‘Still feels like jail’

This chapter delves into our collective experience of doing fieldwork in an observation home for boys in urban India, which served as a detention facility for children in conflict with the law. The emotions, perceptions and views generated by the surveillance, monitoring, and regulating of fieldworkers’ bodies form the foundation of our reflections. Transitioning from our personal encounters with this confined space, we use the perspectives of our interlocutors, the young residents of this home who were confined to their wards for several hours through the day and expressed that the environment resembled and felt like a prison. We use the sensory data to depict diverse embodiments of the concepts of danger, security, closeness, and affective connections, crucial to the confinement experience. Our sensorial encounters as well as the discussions we engaged in amongst ourselves, with the boys, and the staff unveil the capacity of the sensory in challenging and re-evaluating established carceral categories.