Book review: M Bosworth, A Parmar and Y Yázquez (eds), Race, Criminal Justice, and Migration Control: Enforcing the Boundaries of Belonging
| Date | 01 February 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1362480619878893 |
| Author | Rachel Seoighe |
| Published date | 01 February 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Book reviews |
878893TCR0010.1177/1362480619878893Theoretical CriminologyBook review
book-review2019
Theoretical Criminology
2020, Vol. 24(1) 132 –141
Book reviews
© The Author(s) 2019
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https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480619878893
DOI: 10.1177/1362480619878893
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M Bosworth, A Parmar and Y Yázquez (eds), Race, Criminal Justice, and Migration Control:
Enforcing the Boundaries of Belonging, Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2018; 253
pp.: 9780198814887, £60 (hbk)
Reviewed by: Rachel Seoighe, Middlesex University, UK
Race is often the unsaid, the assumed and the concealed. Made up of 14 chapters, this
collection allows for rigorous examination of purportedly ‘race-neutral’ migration laws
and policies. They document discriminatory practices in criminal justice, and the atten-
dant devastation and precarity on communities of colour, contributing to minority ethnic
subjugation (Golash-Boza, Vázquez) and the preservation of a system of ‘global apart-
heid’ (Bowling and Westerna). The range of country contexts explored—from the UK to
the Mexican border to the Western Balkans—serves not only to demonstrate the global
spread of criminalizing and racialized state migration practices but also to illustrate the
nuances of postcolonial and gendered reproductions of racial power structures. The
book’s structure follows migrants and asylum seekers from border crossings to encoun-
ters with law enforcement, to legal processing, detention and deportation. In the process,
the chapters reveal how race, though unspoken, shapes discourse and practice in essen-
tializing and discriminatory ways. Many chapters acknowledge the persistent coloniality
of racial power structures, while analysing its transformation in ‘post-racial’ times.
However, the book would form a more convincing challenge to postcolonial knowledge
production if more voices and analyses from the ‘periphery’ were included.
Two incisive aphorisms...
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