87161 - Criminology Of The Borders

Learning outcomes

Objectives: The course is designed to give students a general overview and understanding of the international and European criminological debate concerning border control and a detailed knowledge of key topics and key scholars in the field. Students are expected to be able to combine their knowledge of different contexts and disciplinary approaches when analysing border policies. The goal of the course is that students acquire the competences and knowledge necessary to analyze critically the contemporary policies of border control in different contexts, also in view of possible fields of work and research: border police, the role and functioning of administrative detention and deportation, the international relations of the externalization of borders, the use of criminal law in border control.

Course contents

For exchange students: the admission to this course (optional courses of the LM in IR) is allowed to incoming students at Master level. As for undergraduate students, they must demonstrate to the Professor having already acquired competences in the disciplines of criminology and sociology in their respective Transcripts of Records.

The course is organised into lectures and seminars, as detailed in the following program and further developed in the syllabus uploaded in VIRTUALE before the beginning of the course. The course will present the contemporary debate in the field known as "border criminology". This is a recently emerged field of criminological research, which merges insights from border studies, critical migration studies, and the criminological interest over border control. The label of "border criminology" identifies an interdisciplinary body of criminological literature concerned with borders and, more specifically, concerned with how border control in times of globalization is bringing about important changes in the field of Criminal justice, punishment, sovereignty and membership in continuously changing and increasingly complex societies.

At the end of the course, students will be expected to be able to analyse the mechanisms of power subtending the processes of illegalization, detention, deportation, refusal and criminalization of migrants. The perspective developed in the course embraces a critical approach and considers law, policies, and discourses as entrenched factors in driving the mechanisms of border control. The focus of the analysis will be the European context, analysed through comparative perspective as much as possible. Special attention will be given to the intersection of race, class and gender in the law-making and law-enforcement activities. Not only the securitization of border will be taken into account, but also the more recently emerged “humanitarian control” will be considered as an object of possible criminological enquiry.

The course is organized in lectures and seminars. Students are required to carefully read the assigned material before each class and are expected to actively participate in class discussion.

Lectures will first introduce the students to the critical perspective in criminology and to the main topics and the theoretical debate of border criminology. It then will provide an introduction to the theoretical key concepts in border criminology, and especially the question of punishment, the nature of borders, and the transnational perspective we aim to adopt in the course, with an attention to the possibility of transforming borders from below. Then, the lectures will investigate the different countries in Europe where one can observe the mechanisms of border control, highlighting the variety of cases. Each of them will be discussed through empirical and theoretical researches carried out in different contexts.

Lectures

1. Introduction to critical criminology and border criminology
2. The illegalization processes and deportability
3. Class discussion
4. The perspective of border performativity: multi-scalar and transnational governance of migration
5. Class discussion
   
6. Crimmigration debate in the US and in the EU and its critiques
7. Class discussion
8. Pre-removal detention: theories, numbers, functions
9. Border policing: discretion, internal borders and the instrumental use of immigration law
10. Deportation
11. Mid-term exam
    
12. Pre-removal immigration detention in Italy
13. Temporal borders and life in camps in Greece
14. Push-backs and violence at the borders in the Balkans
15. The deportation machine in Spain
16. Digital borders
17. Smuggling and trafficking
18. Gender perspective on migration control: women migrants, sex work and the ideal victim
19. Southern perspective on bordered penality
20. Conclusions

 

Readings/Bibliography

Required Readings

All students are required to read the following core articles:

• Bosworth, Mary, Franko, Katja, & Pickering, Sharon (2018). Punishment, globalization and migration control: ‘Get them the hell out of here’. Punishment & Society, 20(1), 34–53.

• De Genova, Nicholas (2002). Migrant “illegality” and deportability in everyday life. Annual Review of Anthropology, 31, 419–447.

• Fabini, Giulia (2017). Managing illegality at the internal border: Governing through ‘differential inclusion’ in Italy. European Journal of Criminology, 14(1), 46–62.

• Wonders, Nancy (2006). Global flows, semi-permeable borders and new channels of inequality: Border crossers and border performativity. In Pickering, S., & Weber, L. (Eds.), Borders, Mobility and Technologies of Control (pp. 63–86). Heidelberg: Springer.

• Brandariz, Jose Angel, Fabini, Giulia, Fernandez-Bessa, Cristina, & Ferraris, Valeria (2025). Border criminologies from the periphery: An introduction. In Brandariz, J. A., Fabini, G., Fernandez-Bessa, C., & Ferraris, V. (Eds.), Border Criminology from the Peripheries: Cross-National Conversations on Bordered Penality (pp. 1–18). Routledge.

For Students Regularly Attending Classes

In addition to the core readings listed above, regularly attending students will be assigned further readings (mainly scientific articles and book chapters) depending on the topics discussed in class.
The full syllabus will be distributed before the beginning of the course and made available on the course webpage.

For Students Not Regularly Attending Classes

Non-attending students are required to read the following additional texts:

• Aas, Katja Franko, & Bosworth, Mary (2013). The Borders of Punishment: Migration, Citizenship and the Northern Penal State. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

• Brandariz, Jose Angel, Fabini, Giulia, Fernandez-Bessa, Cristina, & Ferraris, Valeria (2025). Border Criminology from the Peripheries: Cross-National Conversations on Bordered Penality. Routledge. (Students are required to select and read any four chapters from the volume.)

The complete list of Readings, which relate to the specific topics of single lectures, will be uploaded on the online platform VIRTUALE (https://virtuale.unibo.it) since next early September.

Teaching methods

The course will use different teaching methods to provide students with knowledge on border criminology but also to help them develop critical thinking skills: lectures, seminars, class discussion, papers. The active participation of students during the course will be strongly encouraged.

Assessment methods

• Mid-term exam

•  The mid-term will be a written exam administered on the EOL platform. It will consist of five short open-ended questions to be completed within one hour, and it will count for 30% of the final grade.

• In order to pass the mid-term, students must answer at least three out of the five questions. Particular attention will be given to the clarity and coherence of the answers, the ability to refer precisely to the readings discussed in class, and the relevance of the content in relation to the questions asked. Critical thinking, the capacity to synthesize key ideas, and the appropriate use of disciplinary language will also be positively evaluated.

  Students who are unable to take the mid-term exam will be required to take the final exam as non-attending students, and will therefore be assessed on the full reading list for non-attending students.

• Final Essay

  The second part of the final exam consists in the submission of a 3,000-word essay. The essay accounts for 70% of the final grade.

  Students are free to choose the topic of the paper but must send a proposal to the professor by the end of the course in order to agree on the subject of their final essay. Students may change the topic later, but any changes must be discussed and approved by the professor before submission.

  The final essay must be submitted by email to the professor at least one week before the chosen exam date (appello). On the day of the exam, students will be required to briefly discuss their paper with the professor.

  The paper may be submitted in any of the following official exam sessions:

  • Winter session (January and February – three sessions)

  • Summer session (June and July – two sessions)

  • September session (one session)

  Final Grade

  The final grade is based on the combined evaluation of the mid-term exam (30%) and the final essay (70%).
  The student has the possibility to refuse the final grade once. In this case, they will be required to take a comprehensive oral exam as a non-attending student, based on the full reading list assigned to non-attending students.

  Guidelines for the Final Essay

  Each student will develop their chosen topic in agreement with the professor. There are two possible approaches to the essay:

  1. A book-based essay

  2. An empirical case study

  In both cases, students are expected to use the course literature—including compulsory readings, suggested readings, and chapters from The Borders of Punishment by Katja Franko and Mary Bosworth—to develop and support their analysis. The final essay must include a bibliography and demonstrate an informed, critical engagement with the course material.

  Option 1: Book-based Essay

  Students may choose one book from the list below. If a student wishes to focus on a book not included in the list, they must seek approval from the professor. The essay should include:

  • A summary of the book

  • A critical discussion of the text in relation to course topics and literature

  • An analysis of the book’s empirical and theoretical contributions

  • A reflection on its possible limitations

  Suggested books include (but are not limited to):

  • Eleonora Di Molfetta (2024), Delivering Justice to Non-Citizens: How Criminal Courts Create Borders and Boundaries, Routledge

  • Francesca Soliman (2024), Social Harm at the Border: The Case of Lampedusa, Routledge

  • Giuseppe Campesi (2023), Policing Mobility Regimes: Frontex and the Production of the European Borderscape, Routledge

  • Lea Sitkin (2019), Re-thinking the Political Economy of Immigration Control: A Comparative Analysis, Routledge

  • Victoria Canning (2019), Gendered Harm and Structural Violence in the British Asylum System, Routledge

  • Sanja Milivojevic (2018), Border Policing and Security Technologies: Mobility and Proliferation of Borders in the Western Balkans, Routledge

  • Vanessa Barker (2017), Nordic Nationalism and Penal Order: Walling the Welfare State, Routledge

  • Ana Aliverti (2014), Crimes of Mobility: Criminal Law and the Regulation of Immigration, Routledge

  • Leanne Weber (2013), Policing Non-Citizens, Routledge

  • Ana Aliverti (2021), Policing the Borders Within, Oxford University Press

  • E.E. Korkmaz (2024), Smart Borders, Digital Identity and Big Data: How Surveillance Technologies Are Used Against Migrants, Bristol University Press

  • E. Iliadou (2023), Border Harms and Everyday Violence: A Prison Island in Europe, Bristol University Press

  • David Moffette (2018), Governing Irregular Migration: Bordering Culture, Labour, and Security in Spain, University of California Press

  • P. Mutsaers (2019), Police Unlimited: Policing, Migrants, and the Values of Bureaucracy, Oxford University Press

  • Mary Bosworth (2014), Inside Immigration Detention, Oxford University Press

  • Annika Lindberg (2022), Deportation Limbo: State Violence and Contestations in the Nordics, Manchester University Press

  The discussion should connect the book to the themes covered in class. Students are encouraged to reference course readings, both compulsory and suggested, and to make use of relevant academic literature.

  Option 2: Case Study-Based Essay

  Alternatively, students may develop a paper based on an empirical case related to mechanisms of border control in the Global North or South.

  Empirical cases may be based on:

  • Reports by NGOs or international organizations (e.g. MSF, Amnesty International, IOM, ISMU)

  • Media investigations (with sufficient detail and reliability)

  • Public databases (e.g. Frontex risk reports, Eurostat data, the Immigration Detention Project, Trattenuti database, Ombudsperson reports)

  • Students' own research (e.g. interviews, participant observation, original data collection)

  The case study should be clearly presented, and then critically discussed through the lens of the course literature. As in the book-based option, students should reference compulsory readings, suggested materials, and The Borders of Punishment.

  The final essay must include a bibliography and demonstrate appropriate use of sources.

   

• Students who do not regularly attend classes will be assessed through a final oral exam, based on the full reading list for non-attending students.
  

 

• Students with DSA or temporary or permanent disabilities. It is recommended to contact the responsible University office in good time (https://site.unibo.it/studenti-con-disabilita-e-dsa/it): it will be their responsibility to propose any adaptations to the students concerned, which must however be submitted, with a 15-day notice, to the approval of the teacher, who will evaluate the opportunity also in relation to the educational objectives of the course.

Teaching tools

Power-point, visual material, collective discussions.

Office hours

See the website of Giulia Fabini