Numbering and Boat IDs: The Dehumanizing Use of ID Numbers in Australia’s Border Regime

Abstract

The practice of identifying people by ID numbers rather than their names, which the authors term here “numbering,” has been extensively recorded in carceral and bordering institutions. While the argument for using identification numbers (ID numbers) is that they enable the reliable mapping between a person and designated institutional artifacts, according to people who have been subjected to numbering, its effect is to dehumanize, erasing individuals’ identities so that they might be more effectively abused as objects. To explore these logics, our article provides a critical reading of Boat IDs in Australia’s notorious border regime based on the first-hand accounts of people subjected to numbering. We apply a ‘technology-in-practice’ lens to analyze ID numbers as biopolitical apparatuses of carceral recognition and erasure that work to materialize power relations of domination and subjugation.

Keywords:

• carceral technologies
• ID numbers
• technology-in-practice
• Manus Prison
• prisons
• immigration detention

Acknowledgements

We would like to particularly acknowledge those who have been subjected to numbering and shared their accounts, which are the core of this article. Our deep appreciation goes to Zaki Haidari, Arad Nik, and Carolyn Mckenzie-Craig for sharing their knowledge and for emphasizing the emotional power of names. The idea to produce a focused account of Boat IDs was seeded in our work at RACS in Sydney. Special thanks to Miška Mandić, Omid Tofighian, Anthea Vogl, Alexandra Crosby and Cameron Tonkinwise for essential feedback on our abstract and drafts, and to the editors and anonymous reviewers for their generous advice.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Here the Boat ID is a boundary object (Star 2010), connecting the practice in an organization, a community legal center, for example, to the practices and logics of bordering institutions. Further research may explore the meanings of how Boat IDs function as boundary objects.

2 Munjed Al Muderis’ account here is from around early 2000 and likely was an alternate ID system to Boat IDs, however we include it here because of its consistency with accounts of encounters with Boat IDs.

3 With this accounting, detention industries have received over AUD12 billion from the Australian Government for offshore processing alone.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Luke Bacon

Luke Bacon is a designer, researcher and software maker working on unceded Wangal and Gadigal Lands. His work explores the politics technologies, collective learning and collaborative activisms. His Masters by Research, “Doing the Front End Role: A Study of Technology-in-Use in an Australian Community Legal Centre” (2022), is an account of collaborative work and learning trajectories within a refugee-specialist community legal center in Sydney, Australia. In 2013, Luke co-edited and programmed detentionlogs.com.au, publishing extensive evidence and reporting on conditions in Australia’s immigration detention network. [email protected]

Arif Hussein

Arif Hussein is a Senior Solicitor at the Refugee Advice and Casework Service (RACS) in Sydney. Arif leads the center’s judicial review program which provides vital legal support to people who have had their refugee claims refused by Australia’s restrictive refugee determination process and are facing great risk of being deported back to danger. Arif has previously worked at the Human Rights Law Center and was awarded a 2020 Churchill Fellowship to investigate international approaches for improving procedural fairness and access to justice in refugee determination processes. [email protected]