Crimmigration in Border Security? Sorting Crossing through Biometric Identification at Australia’s International Airports

Abstract

In this chapter, we re-visit crimmigration by examining practices of identification at Australia’s international airports under the aegis of border security. Our purpose here is to open a critical dialogue with some key claims of crimmigration scholars. Introducing insights from cognate fields of critical security studies and international political sociology, and by paying attention to the government’s own theorisation of border security, we argue that border security is a proximate cause of more recent societal effects that can be observed as crimmigration. However, when we examine emergent practices of identification focused on crossing at Australia’s international airports, what we discover is better described as function creep. This opens a space to pose broader questions about crimmigration’s overall usefulness as a guiding theoretical concept for critical theoretical inquiries around immigration and criminal law, especially in an age whose dangers, we contend, may be better understood as surveillance capitalism and the erosion of the normative order associated with liberal democracy. Practices of identification at international airports undertaken for the purpose of border security, we speculate, may be indicative of a move from a liberal society of law and crime to one of surveillance and security aligned with global capitalism.

The authors wish to thank Harley Williamson for her excellent research assitance, and QUT Law for financing Harley’s contribution. We also thank Peter Billings for his editorial assistance, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on previous versions of this chapter.