Borders as penal transplants: Control of territory, mobility and illegality in West Africa

AuthorEva Magdalena Stambøl
DOI10.1177/1362480621995457
Published date01 August 2021
Date01 August 2021
Subject MatterArticles
https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480621995457
Theoretical Criminology
2021, Vol. 25(3) 474 –492
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/1362480621995457
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Borders as penal transplants:
Control of territory, mobility
and illegality in West Africa
Eva Magdalena Stambøl
Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
Abstract
This article explores an increasingly significant trend in crime and mobility control
that has received scant criminological attention: border externalization, specifically
scrutinizing land border security-building by international actors in West Africa. Going
beyond the usual focus on migration in border studies, it develops a criminologically
grounded theorization of the border as a political technology of crime control and
its relationship to the state. This is done by arguing that borders, theorized as ‘penal
transplants’ embodying specific (western) visions of state, political power, social
control/order and territoriality, are transformed and often distorted when performed
in ‘heterarchical’ contexts in the global South. Further, empirically based concepts from
‘the periphery’ are suggested to enrich border criminology, broadening its geographical
scope and spatial awareness.
Keywords
Border security, mobility, penal transplant, Sahel, transnational crime
Introduction
Border security has become a primary response of the western world1 to a wide range of
alleged security challenges, including irregular migration and various forms of transna-
tional crime. Yet, while the emerging field of ‘border criminology’ has mainly explored
borders with regard to migration—predominantly in Europe, North America and Australia
Corresponding author:
Eva Magdalena Stambøl, Freie Universität Berlin, Ihnestraße 2122, Berlin, 14195, Germany.
Email: stambolevam@zedat.fu-berlin.de
995457TCR0010.1177/1362480621995457Theoretical CriminologyStambøl
research-article2021
Article
Stambøl 475
(e.g. Aas and Bosworth, 2013; Pickering and Weber, 2006)—other crime control functions
of borders as well as other regions of the world have received much less attention (e.g.
Metha, 2016; Milivojevic, 2019). Aiming to remedy these lacunae, this article asserts that
it is crucial for criminology to explore how border security-building is in fact becoming
one of the most prevalent types of what has been coined ‘penal aid’ (Brisson-Boivin and
O’Connor, 2013)—or western ‘crime control exports’ (Aas, 2011; Cohen, 1988)—to non-
western countries. For instance, the European Union (EU) channels significant amounts of
development aid to building borders in third countries and regions, notably in Africa
(Akkerman, 2018; Den Hertog, 2016; Russo and Stambøl, under review). In doing so, the
EU and the West simultaneously aim to protect themselves from ‘illicit flows’ of goods and
people before they allegedly reach Europe, North America or Australia: border externaliza-
tion thus entails crime and mobility control ‘at a distance’ (Stambøl, 2019).
This article argues that studying border security-building as a ‘penal transplant’
(Garland, 2006) to non-western countries more clearly elucidates western ways of thinking
about and controlling crime; the role of borders in crime control; and the relativity of the
notions of crime and crime control across social and geographical contexts. Furthermore,
it asserts that border transplants embody specific (western) visions of state, political power
and social control/order and territoriality, which are transformed and often distorted
(Melossi et al., 2011) when performed in ‘heterarchical’ contexts (Hüsken and Klute, 2015)
in the global South. These arguments are developed based on an empirically grounded
analysis of border security-building projects that have gained substantial traction among
western donors in West Africa, which blur traditional development policies with a new
rationale for preventing and combating transnational crime and illicit/irregular mobility.
The following section reviews conceptualizations of borders and outlines the article’s
theoretical framework, followed by a section on the research methods and data on which
this article is based. Section four, which explores the visions and practices of western
donors implementing land border security across the Sahel region of West Africa, reveals
that the ‘penal transplant’ of the border post is envisaged both as a crucial manifestation
of the state and as a political technology of crime control, simultaneously embodying
penal power, risk management and social service provision. Moreover, the border is
increasingly becoming the target sector for penal aid, as it seems that donors acknowl-
edge their limits in building western-style sovereign states in Africa (see Garland, 1996).
Section five, aimed at ‘seeing from the periphery’ (Aas, 2012; Carrington et al., 2016),
analyses how these western visions of ‘borders as state’ and ‘borders for crime control’
collide with the social reality on the ground, as notions of crime, mobility, territory and
sovereignty contrast with those of donors. It draws on theoretical insights from anthro-
pology and African studies to expand the criminological understanding of the relation-
ship between borders, crime control and the state. Section six delves into a novel type of
international border security-building project that aims to overcome the above shortcom-
ings, epitomizing the border as ‘performance’. By performing the border and its crime-
control functions through theatre, these projects seek to teach risk awareness and
territoriality to local border communities across West Africa, thus altering their border
culture and habits and harnessing them as non-state partners in crime and mobility con-
trol. The last section provides the significance of these findings for criminology and
border studies.

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