Border Criminologies 2016/17 in Review

Border Criminologies has had a busy year, hosting a number of visitors in Oxford from across the world. We have run a full calendar of events, starting with a two-day international workshop on race, migration and criminal justice in September (You can read the storify story of the #RaceMigCJ workshop here).  The papers from this event are being published in an edited collection by Oxford University Press in January 2018. Together with Prof. Emily Ryo, Mary Bosworth organised an international workshop on immigration detention at the University of Southern California in April, while Ana Aliverti held the second of her British Academy Rising Star events at Warwick University on policing migration in March. In addition to these events, we held a number of seminars in Oxford on topics ranging from the deportation of foreign offenders, to the work of NGOs in Athens. As usual some of these can be heard on our iTunes account.

Our members have been exceptionally active in publishing and dissemination both on the Border Criminologies’ blog and elsewhere. To give you a flavour of what people have been up to: Ines Hasselberg’s book Enduring Uncertainty. Deportation, Punishment and Everyday Life (Berghahn 2016), based on her doctoral research, won the Prose Award 2017 (Anthropology) and was shortlisted for the 2017 BSA/BBC Thinking Allowed Ethnography Award. Ana Ballesteros published an article on the Spanish penal system with special attention to the manner in which these technologies are shaped by gender, race and nationality stereotypes. In 2017 Didier Fassin published Le monde à l'épreuve de l'asile, on refugees and asylum, while Vanessa Barker completed her manuscript Nordic Nationalism and Penal Order, that will appear in the near year in the Routledge Studies in Criminal Justice, Borders and Citizenship. Marie-Laure Basilien Gainche published a number of articles and book chapters in a wide range of outlets (e.g. see here, here, here, here and here).

One of our institutional partners, the Border Crossing Observatory (Bob), hosted the Temporary Migration Forum in  March 2017 at Monash University. The Forum brought together a select group of government, NGO, academic and policy stakeholders to consider and discuss three issues associated with temporary migration in Australia: international students, New Zealand citizens and temporary workers. All of these issues are covered within the book publication Fluid Security in the Asia-Pacific: Transnational crime, crime control and security (Palgrave Macmillan 2016) authored by our Fluid Security project team, Claudia Tazreiter, Leanne Weber, Sharon Pickering, Marie Segrave and Helen McKernan. BOb criminologists have made significant contributions to a groundbreaking publication linking criminology and human rights. Co-edited by Leanne Weber (with Elaine Fishwick and Marinella Marmo) and featuring an original contribution from BOb’s Marie Segrave, Sharon Pickering and Sanja Milivojevic, the Routledge International Handbook of Criminology and Human Rights brings together a diverse body of work from around the globe united by its critical application of human rights law and principles. Brandy Cochrane, a member of the Border Crossing Observatory, has successfully defended her PhD thesis on refugee and asylum-seeking mothers.

On the research front, Liza Schuster in currently in Kabul leading a team of young Afghan researchers on an ESRC-AHRC GCRF funded project. Together, they are following 18 families, exploring their plans, hopes and fears for the future; exploring the representation of migration and migration in Afghan oral culture; and examining the influence of European states on Afghan migration policies. Efrat Arbel is currently analysing the rights of refugees and other border crossers along the Canada-US border, having secured grants, both from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.  Hindpal Bhui has been working with Mary Bosworth and other members of Border Criminologies on a project on monitoring immigration detention centres in Greece, Italy, Hungary and Turkey. Alpa Parmar has spent a lot of time in police custody suites near Oxford.

Many of our members have contributed to the blog in themed weeks and individual posts.  The blog has included themed weeks on a range of topics from humanitarian corridors, legal perspectives on unaccompanied minors, seeking refuge in Europe, to immigration detention, and anthropological representations of border control. We also run a series on responding to the current political climate and the importance of scholarship and activism about immigration and border control. Supporting the website and extending the reach of the blog and the website, we also have an active and growing following on Twitter and Facebook. This year, under the skilful guidance of Andriani Fili, our managing editor, we have for the first time run a series of successful guest Twitter campaigns, allowing for new methodologies and discussions to emerge.  

As this academic year draws to a close, we would like to take the opportunity to thank some of the funding bodies that have underpinned Border Criminologies from the start as a number of grants are winding down. We are thankful for the generosity of those funding bodies, particularly the Leverhulme Trust and the European Research Council. We are also grateful for the ongoing support of the Centre for Criminology through the Global Criminal Justice Hub, to the John Fell Fund at the University of Oxford and to the Economic and Social Research Council. 

Looking ahead, we have started the search for replacement funding in earnest.  It is with great pleasure therefore, that we can announce a series of new partnerships with Goldsmith Chambers, Garden Court Chambers and the European Border Communities research group headed by Prof. Maartje van der Woude at Leiden University law school. Funding from Goldsmith and Garden Court Chambers will allow the core work of Border Criminologies to continue, while new plans are afoot to hold events bringing together legal practitioners and academics. Working with the wider Law faculty and the Centre for Criminology we hope also to encourage students to consider working on the intersections of criminal and immigration law. The Criminal Justice, Borders and Citizenship SSRN series which makes academic research free to access and was previously covered by the Leverhulme Trust, will be funded through Prof. van der Woude's VIDI grant. The two research groups are working together to plan student exchanges and seminars.

While we are taking a rest over the summer, plans are already underway for next year to celebrate the 5^th anniversary of Border Criminologies in Oxford in April 2018. We are also planning on adding more visual material to the website, in the form of short videos about members’ projects. The Immigration Detention Archive is moving to the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford and should, for the first time, be open for wider consultation. We will let you know when that happens.

Finally, we would also like to thank our readers for their continued support and useful feedback. As ever please do contact us if you have any ideas for the website and our activities. Meanwhile, we wish you all a happy and peaceful holiday period. See you in September!

The Border Criminologies Team (aka Mary, Andriani, Ana, Alpa, Gabriella, Ines, Rimple, and Vanessa)