Dr. Jennifer Turner

Read my new book chapter, entitled ‘‘No place like home”: boundary traffic through the prison gate in Placing the Border in Everyday Life, out this month.

Edited by Reece Jones and Corey Johnson, this book complicates the connection between borders and sovereign states by identifying the individuals and organizations that engage in border work at a range of scales and places. This edited volume includes contributions from major international scholars in the field of border studies and allied disciplines who analyze where and why border work is done. By combining a new theorization of border work beyond the state with rich empirical case studies, this book makes a ground-breaking contribution to the study of borders and the state in the era of globalization.

I have recently taken up a new position as a Research Associate in the Department of Criminology at the University of Leicester.

The ESRC-funded project is entitled ‘Fear-suffused environments’ or potential to rehabilitate?  Prison architecture, design and technology and the lived experience of carceral spaces” and is with Prof. Yvonne Jewkes and Dr. Dominique Moran (Birmingham).

Keep up-to-date with project goings on at the website Prison Spaces or follow us on twitter @PrisonSpaces

The basic idea of this Special Issue is to promote cutting-edge dialogue about links between spaces and spatialities commonly understood as ‘carceral’ (prisons, detention centers, camps, etc.) and other, often urban spaces seen to be undergoing new forms of ‘criminalisation’, for example through video surveillance, Geographic Information Systems and Crime Mapping, Predictive Policing, Environmental Crime Prevention and so on.

Scholars working in these two areas engage with related themes but often focus their empirical work on one or the other type of field site. The Special Issue is aimed at generating reflection and exchange on how themes typically considered ‘carceral’ can inform imaginations of, as well as policing and governmental projects centered upon, nominally more ‘open’ civic or public realms. Likewise, it is important to understand the ways in which urban (or rural) imaginations of civic or public space as well as spaces of economic exchange, inflect the evolution of carceral policies and practices. In general, there is increasing ‘leakage’ and an increasingly complex bundle of cultural, economic and political relations that undermines any simple distinction between the ‘carceral inside’ and the ‘public outside’. We would especially welcome theory-based submissions that draw upon a range of case studies to reflect broadly on these issues. Also welcome would be contributions touching any of the following areas:

-Carceral imaginaries in public culture

– Carceral strategies and the criminalisation of urban spaces

– Civic and citizenship ideologies in prison management

– Economic links across prison boundaries

– Historical transformations in the cultural placing of carcerality and criminality

– Innovative theorizations of boundaries between nominally carceral and civic spaces

– Theoretical arguments regarding the cross-applicability of themes between nominally carceral and civic spaces

– Reflections on the relevance of postcolonial, feminist and other theoretical frameworks for illuminating this complex

In order to facilitate timely publication, papers would need to be received for peer review by mid February 2014. Please send any proposed abstracts of no more than 200 words to myself, Jen Turner (jet08@aber.ac.uk) by November 15th 2013.

For more details about the Journal, see: http://www.social-geography.net/

Read my latest Geography Directions post surrounding the politics of convicted criminals in the West Midlands being paid to work in call centres for insurance firms.

My latest article, available to download in Early View in Area is available here.

Abstract:

Recent work within and beyond the geography discipline has come to understand that where might be imagined a sharp boundary between the ‘hidden’ inside and outside of prisons, there is in fact a myriad of materials that cleave and bind penal geographies that mark the prison wall as a site of transaction and exchange. Recidivism in the UK is of serious concern, rendering the ‘prisoner’ a participant of a very unique and dynamic type of border exchange. In light of this, this paper questions how this impacts prisoners’ identities and attachments to ‘home’. Although ex-offenders may idealise a return to the communities where they lived prior to incarceration, the ability to re-integrate is often limited. This may be attributed to the transformations that individuals undergo while spending time in prison, such as the possession of a criminal record. In grounding this discussion in the case of a company that employs ‘ex-offenders’, I examine the implications of belonging to such a group of ‘conventional employees’ and ‘those with criminal records’; revealing tensions that complicate matters of belonging. This paper therefore posits the prison as a kind of ‘homeland’ that continues to significantly shape one’s identity following their out-migration. Those leaving prison find themselves unable to display conventional attachments to the outside society, while performing a dystopian relationship with the prison homeland, allowing for a consideration of what I have termed the ‘prisoner dyspora’.

New book: “Carceral Spaces: Mobility and Agency in Imprisonment and Migrant Detention”.

This book draws together the work of a new community of scholars with a growing interest in carceral geography: the geographical study of practices of imprisonment and detention.

Edited by Dominique Moran, Nick Gill and Deidre Conlon, the volume features work by Lauren Martin, Matt Mitchelson, Olivier Milhaud, Bénédicte Michalon, Julie De Dardel, Nancy Hiemstra, Mason McWatters and myself.  There are also reflective pieces by Alison Mountz and Yvonne Jewkes.

It’s available for purchase via Ashgate and Amazon.