INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP

EXPANDING THE PENAL LANDSCAPE: THE IMMIGRATION DETENTION PHENOMENA

Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies, University of Toronto (Canada)

 

April 20-21, 2020

Call for papers

Coordinator: Ana Ballesteros Pena (University of Toronto, Canada & University of A Coruña, Spain)

Scientific Committee: Ana Ballesteros Pena (University of Toronto, Canada & University of A Coruña, Spain), Prof. Mary Bosworth (University of Oxford, United Kingdom), Prof. Jose A. Brandariz (University of A Coruña, Spain), Prof. Elisa García España (University of Malaga, Spain), Prof. Kelly Hannah-Moffat (University of Toronto, Canada) & Prof. Audrey Macklin (University of Toronto, Canada).                                                              

Over the last few decades, we have witnessed the proliferation of practices of migration control. These include the creation, reinforcement and development of borders; the multiplication and diversification of practices and spaces of detention; the implementation of different initiatives of supervision and control of undocumented migrants and asylum seekers before detention and after release; the use of violent practices of push-backs, strategies of containment, and spectacles of transporting migrants and asylum seekers; the prosecution of organizations and individuals supporting migrants and asylum seekers; and the amplification of deportation practices. At the same time, both people on the move and the organizations and citizens supporting them have accumulated knowledge and developed strategies to resist, manage, and overcome the aforementioned attempts to constrain human mobility. This multiplicity of practices is being analyzed from within various disciplines including, but not limited to sociology, political science, anthropology, legal geography, criminology, and migration studies.

Some of these analyses have identified the punitive nature of migration enforcement practices but these processes are frequently characterized as outside the field of “punishment”. Scholars such as Hannah-Moffat and Lynch (2012) have pointed to the need to expand “definitional boundaries of the category of ‘punishment’” (Hannah-Moffat and Lynch, 2012: 119). According to them, these boundaries “tend to neglect a number of questions about what constitutes punishment in diverse settings, and are limited in their ability to explain on-the-ground punitive practices, particularly in contexts that challenge traditional understandings of the penal realm” (Hannah-Moffat and Lynch, 2012: 119). In this vein, Bosworth, Franko and Pickering (2018: 35) argue that the term “punishment” should be fundamentally adjusted so as to include the proliferation of “bordered forms of penality” (Bosworth, Franko and Pickering, 2018: 46). Others have studied the racialized, gendered, and (post)colonial character of border and/or migration control and immigration detention (Bosworth, Parmar and Vázquez, 2018).

This international interdisciplinary workshop provides an opportunity to reflect, both conceptually and empirically, on the explosion of penal and punitive forms and consequences of border and migration control practices in the Global North and South.

We seek contributions on the following topics, amongst others:

  • Immigration detention, including pre- and post-detention practices
  • The role of different actors in the immigration detention complex
  • Agency and resistance of different actors involved in detention, supervision, and other forms of border and migration control
  • Border control mechanisms
  • Other exclusionary practices against migrants and asylum seekers
  • Spatial practices of detention, containment and exclusion
  • The impact of gender, race, and (post/neo)colonialism in practices of border control and/or immigration detention
  • Emergent places of detention and containment: informal settlements, hotspots, temporary reception centers and the like.

Confirmed keynote speakers are: Prof. Yolanda Vázquez, Associate Professor of Law, College of Law, University of Cincinnati (United States) and Prof. Leanne Weber, Associate Professor of Criminology, School of Social Sciences, Monash University (Australia).

This interdisciplinary event will be of interest to scholars from criminology, sociology, social policy, law, human geography, anthropology, political science, and psychology. Early career scholars are encouraged to send abstracts. Attendance is free. We have limited funds available to cover travel and accommodation for junior participants outside Canada.

Please email your proposal (250 words maximum) to the coordinator by 23:59pm (GMT-4) on 6 December, 2019 at ana.ballesteros@utoronto.ca.

We aim to publish the papers discussed in this international workshop as a special issue of a journal.  If you are interested in putting your work forward for consideration, please indicate this in your proposal.

Information about acceptance will be sent by 17 January, 2020.

The workshop is part of the European Commission funded project Governmigration: Governing irregular immigration through detention. Discourses and practices from an interdisciplinary approach, under the scientific program Horizon 2020 within Marie Sklowdowska-Curie Actions. It is sponsored jointly by the Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies, University of Toronto (Canada) and the ECRIM Research Group, Faculty of Law, University of A Coruña (Spain).