Dorina Damsa

• Tuck, R. Hallam; Ostrand, Nicole Marie & Damsa, Dorina (2025). The Constitution and Contestability of Borders. Geopolitics. p. 13–13. doi: 10.1080/14650045.2025.2548088. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This article introduces the special issue on the constitution and contestability of borders. Reflecting the processual turn in critical border studies, Yuval-Davis, Wemyss, and Cassidy (2019, 5) describe bordering as the set of practices and techniques that generate the forms of difference that enable distinctions between political subjects. Drawing on the concept of the borderscape, this special issue contributes to research within the field of border studies by examining how this social process of bordering is both co-produced and contested. This introduction describes the three main contributions of the Special Issue. First, our analysis draws attention to the ways in which bordering practices are co-constituted through interactions and negotiations between many different actors and institutions. Attention to co-constitution demonstrates how the borderscape produces differentiation through mundane, material practices, such as access to work, medical care, education, mobility, language, and bureaucratic encounters. Second, we emphasise how bordering practices are relational – appearing and operating differently on different people and in different contexts. Finally, by emphasising the processes of social and legal contestation that underlie bordering, we argue that the borderscape offers a uniquely valuable analytical tool to help us understand bordering as contingent, fragmented and containing multiple contradictions.

• Damsa, Dorina & Ostrand, Nicole Marie (2025). States of Un/Knowing: The Un/Making of the European Deportation Regime. Geopolitics. doi: 10.1080/14650045.2025.2493830. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Migration governance in Europe is continuously shaped by various rationalities and actors, including those from state, supra/international, civil society and academic institutions. This article contributes to the epistemologies and methodologies of knowledge and nonknowledge by bringing focus to the fluid, that is, the co-constitutive, relational and contextual dimensions of non/knowledge production. It interrogates how specific governance strategies are enabled, legitimised and foreclosed by different forms of knowing and un-knowing and how interactions between multiple intervening actors continuously inform this process. To illustrate the fluidity of non/knowledge as means to govern migration, we draw on our empirical work on deportation in Europe, a form of state sanctioned violence that is dependent on the co-constitutive relation between knowledge and nonknowledge produced by a variety of actors in evolving contexts. In this article, we join ongoing calls for epistemic justice in the production of knowledge concerning migration and specifically deportations carried out by European states.

• Tuck, Hallam & Damsa, Dorina (2024). All-foreign prisons: Sites of (colonial) nation-building. In Bosworth, Mary; Franko, Katja; Lee, Maggy & Mehta, Rimple (Ed.), Handbook on Border Criminology. Edward Elgar Publishing. p. 235–253. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This chapter considers the emergence, administration, and function of all-foreign prisons, as part of a broader global architecture of control.

• Damsa, Dorina (2023). Punished and banished: Non-citizen women's experiences in a Danish prison. The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice. 63(1), p. 43–61. doi: 10.1111/hojo.12544. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The Nordics have employed discourses of gender equality and women's rights and a welfare-oriented approach to punishment as integral parts of inclusive welfare states and their ‘goodness’. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with non-citizen women at Vestre Prison in Denmark, this article suggests that the will to punish and banish prevails over the state's commitment to women's rights and protection. Rather than being an inherent feature of incarceration, the pain experienced by non-citizen women in prison is a ‘political statement’ (Bosworth, 2023). Employing precarisation, incarceration and deportation to govern unwanted non-citizens and (re)produce the borders of membership, the Danish state also reproduces the conditions for gendered harm. Bordered penality, this article concludes, is gendered.

• Tuck, Robert Hallam; Damsa, Dorina & Kullman, Elizabeth (2022). All-foreign prisons in the United States, England and Wales, and Norway: Related logics and local expressions. Theoretical criminology. 26(4), p. 1–23. doi: 10.1177/13624806221116092. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Norway, England and Wales, and the USA are among a small number of affluent Western countries to establish ‘all-foreign’ prisons in response to public concerns about the growing threat of foreign-national prisoners. Drawing on collaborative analysis of empirical data collected at all-foreign prisons in these three countries, this article traces the conditions in which all-foreign prisons emerged, the position and function of all-foreign prisons in specific national systems of criminal justice and immigration control, and the operation of all-foreign prisons within each context. The article points to a shared logic, while drawing attention to the local expressions of bordered penality.

• Damsa, Dorina & Franko, Katja (2022). ‘Without Papers I Can’t Do Anything’: The Neglected Role of Citizenship Status and ‘Illegality’ in Intersectional Analysis. Sociology. 57(1). doi: 10.1177/00380385221096043. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Intersectionality scholarship has yet to systematically recognize the importance of citizenship status for the mutual shaping of inequalities. In this article, we bring attention to the combined structuring force of criminal law and citizenship status (and the related concepts of ‘illegal’ or ‘irregular’ status) in intersecting with other categories of social disadvantage, such as those created by racialization, class, gender and ethnicity. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with women in prisons for ‘foreign nationals’ and health clinics for ‘undocumented’ migrants in Norway and Denmark, this article shows how citizenship status has a central role in the co-constitution of gendered, classed and racialized social disadvantages.

• Damsa, Dorina (2021). ‘This is not what I signed up for’ – Danish prison officers’ attitudes towards more punitive penal policies. Punishment & Society. p. 1–19. doi: 10.1177/14624745211068870. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  A humane approach to punishment has been integral to the work of the Danish Prisons and Probation Service. However, Danish penal policy has recently taken a punitive turn. What happens when punitive policies are adopted by a penal regime built on a humane approach to punishment? To address this question, this article focuses on prison officers at Vestre prison and how they adapt to punitive political decisions and prison policies. The increased focus on security in Danish prisons is considered, together with limitations set on welfare services available to non-citizen prisoners. Examination of officers’ subjectivities at Vestre prison shows that punitive penal policies have produced an environment fraught with tensions that affect prison work, institutional culture, and the officers’ professional identity. These findings also raise questions about the shifting nature of Danish penal power.

• Damsa, Dorina (2019). Between Belonging and Exclusion: Migrants’ Resilience in a Norwegian Welfare Prison. In Wyller, Trygve & Bendixsen, Synnøve Kristine Nepstad (Ed.), Contested Hospitalities in a Time of Migration. Religion and Secular Counterspaces in the Nordic Region. Routledge. p. 162–175. Full text in Research Archive
• Ugelvik, Thomas & Damsa, Dorina (2018). The pains of crimmigration imprisonment: Perspectives from a Norwegian all-foreign prison. British Journal of Criminology. 58(5), p. 1025–1043. doi: 10.1093/bjc/azx067. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  In the second part of his article on Scandinavian exceptionalism, John Pratt identified certain developments that might undermine the exceptional status of Scandinavian prisons and penal culture. A major problem looming on the horizon, according to Pratt, was the effects of globalization on Scandinavian societies. Since then, scholars have claimed that a bifurcation is emerging in the Norwegian correctional system, with humane and inclusive punishments reserved for nationals, while a more exclusionary alternative system is being developed to respond to the perceived challenge represented by foreign nationals. The opening of Norway’s first all-foreign prison in 2013 has been seen as part of this trend. In this article, we describe three pains of imprisonment experienced by foreign national prisoners: those of (1) discrimination; (2) long-distance relationships; and (3) deportability. We argue that these are all specifically tied to the prison’s status as an all-foreign prison.

• Damsa, Dorina & Ugelvik, Thomas (2018). One of us or one of them? Researcher positionality, language, and belonging in an all-foreign prison. In Jahnsen, Synnøve Økland; Powel, Rebecca & Fili, Andriani (Ed.), Criminal justice research in an era of mass mobility. Routledge. Full text in Research Archive
• Damsa, Dorina & Ugelvik, Thomas (2017). A difference that makes a difference? Reflexivity and researcher effects in an all-foreign prison. International Journal of Qualitative Methods (IJQM). 16(1), p. 1–10. doi: 10.1177/1609406917713132. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Today, researchers are expected to spend considerable energy describing and discussing their own social positions and personas in the field for at least two reasons: First, researchers always observe the field from a specific point of view. Their perspective is structured by their own social position and biography and is thus unique. Second, the people in the field react differently to the presence of different researchers. The field persona of the researcher is expected to impact the data she or he is able to produce. For these reasons, critically discussing one’s own field experiences is seen as an important part of the qualitative research process. This article will discuss the second part of this argument. Based on the experiences of two different researchers in the same field site, we ask whether it is true that different researchers necessarily produce different data. We conclude that in this case, at least, the differences between the two researchers did not seem to make much of a difference.

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• Brekke, Jan-Paul; Damsa, Dorina; Evertsen, Kathinka Fossum; Hansen, Vibeke Wøien; Liden, Hilde & Paasche, Erlend [Show all 9 contributors for this article] (2024). Tilrettelegging for integrering av flyktninger i Norge. Organisering, tiltak og erfaringer. Institutt for samfunnsforskning. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Hvordan kan norske myndigheter best legge til rette for integrering av flyktninger? De siste årene har norske kommuner måttet finne løsninger som passer til stadig nye grupper flyktninger. Denne studien viser hvor man lykkes godt og hvor det kan være behov for justeringer.

• Liden, Hilde; Damsa, Dorina; Brekke, Jan-Paul & Hoen, Maria Forthun (2024). Trøblete utenlandsopphold. Barn og unge voksne tilbakeholdt i utlandet: fenomenforståelse og oppfølging. Institutt for samfunnsforskning. Full text in Research Archive
• Lidén, Hilde; Paasche, Erlend & Damsa, Dorina (2022). Protection Seekers’ Lived Experience of Vulnerability in Times of Stricter Migration Policy: The Case of Norway. VULNER - Vulnerability Under the Global Protection Regime. Full text in Research Archive

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• Damsa, Dorina (2024). Situating Vulnerability: Epistemological and Methodological Dilemmas. Full text in Research Archive
• Hol, Maud; Antonsen, Katrine & Damsa, Dorina (2023). Kvinner uten nordisk statsborgerskap i de nordiske velferdsstatene. [Internet]. Universitetet i Oslo. doi: https:/www.jus.uio.no/ikrs/forskning/aktuelt/aktuelle-saker/2023/kvinner-uten-nordisk-statsborgerskap-velferdsstat.html. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Gjennom intervjuer med kvinner med utenlandsk statsborgerskap som opplever «illegalisering» i Norge, utforsker Dorina Damsa spenninger rundt spørsmål om statsborgerskap, straff og velferd.

• Damsa, Dorina & Ugelvik, Thomas (2017). A Difference that Makes a Difference – Researcher Effects in an All-Foreign Prison. Europris newsletter. Full text in Research Archive
• Ugelvik, Thomas & Damsa, Dorina (2017). A difference that makes a difference? Reflexivity and researcher effects in an all-foreign prison. Full text in Research Archive
• Ugelvik, Thomas & Damsa, Dorina (2017). Pains of imprisonment revisited: Perspectives from a Norwegian crimmigration prison. Full text in Research Archive

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