Gendered Carceral Borders: Feminist Readings of Detention, Expulsion, and Containment

In recent years, the Spanish immigration border control apparatus has shifted towards a reduced reliance on immigration detention, a trend particularly evident in the case of women. Simultaneously, other containment practices have gained prominence through the proliferation of ostensibly more humanitarian facilities, while deportations from prison persist. Across these processes, gendered technologies are continuously mobilized, yet feminist analyses of these dynamics remain limited. Existing studies have primarily drawn on crimmigration and border criminologies, incorporating gender analysis only when addressing women’s experiences. This paper centers gender as a fundamental analytical category and employs feminist theories to offer new insights into the technologies and practices of border control in Spain.