Women, Borders, and Violence: Current Issues in Asylum, Forced Migration, and Trafficking

Women at the Border analyzes border policing practices currently informed by paradigms of securitization against unauthorized mobility and explores the potential for a paradigm shift to a more ethical regulation of borders. By focusing on the ways women have sought to cross borders in ‘extra’-legal fashion, the book shows how border enforcement differentially impacts on some populations and makes the case that unauthorized migration requires management rather than repulsion and criminalization. When facing the emerging and future challenges of unauthorized mobility, border policing must be recast as a function of human rights that results in greater human security at the border. Examining gender and border policing across Europe, North America and Australia, this book enhances our understanding of the gendered determinants of ‘extra’-legal border crossing, border policing and the changing dynamics of unauthorized mobility.

Associate Professor Sharon Pickering lectures in criminology at Monash University. She led the three year study between Monash and Victoria Police on Counter-Terrorism policing and she is the co-author of the book Counter-Terrorism Policing: Community, Cohesion and Security (Springer, 2008). She has seven other books including Women Policing and Resistance in Northern Ireland (2002), Critical Chatter: Women and Human Rights in South East Asia (2002), and Refugees and State Crime (2005). Dr. Pickering co-convenes the annual Prato Roundtable Series on Transnational Crime that was established in 2006. She recently co-edited a special edition of the journal, Social Justice, entitled "Beyond Transnational Crime". She is currently a Visiting Fellow at UNSW working on a study of deaths at the border.