Bordered penality: Precarious membership and abnormal justice

Abstract

The article brings to attention, and explores, the transformations of criminal justice related to the control of unwanted mobility, looking in particular at recent Norwegian developments. It maps a gradual emergence of a differentiated, two-tier approach to criminal justice and a more exclusionary penal culture directed at non-citizens. The article suggests that the absence of formal membership is the essential factor contributing towards shifting the nature of penal intervention from reintegration into the society towards deportation and territorial exclusion, and towards the development of a particular form of penality, termed hereby bordered penality. The lack of formal citizenship status also crucially affects the procedural and substantive standards of justice afforded to non-members. While these developments are not confined to Norway alone, they cast doubt on the non-punitive image that is widely attributed to Scandinavian countries, and present a set of conceptual, epistemological and normative challenges for criminal justice in a rapidly globalizing world.