Introduction: Criminality and Carcerality Across Boundaries

[From initial paragraph] For the last 5 years, most of the conference papers I have presented or articles I have written have begun with the usual obligatory introduction to the “newly emerging” subdiscipline of carceral geography. That is, of course, research “specifically alighting on the spaces set aside for ‘securing’ – detaining, locking up/away – problematic populations of one kind or another” (Philo, 2012:4). However, to paraphrase a colleague participating in one of three sessions entitled “Mapping Carceral Geography” at the 2014 Royal Geographical Society of the Institute of British Geographers, “we do not need to keep saying this anymore; we have definitely emerged”. This got me to thinking about the politics of emergent or indeed “recently emerged” areas of a discipline and their propensity to continue their momentum to become both prolific in their own right and sustain academic longevity. In short, what does a newly emerged discipline do next?