Borders: A view from ‘nowhere’¹

Abstract

Borders separating two states are the markers of inequality in terms of gender as well as in terms of other intersecting social locations of marginalization and discrimination. Mobile populations generate cartographic anxieties for the keepers of these borders who, in turn, respond by increasingly criminalizing unwanted border crossing. While mainstream criminology has historically focused on matters of exclusion, integration and identity, discussion of its relation to borders and more specifically, 'gendered borders' has been oblique. This article presents the narratives of young Bangladeshi women, detained in Kolkata, India under the Foreigners Act (1946), on borders and border crossings, bringing into the discussion women's understandings of their 'transgressions' in relation to normative and androcentric paradigms of state sovereignty and border control. It connects the newly emerging body of work on the criminalization of mobility with feminist theorizations and methodologies for an empirical understanding of the lived experiences of those subject to practices of border control. By focusing on the narratives of Bangladeshi women imprisoned in India for infractions against the sanctity of the Indo-Bangladeshi border, the article provides an insight into how everyday border crossings can be framed and understood differently, in juxtaposition to dominant rationales underpinning criminalization discourses.

Voices from the Inside: Lived Experiences of Women Confined in a Detention Center

“…Scholars engaged in the study of everyday life inside detention centers have called particular attention to the almost nonexistent body of knowledge concerning women's experiences in detention (for exceptions, see Alberti 2010; Bosworth, Fili, and Pickering 2014; Bosworth and Kellezi 2014). The purpose of this article is to contribute to filling this gap, in the belief that a feminist understanding of such experiences, rooted in the marginality of these women's positions, can open up new lines of thought (Bosworth, Fili, and Pickering 2014;Mehta 2016).…”

“…Furthermore, our research adopted a feminist framework that acknowledges fuzziness and vagueness as constitutive dimensions of the research process, as well as the existence of intrinsic power imbalances in the researcherparticipant relationship (Mehta 2016). With this in mind, we favored a critical reflexive attitude as a way of engaging with the research experience (see Esposito 2017).…”

“…Drawing on two years of fieldwork, informed by a community psychology ecological perspective with a focus on justice (Esposito, Ornelas, and Arcidiacono 2015b), the purpose of this article is to provide insight into the experiences of the women confined inside Rome's detention center. 1 In so doing, we embrace a feminist framework that favors the perspectives of women, whose voices have historically been excluded from the process of knowledge production (see Personal Narratives Group 1989;Harding 2004), as well as from discussions regarding border control regimes (Bosworth, Fili, and Pickering 2014;Mehta 2016). Feminist analyses have long highlighted the centrality of women's experiences and narratives in order to contest the hegemonic notions of knowledge that, while presented as objective and value-free, are predominantly based on a "Western, bourgeois, white-supremacist, androcentric, heteronormative culture" (Harding 2004, 5).…”

Women's experiences of border crossing: gender, mobility and border control

“…Overall, our research is drawn on a feminist framework that takes into account the historical exclusion of women from the process of knowledge production, enacted also by leaving out or eclipsing their voices and experiences (Mehta, 2016;Piscitelli, 2008). In accordance with this framework, a critical reflexive attitude has been embraced at all stages of the research process (Esposito, 2017).…”

“…Border posts, police patrols, prisons, and detention centres are all part of a complex apparatus aimed at containing and filtering migrants' mobility (Tazzioli, 2018;Tazzioli and Garelli, 2018), while also over determining their (gendered, as well as racialised and class-based) struggles to access sovereign territory. Notwithstanding this evidence, not much research has shed light on women's perspectives and experiences regarding borders and border crossing (for exceptions see Gerard and Pickering, 2014;Mehta, 2016), and most studies in this field have adopted a male lens. In particular, a scarce scholarly knowledge exists on the lived experiences of women who end up detained, and who can be regarded as a 'silenced custodial population' [Bosworth and Kellezi, (2014), p.81].…”