Mobile spaces of control and moral geographies: places of internal bordering, immorality and crime in Sweden

Abstract

This paper–based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2017 with the Swedish border police force in charge of detecting and deporting irregularised migrants–analyses bordered urban space. It contributes to discussions about moral geographies that are produced through bordering work of border police officers, which sometimes blurs the distinction between external and internal border controls, based on an analysis of three spaces: the port as an “in-between” space of bordering; workplace inspections; and searches of private homes and other types of accommodation, conducted with the aim of detecting morally censured sex work. As I find, officers function as gatekeepers of the nation and its moral values in relation to space and thus map the area of their jurisdiction according to potentially “illicit” conduct of noncitizens. This, in turn, legitimises their gendered, classed and racialised inspection practices even as these practices entrench the perceived “otherness” of such spaces and manifest moral judgements.