A Southern Feminist Approach to the Criminology of Mobility

Rimple Mehta is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Social Sciences, Western Sydney University. Her research and field engagements focus on women in prison, refugee women, and human trafficking. She engages with questions of borders, citizenship and criminology of mobility. Her monograph titled "Women, Mobility and Incarceration: Love and Recasting of Self across the Bangladesh-India Border" was published by Routledge in 2018. Her latest co-edited volume published by Orient BlackSwan in 2022 is titled “Women, Incarcerated: Narratives from India”. She has worked with women in prisons/detention in Mumbai, Kolkata, Sydney and The Netherlands. This is the second post in the Border Criminologies 'Southern Perspectives on Border Criminology' themed series curated by Rimple Metha and Ana Aliverti. You can find Rimple's corresponding article in the International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy here: A Southern Feminist Approach to the Criminology of Mobility.

While most displaced populations move within the Global South, academic work in the field of criminology of mobility has traditionally been US/UK/Eurocentric. However, this is changing as critical research emerges from different regions of the Global South, shedding light on diverse perspectives (see Campos-Delgado & Côté-Boucher, Gazzotti, Mehta). My article in the special issue contributes to this evolving scholarship by proposing a Southern feminist ethico-political lens for engaging with the criminology of mobility.

I begin by proposing to engage with the ontology of the South to challenge epistemological bordering, which marginalizes and invisibilizes knowledge from the Global South. I argue that the geopolitics of knowledge is such that knowledge produced in the Global South is often viewed as emotional, creative, and subjective, while knowledge from the Global North is considered rational and therefore superior. This hierarchical perspective perpetuates epistemological bordering, where Southern voices are silenced or homogenized in academic discourse.

In the context of a global discourse centered around ‘decolonization’ and ‘Southern’ perspectives, the concept of epistemological bordering serves as a foundation for framing a Southern feminist approach to the criminology of mobility. Epistemic inequalities in knowledge production intersect with issues in the criminal justice system and broader nation-state politics and bordering policies and practices. I argue that “if the criminology of mobility is committed to questioning borders and systems that govern mobilities, it must loosen the epistemic fixities and challenge epistemological bordering.”

The Southern perspective, however, does not merely involve incorporating case studies or theories from the Global South, but actively engaging with the historical and socio-political movements of the regions and reversing the hegemonic control of the North. It acknowledges the complexities and challenges of Southern identities and serves as an act of resistance against marginalization. It is crucial to clarify that the concept of the ‘South’ is not just a geographical location but a political grouping, signifying power dynamics exerted by the North in economic, political, and cultural domains within the South. It is essential to consider histories of colonization and contemporary impacts of capitalist globalization and enclaves of the Global South constructed within the Global North. Embracing situated intersectionality can provide a more nuanced understanding of the South's complex and dynamic identity within the context of contemporary global challenges.

The urgency for the criminology of mobility to engage with the ontology of the South is highlighted by racialized subjectivities within global securitized border regimes and the overrepresentation of marginalized communities in prisons worldwide. Understanding the experiences of migrants in both their home countries and destination countries, and how discrimination and marginalization can lead to migration and subsequent detention, is crucial in addressing the complexities of cross-border mobilities.

A feminist lens reveals the gendered aspects of colonialism, affecting gender relations and roles in pre-colonial, colonial, and postcolonial contexts. This lens highlights how militarized states and border regimes are shaped by masculinized and heteronormative cultures. The intersections of gender with other identity markers such as class, caste, religion, race, disability, age, sexuality, and nationality create internal and external borders, distinguishing between legitimate citizens and the ‘other’.

To develop an ethico-political framework for a Southern feminist criminology of mobility, I propose five key conceptual formulations at its constituents: reflexivity and accountability, vagueness and fuzziness, spatio-temporality, embodiment, and resistance. These concepts, drawn from research involving Bangladeshi women in prisons in India and its borderlands, emphasize the affordances of the Global South in shaping a more inclusive and intersectional understanding of gender, mobility, criminalization, and border control.

Women’s narratives provide valuable directions for the criminology of mobility, shedding light on the everyday dynamics of power and oppression created by border controls and suggesting the need to imagine alternative notions of the nation-state based on marginalized experiences, especially in the Global South. They emphasize on the importance of considering space and time when examining gendered experiences during cross-border mobility. The historical context of borders, kinship relationships, and cultural ties play a significant role in shaping women’s experiences across borders. In addition, women’s mobility across borders, often for low-paid and risky jobs, is marked by the stigma and taboo associated with it. Women are perceived as embodying the honour of their family, community, and nation; therefore they negotiate complex relationships across borders with their children, intimate partners, and friends. Women’s stories represented their resistance against heteronormative family ideals, prison norms, colonial borders, and the researcher's preconceived questions. Overall, women’s narratives provide insights into the experiences and resistance of marginalization before, during and after cross-border mobility and offer alternatives to conventional positivist understandings of borders and mobility. They emphasize the need for a situated intersectional feminist perspective to inform the criminology of mobility.

There is a need for meaningful solidarity between the Global North and Global South in the context of re-imagining the criminology of mobility through a southern feminist approach. This can be achieved by transcending local and global boundaries while respecting particularities. Supporting struggles against issues like identity, citizenship, and belonging across borders can be a powerful expression of solidarity. An example of this is the way in which South Asian feminist activists and scholars have built cross-border solidarities, challenging nationalist politics. However, one needs to be cautious of ignoring the historical and political context of the Global South and be against reductive cross-cultural comparisons. Instead, I advocate for a Southern feminist approach rooted in transversal feminist politics, which involves creative methodologies and emphasizes reflexivity, accountability, and reciprocity in engaging with diverse voices and acknowledging the autonomy of the Global South. The intention is to collectively explore alternatives and shed light on the challenges faced by people due to punitive border regimes.

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