Border Criminologies: The First Ten Years

Post by Mary Bosworth, Co-Director and founder of Border Criminologies

Last week, Border Criminologies celebrated its tenth anniversary in a two-day event in Oxford, showcasing chapters in a forthcoming research handbook, that I am editing for Edward Elgar together with Katja Franko, Maggy Lee and Rimple Mehta.  Topics of the presentations ranged from EU externalisation in West Africa, to violence in immigration centres in Greece, and included an exceptionally moving personal account by Hyab Yohannes about his experiences of leaving Eritrea and entering the asylum system. Speakers and audience members came from across the world, from the academy, the legal profession, and civil society groups.  We heard from early career scholars as well as from more senior colleagues.

The mood across the two days was positive and hopeful, even as all the talks foregrounded violence and inequalities. There was pleasure in being together in person after a long period apart, and the range of speakers and topics under discussion, as well as the variety of people in attendance was uplifting in the commitment to understanding and to bringing about change that was evident. Of course, there are differences of opinion about how best to respond to border control, but overall, the workshop reminded us of the importance of working together and the diversity and richness of views and critique.

A look back at the first ten years

The Border Criminologies network emerged from two research grants, the first of which was a Leverhulme International Network grant, awarded in 2012 to create links between the Monash University Department of Criminology, then headed by Sharon Pickering, a group of colleagues at the Oxford Centre for Criminology, and Katja Franko’s research group in Oslo, then working on her ERC grant. At the time, the three of us were engaged in large-scale empirical projects, in different jurisdictions, on the intersections between criminal justice and border control in custody and policing.

I remember drafting that application with Sharon, one sunny autumn afternoon, while our kids supposedly were learning tennis in suburban Melbourne. As good Australians her two children were wildly sporty. Mine were rather horrified. Having got them out the way for a few hours, I wrote quickly, while Sharon dictated suitably grand phrases and ambitions to me.

That application set the tone for the organisation. Border Criminologies has always been collaborative, and, from the start it was envisaged as an international network. It has always sought to encourage mobility among its members particularly among its early career members and students. It has also always had a large number of busy, slightly distracted, women involved in running it.

The second grant which consolidated the organisation, was from the European Research Council. That project focused on detention, deportation, and the changing nature of punishment, and included two early career scholars – Ines Hasselberg and Sarah Turnbull. In 2013, after they had been appointed, and once the Leverhulme grant had begun, ably assisted, in the first year by Blerina Kellezi, and then by Andriani Fili, we realised we needed a platform to disseminate not just our work, but that of the members of the Leverhulme network and other people we were meeting who were working on similar issues.

Oxford Law didn’t have an equivalent example, but Sharon had already created the Border Crossing Observatory in Monash with Leanne Weber, so I had a model, albeit without the technical infrastructure, or know-how that existed in Australia. After long conversations, I came up with the name, and, with the help of a friend of Ines, we started small with a WordPress site and a blog.  In those early days, we had to teach ourselves everything. I still remember how clever we felt – really, it was Sarah – when we learned how to embed the Twitter widget. And even more so once we actually got some Twitter followers. 

If two big grants built our foundations, Border Criminologies has since been kept alive by lots of smaller ones, each of which have also left their mark, expanding our research fields, our members and impact. To name just a few, we have been fortunate to receive funding from Goldsmith Chambers in London and from Garden Court Chambers. Our work in Greece and in Italy was also generously supported by the Open Society Foundation and by the ESRC through their Impact Acceleration Award scheme. The social science division in Oxford and the Law Faculty have also been very generous. Last year I was particularly lucky to obtain funds towards infrastructure costs from the British Academy under their Academy Research Program, which was matched to varying degrees by the Oxford, Leiden, and Warwick university Law Faculties.

Border Criminologies would not have lasted this long without a dedicated group of people, most of whom attended the event last week. In particular, as anyone who has worked with us at all will know, Border Criminologies would simply not have lasted nearly as long as it has without Andriani Fili, who came on board early as a research administrator on the Leverhulme, and then stayed on to develop our work in Greece. We have also benefited from many early career scholars, from Sarah and Ines in the start, through to our current managing editor Diana Volpe, who is in the third year of their DPhil in International Development. Samuel Singler and then Vicky Taylor, Hallam Tuck all helped to run our events while Claudia McHardy has, for years, managed our very popular book review section. More senior colleagues, including Ana Aliverti, Vanessa Barker, Jennifer Chacon,  Gabriella Sanchez, Katja Franko, and Rimple Mehta, have generously given their time as associate directors and on the advisory board, despite heavy workloads elsewhere. Juliet Stumpf was our co-director during turbulent COVID times, while Leanne Weber’s leadership at ANZSOC Group provided a much-needed link to the southern hemisphere.

As a result of everyone’s hard work, these days, Border Criminology, (in the singular) is a recognised subfield of the discipline of criminology, with its own entry in the Oxford Handbook of Criminology, academic jobs and multiple graduate and undergraduate courses. Scholars in other, related fields, in geography and migration studies, also pay far more attention to the intersection of immigration control with criminal justice. Our organisation now has a student chapter, based at the University of Bristol, which is mentored by Sanja Milivojevic. And, from next year -- its own research handbook, to be published by Elgar. Sharon, Katja and I created a book series in 2013, which, we are handing over, slowly to a new generation of editors.

The blog that Sarah, Ines and I devised in 2013, now reaches 10s of thousands of people a month, and we have equally large following on Twitter - X. We also have a LinkedIn page, so make sure you check it out. Border Criminologies has forged close working relationships with a range of civil society organisations in the UK, Greece, and Italy, as well as with legal practitioners and people who have been detained. Examples of that work, including co-creating the first know your rights document for people detained in Greece with the Greek Council for Refugees, which is distributed across sites of detention and has been translated into multiple languages.

In the academy, the field of scholarship on border control is much wider than it was back in 2013. Work by many of our members has had an enormous impact.  To just name a few – Ana Aliverti and Rimple Mehta pioneered research on southernizing the field, reaching out to colleagues in the global south and also translating their work so it could reach a wider audience; an area of scholarship that José Brandariz has also developed.  Sanja Milivojevic and Samuel Singler, as well as Monish Bhatia have all written important work on the impact of technology on border control, while Vicky Canning, Marta Welander and Francesca Esposito have, in their activist scholarship, worked collaboratively with women affected by border control, ensuring they are part of debates from which they are often excluded. Alpa Parmar and Marie Segrave have led the way in mapping the impact of border control on people of colour and women. Maartje van der Woude has helped us think about policing of EU borders, while Anthea Vogl contributed early on to getting us to think about the criminalisation of asylum.

Methodologically, there has also been a lot of creativity. Francesca and Monish have made podcasts. I co-produced an art book with colleagues using work made by men detained in Campsfield House Immigration Removal Centre. Some of their paintings are appearing in the exhibition, ‘Visions of Transcendence’ that will open on November 11 at the Wende Museum in Los Angeles, along with a digital film made by my colleague Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll. There are maps and counter maps, and always the blog, running as a thread through the organisation.

Future Plans

When we arranged the tenth anniversary event, I thought how nice it would be to announce that we were closing down, due to a lack of need for academic and policy work. But sadly, that is not the case.  Instead, as the political climate and law hardens, everything feels more urgent and more entrenched. As an academic organisation, our main role is to conduct and disseminate research that can be used to better understand policies, ideally in order to challenge them. To be more effective in that role, and to try to open pathways to new collaborations, and also, we hope, to find more funding, we are launching five thematic strands:

• Detention and Deportation;
• Law;
• Technology and Digital Futures;
• Border Policing; and
• The Criminology of Asylum.

Each strand will be headed by at least two people who will be responsible for organising events and research. We will be inviting others to get involved and so please do keep an eye out on our social media. We are shortly to appoint a part-time communications officer who will help disseminate our work and, we hope, assist us in contributing to policy debates. Hopefully these changes will allow us to concentrate on our particular areas of interest and expertise and assist in diversifying the organisation and having a greater impact.

Over the past ten years, I’ve been struck again and again, by the generosity of people involved in Border Criminologies and their commitment to not only understanding and uncovering what is going on, and being done in our name, to harden border control and cast out foreign citizens, but in taking action on such matters, or in supporting others who can do so. Border Criminologies is, at heart, an academic organisation, but it is one with commitment to bringing about change. I still hope we will eventually be able to close ourselves down. But for now, we continue and, we hope, with your help, we can continue to grow and develop.