The Politics of Compassion by Sirriyeh Ala

Author:Sirriyeh, Ala [Sirriyeh, Ala]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781529200447
Google: qm73wQEACAAJ
Publisher: Bristol University Press
Published: 2018-01-15T05:52:18+00:00

The threat of the future smuggler

The war against people smugglers is now a long-standing feature of Australian border enforcement. Even as boat arrivals have dissipated, these enforcement measures remain and are justified through the need for permanent vigilance. Speaking about the deal announced in 2016, to resettle refugees from Nauru and Manus to the US, the Immigration Minister, Peter Dutton (2016b) spoke about the dangers of the Australian government being seen to soften their stance on detention. He stated that if he talked about children being released, smugglers as ‘sophisticated, organised criminals’ would begin messaging on social media to encourage people once more to get on their boats. It was not that the Australian government wanted to detain people, but that the actions of smugglers left them no choice; showing humanity and compassion to children could get them killed.

Just as governments issue updates about the number of attempted terrorist attacks which they have prevented (Mythen and Walklate, 2006), since the launch of OSB, the Minister of Immigration has delivered regular updates on the successes of OSB in thwarting people smuggling ventures. Dutton’s January 2015 update (Dutton, 2015a) stated, ‘Operation Sovereign Borders delivers six months without a successful people smuggling venture’. People smuggling has ceased for now, but a reminder was issued of what could happen were the operation to end; the press release warned that, ‘when the Rudd and Gillard Governments abolished the Howard Government’s proven border protection policies more than 50,000 people illegally entered Australia on more than 800 boats’. Therefore, ‘we need to be ever vigilant because the smugglers and crime gangs that engage in people smuggling are looking constantly for opportunities to subvert our efforts’ [italics added]; this a permanent emergency.

The idea of the smuggler lurking in the wings, ready to relaunch their death boats, echoes contemporary security discourses on terrorism. The never-ending war against the smuggler has parallels with the never-ending war against terrorism (Giroux 2002). Giroux (2002) argued that this has resulted in the state of emergency becoming business as usual. The terrible events of the past never end; instead, they endure into the present and continue forward into anticipatory projections of possible catastrophic futures. The focus on the smuggler is a symptom of what Amin (2013:6) has described as the ‘catastrophist politics of societal management’. Through this approach, a ‘just in case’ structure of provisions is displaced by a ‘just in time’ structure of preparations. This relies on anticipatory intelligence that is used to develop a ‘hyper-vigilant environment’ in which dangerous enemies can be identified, tracked and stopped before they cause us harm (Amin, 2013:6).

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