Izvorni znanstveni članak
https://doi.org/10.15176/vol62no26
Policing “Small Boats” and Peripheries: Channel Crossings as Sites of Moral Panic
Simon Campbell
orcid.org/0009-0000-9090-0034
; Centre for Migration and Forced Displacement, Aston University, Birmingham
Sažetak
This paper looks at the United Kingdom’s governing of the Channel during the late 2010s, early 2020s – exposing how relationships of capital and race have been configured in this particular conjuncture through the policing of “small boats”. Using the analytic of moral panics (Hall et al. 2013), I investigate how concerns of maritime safety, hard immigration, and crackdowns on “smuggling” gangs convene in the policing of “entry” via sea, yet obfuscate a set of socio-economic conditions prevailing in post-2008 racial capitalism. Drawing on Stuart Hall’s analysis of “mugging” in 1970s Britain (Hall et al. 2013), and Ida Danewid’s conjunctural work on the European border regime (2022), the paper situates “small boats” in a longer arc of racialised panics in which various crises of accumulation and racial hegemony have been rendered onto migrants and vessels (via policing, mediatisation, courts and policy). In particular, I focus on Eastern and Southeastern European migrants as an important part of the Channel’s political economy. Foregrounding the historic interaction of enclosure of Britain’s imperial space and Europe’s peripheries, and ongoing securitisation of Channel crossers (as facilitators, criminals, bogus asylum seekers, and surplus labour), I argue for a closer understanding of how the racialisation of Black, Brown and “not quite white” articulate.
Ključne riječi
moral panic, the Channel, small boats, peripheries, enclosure
Hrčak ID:
341674
URI
Datum izdavanja:
19.12.2025.
Posjeta: 662 *