“The Muslims are taking over”: the politics of space and geopolitical and national imaginaries in an English prison

This article explores how the 2013 Woolwich murder in the streets of London and the conflict in Syria “played out” in one high security prison in the north of England. Building on research that has advocated for approaches that study prisons as inextricably connected to the outside world, it explores how wider anxieties and “moral panics” over Islam and extremism are configured locally in a high security prison. It utilizes ethnographic description that attends to feelings, the body, sounds and visual materials as spatializing tools that mark “place” and define social boundaries. A description of ordinary prison spaces – the chapel, workshops, and a staff office – shows practices that transform these spaces into “battlegrounds” of ethno-religious and geopolitical tension.