ABSTRACT
Mobility research has been criticised over the years by feminist scholars for concentrating on men at the detriment of women’s experiences (Goldthorpe, 1980). Goldthorpe, however, argues that while data has been produced, it has not been ‘analysed as intensively’ as those relating to men (1980: 277). Subsequently, ‘more effort should have been devoted’ to such a task (Goldthorpe, 1980: 277). This chapter goes some way in exploring and theorising previously unexploited Penitentiary data on female, semi-penal prisoners in Liverpool between 1809 and 1921 in direct relation to the physical and social mobility of their ‘deviant’ bodies. By ‘social mobility’ this chapter refers to the desired ‘upwards’ mobility of status for so-called ‘deviant’ women. However, in doing so, it attends to the distinct weakness within social mobility literature – the ‘under-theorisation of mobility and power’ in this context – by considering the ‘coerced mobility’ inherent in carceral practices (Moran et al., 2012: 446). By presenting and analysing empirical semi-penal data, this chapter calls for further inquiry into the negative aspects of that come hand-in-hand with coerced and disciplined forms of social mobilisation, drawing upon ‘Foucauldian understandings of discipline and governmentality in which mobility is an instrument of power’ (Moran et al., 2012: 457).
