The orphanage as an institution of coercive mobility

This article reconsiders children’s mobilities through the relationship between care and control in the context of Russia’s disability orphanages. Drawing upon the lens of carceral mobilities, the article challenges the dominant conceptualisations of children’s mobilities as ‘independent’ or necessarily intertwined with notions of ‘wellbeing’. Instead this piece draws upon ethnographic research into the Russian disability orphanage system to present three typologies of multi-scalar carceral mobilities which children experience in this context; firstly as a form of spatial segregation and containment, secondly as a form of punishment and finally enforced stillness and restraint as a form of care. In doing so it provides new insights into the nature of the everyday for children in restricted institutional environments, largely absent from the wider geographical literature. Through the lens of carceral mobility this article provides a more nuanced geographical reading of the orphanage beyond an environment variously understood to harm or problematically to provide shelter, but as an institution enmeshed in biopolitical processes of power and control.

Impact of Incarceration on Families and Communities

This essay describes the implications of confinement for offenders’ families (both children and spouses) and for their communities, including coercive mobility, weakened social controls, family disruption, and stigmatization. The pros and cons of removing criminal fathers are discussed, focusing on possible differences in the implications of removing criminal fathers versus criminal mothers. The dramatically higher incarceration rates of black men from the most disadvantaged urban neighborhoods relative to any other demographic subgroup is discussed in the context of possible implications for the social and economic environments of poor neighborhoods. An overview of the debate on whether these higher incarceration rates actually reduce crime is also offered, including possible implications for a deterrent effect on crime (or a lack thereof). The need for research on the collateral consequences of incarceration for Latino families and communities is highlighted, given that Latinos represent the fastest growing segment of the US correctional population.

National Vitality, Migrant Abjection, and Coercive Mobility: The Biopolitical History of American Deportation

The United States has one of the world’s most extensive systems of mass removal. Its historical roots draw on 19th century biopolitical traditions of border control and internal anti-immigrant policing. In the early 20th century, rail technologies enabled an economical assemblage of steel and law, of racism and politics, attempting national purification by expelling ‘undesirable aliens.’ The process differentiated between the categories of privileged citizenship and abject alienage. The possibilities of national cleansing through deportation allowed new modes of sovereign governance, defined territories, and controlled populations—foundational aspects of modern nationhood.