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ABSTRACT
This article analyzes the social construction of border surveillance and policing in reality-based television. Utilizing content analytic methods to document and decode popular images of borders, mobility, and insecurity, it assesses three programs from Australia, the UK, and the United States. Despite claims of offering accurate and unfiltered depictions, the programs are ideological and provide visions of enforcement that reinforce stereotypes regarding the risks of permeable borders and exonerate intensive regimes of surveillance and securitization. Our findings suggest this occurs in three ways. First, the programs inflate the extent and seriousness of lawlessness associated with cross-border movement. Second, they offer individualistic explanations of crime that cite personal choices and pathologies as determinants. Finally, alongside neglecting their perspectives and interpretations of events, when compared to the reality of official statistics, the programs disproportionately feature suspected offenders as members of marginalized groups. The social and political implications of these findings are discussed.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
James P. Walsh is an Assistant Professor with the Faculty of Social Science and Humanities at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. His research focuses on crime and media, immigration law and policy, globalization, neoliberalism, and border surveillance and policing. [email: [email protected]]
Jin R. Lee is a Masters student in the Criminology Program at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. His research interests are cybercrime, youth culture and crime, crime and media, race and inequality, and surveillance and policing. [email: [email protected]].
Notes
1. Such programs have emerged in several countries including New Zealand, Australia, the UK, Canada, the United States, the Netherlands, Ireland, and Germany.
2. While all three programs are devoted to depicting the institutional procedures and administrative practices implicated in the surveillance and control of borders and mobility, differences in the nature and location of such practices are apparent. For example, the episodes of BW in our sample were almost exclusively filmed along the US–Mexico border with particular emphasis on unauthorized crossings between designated ports of entry. In contrast, reflecting their status as island nations, BSAFL and UKBF tended to privilege practices of screening and enforcement at official entryways, whether international airports or harbors. Consequently, rather than focusing on the tracking, pursuit, and interception of unauthorized crossings, BSAFL and UKBF tended to emphasize forms of surveillance associated with practices of interrogation, risk assessment, and behavioral profiling dedicated to identifying suspicious persons believed to be in violation of the law. Finally, unlike BW and BSAFL, UKBF spent considerable time documenting regimes of ‘offshore’ surveillance and associated practices of ‘remote control’ (Zolberg, Citation2009) in which screening was conducted well before travelers reached the physical space of the border itself. In this case, 19% of segments on UKBF featured surveillance in foreign areas, whether the French port of Calais or visa offices in Delhi.
3. Following Cohen (Citation2002, p. 2) folk devils represent popular scapegoats, ‘visible reminders of what we should not be’ and the antithesis of stability, order, and security.
4. While UKBF was cancelled after two seasons, BW and BSAFL have proven popular with audiences. The debut of BW was the National Geographic Channel's highest rated series premiere, while BSAFL has consistently topped the rankings for its time-slot, and, at times, has been Australia's highest rated program.
5. Like other reality-based programs featuring government authorities (Doyle, Citation2003), for the programs in our sample, camera crews are chaperoned by department officials with authorities possessing the power to veto material they do not want aired.
6. Alongside crime news, empirical research suggests fictional programming figures prominently in sculpting public sentiment (Livingstone, Allen, & Reiner, 2001).
7. Excluding commercials, episodes of UKBF and BW averaged 45 minutes in length versus 22.5 for BSAFL. Additionally, while BW and BSAFL feature a total of 7 and 11 seasons, only 2 seasons of UKBF exist.
8. The total number of vignettes per program was: 176 (BSAFL); 119 (BW); and 72 (UKBF).
9. Given national-level differences in the definition, classification, and measurement of offenses some imprecision exists in our comparisons. Accordingly, our results are intended to be illustrative rather than definitive.
10. For authorities, only ethnoracial background was coded. For nationality, suspects were coded by country of origin.
11. In certain instances, rather than verbal statements, outrage was expressed through the tenor of speech or non-verbal cues.
12. Former Australian Customs officials estimate the agency is lucky if it intercepts 10% of all contraband (Butler, Citation2004). For undocumented migration along the US–Mexico border, it is estimated 97% of those attempting to enter without authorization will eventually succeed (Cornelius, Citation2005).
13. Between 32 (UKBF) and 56 (BW)% of each program's vignettes featured causal statements.
14. Given the lack of demographic data for offenders, traveler data were employed as a baseline. While this introduces certain limitations in extrapolating from our results, we believe the significant differences uncovered reveal clear bias in coverage.
15. Due to the time-consuming nature of this task only two episodes of both BW and UKBF and four episodes of BSAFL were assessed. Statements made by the narrator were not included in our analysis.
16. In the case of BSAFL and UKBF suspects featured on camera have signed releases and provided legal authorization to be depicted on air (Cunningham, Citation2006; Revoir, Citation2008). For these reasons, differences in the portrayal of suspects represent an artifact of editing rather than a deliberate effort to conceal their identity. We were unable to determine if this was also true for BW. Nonetheless, even if such representational differences are due to suspects' efforts to avoid being depicted in compromising situations, such outcomes still ensure the programs' contents function to dehumanize suspects and distance audience members from them.