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Anywhere but Here: Locating the Border and Narrating Asylum Seekers Under Australia’S Policy of Territorial Excision

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Anywhere but Here: Locating the Border and Narrating Asylum Seekers Under Australia’S Policy of Territorial Excision Anywhere but Here: Locating the Border and Narrating Asylum Seekers under Australia’s Policy of Territorial Excision Anthea Vogl Faculty of Law, McGill University, Montréal November 2010 A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of a Masters of Law. © Anthea Vogl, 2010 1 Even the linking of stars is a lie. But for while now let’s be happy to believe the symbol. 1 That’s enough. 1 R.M. Rilke, Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus, trans. A. Poulin (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977), First Series, Sonnet No. 11. 2 Table of Contents ABSTRACTS ............................................................................................................................ 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ..................................................................................................... 5 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................... 6 METHODOLOGY .................................................................................................................... 12 CHAPTER ONE ..................................................................................................................... 17 SECURITIZING MIGRATION: THE BORDER-AS-BARRIER, THE NATION STATE AND THE UNDOCUMENTED MIGRANT ....................................................................... 17 INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................... 17 PART ONE - BORDERS AND/AS SECURITY ............................................................................ 20 PART TWO - BORDERS REAL AND IMAGINED....................................................................... 29 PART THREE - NECESSARY THREATS: UNDOCUMENTED MIGRANTS AT THE BORDER ....... 37 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................ 42 CHAPTER TWO .................................................................................................................... 44 PINNING WAVES UPON THE SAND: LOCATING AND NARRATING THE BORDER WITHIN AUSTRALIA’S POLICY OF TERRITORIAL EXCISION ........... 44 INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................... 44 PART ONE - THE POLICIES OF TERRITORIAL EXCISION & INTERDICTION IN AUSTRALIA: AN OVERVIEW ............................................................................................................................ 47 PART TWO - SEARCHING FOR A BORDER: INSIDES AND OUTSIDES IN THE POLICY OF TERRITORIAL EXCISION........................................................................................................ 56 PART THREE - FACTS ON THE GROUND: THE GEOGRAPHY AND FUNCTIONS OF THE TERRITORIAL BORDER OUTSIDE OF SECURITIZATION DISCOURSES .................................... 68 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................ 84 CHAPTER THREE................................................................................................................ 87 THE LIVES OF OTHERS: GOOD REFUGEES AND BAD ASYLUM SEEKERS....... 87 INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................... 87 PART ONE - ONSHORE ASYLUMS SEEKERS: CONTESTING SOVEREIGNTY AT THE BORDER 89 PART TWO - GOOD REFUGEES, BAD ASYLUM SEEKERS ...................................................... 97 Asylum seekers as economic migrants as asylum seekers ............................................... 99 Too much agency; too much money; too much mobility................................................ 105 Genuine asylums seekers behaving badly...................................................................... 109 PART THREE - ANYWHERE BUT HERE: THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENUINE ASYLUM SEEKING ............................................................................................................................................ 113 CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................................... 125 CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................................... 127 APPENDIX A:....................................................................................................................... 130 BIBLIOGRAPHY................................................................................................................. 131 3 ABSTRACTS This thesis argues that the securitization of migration is a discourse that has gained a near monopoly over how the physical spaces of the territorial border are imagined and how the border itself is understood as a site of exclusion and control. Narratives about who undocumented people are and why they arrive at the border play a central role in justifying the anxious regulation of the border and migration as a national security issue. Taking Australia’s policy of territorial excision as a representative instance of border policy that is dictated and defined by the securitization of migration, this thesis traces the various and over-determined narratives of the territorial border and the undocumented person that were articulated in the parliamentary debates surrounding this policy. It argues against securitization’s constructions of these subjects, to show that neither the border nor the undocumented migrant exist independently of the narratives that constitute them. These narratives work not only to justify the exclusion of undocumented people at the border as sensible and legitimate, but also actively obscure and discredit other ways of imagining people who arrive at the border, as well as the functions and spaces of territorial borders. Ce mémoire soutient que la sécurisation de la migration est un discours qui a obtenu le quasi-monopole sur la manière de percevoir l’espace physique des frontières territoriales ainsi que la compréhension de la frontière elle-même en tant que site d’exclusion et de contrôle. Les narrations portant sur l’identité des sans-papiers et les raisons qu’ils peuvent avoir d’arriver à la frontière jouent un rôle central pour justifier le fait que la réglementation de la frontière et de la migration est une question de sécurité nationale. Prenant la politique australienne d’excision territoriale comme exemple de politique frontalière dictée et définie par la sécurisation de la migration, ce mémoire analyse les discours divers et passionnés sur la frontière territoriale et les sans-papiers qui ont été articulés dans les débats parlementaires ayant eu lieu autour de la formation de cette politique. Elle plaide contre les constructions de sécurisation de ces sujets démontrant que ni la frontière, ni le migrant sans-papier n’existe indépendamment des discours qui les constituent. Ces discours non seulement œuvrent à la justification de l’exclusion des sans-papiers à la frontière comme étant sensée et légitime, mais de plus ils masquent et discréditent les autres manières de percevoir les gens qui arrivent à la frontière ainsi que les fonctions et les espaces des frontières territoriales. 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Unlike many other endeavors, the writing of a thesis comes with the opportunity to thank all those who have played a part in bringing about its completion. I would firstly like to thank my supervisor, Robert Leckey, for his support and thoughtful guidance throughout the year. Thank you also to Shauna Van Praagh, François Crépeau, Kim Brooks, and Desmond Manderson not only for warmly welcoming me into the faculty, but for making my stay in Montréal a continuously intellectually rich, expansive, and happy one. Thank you to Samuel Singer, Karen Crawley for being constant companions on the journey, their generous editing and comments, and discussions on any and every topic; to Mark Elsworthy for being the perfect partner in crime and constant support and friendship; to Suzanne Bouclin; to the Graduate Programs Office staff at McGill for all of their assistance; and to the staff in all of the libraries in which I took up residence, for their generous help and quiet company. Finally, Anthony Giddens’ shorthand definition of globalization is “the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa.”1 Although it is a definition that has been widely and appropriately critiqued, it captures the nature of the relationships I have been able to maintain with my far-flung network of friends and loved ones. Amongst them are my parents, Shahla and Edward; my brother, Martin; my grandmother, Batool Danesh; Joanne Ball; Robyn Higgins; and finally, for being cherished and unstinting sources of love, support, and truly epic skype dates, Jemima Mowbray and Claire Van Vuuren. I am endlessly grateful. 1 Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990) at 43. 5 INTRODUCTION The Australian Migration Act 1958 (Cth.) defines the migration zone as “the area consisting of the States, the Territories, Australian resource installations and Australian sea installations.”1 In May of 2006 the Australian government attempted an extraordinary experiment. In the name of border control and national security, the government introduced a bill into parliament that attempted
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