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Hi all,
we are still looking for a few more papers for the session on 'Doing Immigration Control'. If interested please be in touch or submit an abstract by Oct 20th
regards
Andrew
CFP AAG 2015, Chicago, 21–25 April 2015:
Doing Immigration Control: Experiences of Border Control Work
Session convenors:
Dr. Nick Gill, University of Exeter ([log in to unmask])
Dr. Andrew Burridge, University of Exeter ([log in to unmask])
While much research has been devoted to understanding the procedures of immigration control, the experience of controlling itself is often absent from current research. Those involved in carrying out immigration control in Western developed countries are an increasingly diverse group. They include those formally employed by border control agencies and contracted partners such as airport liaison officers, passport controllers, air and sea port personnel, backroom government employees, interviewers, security officers of various hues, elite immigration system designers and immigration judges. But they extend well beyond these groups, as more individuals who have no formal connection with immigration control have been required to check and verify immigration status (Coleman 2009, Vaughan-Williams 2009) including social workers, hospital staff, real estate agents, university lecturers (Jenkins, 2014) and school teachers.
While the challenges of researching these individuals are significant because they may be either debarred, anxious or unenthusiastic about engaging in research, researchers have shown that these challenges
are not insurmountable and that access to these groups provides invaluable insights and understandings that help to challenge and denaturalize current border practices (Mountz 2010, Follis 2012, Hall 2012, Prokkola, 2013). What is more, as the number of people
who are obliged to involve themselves in immigration control by default proliferates, new opportunities to research the experiences of border work present themselves.
We welcome papers that peer into the lives of those who carry out border work, and that might utilise interviews, focus groups, visual analysis, court observations,
ethnographies, statistical analysis and GIS. What makes immigration functionaries, managers and controllers do the work that they do? How are they governed? What moral issues do they confront and avoid? How do encounters with those subjected
to such controls, such as irregular migrants and asylum seekers, either mediated or face-to-face, structure their experiences? To what extent are they able to exercise discretion or resist certain roles? How are technologies active in structuring their experiences?
What emotional experiences suffuse their work? When and how do they act insensitively and compassionately?
We welcome any papers in this area, but papers may focus on one or more of the following themes:
·
- -
- The legal geographies of executing immigration control
· - Consistency
and fairness
· - The
timing of immigration control
· - Emotional
landscapes of control such as guilt, shame, anxiety, pride and nationalism
· - Bureaucratisation
of control
· - Encounters
with migrants through different media and in different settings
· - Subverting
or contesting roles of immigration control
Please submit abstracts of no more than 250 words by email to Andrew Burridge ([log in to unmask]) by 20th October 2014.
Sources:
Coleman, M. (2009) 'What Counts as the Politics and Practice of Security, and Where? Devolution and Immigrant Insecurity after 9/11', Annals of the Association of American
Geographers 99(5): 904-913.
Follis, K. (2012) Building Fortress Europe: The Polish-Ukranian Frontier. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Hall, A. (2012) Border Watch: Cultures of Immigration, Detention and Control. London: Pluto Press.
Jenkins, M. (2014) 'On the Effects and Implications of UK Border Agency Involvement in Higher Education', The Geographical Journal 180(3): 265-270
Mountz, A. (2010) Seeking Asylum: Human Smuggling and Bureaucracy at the Border. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Prokkola, E. (2013) 'Technologies of Border Management: Performances and Calculation of Finnish/Schengen Border Security.' Geopolitics 18 (1): 77-94.
Vaughan-Williams, N. (2009) Border Politics: The Limits of
Sovereign Power. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press.