Feminist periscoping in research on border enforcement and human rights

Abstract

Border and immigration enforcement is a key contemporary site for human rights concerns. The policies and practices of enforcement are notoriously difficult to research. In our work as feminist political geographers of immigration and border enforcement, we have repeatedly navigated methodological challenges in our attempts to understand how border enforcement policies emerge and play out in ways that infringe on the human rights of migrants and other marginalized populations. In this article, we explore feminist periscoping, a methodological approach developed by feminist geographer Nancy Hiemstra, which we have employed in our own efforts to understand the policies and practices of contemporary border and immigration enforcement and their impact on human rights. As a distinctly feminist and geographic methodological approach, feminist periscoping is useful for studying a broad range of difficult-to-access sites and processes.