Introduction

Abstract

Recognizing that the ‘prison’ and the ‘street’ are increasingly understood to be enmeshed sites of exclusion and confinement, this introduction proposes an analytical orientation towards relations and practices across these sites, which attends specifically to the ways in which they are mutually constitutive. Utilizing notions of traversal and porosity, we push debates on confinement beyond their prison-centric impulse. This decentring of the prison goes beyond reading one site in terms of the other (the street as just another carceral space; the prison as another site of exclusion). We challenge the divisiveness of prison/street binaries and the domination of boundary-making by emphasizing the importance of polyvalent experiences and by drawing attention to the practices of people who traverse the prison/street threshold. On the basis of the fine-grained ethnographic contributions making up this collection, the introduction points towards novel avenues for a (grounded) theorization of confinement in terms of overlap, traversal and porosity.

Penal duress in (post)colonial Myanmar

“…Sherman, already in 2009, proposed scholars turn attention to ‘imperial coercive networks’ rather than only focus on ‘colonial coercive techniques’ (2009). We are sympathetic to these moves, as evidenced by our own work to portray confinement as a practice, not just a site (Jefferson, 2014); our account of prison climates as reflecting their situatedness in society and history (Martin et al, 2014), our interest to pursue carceral themes beyond the prison (Jefferson and Martin, 2020; Weegels et al, 2020) and our turn to unorthodox entry points to the study of prisons such as the politics of air (Martin, 2021). And yet, it is important to recognise that demonstrating there is more to penality than the prison does not make the prison unworthy of study.…”

Carceral ethnography in a time of pandemic: Examining migrant detention and deportation during COVID-19

“…Furthermore, prison ethnographers have long identified specific methodological, epistemological, and ethical issues around working ethnographically in spaces of confinement which might apply productively to reimagining ethnographic praxis during the pandemic. These include the question of research access to sites of detention and incarceration to document everyday life and routines in these institutions ( Bosworth and Kellezi 2016 ; Hasselberg 2016 ; Maillet et al, 2017 ; Wacquant 2002 ); questions of research ethics and reflexivity in studying carceral settings ( Bell and Wynn 2020 ; Bosworth and Kellezi 2017 ; Esposito 2017 ; Hammersley 2015 ; Turnbull 2018 ); the prison–society relation and the articulation between intramural and extramural worlds ( Boe 2020 ; Brown and Schept 2017 ; Cunha 2014 ; Fassin 2017 ; Gill et al, 2018 ; Weegels et al, 2020 ), and the importance of contextualization of ethnographic observations from within the prison walls with other related institutions including courts, police, and the multiple state and non-state actors in the infrastructure of deportation ( Barak et al, 2020 ; Berg 2021 ; Conlon and Hiemstra 2017 ; Coutin 2003 ; Könönen 2019 ; Mountz et al, 2013 ; Provine et al, 2016 ). Many of these concerns highlighted by prison ethnographers can be applied to the pandemic context more broadly and were helpful to us in conceiving our research strategy for this project.…”

Let me take a vacation in prison before the streets kill me! Rough sleepers’ longing for prison and the reversal of less eligibility in neoliberal carceral continuums

“…Punishment has become a condition of some people’s lifeworlds so much so that the loss of freedom in prison is a continuity of the confinement they experience outside of prison rather than a newly felt detriment. However, rather than despairing at this ‘confinement beyond site’ (Weegels et al., 2020), at the structural disadvantages they are faced with in their everyday lives, the fines which sent them to prison and the staircase system which keeps them dependent, the rough sleepers I conducted research with and alongside focus not on what is taken from them but on what can be gained through the prison. By treating prison as a vacation, rough sleepers take away the power of its primary purpose: punishment.…”