Borders provocation from State of Emergency : Melbourne Indymedia

“There is a better way of dealing
with the needs of refugees arriving
in Australia – whether with or
without a visa, by boat or by plane.
The Better Way will not
compromise Australia’s security,
health or community values, and
will actually be cheaper”

— Introduction to “The Better Way: Refugees, Detention and Australians” produced by the Justice for Asylum Seekers Alliance.

John Howard’s statement “we will decide who enters this country and the circumstances in which they come” is often seen as representing a shameful development in Australia’s history: a time when immigration control was ‘politicized’, and state brutality dominated the response to asylum-seekers. Yet this statement is neither new nor confined to the current Government. Howard’s assertion simply reveals the logic that has always typified Australia’s immigration regime, and which is shared by all parliamentary parties, and most refugee advocacy groups. This statement reveals a commitment to national sovereignty, and the link between this sovereignty and an increasingly violent form of border policing.

Currently, the arsenal used to ‘protect our borders’ includes detention camps, pushing back boats, temporary visa regimes, and the deaths of hundreds of asylum seekers, whose boat, the SIEV X, was allowed to sink because a boat that didn’t arrive was seen not as a cause for concern, or for rescue crews, but as a victory. This arsenal has, unsurprisingly, led to protest – beginning inside the camps. Yet, in opposing this regime, many groups attempt to contrast the ‘inhumanity’ of the Government’s approach, with the myth of a ‘humane’ sovereignty, which would protect Australia’s borders yet do away with the brutality of the current system. This approach is not only naïve, but dangerous.

State sovereignty has always been founded on violent exclusion. What we see today is the lengths necessary to maintain this sovereignty in an age of unauthorized migration. Today the consolidation of this sovereignty must necessarily be brutal if it is to repel those who have been forced to leave states that are often war-torn states, poverty-stricken states, or in today’s terminology, simply ‘failed states.’ Detention camps, razor wire, racism, deaths and brutality are not unnecessary aspects of state sovereignty: they are the truth of this sovereignty. In an era of capitalist globalization, the role of the nation-state is increasingly a pure policing role. If the nation-state is to survive, it will only do so by demonstrating its ability to maintain control over a nationally demarcated population. If it can’t do so, it risks the same fate as the regimes of the Taliban or Saddam Hussein, who were not deposed for humanitarian reasons, but because they could no longer be relied upon to adequately control and suppress their populations. Today the stakes for the nation-state are high. The global, unauthorized movement of people can’t be tolerated by states that recognize that their power lies in their ability to construct and control a national people.

This is precisely what much of the ‘refugee movement’ can’t recognize. As long as supposed opponents of today’s border control regime maintain a commitment to state sovereignty, they will be unable to effectively contest even the most brutal aspects of this regime. We see this in the numerous groups, epitomized by the Justice for Asylum Seekers Alliance, and Just Australia who portray themselves as opponents of detention while proposing only a more ‘humane’ detention, or as the JAS pamphlet describes it, The Better Way. Calls for such alternative detention models are invariably prefaced with statements supporting the state’s right to determine who enters Australia. JAS even go as far as to state “The Better Way doesn’t propose changes to Australia’s border protection policy” In fact the best JAS can propose is a model based on the Woomera Alternative Detention Pilot, which they describe as “a more humane model”. In the alternative detention model, women and children are separated from male family members, may only receive visitors in the presence of detention guards and fundamentally, people are still detained and deprived of their freedom. The truth of this model is found in The Better Way in the heading: “Managing people better.” This ultimately, is the role those like JAS, intend for themselves. They cannot oppose state sovereignty, as they have an interest in its continuation – with themselves as more humane managers of a national population. Not just those who cross borders, but all of us must oppose this logic, and refuse to be defined as national subjects, with an interest in managing a national people by retaining a right to exclude. We must continue to cross the borders, tear down the fences and throw our bodies against the camps, not to demand a more humane subjugation and imprisonment, but to create, through our actions, a world without borders in which we are all free to move where we wish.

FUCK the State!
I would hope we could learn from the South African struggle and the specific fight against pass laws.
This took many forms inc 'lost' passbooks.
I would hope to see more international stateless passports if they have to be used, more , many more lost passports and finally a world wide ' burn yr passports' day.

Roll on the state/ passbook free revolution.

Nice critque of "Refugee" advocacy groups. As described in the article these are nothing more then liberal scum, trying to place a humanistic face on mandatory detention.
- Borders are meant to be broken

Are the rich preparing to make all of us ecological refugees? There are signs that private companies and corporations are positioning themselves to become Water Lords in a Feudal Post Petroleum World. Many are posing as friends to the Asylum Seeker defenders by espousing high immigration, but do not be fooled. See: . http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2004/05/68942.php

Borders are neither good nor bad nor are they neutral. It is not the borders that are the problem, it is the interpretation of the border. You (the author) are hiding behind a rhetrical utopian fantasy that doesn't really help anyone. You have your own borders; let's keep it real. Am I alowed to squueze your tits or fondle your penis without permission. No. You also have your borders. I like my borders sometimes but sometimes I do not.

Use your brain and think of a real solution. Take some responsibility and stop dreaming.

Craig

hi craig,

your not making a lot of sense - first borders are neither good nor bad nor neutral in themselves, yet they aren’t the problem. how does that follow?

I mean, even if we pretend we are brain dead, and start from the idea that the author is referring to all kinds of borders, from the osmotic boundaries of cells to the borders of the nation-state (which are very different things), and then ignore the fact that things are never neutral - which means they are indeed good or bad in structure (which is not the same as making an essentialist argument – this is making a value-judgement grounded in ethics and the observable outcomes of real world structures and events), then we are still left with you contradicting yourself - obviously if we go with your line that its the context and type that counts, then in many cases it is borders that could indeed be the problem. In this instance, it is borders of nation-states that control the flow of goods, services and people – the author is arguing (well, provoking actually) that this border is grounded in violence, and that conservative refugee groups, by arguing for a more ‘humane’ state, are in effect, just arguing for a more comfortable cell and for torture that isn’t as ‘offensive to the eye’.

Unfortunately, it is you who are hiding your conservative, and in essence xenophobic politics behind a conflation of various kinds of borders (and, quite possibly, kinds of communities). A more mature mind might try to distinguish between various boundaries – be them social, personal, or constructs like the borders of nation-states. An issue of personal boundaries – and the crossing of them in the manor of sexual abuse, assault, rape, et al as you mention – is quite different in kind to issues surrounding the maintenance of the nation-state, and its fictional companion ‘the people’ via institutions like detention centres, off-shore processing zones, deportation, TPV’s, et al.

More often than not, those that would make a better world are accused of being ‘unrealistic’ or ‘dreamers’. Thos that would dream of land rights have been called (and still are) un realistic. The abolition of racism, sexism, colonialism, et al – all unrealistic. The end to the vast disparities of wealth and power that currently exist… yes, this is a dream. But to stop dreaming would deprive us of a fundamental power – to imagine a better world, one worth living in. Without such visions, we wouldn’t have come the little distance we have – with things like public health care, voting (for what it is worth) for women and indigenous Australians, the 8 hour day, the end of colonial rule in many countries, etc. And without dreams we will go no further.

Be realistic then, and demand the impossible.

sounds like a whole load of more-radical-than-thou wanking to justify inaction. the existing refugee solidarity and support groups do something. if you are doing nothing you are more conservative that the most conservative of them, no matter how radical you try to sound.

most of the authors of the above article are, and have been, involved in a number of organisation, centres, etc fighting to overturn current legislation, provide services, and change the nature of the current border regime. Just because you think about what you want to do doesn't mean you end up doing nothing. You can both think and act, strange as it may seem...