Refugee camps are often thought of as spaces of temporary sanctuary and humanitarian relief; Life in such camps is also always subject to management through rationing, restriction of movement, identity checks, and security. In his analysis of the refugee camp, Adam Ramadan defines it as a space of “complex, multiple and hybrid sovereignties” and emphasizes that state governments, humanitarian organizations, security forces, as well as refugees themselves, might influence life in the same space. From this theory, this paper moves on to compare Behrouz Boochani’s book, No Friend But the Mountains, and Richard Mosse’s film, Incoming, in terms of how control is brought into detention life and border watching and the positions of interpretation afforded by the two pieces to refugees. The findings demonstrate that the author Boochani writes about queues, food, guards, body searching, and numerical rules from inside the Manus Prison. By naming “Manus Prison Logic,” recording personal judgment, and documenting collective resistance, he enables detainees to participate in explaining how the institution acts on bodies and time. Incoming uses thermal imaging technology originally developed for military reconnaissance and border surveillance to depict refugees in motion. It makes the technical conditions of long-range identification and tracking visible to viewers while weakening faces, names, and direct voices. Comparing the two cases shows that refugee governance needs to be analyzed through both the rules, bodies, and technologies through which control operates and the extent to which those subject to control can participate in interpreting these experiences.