The enforcement archipelago: Detention, haunting, and asylum on islands

From offshore border enforcement to detention centers on remote islands, struggles over human smuggling, detention, asylum, and associated policies play out along the geographical margins of the nation-state. In this paper, I argue that islands are part of a broader enforcement archipelago of detention, a tactic of migration control. Island enforcement practices deter, detain, and deflect migrants from the shores of sovereign territory. Islands thus function as key sites of territorial struggle where nation-states use distance, invisibility, and sub-national jurisdictional status (Baldacchino & Milne, 2006) to operationalize Ong’s (2006) ‘graduated zones of sovereignty’. In sites that introduce ambiguity into migrants’ legal status, state and non-state actors negotiate and illuminate geopolitical arrangements that structure mobility. This research traces patterns among distant and distinct locations through examination of sovereign and biopolitical powers that haunt asylum-seekers detained on islands. Offshore detention, in turn, fuels spatial strategies employed in onshore detention practices internal to sovereign territory.     

The arming of non-state actors in the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula

Rebellious non-state actors of the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula have been arming themselves through smuggling networks operating in north-east Africa and the Middle East. They feature complex, dynamic, open systems which include many components of various organisational and national identities, and which are driven by various motives, united in order to accomplish the goal of arms smuggling. Previously, this system was dominated by the supply of Iranian large and high-quality weapon systems, mainly rockets, to the Palestinian Hamas, enabling them to build up military force that has sustained long-standing conflict against the stronger Israel. The Arab turmoil initiated dramatic changes in the arming system: Iran stopped, at least temporarily, the channelling of weapons to the Hamas due to its support of the Syrian opposition against the Assad regime. Egypt blocked many of Hamas's smuggling tunnels, intensifying Hamas's strategic isolation. Following the removal of Gaddafi and lack of government, Libya became a major arms source, serving mainly regional radical Islamic groups. Salafist jihadist groups in Sinai revolted against the Egyptian government, using huge local stockpiles of weapons and operational cooperation with Palestinian Islamists. This article argues that to survive, rebellious non-state actors must exploit arming opportunities in the physical, social and political environment, whereas securing shared borders is vital for defeating rebellious non-state actors. The arming of non-state actors should be analysed broadly, considering the needs of the civilian population among whom the militants are operating.     

1902年中葡交涉述论

1902年中葡交涉过程中,葡方先后提出扩大澳门界址、在澳门及周围各岛范围内任建工程并协助缉私、修造广澳铁路等项要求,并以承认中外新定税则和协助清政府在澳门征税缉私作为交换条件.中方对葡方企图扩大统治区域等严重侵害中国领土主权的要求给以坚决抵制,使葡方的主要目标不能实现;但为了取得葡方承认新定税则和协助中方征税缉私的目的,在修造广澳铁路问题上对葡方做出一定让步.     

Pre-flight experiences and migration stories: the accounts of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children

Much work about transnational migration and mobility overlooks the active role of children in such processes and experiences. This paper counters the omission from the literature by exploring the pre-flight experiences and migration stories of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in Scotland. In doing so, we demonstrate that unaccompanied minors experience a range of traumatic situations in their countries of origin including, the death or persecution of family members, war, forced recruitment and personal persecution. In their experiences of transnational migration processes, the majority are brought by an agent, with accounts of smuggling and trafficking being minimal.     

Construction Sacrifice,Kidnapping and Head-hunting Rumors on Flores and Elsewhere in Indonesia

Three recent articles have examined head-hunting and kidnapping rumors in connection with construction sacrifice on Borneo and Flores. This paper presents further information on such rumors on Flores and elsewhere in Indonesia which largely confirms their interpretations. However, the argument is made that rather than being a new phenomenon and a product of the colonial era, these rumors may well have been characteristic of Indonesia from ancient times and have typically been associated with offices of political and military potency. Policies and activities of the Dutch near the Solor islands since the seventeenth century may have strongly reinforced suspicions that they were capable of taking heads through local agents.     

Illegal fishing and Australian security

The security impact of illegal fishing is not well understood. Where illegal fishing is recognised as a security problem, the focus has been on fish as a natural resource, the depletion of which can have impacts on food security, individual livelihoods, and the economic survival of states relying on illegal fishing. We argue that a focus on fish as a natural resource obscures the other security challenges the crime of illegal fishing poses to Australia. As this paper explains, illegal fishing overlaps with drug, human, weapon and other contraband trafficking and smuggling; irregular maritime arrivals; and maritime piracy. In addition, like other easily transported, high value resources, illegal fish can fund insurgencies and other types of political violence. Understanding illegal fishing as a security challenge will improve Australia’s national security policy. First, it acknowledges fish as a vital natural resource, implicated in economic, ecological, and human security; second, it analyses how illegal fishing interlinks with other maritime crimes; third, it challenges the effectiveness of monitoring and enforcement of illegal fishing; fourth, it presents an opportunity for effective regional cooperation; and finally it highlights the benefits of regional cooperation in responding to illegal fishing.     

The Humanitarian War Against Migrant Smugglers at Sea

This paper engages with the military‐humanitarian technology of migration management from the vantage point of the European Union Naval Force Mediterranean (EUNAVFOR MED) “Operation Sophia”, the naval and air force intervention deployed by the EU in the Central Southern Mediterranean to disrupt “the business model of human smuggling and trafficking” while “protecting life at sea”. We look at the military‐humanitarian mode of migration management that this operation performs from three vantage points: logistics, with a focus on the infrastructure of migrant travels; subjectivity, looking at the migrant profiles this operation works through; and epistemology, building on the mission's first stage of intelligence and data gathering. Through this multi‐focal approach, we illuminate the productivity of this military‐humanitarian approach to the migration crisis in the Mediterranean.     

Corruption at the Border: Intersections between US Labour Demands,Border Control,and Human Smuggling Economies

Based on a qualitative methodology that includes in‐depth interviews conducted between 2008 and 2017 with 180 migrant smugglers from Mexico, the objective of this paper is to analyse the way US employers' interest in having access to cheap labour feeds migrant smuggling, and is connected to corruption in US border enforcement. We conclude that corruption on the US side of the border could be systematic and not a matter of a few bad apples. Corruption is manifested in selective enforcement, which is a pragmatic practice that justifies enhanced immigration enforcement, and benefits US immigration agents, US employers and Mexican smugglers, while undocumented border crossers suffer the monstrous effects of militarised border enforcement.     

A harbour in the country,a city in the sea: Infrastructural conduits,territorial inversions and the slippages of sovereignty in Sino-Sri Lankan development narratives

This paper adopts infrastructure as a lens through which new understandings of the inter-relationships between territory and sovereignty can be advanced. It argues that inverting the terrestrial assumption of territory can lead to “slippages” of sovereignty in which territorial sovereignty is indirectly claimed through the assertion of governance rights. For the purposes of this paper, I explore these inversions through the reclaiming of land from the ocean, and the removal of land by the ocean. Drawing on ethnographic research exploring the effects of China-backed infrastructure mega-projects in Sri Lanka, these territorial inversions are explored, respectively, through the Port City Colombo project – in which territory is claimed from the ocean through the creation of an island infrastructure – and the Hambantota International Port project – in which territory is removed by the ocean through the creation of a man-made port. Both projects reveal the ways in which infrastructure investments are implicated in the region-building ambitions of the Belt and Road Initiative, and thus provide conduits through which Chinese sovereignty can be asserted. As conduits, they foreground the realisation, but also the reimagination, of what “islandness” can mean in/to post-war Sri Lanka.     

19世纪爪哇鸦片走私中的华侨包税商

结合19世纪末华侨因为参与鸦片税收承包与鸦片走私成为社会舆论批驳焦点的史实,阐述和分析了爪哇鸦片的输入与鸦片包税制的确立、爪哇鸦片走私的兴起以及华侨鸦片包税商在走私中所扮演的角色及其原因。认为华侨并不是爪哇鸦片走私的唯一参与者,欧洲人、欧亚混血儿及爪哇本土人常常是他们的合作伙伴;无论鸦片税收承包还是鸦片走私,最终的受益者都是荷兰殖民统治者;华侨包税商在荷属印尼历史上所扮演的任何角色都是由荷兰殖民统治的利益所决定的。     

Missing the point: globalization, deterritorialization and the space of the world

This article provides a critique of a dominant strand of the literature on globalization – that which suggests it can be understood as deterritorialization. It argues that suggestions that we have moved away from territorial understandings of politics fail to conceptually elaborate the notion of territory itself. Drawing parallels between mathematics and politics in the seventeenth century, the paper claims that the notion of territory is dependent on a particular way of grasping space as calculable. This way of understanding space makes bounded territories possible, but also underlies new global configurations. In other words globalization is a reconfiguration of existing understandings rather than the radical break some suggest. The article concludes by making some comments on this reconfiguration, and suggesting that further historical and conceptual work on territory is necessary before it can be thought to be superseded.     

Libya and the International System: Retracing the Aftermath of the Lockerbie Bombing

The defining moment of Libya's relationship with the United States during the last decade of the 20th century was the 1991 implication of Libya and its government by the United States and United Kingdom in the 1988 bombing of Pan American Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. The controversial decision of the United Nations Security Council to employ sanctions against Libya after its refusal to surrender two bombing suspects to the United States and United Kingdom was largely ignored by European countries with interests in Libya, and led to the eventual open opposition to sanctions by many of Libya's African neighbors. Libya was quickly found guilty in the U.S. and UK courts of public opinion; however the common assumption that Libya's refusal reflected its indignation toward the West is problematic, and does not take into account historical factors that pushed Libya away from compliance, nor the lengths to which Libya attempted to sidestep those factors in order to respect international law. This article places Libya's reaction to the destruction of Flight 103 into the context of its recent relationship with the United States, and argues that despite the tainted U.S. public perception of Libya and its leader, the aftermath of the destruction of Flight 103 no longer plays an important role in shaping United States–Libya relations.     

Post-trafficking bordering practices: Perverse co-production,marking and stretching borders

This paper highlights the significance of post-trafficking scenarios for understanding bordering practices in political geography. In so doing, it addresses two significant research gaps: the lack of attention to trafficking in geography and the failure of wider interdisciplinary debates to engage with post-trafficking specifically. While extensive research in political geography has addressed the related experiences of refugees, asylum seekers and ‘illegals’, much of this work has centred on policies, processes and practices that aim to keep ‘unwanted strangers out’. By contrast, very little research has addressed how the border is configured for and by those who are crossing-back over; those who are ‘returning home’, in this case from diverse trafficking situations. The paper draws on recent empirical research on post-trafficking citizenship and livelihoods in Nepal which examined how women returning from trafficking situations deal with stigma and marginalisation. Our analysis illuminates how bordering practices circumscribe and shape women's lives in powerful ways as they seek to (re)establish a sense of belonging and respect. We examine the interplay of state and non-state actors (national and transnational) in structuring mobility and anti-trafficking advocacy through a range of bordering practices and explore how the border is (co-)produced by varied actors at different border sites. This includes women returning from diverse trafficking situations, who invoke the border to argue that they are ‘not as trafficked’ as other women, and others who perform the border differently as agents for trafficking prevention.     

Territory,sovereignty and entitlement: Diplomatic discourses in the United Nations Security Council

This paper builds upon feminist approaches within political science, international relations and geography that study how bodies haunt global politics, by exploring how entitlement to power connects through the scale of the body to that of the state. In a context of rising populism and political bluster, as well as post-#metoo discussions of personal entitlement displayed by well-known political figures, there is a need to take seriously how discourses of statehood within security crises are gendered in specific ways. This paper argues that the concept of entitlement offers potential for geographic enquiry by opening up new perspectives on masculinist framings of territory and state in critical geopolitics and in critical international relations. It considers specifically how diplomatic discourses ground and naturalize claims to territory by showing how states’ entitlement to territory and masculinist forms of personal entitlement are connected. Drawing upon feminist approaches to language, discourse and power, this paper studies diplomatic interventions at the United Nations Security Council in New York in 2014–2017 on the crisis in Ukraine. Methodologically, it analyses diplomatic speeches through the concept of entitlement to show how territorial claims are naturalized through rhetorical devices grounded in hegemonic forms of masculinity. It argues that a clearer understanding of the connections between discourses of personal entitlement and state territorial sovereignty can further our understanding of territory.     

Calculable territory and the West German census boycott movements of the 1980s

This paper argues that recent signs of a hesitant convergence between discourses on sovereignty and territory and discourses on power/knowledge point to ways in which both discourse of power are linked to calculable territory. Both sovereignty and power/knowledge are based upon intervention, and intervention in turn presupposes these two general forms of power. But intervention is also inherently territorial. The historical context for these claims is set through a brief account of the general sciences of order emerging in the early modern period. The theoretical argument is then given a platform by means of a heuristic model of calculable territory, which, while incomplete and partly counter-factual, provides an overarching framework for understanding a range of recent studies of spatial power relations as contributions to a collective genealogy of calculable territory. An important recent change in the genealogy of calculable territory was brought on by the widespread adoption of electronic information and communications technologies in state institutions and other large organizations over the past quarter century. Both the continued relevance of calculable territory and recent changes in its composition and significance for power relations are illustrated by chronicling one important early set of controversies in the emergence of the ‘information age’: the mass boycott movements in West Germany in 1983 and 1987 aimed at blocking the federal census in that country. These boycotts clearly show the links between sovereignty, power/knowledge, intervention and calculable territory.     

Human Trafficking and Online Networks: Policy,Analysis, and Ignorance

Dominant anti‐trafficking policy discourses represent trafficking as an issue of crime, “illegal” migration, victimhood and humanitarianism. Such a narrow focus is not an adequate response to the interplay between technology, trafficking and anti‐trafficking. This article explores different levels of analysis and the interplay between human trafficking and technology. We argue for a shift from policy discourses with a very limited focus on crime and victimisation to more systemic understandings of trafficking and more robust micro‐analyses of trafficking and everyday life. The article calls for an agnotological understanding of policy responses to trafficking and technology: these depend upon the production of ignorance. We critique limitations in policy understandings of trafficking‐related aspects of online spaces, and argue for better engagement with online networks. We conclude that there is a need to move beyond a focus on “new” technology and exceptionalist claims about “modern slavery” towards greater attention to everyday exploitation within neoliberalism.     

Nations,states and homelands: territory and territoriality in nationalist thought

This article is a response to growing recognition that the role of territory has been neglected in recent explorations of nationalism. To improve understanding of how and why territory has been significant to the development of nationalist thought, this article advances two closely related arguments. The first is that the ideology of nationalism is, itself, a product of attempts to merge two very different views about the value of territory and, consequently, two different practices of territoriality. Secondly, I argue that the main lines of division in explanations of nationalism reflect the differential privileging of one view of the significance of territory, and one practice of territoriality, over the other. To substantiate these assertions, the article begins by identifying the latent powers of space and outlining the process of territoriality that allows human beings to harness these powers. This is followed by a discussion of how nationalism – as part of the shift to modernity – contributed to a major transformation in the general significance of territory and territoriality. Drawing on both pre–modern and modern views, the article demonstrates how different understandings of the significance of territory and territoriality help to define the spectrum of nationalist thought that has emerged from the eighteenth–century work of Herder and Rousseau. Through this geographical lens, the article as a whole reveals the profoundly territorial quality of nationalism and thus confirms the view that neither nationalist ideology nor practice can be understood without reference to the spatial powers which it mobilises and creates.     

Policing the Desert: The IOM in Libya Beyond War and Peace

The war that took place in Libya in 2011 forced 1.5 million people to leave the country. Many of them, from sub‐Saharan Africa, were helped to return to their countries of origin by the International Organization for Migration (IOM). This paper questions the purely humanitarian nature of the IOM intervention with references to its activities before and after the conflict. It shows that this organization has long participated in the implementation of European migration policies in Libya, and more widely in the Sahara, without being accountable to any people. Through the replacement of local politics by international crisis management, the Sahara is gradually integrated into a zone of international bureaucratic expedience. War and humanitarian intervention appear as contingencies in the progressive implementation of a global system of surveillance, spatial control and management of mobility in Africa.     

Libya and Syria: R2P and the spectre of the swinging pendulum

This article examines recent UN Security Council deliberations over events in Libya and Syria and in particular assesses the extent to which Council members sought to justify their positions and voting behaviour by reference to the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P). It shows how limited invocations of R2P were with regard to Libya, before proceeding to demonstrate how, somewhat paradoxically, R2P‐sceptics such as Russia and China subsequently drew upon concerns over the manner in which NATO implemented its UN‐mandate in Libya to cast doubts over R2P during debates over Syria. Contemplating the implications of the Libyan and Syrian cases for the future of R2P, the article concludes by arguing that the concept's international standing can best be preserved through the excision of its most coercive elements; R2P should be reconstituted as a standard of acceptable sovereign behaviour and a mechanism geared towards the provision of international guidance and support, while decisions over coercive military intervention, inevitably infused with considerations of strategic interest, should be made outside the R2P framework.