These are some of the important issues to be addressed by the research project "Crime control in the Borderlands of Europe" at the Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law at the University of Oslo.
Immigration and national security
Immigration and asylum issues are increasingly defined as matters of national security, together with terrorism and organized crime. Foreign nationals make up an increasing proportion of individuals who are dealt by the criminal justice system. They represent over 30% of prisoners in Norwegian prisons, and an even greater percentage of pre-trial detainees.
- We want to examine what this means for the Norwegian penal system and our perspectives on punishment and crime control, says Professor Katja Franko Aas.
The significance of citizenship
Aas was the first social scientist in Norway to receive the ERC Starting Grant from the European Research Council. The project consists of several sub-projects aimed at topics related to the intertwining of crime control and migration control. Together these projects aim to analyze the impact of increased control of migration on criminal justice and other agencies such as police, prisons and detention centers.
- We are particularly interested in how the control changes when those who are controlled are non-citizens. Does lacking citizenship affect how certain groups are controlled and punished, for instance, the prison conditions they are exposed to? One example is the international databases and surveillance systems used for border control. These systems not only differentiate between European citizens, they also differentiate between citizens from rich and poor countries. Non-citizens with financial resources are likely to be given better opportunities than poor non-citizens, explains Aas.
- Internationally we find hierarchies of citizenship and various privileges associated with these hierarchies. At the same time, we see strategies implemented in Europe that work to immobilize groups of people. Aas will, together with Helene Gundhus from the Police University College, conduct a study which aims to examine the recently established European external border control agency, Frontex.
- Mobility is a privilege that only a small part of the world have the opportunity to enjoy, she says.
Insiders and outsiders
Four other researchers are working on the project together with Aas. One of these is Nicolay B. Johansen.
- I want to to describe the changing patterns of social exclusion through the experiences of its subjects. Johansen will conduct two qualitative studies, one among homeless drug addicts and one among rejected asylum seekers. Members of the two groups will be interviewed about their life strategies, their relations to different types of state welfare and immigration services and to the police.
My objective is to describe the various state strategies of governing social marginality and to compare them with regards to the two groups of respondents. I wish to understand more about both control in modern society and, by contrasting these groups, more about the importance of citizenship, says Johansen.
Do closed detention centers resemble prisons?
- The use of closed detention centers in many respects resembles prison punishment without being called prisons, says Thomas Ugelvik. He is doing a comparative study of closed detention centers in Europe, with special focus on the Norwegian detention center Trandum.
- The closed detention centers represent a new, hybrid form of confinement, according to Ugelvik. One of his objectives with this project is to compare the detention centers with different types of prisons and describe the differences and similarities.
Migration and police work
What kind of impact do immigration control objectives have on the nature of contemporary policing? This is one of the questions asked by the fifth researcher in the project, Sigmund Book Mohn. He is conducting an study of the National Police Immigration Service (PU), the Norwegian police unit responsible for identification of foreigners, registration of asylum seekers, deportation of foreign nationals and for the management of a detention center near Oslo airport.
- I want to study the ways in which police work with immigrants is merging with the criminal justice system in general, for instance whether the police is using criminal law in the processing of immigration cases. Does a general criminal orientation within the police somehow affect the treatment of the asylum applicants? asks Mohn.
Together the sub-projects aims to develop, on the basis of own and previous empirical findings, a conceptual and theoretical framework for addressing the issues related to the connection between crime control and migration control.
