2021 RGS Annual International Conference
Carcerality of and/or on the border
Borders are often carceral apparatus – that is apparatus that have incarcerating and exclusionary qualities – of bounding, containing, confining and restricting people and place. Likewise, carcerality – as a now established term used in subfields of the discipline – is concerned intimately with border regimes and politics through practices of spatiality, detriment and intent (Moran et al. 2018). This session seeks to interrogate borders and carcerality, beyond their often taken-for-granted status and connections, to better examine how they relate. It seeks to make space for thinking of borders through a carceral lens and the carceral through the lens of the border. Vitally, the session aims to push the very limits of border studies and carceral geographies beyond their implied linkage as spaces of physical bordering and the prison respectively. In doing so, we ask – what are the carceral characters of borders? How is carcerality present on the border? And in turn – locating carcerality beyond its typical spaces of concern – what different kinds of borders might be thought of as carceral? Can the ‘carceral’ border on new territory, where different kinds of borders – from the (air)port to the home – be thought of carcerally?
We invite papers that tackle questions concerned with carcerality of and/or on the border. Topics might include but are not limited to:
- Borders and boundary crossings (e.g. considerations of various practices of migration)
- Negotiations of the prison boundary
- New territories of the carceral
- Scholarship that (re)considers the border of the discipline of (carceral) geography
- Scholarship that extends the boundary of existing work in carceral geography to case studies and empirical examples beyond the global north.
Please do not hesitate to get in touch regarding potential abstracts. We welcome scholars from across disciplines and career stages. The session will be held in online format.
Submission details: Please email submissions to Anna Schliehe (aks79@cam.ac.uk) and Jennifer Turner (jennifer.turner@uni-oldenburg.de), including paper title and abstract (max 300 words), name(s) and affiliation(s) by 28th February 2021