Law and Order on the Border in the Neo-Colonial Antipodes

Abstract

The principles of enclosure within borders and the segregation of populations who belong from those who do not are the foundations of the sovereignty of the modern state as the introduction to this volume rightly points out. Border control measures deployed in the neo-colonial antipodes that arise from such conceptions of territorial sovereignty and statism consequently bear many similarities to the disciplinary technologies of population control used around the world as a device for assigning citizens to competing nation states and expelling those who do not otherwise belong. In an increasingly troubled 21st century, destination countries like Europe, the United Kingdom and Australia have increasingly intensified their efforts to tighten their borders, to assert their sovereignty and expel 'non-citizens'. In this respect Australia has emulated the border protection practices of the United States and the United Kingdom, as other contributions to this compendium have suggested. But not in every respect. In some senses Australia has the dubious honour of leading the world, rather than vice versa, through border protection measures and technologies aimed historically at 'white' nation building and protecting the continent's pristine environment against contagion and decease that afflict the northern hemisphere. Unlike Europe and Britain as an immigrant settler nation Australia has been a significant destination country for millions of migrants, albeit mostly from the Anglophone world. All this means that border control measures in the neo colonial antipodes also have a more extended and complicated genealogy historically distinctive from the cross-border issues that regularly arise in the northern hemisphere.