Call for Chapters: Carceral Mobilities

Jennifer Turner and Kimberley Peters have been invited by Routledge to submit a proposal for an edited collection on the theme of Carceral Mobilities. They would like to invite individuals to participate in the project by contributing a chapter to the collection.

If you are interested in doing so, please indicate your interest at your earliest convenience, and then submit an abstract of 250-300 words, and a proposed chapter title, by January 31^st 2015.

As the sub-field of Carceral Geography continues to gain momentum, interrogating the spatialiaties of confinement, detention and imprisonment, the question of mobilities has emerged as a central concern. Whilst, as Chris Philo has recently noted (2014), carceral space may not be the most obvious lens through which to explore mobilities, movement pervades experiences and practices of incarceration. As Moran et al. (2012) contend processes of holding, restraining and imprisoning, which are so crucial to carceral regimes, assume absolute fixity for those individuals detained. Yet as these authors, and others (see Gill 2009; Moran et al. 2012; Mountz et al. 2012; Ong et al. 2014; Philo 2014) have argued, mobility is part and parcel of carcerality.  The immobilities that shape our perceptions of carceral life are, in fact, reliant on a host of mobilities (Gill 2009; Mountz et al. 2012). Moreover, even within carceral regimes – inside the prison walls, detention centres and immigration stations – mobilities occur as bodies are disciplined to move in specific ways (Philo 2014) and identities become fluid and mobilised across borders (Mountz et al. 2012). In this volume we seek to bring together a series of chapters that negotiate the complex and contested ground of carceral mobilities, highlighting the array of mobilities that shape carceral life, adding to this rich area of discussion, whilst also contributing to the burgeoning field of Mobilities studies, through using carceral space as a window of exploration.

Contributions may focus upon any aspect of the carceral:

• Policing
• Prisons
• Probation
• Immigrant detention
• Internment
• Detention and mental health
• Prisoners of war
• Abstract notions of ‘confinement’ or ‘detention’

They may include (but need not be limited to) the following areas:

• Mobilities across boundaries and borders
• Movements within carceral spaces
• Architecture and the shaping of mobilities
• Mobilities of bodies and identities
• Mobilities of objects, and contraband
• Transportation mobilities (carceral movements by plane, train, automobile)
• Virtual or imaginative mobilities
• Mobile technologies and practices (i.e. tags, curfews and probationary regimes)
• Mobilities and carceral regulations/rules

The following timescale is anticipated for the volume. Please note this in submitting your abstract for consideration:

• First submission of chapters to the editors required by 31^st August 2015
• Final submission of revised chapters to the editors by 31st December 2015

Jen and Kim hope that you will want to be involved in this exciting project, and if you would like to discuss this further, please contact them as follows:

jt264@leicester.ac.uk Jennifer Turner

k.peters@aber.ac.uk Kimberley Peters