Australia’s irregular migration information campaigns: border externalization, spatial imaginaries, and extraterritorial subjugation

Abstract

ABSTRACTAustralia’s irregular migration information campaigns: border externalization, spatial imaginaries, and extraterritorial subjugation. Territory, Politics, Governance. This article analyses the Australian Government’s ‘Overseas Public Information Campaigns’ (OPICs). OPICs are transnational marketing campaigns disseminating advertisements in asylum seeker source and transit countries to ‘educate’ people about the risks of irregular migration. The article argues that these campaigns are a practice of externalized border security extraterritorially acting on people’s perceptions of migration in ways intended to discourage it. Specifically, the article demonstrates how campaigns are designed to reshape the symbolic and imaginative dimensions of the transnational space of irregular migration to Australia among ethnic groups the Australian Government deems at risk of asylum seeking. Campaigns do this by disseminating narratives about the spaces and places of clandestine boat travel to Australia. These narratives are designed to normalize a spatial imaginary deterring irregular migrants through portraying ‘home’ as safe and financially stable while irregular migration to Australia as dangerous and destined to fail, a financially irresponsible waste of time hurting families and leading to island detention. The article analyses the campaigns themselves and 103 Australian Government documents related to their use, shedding light on how campaigns are used to preemptively exclude undesired refugees paradoxically through including them as specific kinds of extraterritorial subjects.