Border Policing and Sovereign Terrain: The Spatial Framing of Unwanted Migration in Melbourne and Australia

Abstract

This paper investigates the spatial frames that are mobilised in the discourse and practice of border policing in the Australian context and the ideological content in which those frames are embedded. On the one hand, a deterritorialised frame positions unwanted migrants as a global threat from beyond. On the other, a territorialised frame enables the possibility of sovereign territorial defence. Neither of these frames, I contend, adequately captures contemporary techniques of border policing which increasingly open borders to global market ideology in the very act of their defence. Nor do they capture the strategic opportunities that exist across different places and scales to resist sovereign logics of control. The paper drills down to the level of the city and the experience of asylum seekers in Melbourne in order to further highlight the limits of simplistic spatial frames. I show that both in local sites and at territory's edges, border policing is indicative of a new terrain of sovereign practice. Accordingly, I present an analytical and normative case for a multidimensional approach to spatial framing. I argue for theoretical openness to spatial metaphors that assist in the tasks of empirically investigating and politically unsettling technologies of contemporary border control.

Este artículo investiga los marcos espaciales que se han puesto en marcha en el planteamiento y la práctica de vigilancia de la frontera en el contexto australiano y contenido ideológico, en los que se han incluido aquellos marcos. Por un lado, un marco de desterritorialización sitúa a los migrantes indeseados más allá de una amenaza global. Por el otro, un marco territorializado habilita la posibilidad de una defensa de soberanía territorial. Ninguno de esos marcos, yo sostengo, capta adecuadamente las técnicas contemporáneas de la vigilancia de frontera, que progresivamente abre fronteras a la ideología del mercado global al mismo momento de su defensa. Tampoco captan las oportunidades estratégicas que existen a través de lugares y escalas diferentes, para resistir las lógicas soberanas de control. El artículo va hasta el nivel de la ciudad y la experiencia de los buscadores de asilo en Melbourne, para resaltar más aún los límites de los marcos espaciales simplistas. Demuestro que tanto en los sitios locales, como en los bordes del territorio, la vigilancia de frontera es un indicativo de una práctica soberana de un nuevo terreno. Por consiguiente, presento un caso analítico y normativo para un enfoque multidimensional, a una enmarcación espacial. Yo sostengo una apertura teórica, a las metáforas espaciales que colaboran con las tareas de la investigación empírica y las tecnologías políticamente desestabilizantes del control de frontera contemporáneo.

Keywords:

• asylum seekers
• border policing
• irregular migration
• privatised immigration detention
• socio-spatial relations
• sovereignty
• spatiality

Notes

Indeed the US market for immigration detention is closely linked to Australia's. The US Federal Bureau of Prisons gave its first privatised contract to Wackenhut Corrections in 1991. A subsidiary of Wackenhut was also engaged by the Australian Federal Government to manage immigration detention facilities prior to the contract shifting to GSL.

The term is used in a Government brochure explaining the logic behind administrative profiling of passengers at points of departure (cited in Weber, 2007).

Between 2001 and 2007 the cost of offshore detention and processing of asylum seekers amounted to at least 1 billion Australian dollars. Government estimates suggested that onshore detention for a maximum of three months would have reduced costs by a startling 96.5% (Bem et al., 2007).