The Transnational Carceral Model: Empowering Sovereign Illusions through the Suppression of the Stateless

Migration is essential to human survival, as is a sense of security and belonging. Yet today, the most powerful states unleash global mechanisms of migration control onto the most vulnerable populations to determine who has a right to survive and belong. Migrants hailing from the Global South are disproportionately subjected to forms of state control, violence, and dehumanization that stem from historical systems of oppression. In a quest to accumulate power and wealth, the right to move is increasingly restrictive under a global system of unbridled growth that transcends borders.  

I explore the intersections of remoteness, sovereignty, and isolation through examining the racialized and gendered migrant detention, deterrence, and deportation techniques used in the United States and Australia. Ultimately, the Global North’s collective expansion of a transnational carceral model, manipulation of space and geographical location, and diffusion of externalized border security are tactics used to legitimize the power of the state while criminalizing and isolating migrants based on their race, gender, country of origin, and socioeconomic status.  

Legacy of Colonization and Immigration Control    

To understand the transnational carceral model and its impacts, it is imperative to examine the connection between colonialism, racism, and punishment. Across nations, colonization constructed institutionalized racism, territorial control, and social exclusion at the hands of the state. Colonization further established racialized forms of discipline, and eventually, deportation. Scholars trace colonial deportation back to the English 1662 Law of Settlement and Removal, which instituted a legal precedent for forcibly removing and relocating the poorest from society. The poor were grouped with the outlawed and relocated to the colonies, which produced an early form of criminalization that, “targeted the poor…. also explicitly targeted slaves and free people of color.” This 17th century legal framing of a poor, enslaved, or transient person as an undeserving and even criminal member of society perpetuated social exclusion and led to the establishment of citizenship. The criminalization of movement and social exclusion as forms of migration control further empowered the state.  

The Australian legacy of state-led immigration and punitive control begins with the banishment of Irish and British prisoners to the colony. By 1868, over 80,000 prisoners were shipped to Australia. Forcibly relocating European criminals to Australia exemplifies an early form of border externalization to gain territorial control and sovereign power as colonizers enforced the English rule of law within the colony. Forced relocation was a colonial catalyst for violent territorial expansion, the genocide of indigenous people, and land dispossession, “Augmenting the legal and military theft of Indigenous land were the Aboriginal Protection Acts, authorizing the forced removal of children as well as a carceral infrastructure of confinement and impoverishment on various offshore island reserves.” Contemporary Australian detention is reminiscent of colonial racial and spatial control, a haunting legacy that is shared across the Global North.  

The Transnational Carceral Model 

Mandatory detention, exemplified in both the U.S. and Australia, is a mechanism of the transnational carceral model that restricts the movement of migrants and asylum seekers. Irregular migration is a regular, global pattern. Although uniquely distributed, many national responses to irregular migration include enforcement and criminalization, “Whereas deportation should reasonably be considered merely one conceivable response to ‘unauthorized’ or ‘irregular’ migration, it has come to stand in as the apparently singular and presumably natural or proper retribution on the part of state power to this apparent ‘problem.,’” States default to severe modes of enforcement such as deportation as the primary response to irregular migration instead of honoring the humanity of a migrant. In turn, the transnational carceral model is used to uphold sovereignty, suppress migrants on a racial and gendered basis, and mitigate the supposed threat of irregular migration.  

This transnational model encompasses multiple aspects of migration control including securitized and militarized border enforcement, inhumane measurements of deterrence, violence, forced removal, and dehumanizing detention centers. The two main elements of the transnational carceral model are the externalization of borders and offshore detention. Border externalization is a territorial extension of the state, adopting a geographic and legal ambiguity where enforcing a border can essentially occur anywhere in the world. Externalized enforcement overrides the outdated notion that a migrant is only deterred at the geographical border of the receiving state, “...states now increasingly treat that as anachronistic, and seek instead to take immigration control action- both decision-making and enforcement- prior to an individual’s arrival on their territory.” Whether through visa requirements, international agreements, or preclearance measures, the adoption of extraterritorial control is used to frame the Global North as an exclusive destination where only those deemed “worthy enough” may enter “legally.” 

 The justification for securing an image of exclusivity while continuing to gain more wealth and power can be partly attributed to the impacts of neoliberalism and the rise of hyper capitalism. Since the 1980s, the U.S. has entered countless international agreements to enforce and securitize its border to generate more revenue, protect its own capital accumulation, and legitimize its sovereignty. A conspicuous example is the response to the 120,000+ boats that fled Cuba in the summer of 1980 and arrived at Florida’s coastline, which led to a Reagan Administration agreement between the United States and Haiti that permitted the U.S. Coast Guard to interdict boats departing from Haiti. Following this agreement with Haiti, the United States found itself running out of room and asking for neighbors’ accommodation services. Migrants who faced interdiction at sea were then relocated to a variety of “processing” centers throughout the Caribbean and Central America. Simultaneously, the U.S. opened its infamous “migrant facility” in Guantanamo Bay, entering decades of international surveillance, deterrence, detention, and deportation of migrants. These examples demonstrate how the United States manipulates and enforces its borders in a manner that transcends the limitations of geography.  

Domestically, the United States hosts the largest system of migrant detention, with over 50,000 “non-citizens” held in detention daily. Yet over the past decades, the U.S. weaponizes offshore detention to recuse responsibility, redirect and disperse control mechanisms, maintain an image of hegemony, and create a culture of collective apathy toward the mistreatment of migrants. The years following the Clinton Administration gave rise to the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s power and global scope through transnational deterrence and detention strategies like “Operation Global Reach” or “Crossroads International.” More recently, the Obama Administration began insisting that migrants attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border should be detained in Mexico. Similarly, the Trump Administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy required asylum seekers who had been detained within the U.S. to await the asylum process in Mexico. These policies demonstrate how the United States has expanded its borders and mechanisms of offshore detention to further control migrants and asylum seekers, “Governments and scholars alike agree that borders are being pushed out to keep the unwanted at arm’s length,” and deliberately keep migrants away from its mainland.  

Australia drew inspiration from the Reagan Administration’s interdiction policy in the Caribbean and adopted the damaging “Pacific Solution” decades later. Prime Minister John Howard implemented the Pacific Solution and used 9/11 terrorism warmongering to justify migration control through the deployment of the Australian Navy to interdict and detain “suspected illegal entry vessels.” Like the U.S., Australia has a troubling history of forcibly relocating migrants and detaining them offshore. The Pacific Solution was a form of deterrence that permitted the use of external territories as a mechanism to house migrants. More sinisterly, external territories were excluded from Australian migration policy, “...meaning that refugees arriving at these locations were considered not to have officially entered Australia,” and prevented migrants who arrived at Christmas Island (commonly referred to as the “Gitmo of Australia”) Manus Island, or Nauru from obtaining asylum status. It also created a new category of racialized citizenship status, interstitial legal categories, where essentially anyone arriving irregularly to Australia by boat was detained offshore. This policy denied the chance to ever become an Australian if a migrant were to arrive by boat.  

Several racist, isolating, and costly policies that criminalized movement in the name of national security is a U.S. model that has been replicated in Australia and throughout the Global North. The lengths at which the United States and Australia work to maintain control and establish global order is an imperial attempt to solidify sovereignty. The model also acts as a supplementation or “outsourcing” of governance. Offshore detention and externalized borders criminalize migrants, while states weaponize the power of remoteness to further maintain sovereignty, often negating the fiscal cost and the wellbeing of migrants.      

Production of Remoteness 

The production of remoteness is a mechanism of immigration control, both onshore and offshore. Externalizing borders gives pushes the boundaries of what constitutes a state’s territory, relying on geographical and legal ambiguity to further deter, detain, and deport migrants. The manipulation of geography and remoteness are additional tools of migrant suppression, “The remote geographic locations of many of these facilities and frequent transfers of detainees between facilities within the system have proven significant issues of concern…” Remote detention and the prison industrial complex have considerably expanded across the globe, which is concerning for the health and safety of migrants and their families. The Global North’s enactment of these policies has normalized a deeply unregulated and unaccountable private prison industry, resulting in unprecedented profit generation and migrant distress.  

Remote onshore and offshore detention is directly produced through the transnational carceral model. Powerful states wield remoteness to further ostracize migrants while building capacity and capital. Not only does remoteness distance migrants from their advocates and support systems, but it operates to further the entire global carceral model, “Remoteness is not simply about the isolated location of any one facility. Rather, the onshore-offshore US detention system produces isolation of asylum seekers while connecting them to a transnational infrastructure of interception, apprehension, detention, and removal." Transnational infrastructure is not only bound to land, but to sea, and acts tactically. Space, geography, and remoteness through the externalization of borders are weaponized to further implement transnational carceral systems that are racist and dehumanizing. Although these mechanisms are rooted in systems of historical oppression, the contemporary deployment of the transnational carceral model is occurring at an unprecedented scale and magnitude.   

Remoteness and removal from support networks produces isolation, and even chaos. Scholar Nancy Hiemstra argues that the use of chaotic geography is “spatialized and temporalized” to ensure the “continued profit and influence of the immigration industrial complex,” while further criminalizing the movement of migrants. Disorder creates additional harm for a migrant facing remote detention, but chaos itself is also wielded to hide the true forces “driving detention expansion.” Remoteness fuels the transnational carceral model, empowers the state, and further isolates migrants.  

Isolation and Punishment  

Remoteness and isolation produce punishment. Migrants and asylum seekers who disproportionately experience vulnerability are further punished through isolation. Whether remoteness constitutes an isolated geographic location, family separation, solitary confinement, dependence on a legal system that is criminalizing and punishing, or the isolating experience of being “othered,” isolation is a state-wielded tactic of suppression and a demonstration of sovereignty. Inhumane and creative tactics, such as the ice cold holding cells (hieleras), unequivocally punish, and deter migrants, “The fact that women in the cells feel those temperatures as frigid is a sign of the spread of disciplinary procedures: whether the cold temperature is deliberately maintained or not, the officers deploy it discursively as a strategy to deter…” Punishment is isolating, as are most aspects of detention, deterrence, and deportation.          

Conclusion  

Built upon the legacy of colonization, the Global North has deployed a system of transnational incarceration through the externalization of borders, leveraging geographical ambiguity and remoteness, and punishment through isolation. The contemporary system of immigration control is framed as a measure of national security and protection from stereotyped migrants who face a racialized and gendered system of deportation, detention, and deterrence. Furthermore, the system permits powerful states to avoid the accusation of refoulement while averting their legal obligations to asylum seekers, including through additional mechanisms such as granting temporary forms of refuge or penalizing unapproved travel. The policies within the system of immigration control deter and detain migrants before they even arrive to safety or to seek asylum. The transnational carceral model operates solely to uplift and empower the state, and in an ever-globalized world, the most powerful states in the world are clinging to the concept of sovereignty to gain more legitimacy, power, and profit. The Global North, examined here through examples in the United States and Australia, creates an emboldened illusion of state sovereignty by pushing the bounds of territorial and migratory control. The transnational carceral model, although massive in scale, indirectly exposes an insecurity of sovereignty within the Global North that must be further explored to liberate the movement of migrants and instill dignity onto a population that historically faces injustice, dehumanization, and isolation.