City Research Online

Abstract

This article examines how mobility, migration, and borders shape incarceration and the practice of imprisonment. The article traces the intersections of borders and imprisonment through three thematic intersections. In addition to a site of immobilization, the first section draws on recent research in carceral geography to examine how mobility and circulation define the practice of incarceration. In the following section, the article examines how migration and border control have been embedded into prison systems in the United States, United Kingdom, and Europe, suggesting that the jails and prisons have become critical sites for the definition of political membership. In the final section, the article traces the recent history of transnational prison outsourcing agreements, from Denmark’s arrangement with Kosovo to rent Glijan prison, to the United States’ efforts to remove non-citizens to El Salvador’s CECOT prison. On one hand, these efforts to externalize or export responsibility for imprisonment demonstrate how prisons have become a critical site for welfare nationalism. They also undermine basic tenets of the established legal and normative justifications of punishment.

Publication Type:	Book Section
Additional Information:	The Borders of the Prison by Tuck, R. H. (2025). Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press https://doi.org/10.1093/9780198945222.001.0001. For permission to re-use this material, please visit https://global.oup.com/academic/rights.
Publisher Keywords:	borders, citizenship, geopolitics, globalization, homeland, migration, sovereignty, states, territory
Departments:	School of Policy & Global Affairs School of Policy & Global Affairs > Department of Sociology & Criminology
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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