Border terror: policing, forced migration and terrorism

Abstract

The symbiotic relationship between refugees and the police is increasing around key zones of global exclusion: the US/Mexico border, the European Union and the Southeast Asian/Australasian rim.1 Examining these relationships uncovers the contradictory yet stunted deployment of sovereignty‐led responses of the Global North to refugees, particularly those responses that cluster around the frontier, marking and patrolling the border. Moreover, the police/refugee relationship and the discourses underpinning it have prepared the way for problematic constructions of, and responses to, terrorism as it is patrolled at the border. Refugees are not just a problem, but a policing problem. Terrorism is not a problem, but a counter‐terrorism policing problem. Increasingly the securitisation of borders explicitly and implicitly conflates these two ‘policing’ problems. This article will examine the discursive resources underpinning border‐policing efforts against refugees and terrorism, and the repercussions for the law enforcement apparatus. In the case of Australia, it will argue that the border‐policing effort has become a site for the recrafting of federal law enforcement with significant consequences for regional governance as policing becomes unshackled from territory and merged with military functions. In making this argument in relation to Australia within the Southeast Asian region, the article will also draw on evidence from Europe and North America.