A culture of border control? From critique to abolition

In a postcolonial global world, territorial borders have become sites for the reassertion of state sovereign power and the social boundaries of the nation. Criminologists have started to pay increasing attention to the sites, actors, and practices of migration controls as key features of the contemporary “culture of control” and the study of the criminal question. Border criminologists have surveyed these novel architectures of control in the governance of migration, which dovetail immigration and criminal justice systems and buttress nationalism and hostile politics, while documenting the human wreckage left behind by them. This work has expanded our understanding of the geopolitics of punishment and its cultural scaffolding, where race is central. In doing so, this scholarship has contributed to the sociology of punishment and cultural criminological theories, opening up important avenues of critique. However, much of this rich scholarship has been less inclined to distill the normative implications of this critique and far less interested in rethinking alternative unbordered orders. Such reluctance to engage with questions of abolition and abolitionist activism has led to an impasse in the field. The first half of this chapter will chart border criminology scholarship, highlighting its main epistemological, conceptual, and theoretical contributions; while the second half identifies key gaps, particularly its lack of engagement with radical and abolitionist perspectives and praxis on bordering. Drawing on work by postcolonial and critical cultural scholars, this chapter explores avenues for revitalizing debates around borders and to reimagine unbordered futures.