Bordering, detention and deportation
Channel: SOAS University of London
Date: 2022-05-27

Systems of confinement are not just enforced by prison officers and the police. They are enforced by border guards and detention agents too. Too often, realities of bordering, detention and deportation are understood independently from how they operate within this much broader, carceral regime. Narrow, penal-centric discussions - which conceptualise incarceration within the confines of “criminal justice” - routinely ignore the experiences of racialised populations confined in migrant detention centres, refugee camps, offshore processing centres and border checkpoints. This workshop understands how forms of bordering, detention and deportation are a constitutive element of mass incarceration itself. In our analysis, we will ask how colonial logics have long criminalised, detained and dehumanised those who are compelled to cross national boundaries. Building on an historical analysis of the relationship between convict labour, human transportation, this workshop traces systems of bordering, detention and deportation to its colonial roots, and diagnoses its function today: to protect colonially acquired wealth, and to uphold hierarchies of race, class and gender.

Speakers

Professor Sharry Aiken
Dr Enrique Martino
Professor Fiori Berhane