25) in that we looked for situations in which actual violence and potential violence were present. Inspired by practice theory, we regard violence as a ‘skilled accomplishment’ (Nicolini, 2009, p. 1400). We departed from first-order concepts (Van Maanen, 1979) in the field actors’ language that relate to situations of potential and actual violence, thus involving a certain physicality, fear, tension, authority, or dominance. Codes emerged that capture, amongst other things, how guards perceive their role (e.g. ‘hatchet-man’), relate to their body (e.g. ‘tough’, ‘unyielding’), refer to the residents (e.g. ‘train them like dogs’), physically and/or verbally interact with residents (e.g. ‘pushing’, ‘shouting’, ‘blocking’), and also make sense of violent occurrences (e.g. for ‘their own protection’, ‘guiding’). At this stage we coded both individual expressions and observations as well as longer situational descriptions from ethnographic data to make sense of the interactions between the guards and residents in their particular context. Together with the second author and in dialogue with extant literature (e.g. Collins, 2008; Goffman, 1961; and the aforementioned management and organisation studies’ literature on violence, invisibilisation, order, control, total institution) this initial round of coding was developed into second-order themes around practices of violence in a total institution. Based on the level of situational intensity and violence’s visibility, we distinguished between practices relating to creating an intimidating presence, targeted intimidation, getting physical, and subduing the body. Whereas the first two practices do not entail any physical contact between residents and guards, the second two do. In order to capture this important distinction relating to potential and actual violence, we merged these into two overarching, bifurcated sets of practices: signalling and exerting violence. Here we also identified an underlying logic of deterrence and escalation that we theorise below.

Apart from triangulation of data generation methods, peer debriefing (Lincoln & Guba, 1985) allowed credibility and plausibility checks (Hammersley, 2008). In addition, the first author engaged in member checks (Lincoln & Guba, 1985), discussing his insights and ideas with various guards and officials at Arrival.

Researcher positionality, ethics, and limitations

The ethnographic field study brought the researcher close to stigmatised or even legally sanctionable actions (Ferrell & Hamm, 1998; Lyng, 1998). Arrival, as an extreme context, is a ‘risky’ research environment, due to its ‘near-constant exposure to potentially extreme events’ (Hällgren et al., 2018, p. 117), in our case physical violence, in which ‘researchers can become ethnographers of brutality and hostility’ (Marks & Abdelhalim, 2018, p. 307). Yet, the researcher was only at risk to a limited degree: he neither participated in violent practices, nor was he ever the target of violence committed by guards or Arrival’s inhabitants. As a young German white man who had negotiated his field access through state authorities and shadowed Secure guards, he found himself symbolically associated with these by actors in the field. However, this brought about a major limitation of our study: the residents’ voices are only present to a limited extent. As Gomes and Duarte (2020, p. 462) point out, in ‘confinement settings’, establishing rapport with inmates is especially difficult: they may be suspicious of researchers and the purpose of the research. The first author engaged in casual, everyday interactions with residents (as far as language barriers allowed). Yet they declined formal interviews, fearing any negative influence on their asylum application – something that illuminates the power dynamics at this total institution (see also Abdelnour & Abu Moghli, 2021). Observing violent practices vis-à-vis residents, and being associated with the German asylum system that oscillates ‘between coercion and paternalism’ (Fontanari, 2015, p. 723), evoked feelings of discomfort and shame in the researcher (Claus, de Rond, Howard-Grenville, & Lodge, 2019). While our research carries the limitation that we cannot provide direct insights into residents’ meaning-making of violent situations, our non-participant observation data nevertheless allow us to make inferences about residents’ reactions to guards’ violent practices. More importantly, we believe that our study offers a rare glimpse of how violence takes place in contemporary organisational settings, such as Arrival – an important social and political issue concerning the organisation of global migration and the treatment of refugees.

Entering Arrival: Rules, Relationships, and the Invisibilisation of Violence

At Arrival, residents’ everyday life is tightly controlled through rules and regulations. The Asylum Act (Asylgesetz) requires residents to be available at all times to address issues concerning their asylum procedure. The office for migration and refugees requires previous registration for appointments. Residents have to queue for goods and services. House rules forbid hard alcohol – that is, beverages with more than 5% alcohol – as well as cooking and smoking in the living areas, while personal electronic devices, from water cookers to radios, must be registered and certified for use. Fire and safety regulations prohibit residents from personalising their rooms; for example, with rugs or posters. These rules and laws place residents in the difficult situation of impersonality, uncertainty, frustration, and dependency on authorities (Fontanari, 2015; Leutloff-Grandits, 2019). They therefore come into frequent conflict with these rules and laws, for instance, by using personal electronic devices without permission, jumping queues, demanding immediate appointments at the office for migration and refugees, or disregarding the 48-hour off-premises rule.

Security guards attribute some rule violations to residents’ lack of knowledge or German language skills. More often, they believe, residents deliberately break the rules. Referring to a female resident who breached the 48-hour rule to visit her family, Cyrill (security guard, 37, German) says, ‘You can tell them the rules a thousand times. As she said: “I know this, I know this”. OK, it’s nice that you know this, but why do you not understand that you cannot do this?’

Cyrill’s statement shows how guards fail to either care about or understand the practical difficulties residents face with respect to the rules. Moreover, when guards do exhibit sympathy, they may cite the residents’ ‘psychological worries’ rather than their human needs; for example, visiting family. Overall, the expectation prevails that residents must follow the rules:

Obviously, they have their, let’s say, psychological worries. They come to Germany, and they want asylum – why don’t they get it like, the next day? I get that. Many are here for months. They don’t understand what takes so long. But you must see, you are in Germany now, and here, you must adhere to the rules. (Robert, security guard, 34, German)

Guards see themselves as enforcers, tasked with making sure residents subordinate themselves, and thus ‘assimilate’ to the supposedly rule-abiding German ‘country’, as Katrin (security guard, 43, German) puts it. In this way, guards interpret rule adherence as a sign of residents’ willingness to assimilate.

The invisibilisation of guards’ violence: relabelling, normalisation, and othering

Arrival’s management and onsite state authority employees expect security guards to enforce rules through violence, if necessary, to maintain order (see also Benjamin, 1996; Popitz, 2017). Dario (34, German), the coordinator between Secure and the state authority for migration and refugees, states: ‘We are lucky, we have a good security team, they don’t hold back [from using violence if necessary]. If that was different, things wouldn’t work so well here.’ Dario thus relates the very functioning of the total institution to the guards’ potential or actual use of violence. Yet he also admits that such violence is a legal ‘grey area’:

Nobody really knows how well regulated everything is. For example, arresting somebody, Paragraph 127.³ Some say, ‘it’s OK’. Others say, ‘it’s not’ . . . If any one of [the residents] ever turns to a good lawyer, I don’t think it’ll look very good. Who arrested you, the security service? Uh-oh.

Violence is officially invisibilised to the outside because of the legal uncertainty surrounding its use (see Kupka et al., 2017; Monaghan, 2004). The head of the state authority of migration and refugees, Matthias (50, German), stresses that security guards ‘are not supposed to actively intervene, their role is to observe, report, and prevent others from getting involved’. Secure’s official documents concerning conflict situations also do not refer to violence; they state that if verbal interaction fails to de-escalate a conflict, and guards ‘can no longer control the situation, [they are supposed to] withdraw’ (excerpt from Secure’s instructions).

Guards are acutely aware of the legal uncertainty around their expected use of violence: ‘They told us during training . . .: you already have one foot behind bars’ (Edgar, security guard, 35, German). For this reason, guards (as well as onsite state authority employees) avoid the term violence or any terminology associated with physical force. They relabel violent practices by using a technical language, such as ‘fixating someone’ with handcuffs or to ‘make an arrest’ (see also Chwastiak, 2015).

Amongst themselves, however, guards openly talk about violence, which they describe as a normal feature of their work (see also Baines, 2006): it is ‘part of [the work] . . . For their [the residents’] protection, for our protection. We do it because we have to’ (Eric, security supervisor). This is not to say that they welcome this aspect of their job: despite gendered enactments of masculinity and toughness (see also Johnston & Hodge, 2014), they do not engage in violence easily and they fear being harmed, especially by counter-violence by residents. Referring to a violent outbreak between guards and residents, Stefan (security guard, 34, German) reported to the first author, who had not witnessed it: ‘I really feared for my life. I have a wife and kid at home.’

If, however, guards exercise violence, it is explained away through othering (see also Kenny, 2016). Indicative of racial stereotypes, residents are cast as animalistic, and therefore unpredictable and dangerous: ‘Those are human beings but really, they just act like animals’ (Ole, security guard, 32, German). A logic of us (civilised, self-controlled, rule-abiding German citizens) versus them (primitive, uncivilised, uncontrolled others) is at play in guards’ justifications of violence:

With them [residents], it’s not like with you and me, they’re not like us. They have no inhibitions . . . They want to kill you. And you have to respond accordingly. (Cyrill)

Through othering, guards attribute violence to the residents rather than to themselves (i.e. the latter is couched as a ‘response’ only). Notwithstanding that individual residents may be violent towards other residents or guards, we develop in our analysis how guards’ very framing of residents as aggressors serves to justify, and in fact invisibilise, their own use of violence. In sum, guards discursively invisibilise their use of violence through relabelling, othering, and normalisation. In the following, we illuminate how violence for control purposes takes place in practice, and how different degrees of (in)visibility are apparent in violent situations.

Signalling Violence

We distinguish between signalling and exerting violence. In contrast to exerting violence, signalling does not involve physical contact between violator and violated, in our case guards and residents, and thus remains more invisible. Signalling in the form of intimidating presence and targeted intimidation nevertheless harbours violence, as it frames the situation as one in which violence may potentially take place – something that can have control effects in itself.

Toughing it out: performing intimidation

To signal the potential use of violence, security guards perform their bodies in ways that foster an aura of intimidation, toughness, and authority. Guards wear white shirts, black cargo pants and steel-toe boots, and on colder days, black soft-shell jackets and tactical vests (gear with pockets and holsters for mobile radios and other equipment). The clothing makes security guards easily recognisable. Importantly, in contrast to the police, security forces at Arrival are not allowed to carry or use weaponry. Many security guards make their appearance more martial by wearing authorised handcuffs and cut-resistant gloves in visible holsters. When the first author, having just entered the field, moves aside to let three residents pass through an entrance, Katrin, a security guard, reprimands him:

You must not give way like that. They should move around you. You really have to be clear about this. You take a step back here one too many times and they get used to it! You have to show them who is in charge.

Given the researcher’s association with the security guards, his failure to dominate the situation could undermine the credibility of their staged intimidation. This staging serves to make visible the potential use of violence. During the supervision of food, clothing, or other welfare distributions, guards position themselves at key points, such as doors and corridors. Residents must pass these spatial bottlenecks and thus the security guards, who deliberately size up passing residents with stern looks. As Emil (security guard, 27, German) puts it: ‘It’s about us being here. That we are here and they see us. That’s usually enough. That they see that we have an eye on them.’

Guards engage in ‘boasting’ as ‘for being the center of attention, and thus to dominate the attention of others’ (Collins, 2008, p. 346). They intentionally make their intimidating bodies visible to the residents to maintain order at Arrival. In addition to embodied intimidation, guards strategically use artefacts to exert authority. When conflict with residents arises, they may conspicuously take their gloves from their holster and put them on. Gloves not only constitute a symbolic barrier against the alleged ‘dirtiness’ guards attribute to residents – something that further highlights the resident’s position as other in the eyes of the guards (Douglas, 1966) – but also bear associations with bodily fluids as well as fear of infection and therefore of violent interventions: ‘Gloves, practically always. When opening a door or in case there is a brawl. Gloves on first, because when they bleed, bite or spit, always gloves on. You never know what they got’ (Eric).

Gloves signal to residents the guards’ readiness to use violence. This intentional visibilisation of violence is supposed to make residents accept a subordinate position, as the following situation exemplifies:

We [the first author and three guards] are called as reinforcements to a patrol. A group of residents has encircled the three patrolling guards, and an intense discussion between them takes place. Robert, Cyrill and Martin quickly step in and form a semicircle around their colleagues authoritatively so that the residents step back. The guards conspicuously stretch out their gloved hands towards the residents. I notice how this gesture makes an impression on the residents: they now exchange looks and keep their distance. Eric, leading the patrol, raises his open hand and slightly shakes his head; he seems to signal that the situation is under control. (Field notes)

The newly arrived guards explicitly visibilise potential violence vis-à-vis the residents: their decisive physical intervention and their display of their gloved hands mark their readiness to escalate the situation. The residents seem to accept the guards’ authority so that, as Eric signals to his colleagues, no further escalation is required. Both the performance of an intimidating body and the strategic use of artefacts associated with violence constitute ‘not so much a way of looking for a fight as of getting dominance over the situation, and thus situational respect, without actually having to fight’ (Collins, 2008, p. 352).

Special attention: targeting individuals

Signalling can entail more intense forms of targeted intimidation. Although still largely invisible as it only constitutes a potentiality, the practice of targeted intimidation makes violence increasingly visible. Targeted intimidation is realised through embodied performances directed at specific people. While supervising the cafeteria, for example, Eric approaches a table of residents, draws himself up to full height standing directly behind one of them, and intensely stares at him. The resident furtively glances behind himself, looking distressed, seemingly not daring to turn his head and face Eric. Instead, he exchanges looks with other residents, who also look flustered. After about a minute of intense uneasiness at the table, Eric returns to his position, explaining to the first author:

He is an acquaintance of ours. I tried to get a good look at him, but couldn’t really see him in the crowd. I want to establish a relationship with him. So I went over there and had a look. I want him to know I am here, and that I know he is here, that I am watching him so he doesn’t start fooling around.

An ‘acquaintance’ is a resident who has previously disobeyed orders or violated rules. Eric reasons that a general intimidating presence does not suffice to make this resident follow rules. He therefore escalates to more targeted intimidation through ‘blustering’: an ‘expression of pointed threat [and] anger directed at an immediate opponent’ (Collins, 2008, p. 347). His physical proximity makes the resident feel the former’s embodied authority, making violence affectively visible.

Such targeted intimidation can be reinforced by verbal commands. In one instance, the guards block the entrance to a residential room after being called there to intervene in a conflict. A young male resident protests that Robert has denied him entry. Cyrill broadens his shoulders, stands sternly with his legs apart in front of him, looks the resident in the eye and reprimands him sharply: ‘Listen buddy, keep your calm, nobody gets in now. It’s no use!’

The young resident remains agitated and keeps protesting, until an older resident pulls him aside and apologises to the guards for the younger man’s behaviour. The older resident’s intervention indicates his understanding of the guards’ signalling and compliance with their command. Meanwhile, the incident has attracted attention and a group of residents has gathered, talking loudly. Their talk threatens to drown out the guards’ voices and efforts to restrict residents’ use of voice. Challenged by this, Robert and Cyrill draw themselves up to even fuller height, and Cyrill nearly shouts: ‘Hey guys, not so loud! We are talking here! Thank you!’

Surprised by this outburst, the residents immediately start whispering and retreat to the end of the corridor a few metres away. However, Robert is not satisfied. He shouts: ‘Go into your rooms please, your rooms!’

There are only two nearby rooms. Robert and Cyrill position themselves in the corridor’s middle and slowly approach the group. They wave their arms, indicating the rooms and splitting up the group without any bodily contact as the residents are forced into one room or the other. While such signalling invisibilises violence, as it does not entail any physical contact, security guards make the threat of violence more visible and therefore palpable to the residents – something the guards intend as a deterrent so that they can ‘avoid fighting’ (Collins, 2008, p. 352). Simultaneously, the guards’ tone of voice and close proximity express clear commands: they direct residents to certain spaces, they police who may speak and at what volume, and they limit the range of appropriate feelings (see also Hochschild, 1983). Residents’ freedom is thus curtailed on pain of violence, however tacit the threat.

Exerting Violence

When performing intimidation and targeting individuals fail to enforce rules, guards cross the threshold towards exerting violence. This involves getting physical and/or subduing bodies.

Getting physical

One way in which guards exert violence is by engaging in physical contact with the residents to restrict their movement. Edgar explains this carefully managed escalation:

We extend our arms a bit, leave our hands open, and show our palms. So we don’t grab him [the resident] under any circumstances. This could be seen as an attack. But what we do is, we extend our arms and gently push him out the door, for example.

Edgar explicitly differentiates between the open-handed pushing of a resident and an attack. He even describes such pushing as ‘gentle’, euphemistically referring to it when talking to the first author as a way of ‘assisting’ the resident (see also Johnston & Kilty, 2016). Despite such invisibilisation, violence is used. It goes beyond blustering, which involves only the ‘threat of force’ (Collins, 2008, p. 364), whereas here the guard uses his body as an instrument of force.

In one incident, camp management calls security to eject a resident from his room. While Edgar and Martin talk to him, another guard, Johannes (31, German) engages in targeted intimidation: he positions himself right next to the man, straightens up, folds his arms, and stares at him. In the meantime, Martin produces a plastic bag and starts bagging the resident’s belongings.

Martin:

This yours?

Resident, puzzled:

Yes.

Martin:

And this?

Resident:

Yes.

Martin:

And that?

Resident:

No.

Then Martin gathers the resident’s bedding. The resident protests: ‘No, no, this my room. No change!’

Soon everything is packed up. Edgar pats the resident on the upper arm and shoulder with an open hand and carefully but firmly pushes him towards the door, all the while talking insistently to him. Johannes closely follows, blocking the resident from returning to the room. Martin uses the filled blue plastic bag to help push the resident towards the door. The resident continues to protest, but more meekly. He gives in and is quickly ejected from the room.

In pushing the resident out of the room, the guards control his location and movement. Getting physical visibilises to the resident that any further resistance will be met with more intense violence, yet physically fighting back is the only option for resistance. He is presented with a ‘put-up-or-shut-up’ (Collins, 2008, p. 364) option: he can either give in or risk physical harm.

While the guards escalate the conflict, they simultaneously attempt to control the escalation, pushing instead of hitting or grabbing. Invisibilisation of violence inheres in the act: the resident could hardly describe his experience to outsiders as one of violence. Here talk plays a key role, as it not only distracts from the violence that is done, but also maintains the semblance of regular social interaction (see also Goffman, 1961). Eric explains: ‘We have distinct roles. We have talkers and, let’s say, doers. The talker is supposed to yak at him, distract him. The doers do.’

What exactly ‘doers do’ is that they get physical, in this instance by pushing the resident out of the room. By euphemising this as ‘doing’, not only does Eric discursively mask the violence (see also Chwastiak, 2015), but his comment further confirms our observation that guards attempt to invisibilise violence even to its target: ‘yakking’ distracts him from it.

Subduing the body

Security guards mobilise the full potential of their bodies and equipment to subdue residents where signalling and getting physical fail to elicit compliance. Here violence becomes most visible to the insiders of the situation and potentially to outsiders. Consider the following incident, in which a resident, nicknamed Topknot by the security guards because of his distinct hairstyle, resists being transferred to another camp location. The guards engage in signalling violence: four guards and David (38, German), the social workers’ supervisor at Arrival, surround the resident; then the guards put on their gloves and draw themselves up to their full height. David confronts the resident: ‘What are you trying to accomplish? You have to leave the compound. You have to calm down, or security will have to arrest you.’

The resident gestures wildly. He and David shout at one another. Guards escalate the situation: they corner the resident and berate him in broken English, sometimes switching to German although the resident can’t understand a word: ‘Calm down, calm down. Das hat hier alles keinen Sinn. [All of this is pointless, i.e. resisting]’ (Oskar, security guard, 29, German).

The resident turns towards the wall, groaning. Then he whips around, flailing his arms, and accosts David. Three security guards crash into a row of seats in the process of wrestling down the resident and handcuffing him. Everything happens extremely quickly. Soon the resident sits on one of the metal stools in the corridor, handcuffed, his head sunk to his chest. The guards are breathing heavily. No one speaks.

In this incident, the intended deterrence, signalling, fails and the situation escalates. Guards interpret the resident’s ‘micro-move’ (Collins, 2008, p. 364) of turning at David and flailing his arms as a tipping point. While violence is most visible at this stage, the guards nevertheless intend to invisibilise it by placing the resident in the role of the aggressor. Guards’ previous signalling remains largely invisible to outsiders, making it seem as if the situation becomes violent only at the point at which the resident turns back. This allows guards to discursively frame their use of violence as ‘self-defence’. Moreover, even at the point where the subduing of the body takes place, invisibilisation is inscribed into the guards’ practice: they avoid direct ‘hitting’ (Paul, security guard, 30, German), and prefer techniques associated with ‘defence’ (Florian, security guard, 37, German).

Discussion

This paper set out to analyse practices of violence for control purposes in organisations. The following discussion develops how our findings contribute to studies of control and violence by drawing attention to the logic of escalation; to studies of violence and its invisibilisation by revealing embodied forms of invisibilisation and the interplay of visibility and invisibility; and to studies of total institutions by shifting the focus from conditions to situational interactions of violence.

Control in organisations: violence and the logic of escalation

One main contribution of this paper is to shed light on how violence may be practised for control purposes, following a logic of escalation. In so doing, our paper connects to classic organisation theories (Blau & Scott, 1982; Etzioni, 1964, 1975), whose insights on the presence of violence have been neglected in more recent control discussions (Cardinal et al., 2017; Sitkin et al., 2020). This neglect relates to the problematic assumption that today’s organisations and societies are violence-averse (Schinkel, 2013), and implies that our field does not fully grasp how organisational control may still be backed up by violence (see also Costas & Grey, 2019; Hearn, 1994).

Recent research has drawn attention to violence in the form of ‘policing work’ (Crawford & Dacin, 2021) and ‘fear work’ (Gill & Burrow, 2018) for institutional maintenance as well as violence in the form of ‘humiliation’ (Varman et al., 2023) aimed at control, oppression, and exploitation of workers. While our paper, similarly, shows how violence can be ‘a necessary condition of the preservation of the social order’ (Popitz, 2017, p. 40), we add an understanding of violence as an organised phenomenon that entails an escalation logic. Here violence does not consist of micro-practices of humiliation embedded in and reproducing social power relations relating to caste, gender, or class (Varman et al., 2023). It is also not based on individual acts of vigilantism, which are a consequence of a loss of emotional control deemed problematic by the violators themselves (Crawford & Dacin, 2021). We show instead how violence may be organised, implicitly if not explicitly, demanded by management, and based on deliberate, carefully managed embodied practices. Thus, we shift attention to how violence can be deeply embedded into the very fabric of organisations, and intentionally mobilised for control purposes. In contrast to Varman et al. (2023, p. 1871), the purpose of this violence is therefore not the affirmation of ‘[o]ppressors’ status by annihilating workers’ corporeality and subjectivity’. Instead, we develop how violence is mobilised more directly to enforce rules; degradation is not violence’s primary aim.

Our concepts of performing intimidation and targeting individuals (signalling) as well as getting physical and subduing bodies (exerting violence) show certain parallels with Gill and Burrow’s (2018, p. 446) findings concerning ‘fear work’. However, we focus on the embodied nature of violence rather than only the emotions involved. The fears Gill and Burrow (2018) refer to do not relate to the subduing of bodies but to professional concerns of ‘not being proficient or “good enough” [. . .] to ensure continued employment’ (p. 451), and of ‘making mistakes in the kitchen’ resulting in ‘[e]xplosive, highly emotional outbursts’ (p. 452). Indeed, believing in an ‘ideology of culinary excellence’ (Gill & Burrow, 2018, p. 452), the chefs accept the ‘necessity of fear’ (Gill & Burrow, 2018, p. 454) for professional development.

Bringing into focus the embodied practices of violence is, however, important for understanding how these in themselves can serve control purposes. Whereas Gill and Burrow (2018) treat verbal, non-harmful and harmful violences as separate phenomena, we develop how they relate to each other through a logic of escalation. Only in this way can we understand why signalling may bring about the intended control effects and exerting violence is ‘less frequent’ (Gill & Burrow, 2018, p. 453): actors in the organisation need to be aware that non-compliance can escalate the situation towards the subduing of their bodies.

The use of violence is, of course, undesirable and rightly morally sanctioned (see also Blau & Scott, 1982). Further, we suggest that it does not necessarily succeed in controlling organisational members. Signalling may fail to engender the desired compliance. It is ritualistic and requires some shared understanding (Collins, 2008): to be intimidated by it, residents need to know that the artefact of the glove stands for an escalation towards the subduing of bodies. More importantly, inherent to the escalation logic is the possibility of non-compliance and even resistance in the form of counter-violence, leading to the point at which a situation may spin out of control.

Embodied invisibilisation and the interplay of visibility and invisibility of violence

Existing research has largely focused on how violence is discursively invisibilised in organisations through othering, relabelling, and normalisation (e.g. Baines, 2006; Chwastiak, 2015; Kenny, 2016). Our concepts of signalling and exerting violence contribute an understanding of how actors invisibilise violence in its very enactment: guards signal violence rather than engage in it in ways that would be visible to outsiders. If they exert violence more visibly, they get physical without grabbing, or they subdue people without hitting them. Following this, violators may not only ex post discursively invisibilise their violent practices (see Alcadipani et al., 2021; Manning, 1980; Van Maanen, 1980; Varman et al., 2023) or watch out for potential witnesses of violent situations (Monaghan, 2004). They may already anticipate the legal uncertainty surrounding their use of violence, and therefore adjust their practice accordingly – something that can involve staging the situation in ways that allow placing the violated into the role of the aggressor.

Furthermore, while the existing literature looks at the invisibilisation of violence in ways that largely decouple it from its situational visibilisation, the escalation logic we identify points to the interrelation between violence’s visibility and invisibility: moving from signalling to exerting, violence becomes more and more visible. The increasing degrees of situational visibility in turn engender different invisibilisation attempts. The invisibilisation of violence may be practised for reasons beyond legal uncertainty (Monaghan, 2004) and social undesirability (Blau & Scott, 1982). When aggressors use intense talk to distract their targets from physical manipulation, violence is invisibilised even to insiders – to the violated – and is so invisibilised for the violator’s self-protection.

Our insights into the (in)visibilisation of violence shed light on why violence and its control effects can be so difficult to grasp, yet continue to have ‘a determining influence on individuals’ (Elias, 1998, p. 57). Following the escalation logic we identified, research needs to work with a concept of violence broad enough to include signalling. A concept focusing solely on directly observable violence fails to account for violence’s absent-presence and its control effects. While the ‘tunnel of violence’ (Collins, 2012, p. 145) – the timespan during which violence is visibly exerted – is mostly short, the use of constant signalling may suffuse an organisation with the potential for violence.

Towards a situational analysis of violence in total institutions

Our situational analysis of violence extends research on total institutions that is concerned with the nexus of violence and organisations. Rather than focusing on the conditions of violence in crimes against humanity (Clegg, 2009; Clegg et al., 2012; Cunha et al., 2012; Martí & Fernández, 2013), we have drawn attention to the analytical significance of face-to-face interactions of violence. In our case, violence is not excessive (see also Lucas et al., 2012; Ngai et al., 2016), to the point where the very organisational purpose is to exterminate human life. Rather, just as Goffman (1961) accounts for violence in total institutions, we shed light on how more moderate forms of violence are mobilised for control purposes. The escalation logic we identified intends to have deterrent effects so that the actual physical exertion of violence is not always necessary: signalling in itself can have control effects. Our analysis has shown that to capture and explain such occurrences of violence, and the different intensities involved, a situational lens is needed rather than one focusing primarily on conditions.

Our findings also challenge a de-emphasis of violence in current total-institution theorising. For instance, Scott (2010, p. 218) suggests that the ‘portrait Goffman painted [of total institutions] is now mercifully obsolete’, the assumption being that the violence Goffman describes no longer characterises total institutions today (see also Crewe & Ievins, 2020; Dawson, 2017; Huber, Metze, Stam, Van Regenmortel, & Abma, 2020; Odrowaz-Coates, 2015; Rogers, Corley, & Ashforth, 2017; for an earlier variation of this argument, see Murphy et al., 1994). Instead, we suggest that it is important to return to a Goffmanian conceptualisation of total institutions, which emphasises the presence of violence and focuses on how it plays out in interactions.

Conclusion

The extreme setting of Arrival, a total institution, allowed us to make visible the workings of violence. Our analysis particularly revealed how violence is systematically employed for control purposes and carefully managed in terms of visibility. We have shown how guards’ practices of violence follow a logic of escalation and deterrence; illuminated the interplay of visibility and invisibility; and elaborated the importance of interactional-level analysis. In light of this focus on the enactment of violence by violators, our analysis provides less direct insight into how the violated – in our case the refugees – make sense of the interactions involved beyond their behavioural responses. We therefore call for future research to address this limitation and focus on how the violated make sense of and respond to the signalling and exertion of violence. This may also provide further insight into how control through violence may spiral out of control – something that our paper could only hint at.

Our insights accentuate that refugees are in a particularly vulnerable position: not only do they face a plethora of rules and laws, creating uncertainty, dependency, and frustration, but they are also othered and subject to violence. While their vulnerable position relates, among other things, to their residency in the total institution of a refugee camp, this does not mean that only refugees can be subject to violence or that violence takes place only within the context of total institutions. Previous research cited earlier has shown how violence may be present in more conventional organisations. We further believe that the kind of embodied practices of violence our paper identifies might be particularly prevalent in organisational settings where guards play an active role in rule enforcement. Private security guards, such as Secure’s, do not only work in refugee arrival centres, but have also become ‘a regular part of the contemporary urban landscapes’ (Krahmann, 2009, p. 27) and are thus considered rather normal in most organisations today. By employing a situational approach, future research may explore further how practices of signalling and exerting violence play out across different organisational contexts.

Footnotes

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Philipp Arnold

Notes

Author biographies

Philipp Arnold is a doctoral candidate at the Faculty of Business Administration and Economics of the European University Viadrina. He currently studies private security work in German reception facilities for refugees and asylum seekers. His research interests include organization theory, power, control, violence, stigma and affect in organizations.

Jana Costas is Professor of People, Work and Management at the European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), Germany. She holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge. Her research interests include work, organization, power, control, identity, culture, leadership, violence and secrecy. Her monograph Secrecy at Work: The Hidden Architecture of Organizational Life (co-authored with Chris Grey) is published by Stanford University Press. Her monograph Dramas of Dignity: Cleaners in the Corporate Underworld of Berlin, published by Cambridge University Press, won the EGOS Book Award 2023.

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