The Shifting Frontiers of Migration Control

Abstract

In this chapter, I try to capture some of the elusiveness and plurality of borders. It is a discussion about the extreme, often squalid, and sometimes bizarre attempts being made to selectively control global mobility through various techniques described by Perera (2002) as ‘defensive geography’. I will build the discussion in four steps, using examples primarily from Australia and Britain. In the first section, I highlight the mobile nature of border controls which transcend the constraints of physical borders and operate both outside and within them. In the case of these functionally mobile borders, the border function is expressed at various sites of enforcement, but the location of the border and its symbolic value as a marker of territory remain unchallenged. Next I consider an Australian example of the spatially mobile border, where the physical location of the border is directly manipulated in the interests of border protection. This border manipulation is taken a step further in the case of temporally mobile borders which, remarkably, can be made to appear or disappear retrospectively as required. And finally I consider the possibility of fully personalised borders where the border is defined, not by a fixed geographical location, nor with reference to the location of border control activities, but is equated with the location of officially sanctioned border crossers, who legally embody the border.