A growing body of interdisciplinary work on the bordering of Europe has emerged in recent years in relation to one of the main catalysts for the accelerating fortification of the frontiers: the irregular migrant. Ethnographically informed work has much to contribute to these interdisciplinary debates – not least in questioning their parameters.
The workshop held at Stockholm University, December 5-6, brought together pioneering scholars working on border controls, from the US-Mexico frontier to the Greek-Turkish borderland.
In his blog post Ruben Andersson writes: “Focusing ethnographically on the sites of contestation between workers, migrants and paperwork – or between workers and their own dilemmas – brings rich ethnographic perspectives to this fraught political field, as workshop participants showed.” “Border controls, the papers reminded us, are as much about defining and defending a self as they are about shutting out ‘the other’.”
Read Ruben Andersson’s blog post Border Controls: Some Reflections from Stockholm.
Find out more about the workshop.
Find out more about Ruben Andersson’s research.
Find out more about Shahram Khosravi’s research.
The Border Criminologies blog is run by Border Criminologies which brings together academics, practitioners and those who have experienced border control from around the world. It is based at the Centre for Criminology at the University of Oxford and is directed by Mary Bosworth, Ines Hasselberg and Sarah Turnbull.