Gender at the border: Nationalism and the new logic of punishment

Abstract

Criminologists have spent the past decade writing about the border. Sociologists have documented the growing convergence of punishment and migration control, while legal theorists have critiqued the concepts of sovereignty and citizenship. Over time, these inquiries have cohered into what Katja Aas and Mary Bosworth call the ‘criminology of mobility’. One central premise of this new criminology, perhaps even its motivating concern, is that globalization has altered the relationship between punishment and identity. This article expands on that theoretical claim. What do we mean when we say that punishment and identity are intertwined? How have mass mobility and waning sovereignty affected the practice of punishment? With these questions in mind, this article examines the relationship between three aspects of identity – gender, sexuality, and nationality – in one space of punishment, the British prison. Drawing on interviews with foreign national prisoners in five men’s prisons, I argue that sexism and homophobia work as resources for prisoners who seek to establish themselves as members of the British polity. In the contemporary prison, asserting gender conformity is one way to lay claim to a British national identity.