Mary Bosworth on the Criminology of Mobility
‘… just as mobility is influencing our social world, so too it is shaping penal practices and their effects.’
In Subjectivity and Identity in Punishment, Mary Bosworth highlights the need for criminology to extend its conceptual analysis to immigration detention centres. In the rising multiculturalism propelled by globalisation and transnational capitalism, immigration detention centres pose a challenge to our understanding of punishment and society. Bosworth argues that as the nature and scope of state punishment are continuing to shift, the study of ‘criminology of mobility’ can provide new ways of thinking about control and punishment.
Bosworth begins by arguing that while the nature of penal power has undergone a change, some old problems continue to persist:
‘incarcerated individuals continue to come from the lowest socio- economic levels of society; men vastly outnumber women; and ethnic minorities, whatever their nationality, are disproportionately likely to be subject to custodial practices.’
In Immigration detention, Bosworth argues, the relationship between identity and penal power becomes central. Therefore, prisons that were earlier just meant for providing a space to deter, punish, and reforms, are now also involved in the process of identifying citizens — the ‘discards’ are then sent to detention centres.
Bosworth’s year-long research in 5 immigration detention centres in the UK foregrounds lived experience of border control and the challenges of enforcing that policy of border control under conditions of globalisation:
‘Testimonies from those subject to immigration detention can shed light on the changing nature of penal power, while opening new lines of thought. They also reveal what is at stake. Notwithstanding their vulnerability, many detainees seek to resist; their accounts remind us that people even in the most abject of situations attempt to negotiate power relations’
Bosworth highlights that immigration detention centres operate with a legitimacy deficit; even the staff members sometimes express doubts on its impact on border control. She says:
‘Perhaps most importantly, the identity of a detainee cannot be changed by the threat of detention, or by the institution’s regime. Citizenship or the right to remain cannot be earned or learned in detention. The centres can only produce what has already been made: non-citizens.’
Bosworth goes on to highlight that citizenship is not just a legal category, it’s also an affective one. Some detainees exhibited resistance to the stigma that comes from being a non-citizen by invoking pride in their national cuisine or culture, while others chose arts and crafts to assert their hopes and aspirations:
‘In detention, hopes and dreams like hers were not to be vocalized, but rather directed to formal routes of paperwork and immigration interviews. In so doing, the affective is denied and brought under control.’
Bosworth then draws a comparison between the identity of a prisoner and that of a detainee in an immigration detention centre. Some detainess preferred being in prison because at least till the duration of the sentence, the offender is accorded citizenship by the goals of punishment. These feelings were motivated by the idea that traditionally prisons have been seen as places to reclaim errant citizens. By drawing a comparison between the role of penal power in a prison and in a detention centre, Bosworth asks a question of whether the state is justified in treating certain offenders differently purely due to absence of citizenship:
‘Identified in prison as foreign nationals, such people emerge as ‘non-citizens’, subject to a new expansive form of penal power in immigration removal centres that is not bound by the familiar goals of punishment but exists purely as a means to an end: deportation.’
Bosworth believes that the fact of non-citizenship encapsulates the interplay between agency and structure inherent in penal power. An interplay which disadvantages the detainees as their non-citizenship is the very cause and effect of their detention. The growing number such persons in immigration detention centres also shows that in penal power, identity matters:
‘The growth in immigration detention and deportation reveals the scale of the power the State is able and willing to use… The point is that just as mobility is influ- encing our social world, so too it is shaping penal practices and their effects… The challenge for criminology remains how to incorporate such matters into their understanding of crime, punishment and social control.’
Complement this with Lucia Zedner on Changing Architecture of Crime Control, and Michael Tonry on Punishing Race.
