Faces of globalization and the borders of states: from asylum seekers to citizens

Abstract

Intensifying processes of globalization have led to a series of tensions around the way in which even the most cosmopolitan democracies now treat people who move across their borders. Non-citizens have become problems. The postcolonial settler nation-states – Australia, Canada, the USA and others – were ‘founded’ by immigrants and refugees who moved globally to become citizens in these ‘new lands’. Such countries were made by migrants displacing indigenous others. However, in a conflict-ridden world in which the displacement of persons has become endemic – and in a media-connected world where the possibility of finding a better place to live has become increasingly imaginable and desired – these countries are now attempting to manage that global flow of people by stringent homeland security measures that are becoming increasingly problematic. While they are constituted through the modern imaginary of liberal democratic norms, human rights and rule of law, in each country over the last few years, rules have been bent, breached or bolstered in order to keep people out. The essay argues that given the globalization of people movement, the nation-state has reached the limits of responding though unilateral or even regional multilateral arrangements.

Keywords::

• refugees
• non-citizens
• globalization
• faces
• borders
• nation-states

Notes

^1.Migration Amendment (Excision from Migration Zone) Act No 127. 2001. See the Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship website, http://www.immi.gov.au/legislation/amendments/2005/050722/lc22072005.htm (accessed July 4, 2013). Amendment No. 128 allowed that ‘An officer may take an offshore entry person from Australia to a country in respect of which a declaration is in force under subsection (3)’. In other words, asylum seekers could be ‘deported’ without the embarrassment of breaching the refoulement provision under the United Nations 1951 Refugees Convention and the 1967 Protocol. For a history of the relationship of Christmas Island, one of the excised places, see Chambers (2011).

^2. From the Canadian immigration website, http://www.canadaimmigrationvisa.com/visatype.html (accessed March 19, 2013).

^3. See Linklater (2007), Chap. 4, ‘What is a Good International Citizen?’ The central figure to use this term in Australian politics was Gareth Evans. It was removed as an objective of Australian foreign policy by the Liberal National Coalition in the late 1990s.

^4. The term comes from Habermas (1987), although the methodological framing comes from James (2006).

^5. According to the Vancouver Sun, ‘The Harper government laid out a series of reforms on Thursday that it said would go after “ruthless profiteers” who coordinate illegal people-smuggling operations and asylum seekers who “jump the immigration queue”’, October 22, 2010. The significance of this language is considerable. It takes on the rhetoric of Australia's Howard government from many years earlier.

^6. From http://www.defenseimagery.mil/index.html (accessed April 14, 2011).

^7. It can be visited by going to the online world ‘Second Life’ and its version of the Contemporary Art Museum Saint Gery.

^8. UNHCR Statistical Online Population Database, http://www.unhcr.org/pages/4a013eb06.html (accessed July 4, 2013).

^9. US Defence Information Directorate website, http://www.defenseimagery.mil/index.html (accessed April 14, 2011).

^10. US Department of Defence website, http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id = 63133 (accessed April 14, 2013).

^11.http://ethicaljournalisminitiative.org/en/contents/charter-of-rome (accessed April 10, 2013).

^12. Chapter 1, Article 1 of the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, adopted on 28 July 1951 by the United Nations Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Status of Refugees and Stateless Persons convened under General Assembly resolution 429 (V) of 14 December 1950.

^13. League of Nations, Arrangement Relating to the Issue of Identify Certificates to Russian and Armenian Refugees, 12 May 1926, League of Nations, Treaty Series Vol. LXXXIX, No. 2004, available at: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/3dd8b5802.html (accessed April 14, 2013).

^14. Chapter 1, Article 1, subsection B.1.

^15. It reads: ‘For the purpose of the present Protocol, the term “refugee” shall, except as regards the application of paragraph 3 of this article, mean any person within the definition of article I of the Convention as if the words “As a result of events occurring before 1 January 1951 and … ” and the words “ … as a result of such events”, in article 1 A (2) were omitted’.

^16. The irony of the recent Australian High Court decision is that the offshore option may be off the table, and the government might be forced into this position for the wrong reason.