Irregular border-crossing deaths and gender: Where, how and why women die crossing borders
| Published date | 01 February 2013 |
| Author | Brandy Cochrane,Sharon Pickering |
| Date | 01 February 2013 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1362480612464510 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Theoretical Criminology
17(1) 27 –48
© The Author(s) 2012
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DOI: 10.1177/1362480612464510
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Irregular border-crossing
deaths and gender: Where,
how and why women die
crossing borders
Sharon Pickering
Monash University, Australia
Brandy Cochrane
Portland State University, USA
Abstract
In a global era of increased securitization of migration between the developed and
developing world this article undertakes a gendered analysis of the ways women die
irregularly crossing borders. Through an examination of datasets in Europe, the USA and
Australia it finds women are more likely to die crossing borders at the harsh physical
frontiers of nation-states rather than at increasingly policed ‘internal border’ sites. The
reasons why women are dying are not clearly discernible from the data, yet based on
the extant literature it is reasonable to conclude that gendered social practices within
families, and within countries of origin and transit, as well as the practices of smuggling
markets, are key contributing factors.
Keywords
Borders, death, migration, women
Introduction
The impact of increased border control on the deaths of irregular migrants is the focus of
a growing body of multidisciplinary scholarship (Athwal and Bourne, 2007; Cornelius,
2001, 2005; Eschbach et al., 1999; Michalowski, 2007; Nevins, 2003; Spijkerboer,
Corresponding author:
Sharon Pickering, School of Political and Social Inquiry, Monash University, Clayton 3800, Australia.
Email: Sharon.pickering@monash.edu
Article
28 Theoretical Criminology 17(1)
2007). The fatalities of irregular border crossers raise serious questions concerning state
obligations, at least in relation to the foreseeability of these deaths, if not also in connec-
tion to state culpability in and the legality of border control efforts that directly or indi-
rectly result in deaths. The key concern of this nascent field is the human cost of border
control measures aimed at sealing borders to irregular migrants in Australia, Europe and
North America (Weber and Pickering, 2011). However, to date, relatively little attention
has been paid to the gendered dimension of this human cost.
This article first examines the changing character of the border and the importance of
including a range of border sites in our analysis of border-related deaths and considers
the available literature on women and irregular border crossing, before turning to an
analysis of the gendered aspects of border-related death in Australia, Europe and along
the United States–Mexico border. It specifically examines where, how and why women
die during irregular border crossing. Women are more likely to die crossing borders at
the harsh physical frontiers of nation-states than at ‘internal border’ sites, such as immi-
gration detention centres. This finding suggests that we need to pay greater attention to
this issue as the existing, admittedly fragmentary, data indicate that the number of women
irregularly crossing borders is increasing. The reasons why women are dying are not
clearly discernible from the data, yet based on the extant literature it is reasonable to
conclude that in addition to the role of state sponsored border control, gendered social
practices within families, and within countries of origin and transit, as well as the prac-
tices of smuggling markets, are key contributing factors. The data analysed in this article
concludes that women as a group face a higher risk of death at the physical frontier than
at internal border sites during illegalized travel.
The border
The securitization of borders between the Global North and the Global South has funda-
mentally transformed the nature of the border internationally (Donnan and Wilson, 2010;
Pickering and Weber, 2006; Vila, 2003; Wilson and Donnan, 1998). Borders are now
widely regarded by theoreticians and practitioners alike as dynamic and fluid construc-
tions, the enforcement of which works in symbiotic relationship with the very operations
that attempt to subvert them (Andreas, 2000). Borders are increasingly selective and
diversified, operating at a range of internal and external locales (Aas, 2007, 2011; Weber,
2006). Borders have become the site for the securitization of migration, even if the bor-
der has been effectively policed across time and space in ways previously unimagined
(Bigo, 2005). Concerns around securing borders have relied on the production of a secu-
rity threat without recourse to evidence (Bigo, 2005) and the processes by which they are
secured have become effectively self-referential (Guild, 2009).
Bigo (2005: 52) uses the terminology of ‘frontiers’, defining borders not as a line of
outside and inside but as a ‘Mobius ribbon where the perception of what is inside and
what is outside varies depending on the position of the observer’. Bauman (2004) con-
cludes that these frontiers operate in highly gendered, racialized and classed ways. The
data presented in this article indicate that it is at the frontiers that the deaths of women
are heavily clustered. ‘Frontiers’ in this sense acknowledges Bigo’s observations around
the fluidity of what occurs at the political and legal edges of nation states but it is also
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