Floating carceral spaces: Border enforcement and gender on the high seas

Ambivalent rescue

The Australian response to irregular maritime arrivals is designed with the explicit, indeed punitive intent of deterring asylum seekers (Pickering and Weber, forthcoming) by applying the logic and rhetoric of criminal justice and law and order frames to asylum seekers. Consequently, the functions of the CBP off the north coast of Australia are embedded within an ambiguous ‘architecture of risk’ (Weber and Pickering, 2011), which plays out in the first instance as an ambivalence towards the rescue of asylum seekers.

The physical rescue of asylum seekers and concern for the safety of life at sea (SOLAS) were seen as paramount by the MEOs in this study. However, physical rescue – and the simplicity of such forms of heroic masculinity in border control – has been complicated and indeed compromised by the politicization of this function. In short, the physical risks undertaken to effect rescue were perceived by those carrying out these rescues to be the result of policy failures to regulate effectively and manage irregular migration. Moreover, the custodial arrangements that now must be enacted following rescue have transformed the role of MEOs into a more complex welfare and migration function, at odds with the traditional understanding of this role. On this point, one senior MEO commented:

ACD1: But this is part of the problem. I don’t want to start getting into issues we have with our employer, but I think this is part of the issue with what we were initially employed for and the training and that’s provided, because everything we do, initially what we were trained for, has got nothing to do with what we’re doing right now.

What the MEOs were trained for was broadly considered to be intercepting illegal fishers and illicit drug importation – old-fashioned transnational crime matters. Indeed, the humanitarian rescue and custodial management and transfer of asylum seekers were not envisaged as core activities by the participants. This is significant considering that the CBP is the lead agency in border enforcement, including efforts to prevent the deaths of asylum seekers at sea.

On the one hand, MEOs expressed frustration with the bureaucratization and even feminization of an otherwise hypermasculine task (of patrolling national maritime boundaries for breaches of customs law). On the other hand, they felt some pride in the humanitarian (rescue) function being performed – as another form of hypermasculine intervention. Yet rescue then necessitates a very different function – that of custodial, welfare and migration processing. As one senior member of the CBP said:

They take great pride in this part of their work, the humanitarian part. It’s about rescuing people who are really in need and have nothing left. Of literally saving their lives. The stuff that comes after they rescue then is complicated.

In practice, the CBP rescues asylum seekers in line with SOLAS provisions and renders assistance to those seeking refugee protection under international and domestic law. It undertakes a humanitarian response to asylum seekers that have been subject to unrelenting demonization by national media, and represented as a crisis that political parties have sought to use as a ‘wedge’ issue in national elections since the late 1990s (Grewcock, 2009; Pickering, 2001). There are repercussions for this political mismatch, apparent in the lack of training for MEOs to fulfil the post-rescue function to protect the welfare of those in their custody. The larger macro politics of border protection impacts on the daily inter-personal interactions that interception engenders and the capacity of MEOs to do a ‘good job’, as described in the following comments:

ACD4: So it’s like well, we’re not trained doctors we can’t –

ACD6: We’re all pretty good at it though.

ACD4: We’re nearly doctors, we’re nearly doctors [laughs].

ACD11: They want us to be doctors, psychologists, counsellors. They want us to do everything.

The respondents made no explicit references to heroic masculinity in relation to their physical rescue of asylum seekers. Rather, it was implicit in the MEOs’ stories of physical rescue in difficult environmental conditions. Heroic masculinity was most apparent in their ambivalence towards the (feminine) requirements of post-rescue custody and the performance of gender in the day-to-day custodial arrangements (see Carreiras, 2010). Reading together the literature on cultures of soldiering and policing evidences the inherent contradiction between the warrior–soldier–hard policing model based on the promotion of assault–violence–‘the thin blue line’, and the peacekeeping soldier–soft policing model based on benign, altruistic and community engaged behaviour (see Carreiras, 2010; McCulloch, 2001; Pickering et al., 2009). Asylum seekers are not usually simply intercepted at sea – phrasing that is lexically clean and certain. They are routinely rescued off vessels that are unseaworthy, in difficult environmental conditions including high seas, inclement weather and the darkness of night. Therefore, in reality the function of border enforcement involves rescue (literally rescue from vessels as well as the provision of welfare and protection from further harm), border protection (and national security) and the start of sorting matters related to detention, legal protection, exclusion and/or incarceration.

The contradictions of border enforcement were largely perceived by those participants charged with their execution as a politicization of their habitus, by the Executive, agency management and those they intercepted, which was experienced as intersecting forms of exploitation. The MEOs thus overwhelmingly expressed their frustration at the politicization of their function: that is, the macro politicization of irregular migration was seen as compromising their role:

ACD14: And they’re actually taking it to another level now, where we’re just solely doing immigration. Because where I’ve been, we’ve been solely doing immigration, whereas we were doing fisheries and what-not before, but now we are not really trained in what they actually want us to do. Like all the paperwork and now with this Malaysian solution, ⁵ it’s actually gone up another degree again.

Architectures of risk that overlay the desires and practices of the government, smugglers, asylum seekers and MEOs – and manifest as a politicization of the MEO function – were evident in narratives of expectation. This was apparent in the expectations of politicians unfamiliar with and disinterested in the operational detail of broad-brush political and policy posturing – emblematic of the political job they are doing. However, these expectations engendered resentment towards the politicization of the role of the CBP insofar as MEOs are ‘used’ by facilitators and asylum seekers as part of the smuggling arrangement:

ACD23: I’m pretty sure they think that we’re – us picking them up putting them on here is actually part of the package they pay for. Like it really comes across like that. ‘What do you mean I don’t get more food? I’ve paid for this.’

MEOs explained that their official role requires them to have limited contact with asylum seekers, yet they reported increasingly undertaking what they described as immigration tasks. They did not regard such tasks as a core function of their work but one that had been thrust upon them by their political (rather than operational) masters. The nature of this contact with asylum seekers – most notably increasing periods of such contact – was also a function of ever longer voyages to new and different destinations because of changing policy agendas around irregular arrivals and offshore processing.

The micro politics of border enforcement is comprised of numerous intersecting levels, in relation to managing asylum seekers who are experiencing shock and recovery, the journey they have survived, their expectations of their future life and the intermediate questions they have about their processing (for example, about time periods for such processing and where they will be held). The MEOs in this study estimated that most asylum seekers intercepted spend an average of four to five days on board a vessel, the physical comfort of which is highly dependent on a range of factors including weather conditions, the condition of asylum seekers when intercepted and their expectations around their arrival and the processes ahead, but also the fiscal priorities of the agency (these were considered both politically based and beyond the control of participants). As the MEOs explained:

ACD8: If they’re rough days, it’s worse for them, so they get more demanding and –

ACD12: And sea sickness thrown in, and when you jam them –

ACD3: It comes down to the budget as well, like earning fuel and the amount of money they’re willing to earn for fuel. Obviously the faster you go the more money it’s going to cost, so that all comes into play as well. So, a five-day trip might take seven days if they are not willing to go at best speed, because they want to save more money.

ACD16: That’s the government.

ACD3: That all comes from the office and stuff like that. So that’s out of our control but then we have to deal with the effects of that, that they think that it’s only going to take five days to get to Christmas Island. So on day five, when you’re not there, they’re asking you, ‘When are we getting to Christmas Island? Why aren’t we there yet? Why aren’t we there yet?’

The tensions between the priorities of humanitarian rescue, custody and border control play out in the role conflict experienced by MEOs. The ambivalent role of heroic rescuer can be understood as a deeply gendered border policing performance that is worth further consideration.

The gendered contours of border policing

The custodial spaces of border enforcement are also embodied spaces in which gender disciplines and regulates. I want to explore the ways in which gender, the body and power intersect and shape some of the ambivalences inherent to interception and custodial relationships on board customs vessels. Therefore we seek to ask: how do the gendered interpersonal relations among staff aboard a border enforcement vessel echo the macro politics (see Welch, 2011) of border control?

Social relations are always embodied and shape not only the meaning of male and female but also femininity and masculinity. Gender is always a moralizing system that exerts control but also generates sites of resistance, flexibility and change. The dominant discourses of border protection are highly gendered and racialized, which positions the state and its agents on the one hand as the heroic (often white, male) protector of the vulnerable, feminized ‘other’ in need of rescue (Duncanson, 2009; Orford, 1999), and on the other hand as emasculated by international law and subject to exploitation by racialized masses, against which it needs to reassert its sovereignty (Pickering, 2005). Unsurprisingly then, gender is deeply embedded and embodied in the everyday realities of border enforcement: this research identified that the gendered relations between asylum seekers and MEOs are positioned at the centre of experiences of vulnerability and protection, and the operation of power in this custodial environment.

The gendered embodiment of border policing is also shaped by the hasty adaptation of physical environments to accommodate increasing numbers of female asylum seekers. Customs vessels are equipped to take on board asylum seekers who are intercepted, as they contain sleeping and bathroom facilities below deck, and areas for food preparation and social interaction. These boats were not purpose built for such functions but have been retrofitted with beds and bathroom facilities. The facilities are basic and largely located in the bow of the ship. It has become increasingly necessary to erect separate living quarters on vessels for women, children and families, including ‘dongas’ ⁶ on the ship’s deck for family groups. The MEOs interviewed described how neither their vessels nor the nature of their work was originally (or fundamentally) developed with the specific needs of women in mind. There were two key ways in which this was apparent. First, structural changes to the physical conditions on the vessels and changes in the type of personnel on board have been necessary. For example, one MEO observed:

ACD14: Initially we only had one set of toilets and showers. We had to adopt procedures to allow females and children private use until separate areas were provided for families. Another area is the primary search of females, [for which we] had to ensure each patrol had a female officer to conduct the search, [and] if not [we] had to rely on other patrol vessels to provide a female officer for the search.

ACD21: Well, we’ve got a duty of care because they are on our vessel, so we try and, where we can, try and segregate them from the male population. We’re not going to put a sole female down in amongst 50 guys, even if they’re from the same country or the same group. So we try and segregate them where we can but some vessels you can do that, you can afford family groups or the females different accommodation. Other vessels we don’t have the room, so we just can’t afford them that, but we just try and monitor them as best we can. It depends on the vessel that they’re on. But obviously where we can, we try and – we’re sympathetic and we’re respectful of the fact that we try and give them privacy.

The adaptation of vessels for growing numbers of women intercepted at sea was marked by the complex gendered interplay between notions of legality and illegality that shape the humanitarian–border control nexus. Narratives of legality and illegality, deserving and undeserving, marked my discussions with the MEOs about their role, particularly in relation to the rising numbers of female asylum seekers in their custody.

Legality and illegality

There is an assembly of social relations enacted on board vessels that hold intercepted asylum seekers. These are fundamentally shaped by the intersecting expectations of both the asylum seekers and CBP officers – expectations that in turn shape the daily management of the crew and those taken on board. On the one hand, migrants are recovering from a voyage on an often unseaworthy vessel and from the drama of the interception and/or rescue, and their expectations for the travel time to the mainland and for their future life are grounded in the reasons they have sought to leave their homelands. MEOs are thus required to manage asylum seekers’ expectations, their own capacity to meet the immediate (often complex) health and welfare needs of the asylum seekers (which accommodates certain gendered assumptions related to the distribution and consumption of food – for example, to pregnant women, as discussed below) and assumptions around the best way to deal with problematic interactions between groups and within family groups of asylum seekers on board. Yet at the same time these MEOs are the in situ vehicles for the sovereign distinction between friend and enemy (Schmitt, 1985). While Doty has questioned what happens when decision making about this distinction slips from the sovereign state to non-state actors (such as anti-immigrant groups on the United States–Mexico border), this article is concerned with how state actors distinguish between the two categories in the context of these highly mobile, often invisible floating spaces. As Doty (2007) highlights, it is important to consider the social spaces that shape the process of determining the friend/enemy distinction. This is not to suggest the existence of a clearly discernible decision point or moment, but rather to emphasize the space in which the putative effect of border protection becomes apparent. The friend/enemy distinction is in the Australian context perhaps an overstatement of the us/them dichotomy at work, as a customs vessel does not legally sort individuals and is not supposed to turn boats around but rather to contain or constrain those intercepted until they reach an Australian port. This highlights the need to look more closely at how the grand narratives of sovereignty are drawn on to make sense of the increasing number of women asylum seekers intercepted at sea and their custodial experiences. It is a need to understand better the ways in which those charged with border protection are left to mobilize the heavy burden of sovereignty at the nation’s edges where simplistic distinctions of friend/enemy, legal/illegal, deserving/undeserving come into play.

In this research, gendered realities were not contained in a single site but were dispersed across a range of interactions and experiences. Similar to the findings of other studies, this was largely identifiable in the MEOs perceiving refugees as either deserving or undeserving. Reflecting a recurring theme, there was a clear perception of the genuine refugee as quiet and obedient, and the demanding refugee as difficult to manage and burdensome. As one respondent commented:

ACD6: Purely from a personal view, the Iranian women demand ‘everything’. All other females are simply glad to be rescued, whereas the Iranian women are initially grateful just to be on board, but within a very short period of time they are complaining about the food, conditions, etc.

Notions of legality and illegality also infused perceptions of asylum seekers as contributing to the politicization of the customs function – that is, that a genuine refugee is one likely to seek a minimum claim on the state, in this case the work of customs during transportation, while a demanding refugee is seen as one less deserving of protection. The recuperation of the tropes of the deserving and undeserving refugee in the carceral context it is linked to the risk taking, welfare provision and custodial duties of customs officers. This work raises the question: how can you be deserving (requiring rescue) in a hostile maritime environment when you are educated, well dressed and concerned with your (feminized) appearance? The following MEO comments are emblematic here:

ACD15: The Afghanis are usually happy to be alive I think, whereas the Iranians come on and they’ve got the Diesel jeans and the gear, and like the girls have got their hair straighteners with them and their blow dryers and everything.

ACD31: It depends on their ethnic background. For example, Afghanis (not a lot of women), Iraqis (a few women), Iranians (a lot of women), Sri Lankans (a few women), Burmese and Vietnamese (a lot of women). A trend I have noted with the Vietnamese is that some of the women are under 18 years of age and are travelling alone. A trend I have noted with Iranian women is that they tend to dress in a western style (jeans and jewellery) and that they are very demanding. A trend with Iraqi and Afghani women is that they are generally ‘submissive’, although they never appear to be abused by the males travelling with them. Another trend is that very few women speak English.

The production of the authentic refugee to which the (neutral, masculine) state can respond with requisite benevolence is therefore clearly overlaid by certain understandings of nationality and ethnicity, whereby deserving is equated with non-western and undeserving with westernized:

ACD33: The Iranians – the Iranians are a lot more westernized and they want a lot more.

ACD32: I am always dumbfounded by the manner in which they are frustrated with what care and accommodation we provide, especially given the conditions of the vessels we have retrieved them from. I have often tried to understand why this is; is it cultural and that if I was a guest that they would be providing me every possible comfort; has someone fed them nothing but lies in an attempt to pursue them to make the journey? [Such as] ‘You will be picked up on a luxury cruise ship with every amenity you could need.’ I wish I could understand as it often causes tension between the passengers and the crew. On one occasion I had a lady mention that all she wanted was to finally get to Australia so that she could be given her new house.

ACD33: Some of the most demanding seem to come from higher socioeconomic circumstances and this is reflected in how they interact with us and other passengers. Burmese and Vietnamese women are very friendly and keen to co-operate.

Being westernized was thus perceived as irreconcilable with being a refugee, fleeing with little more than a no-name shirt on their back. Perplexity at the educated, articulate, well-dressed women making demands on the Australian state indicates the slipperiness between what is regarded as unreasonable expectations of asylum seekers and perceptions of them exploiting Australia. What emerges is not a simple dichotomous sorting, but a hierarchy of deserving recipients of state intervention.

ACD10: I’d say – what you said, the Afghanis are usually happy to be on board and alive and safe and they’re –

ACD13: Compliant.

ACD10: Not very demanding. Then your Iraqis are probably midway, like they’re – most of them are pretty good, but then you get a few who want things and then the Iranians are probably the worst, in terms of demanding things.

ACD5: You don’t get as many, but the Palestinians are right up there with the Iranians as well.

ACD10: The Burmese are pretty good.

ACD5: Yeah.

ACD10: Burmese are good.

ACD5: We picked up Burmese from the Ashmore Guardian, and we went to feed them and they wouldn’t even take food. They were just so happy to be alive and be on there, that they said they didn’t want to trouble us anymore and they don’t need food and they’re happy just to sit. We gave them a set of cards and we didn’t hear boo from them for five days.

However, the ascription of the labels of deserving and undeserving was also fundamentally shaped by women’s agency – both in their decision to cross Australia’s border irregularly and in their knowledge of what was going to happen to them. Most respondents believed that women had prior detailed knowledge of the poor conditions on board smuggling vessels because of their connection to networks of co-nationals already in Australia who had previously made the same voyage, other MEOs were less sure. At the same time, many reported that women asylum seekers’ unreasonable expectations were generated by those facilitating their voyage. Women who were able to anticipate what was going to happen were seen as more problematic and less deserving (see Kuntz, 1973). Greater access to networks and social capital among asylum seekers served to undermine perceptions of being genuine asylum seekers. Moreover, women’s capacity to anticipate interception, custody and the process of refugee determination was also seen to underpin the shallowness of their claim on the paternal state, as the comments below reveal:

ACD16: Iran – the women tend to be more prominent in the decision making than in other ethnic groups that we have encountered. They tend to come from a more ‘well-off’ background.

ACD21: Iraqi/Irani/Syrian women are more involved in the interaction amongst the travelling group on board as opposed to the Afghani women who are more closed shop and appear more fragile in their behaviour.

Interviewer: When you pick them up how much do they know about what’s about to happen?

ACD7: They know everything.

ACD11: They know everything.

ACD7: Everything. Right down to the fact that on some vessels they can get cigarettes.

ACD13: Depends on their nationality too, like how much their husbands are going to tell them or how much decisions they’ve got in coming as well.

Vulnerability and protection

Issues around gender also underpinned the considerable physical protection work carried out by MEOs in relation to women. This was evident in their treatment and custodial arrangements for pregnant women, especially those in the later stages of pregnancy, and was often in relation to incidents of domestic violence on board the vessel. One MEO observed:

ACD19: Pregnant women generally are travelling with a partner or family group. They don’t present any particular challenges. They are treated as if they were any pregnant woman (noting that they have been detained for the purpose of transferring them from the vessel they came on to authorities ashore). Obviously we provide as much care and assistance as is possible, noting the vessels and conditions with which they have just come on small, older Indonesian type wooden vessels.

However, it was to the issue of domestic violence that MEOs were most perplexed and around which their concerns over their role and function coalesced most forcefully. As several respondents commented:

ACD24: There have been several incidents where husbands have assaulted their wives and officers have had to intervene. Unfortunately given the limited accommodation of our vessel we often have to separate the women from the men. Due to the layout of the accommodation we often place the women within the deck cabins, which are newer and more private. If there is the availability of space we will on occasion allow the husbands to remain with their families in these rooms. An unfortunate by-product of this is that it often creates a separation of classes and some hostility and contempt has been shown to those accommodated within.

ACD30: And see we can monitor them on CCTV, even though we are segregated from them. But you can see situations starting to develop, and then all of a sudden they’re like punching on with each other and we have to get in there and separate them, so you might have to segregate the husband back into the male population for a couple of days until they settle down and things like that. We have to deal with that quite often.

ACD25: But you will segregate them for a couple of days and then you will say, ‘Righto, anymore shenanigans and you will be segregated permanently.’ You put them back in there and they are all lovey dovey and hugging each other again.

ACD24: It’s just the totally different thing to the Australian culture. Like, you see the dads whipping their kids with a belt or giving them a fair – like, I’m talking like a three year old, they belt their kids pretty hard and stuff, some of them – not all of them, but some do, so you know where do we step in in terms of – our role as well?

ACD30: Child protection.

ACD24: It wasn’t a part of the job when most of us started it, no.

ACD30: It’s all right though. We’ve all had the good training, it was really good, training us up with all this kind of stuff [laughing].

The MEOs identify vulnerability within the culturally strange and silent bodies of those they intervened to protect. This has pitted the masculine protection of the MEOs against the problematic masculinity of the male asylum seeker. On the one hand, this involves the rapid and summary protection of those subject to violence (and arguably the summary castigation of the assailant) – something unavailable to many women in the private spaces in which violence often occurs, with none of the bureaucracies and complexities associated with such interventions onshore. On the other, it further entrenches racialized stereotypes of the deviant, racialized male. As some of the MEOs observed:

ACD31: But when we process them, we usually have an English speaker who asks their name, and age and where they’re from and that. And, I think you guys would agree, most of the time the husband talks for his wife, like she doesn’t actually talk directly to us.

ACD19: Depends on the nationality too, like some are very open and they’ll, you know, they’ve got their dyed hair, straighteners and then the other ones are all covered up and don’t talk unless spoken to, type of thing.

ACD28: Well see, most of the things – we’ve tried to make it that the husband was the one coming out getting all the food, so we’ve tried to make it [that], no, the wife has to come up so that we can do a welfare check on the wife and welfare checks on the children also, so we’ve changed the way that we process them whilst in our daily routine, so that we can maintain observation on them at all times.

The production of everyday borders in the borderlands

The CBP exists between the political tasking of its migration policing remit and the political claims of those it intercepts, all the while operating floating carcerals. With increasing numbers of women seeking asylum by boat, the micro politics of border controls played out – above and below the decks of customs vessels – in the minutiae of the tensions of the security–humanitarianism–rights nexus. These gendered micro politics can be traced in a range of racialized and contested identities of vulnerability and control, positioning subjects as deserving or undeserving. The inherently gendered functions of border enforcement, at both the macro and micro levels, can be seen in the daily realities of those charged with its execution.

All of the discomfort in responding to what is a relatively small number of irregular arrivals evident in Australian public discourse is clear in the organizational culture on board these vessels. However, it is fundamentally altered by the genuine desire to realize a humanitarian endeavour that was not originally contemplated. In so doing, those charged with border enforcement are significantly ahead of their political masters in addressing the very human needs of those who, as a result of the total visa system, perceive that they have no other option but to take to the high seas. The rescue and care of those in the floating carceral space of a border protection vessel constitutes a fundamentally humanitarian exercise, undertaken in a dehumanizing, securitized context.

In the performance of border policing by customs the ambiguous architecture of risk ⁷ is intimately bound up with organizational culture and identity. There are two immediately discernible levels of risk that shape these micro politics – both substantially gendered. The first is the politics of risk evident in the relationship between the government/management/bureaucracy and MEOs deployed at sea; and the second and related is the impact of those risk politics on the politics that define interactions between the individual officers and the asylum seekers on board.

The blurred nature of the roles and expectations of customs officials in the security/law enforcement environment was significant in our findings. While the CBP is not a military force, nor does it operate as a civilian law enforcement body. It exists in a hybrid space without the certainty of either a military or law enforcement remit. On this point, it is important to acknowledge the increasingly blurred function between military and policing functions (see McCulloch, 2001), especially in relation to counter-terrorism activities. However, this hybrid space occupied by customs is without the perceived status of serving one’s country or upholding the law (carrying with it the concomitant oaths of allegiance). This organizational uncertainty, or disjuncture in purpose, was experienced in a range of ways by the MEOs interviewed for this research.

This is the maritime carceral environment in which organizational identity, culture and operational necessity rub up against all the human experiences involved in forced migration – trauma, anxiety, desperation, uncertainty, mental and physical ill health, concern for family and fear of or hostility towards authorities. Similar to Mountz (2010), this research has sought to identify the performative state at work in border protection, the operational performance of the border is a highly fluid and contested site at which the politics of humanitarianism and border protection result in a complex and largely unknown custodial environment.

The borderlands are contested, fractious and politicized spaces that exist on board large grey vessels in vast maritime spaces. The borderlands are substantially gendered and raced both in relation to interpersonal relations, especially with increasing numbers of female migrants, but also in hypermasculine performances of border protection, the expression of sovereignty and the uncertainty of rescue. The borderlands are the sites where the punitive intent of border control, politics of non-entrée and the marshalling of anti asylum seeker rhetoric are played out on the roles and functions of those charged with border enforcement and those subject to it. In so doing we have an opportunity to examine the micro politics of new spaces of control, where new actors, merged roles and changing expectations raise serious questions as to the new sites of criminological endeavour when we are concerned with penal expansion.