Leanne Weber

Policing Migration: A Framework for Investigating the Regulation of Global Mobility

Criminologists are increasingly pointing to new forms of control that are associated with the regulatory‐yet‐punitive states of late modernity. This article starts from the premise that the policing of global population movements is an example of an emerging punitive regulatory system that demands urgent attention by criminologists. It articulates an agenda for the critical examination of “migration policing” in Britain set against the backdrop of the historical inclusion and exclusion of immigrant groups, and proposes a “sites of enforcement” framework that is intended to guide further empirical investigations into the operation of immigration control networks.

The Shifting Frontiers of Migration Control

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.

Policing Non-Citizens

1. Policing internal borders, 2. Researching migration policing networks, 3. Immigration officers as migration police, 4. Police as immigration officers, 5. Negotiating the criminal-administrative nexus, 6. Creating a ubiquitous border, 7. A nodal cartography of migration policing networks, 8. Patrolling the boundaries of entitlement and belonging.

‘It sounds like they shouldn't be here’: immigration checks on the streets of Sydney

Australian state police have historically held wide-ranging powers which reflect their origins as all-encompassing administrators and agents of control over unruly colonial subjects. Contemporary police powers to stop and question individuals to establish whether they are lawfully present stem from at least 1958 when they were incorporated into section 188 of the Migration Act. There is no official monitoring of the use of stop and search powers in this or any other context, and the capacity for police to make on-the-spot checks has been enhanced by the establishment of the Immigration Status System which provides immediate feedback about immigration status, 24 hours a day. This paper will draw on statistical data, survey responses and interviews with senior New South Wales police to build up a picture of their immigration status checking practices, concentrating on opportunistic street encounters. The reported starting point – of directing attention to those who are perceived to be ‘out of place’ – embeds street-level border control into everyday practices of order maintenance policing. Questions of immigration status are found to be closely intertwined with determinations of identity, highlighting the importance in a globalising world of marking non-citizens as ‘surveillable subjects’, and raising deeper questions about entitlement and belonging.

Stop and search in global context

Police, Stop! Halte! Igazoltatás! Thamba! Tomare! Pare! Alto! Halt! Arrêtez-vous immédiatement! The command issued verbally or in the form of a road sign, a roadblock, or a flashing light on the top of a police car is universal. Police officers around the world have the power to stop, question and search people, their clothing, bags and vehicles in public places. This ranges from street stops of people suspected of possessing prohibited items; ‘suspect passengers’ passing through ports, airports and railway stations; and proactive stop and search carried out in an attempt to prevent serious crime and terrorism. The power to stop, check, interrogate and search, and the way it is exercised, is a contentious aspect of police community relations and a key issue for criminological and policing scholarship. It offers a fascinating case study in the state use of legal powers. It is a visceral manifestation of coercive and intrusive power and the most publicly visible interaction between state agent and citizen or, increasingly, between state agent and non-citizen. This collection examines the power to stop and search in the context of police studies from various parts of the world. The diversity of geographic examples in this collection of essays is echoed in diverse forms of stop and search and in where, how and why it is used. The similarities and differences in the everyday use of stop and search in different countries enable us to look at some key issues. While the pressure to monitor and control minority populations has always been a feature of police work, new and renewed fears about emerging and existing ‘suspect populations’ often accompanied by new powers and technologies intended to control them have arisen in the face of instability associated with rapid global change. This special issue synthesises and extends knowledge about stop and search practices across a range of social, political and cultural contexts. Starting from specific socially, geographically and historically situated locations, the contributions engage with globally relevant themes such as the resurgence of nationalism in the face of globalising pressures; patterns of ethnic and racial targeting; increasing reliance on surveillance and identification technologies; and the convergence of criminal, migration and security paradigms. It is now evident that things happening in one part of the world are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa (Held and McGrew 2002). The world economy has integrated. Transport and telecommunications networks have thickened and widened. Global flows of all kinds have become more extensive, intensive and faster-flowing. Global interconnectedness has created new possibilities for police and criminal justice cooperation and the sharing of technologies, policies and practice (Bowling 2008, Bowling and Sheptycki 2011). Through sharing of information, nodes and networks of power are emerging that involve a range of different organisations locally, nationally and globally. Policing & Society Vol. 21, No. 4, December 2011, 353 356

Stop and search in global context: an overview

Reflecting on the evidence presented in this collection, this overview explores the purposes for which stop and search powers are deployed, whether their use can be described as effective and whether the infringements of liberty and privacy that stop and search entails can be justified. We conclude by considering the impact of stop and search on citizenship and mobility and examining questions of fairness, legitimacy and justice.

Crime, Justice and Human Rights

I write this review at a time when state responses to crime, and even imagined crime, can be judged as violating human rights. In the interests of counter-terrorism, police arrests are reframed as raids, followed by the rapid introduction of legislation that reduces civil liberties. Crime, Justice and Human Rights is timely with its emphasis on ‘everyday’ policing, as contemporary events reveal how the everyday can become the exception. As noted by the authors in their introduction, where security looms as a political goal, human rights can provide the language and concepts to pose critical questions about the harms, benefits and limits of state action and inaction.

Knowing-and-yet-not-knowing about European border deaths

Rapid changes associated with globalisation have led to the violent policing of territorial borders across the Global North. In Europe, the ongoing project of constructing a unified identity for an expanding European Union (EU) has created further pressure to separate included groups from surplus populations. The resulting fortification of external borders and intensification of internal controls have led to thousands of fatalities. But despite this mounting death toll, no EU agency is held to account for border-related deaths, and the carnage has failed to capture the attention of a seemingly unaware or uncaring public. In this article I acknowledge the efforts of NGOs to monitor and mourn the many deaths occurring at Europe’s physical, internal and external borders, and draw on post-Holocaust literatures on moral exclusion and the sociology of denial to identify systemic processes that prevent these deaths from being recognised as large-scale human rights abuses.

Cops and dobbers: A nodal cartography of onshore migration policing in New South Wales

Most public and scholarly debate about immigration in Australia has focused on irregular arrivals of asylum seekers by sea and the harsh system of externalised border controls designed to deter and contain them. This paper concentrates on the operation of Australia’s internal borders. We present a critical account of onshore migration policing networks in the Australian state of New South Wales, which are conceptualised as a distinctive form of policing. Using the techniques of nodal cartography described by Johnston and Shearing (2003) we identify the institutions, mentalities and technologies driving the development of migration policing networks and discuss their structure and internal dynamics. We then examine the means by which chains of public and private actors are recruited to perform a migration policing role, drawing on Garland’s ideas about government-at-a-distance (Garland, 1997). We identify responsibilising strategies that capitalise on overlapping organisational interests, others that are underpinned by the threat of legal sanctions, and others that are directed towards changing the behaviour of unlawful non-citizens themselves. We conclude that the Australian state is not diminished by adopting a networked approach to onshore migration policing, but instead garners significant resources which it can then invest in the construction of a multi-faceted, structurally-embedded and potentially ubiquitous border.

Policing a World in Motion

Globalization transforms policing into an increasingly transnational practice. Viewed from this perspective, state police are seen to be expanding beyond territorial borders to reach out into an increasingly fluid and interconnected world. In this chapter I consider what happens when the world, in effect, comes to the police. I discuss the implications for police-community relations of police involvement in border control, when communities consist of citizens, non-citizens and those whose immigration status is ambiguous or insecure. The discussion incorporates material from the Migration Policing Study which examined multi-agency migration policing networks in the Australian state of New South Wales.