Re-bordering the Peripheral Global North and Global South: Game of Drones, Immobilising Mobile Bodies and Decentring Perspectives on Drones in Border Policing

Abstract

Border security, asylum seekers and undocumented migrants are undoubtedly one of the key issues in a colourful Australian political landscape in the past decade (see McCulloch and Pickering, Borders and Crime: Pre-crime, Mobility and Serious Harm in an Age of Globalization, Macmillan, New York, 2012; Weber and Pickering, Globalization and Borders: Death at the Global Frontier, Macmillan, London, 2011). Elections are won or lost based on political parties’ perceived (in)ability to secure Australian borders, especially from asylum seekers coming to Australia by boat (Manne, The Comment: Asylum seekers, 2010). Elsewhere across the Western world, border policing and regulating mobile bodies are also a priority, creating modern ‘factories of exclusion’ (Engbersen 2001) based on hi-tech mechanisms of social segregation, especially surveillance (see Broeders 2007; Koslowski 2004). With a budget over £ 320 million set for drone development (Waterfield, EU ‘spent £ 320 million on surveillance drone development’, 2014), we are witnessing ‘an emerging EU drone policy’ (Hayes et al., EURODRONES Inc, 2014;) that gradually spills across the border, to the neighbouring countries of Global South.

This chapter looks at the process of re-bordering of both Global North and Global South through case studies of Australia and Serbia. It highlights the development of security and surveillance border control technologies in both countries, especially in the context of the usage of drones in border policing. The chapter’s purpose is not to offer a comparative analysis of two case studies; rather, it seeks to illuminate the issue of drone use in border policing from opposing sides of the borderland. The chapter presents preliminary findings from a research project that looks at mobility and border control in Western Balkans in the context of the European Union (EU) integration, conducted in the period August–December 2013. It also draws on the analysis of media reporting on drones in Serbia and Australia in the past 2 years, in order to explore predominant narratives around the usage of surveillance technologies in border control. This chapter argues that, although the rhetoric in the use of drones in two contexts is largely different, the military rhetoric underpins both military and non-military use of drones. Finally, the chapter begins to examine the impact of surveillance-based, drone-led border policing on mobile bodies caught in the ‘drone stare’ (Wall and Monahan).

Without making a sound, invisible sets of eyes patrol our southwest border…. Virtually undetectable by naked eye, unmanned areal vehicles—better known as UAVs or drones—silently patrol the border, looking for potential terrorists, drug smugglers, and illegal immigrants. (Longmire 2014, p. 75)