The return of the colonial: crime control, imprisonment and immigrant detention in Europe

• In Event: Crime, Science and Politics WG Panel 2. Criminal Policy Evolution: not always forward

Abstract

The present work purports to address the contemporary configuration of social control practices in Europe through the lenses of historical conditions and the emergence of late modern transformations in the continent. It departs from standard accounts in the sociology of punishment to join an emerging and burgeoning literature focusing on issues of border penality. Moving a step further, the present work aims at bringing aspects of coloniality into the framework of analysis, in an effort to elaborate a wider and more comprehensive way of looking at contemporary developments in punishment, crime control and border regulation. As such, the research seeks to analyze dynamics of crime control, punishment and migrant detention taking place in recent years for understanding its overall rationality in Europe. It departs from the perspective that current systems of control are the result of long-established strands of a broad European colonial heritage returning to shape domestic policies in present times. The most distinctive effect of this heritage has been the adoption of harsh measures for dealing with migration flows to the region, raising domestic concerns with identity, security and welfare. As a result, the intensified border control has begun to clamp down on immigration, mostly on those unskilled migrants coming from peripheral countries immersed in a past of colonial domination. These colonial legacies, therefore, have a direct impact in the articulation of social control in the continent. Low rates of incarceration seem to be counteracted by an upsurge in the detention of migrants and stricter policies on migration, while also reverberating on the racial composition of prison populations. Although practices of punishment and immigrant detention follow distinct goals, they need to be understood in tandem. They form together assemblages of control that have become paramount in the operation of social control in Western democracies.

Author

• David S Fonseca, University of Sheffield