Asylum and Border Criminology

This thematic group seeks to bring discussions around asylum and refugee realities, (b)ordering practices and (in)justices more explicitly into Border Criminology. As the number of people forcibly displaced globally increases due to conflict, persecution, and climate change, governments across the globe strategically deploy violent and racialised (b)ordering policies and practices against people who make asylum claims, both at the borders of, but also deep inside, state boundaries. As such, there is an urgent need for scholars, practitioners and the public to not only understand and question the withdrawal of access to asylum and its consequences, but to contribute to the work of rejecting state violence and imagining alternative futures. While recognising the need not to draw hierarchies between different people on the move, we seek to engage in conversations around contemporary trends in the erosion of access to asylum globally. By bringing together scholars and practitioners from different countries, jurisdictions and backgrounds, we hope to facilitate collaborative, intercultural and inter-epistemic exchange. 

This new thematic group of Border Criminologies plans to publish research, hold and promote events relating to the deterrence and denial of asylum globally, and contribute to and platform collective resistance to such denials across different borderzones. We encourage connections with academics from across different disciplines, grassroots actors, people with lived experience, and those working in solidarity with people on the move globally. This group prioritises engagement with people and scholars from forced displacement backgrounds, and in particular we encourage early career scholars with this background to reach out. We hope to build a collaborative network behind the goal of researching, understanding, and challenging the erosion of asylum and refugee rights, and struggles for justice and dignity.

If you would like more information, have ideas for collaboration, or to join this group, please email victoria.taylor@crim.ox.ac.uk.