The Carceral City: confinement and order in Hong Kong’s forbidden enclave

Once feted, Hong Kong has recently become a centre of civil unrest. In this paper, we situate these emergent politics through a case study of corruption and everyday life in Kowloon Walled City, a mainland Chinese enclave in British Hong Kong, which developed notoriety as a freestanding grey economy...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Fraser, Alistair David (Author)
Contributors: Schliehe, Anna K.
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Published: 2021
In: The British journal of criminology
Year: 2021, Volume: 61, Issue: 3, Pages: 587-606
Online Access: Presumably Free Access
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Keywords:
Carceral geography
Colonialism
Corruption
Kowloon Walled City
Urban confinement
Description
Summary:Once feted, Hong Kong has recently become a centre of civil unrest. In this paper, we situate these emergent politics through a case study of corruption and everyday life in Kowloon Walled City, a mainland Chinese enclave in British Hong Kong, which developed notoriety as a freestanding grey economy. Drawing from oral testimonies of police officers, triad members and local residents, we excavate the lived experience of confinement within this contested space. These accounts reconstruct the Walled City as a ‘quasi-carceral’ site of enclosure, a zone of colonial exceptionalism and a hybrid cultural space. Through this case study, we historicize current debates in carceral geography, humanize recent interventions in urban scholarship and analyse the shifting politics at the frontier of Chinese expansionism.
ISSN:1464-3529
DOI:10.1093/bjc/azaa087