Researching borders in the peripheries: methods, language and situated knowledge to avoid “orientalism” in cross-borders conversations

• In Event: Penality in the south(-s) (3): Southern (border) criminology (2)

Abstract

It is important to interrogate the power of research to shape the context that it is meant to just describe. In this contribution, I will wonder to what extent research has the power to shape the reality also in the analysis of border control mechanisms in different contexts across the “Global North” and the “Global South”, and how much results of research in the Global South might be relevant to shed light also on border control in the Global North. For this purpose, I will invite to pay attention at least to three elements, namely methods, language and situated knowledge: the possibility to access the field and, consequently, the methodology that the researcher is allowed using have an impact on researcher’s insights into the field; English is as hegemonic in knowledge production as is it limiting because words as well as concepts cannot be always easily translated into English; the analysis of border control should take into account also the situated knowledge around border and immigration control produced in given contexts prior to the emergence of border criminology as a scholarship. Border criminology in the peripheries invites to apply to the “Northern” border results of research emerging from the “Southern” borders, for two reasons: in order to better understand the “North”, as it is not to be taken for granted that what happen in the “South” does not in the “North”, and in order to avoid orientalising the “South”.

Author

• Giulia Fabini, University of Bologna