Theoretical error, real-world problems
29
some recognised citizenship or quasi-citizenship. Ethnicity, race, gender and
other factors can also affect how both noncitizenship and citizenship are experi
enced at the border.9
DavidMillerdrawsattentiontotheassumedacceptabilityofthistoforeground
hisworkoncompatriotpartiality.Hewritesthatattheborder,‘wedutifullyjoin
the appropriate queue, we take for granted that state officials can treat human
beings quite differently simply because some are citizens and others are not’.10 But
the protests that arise when something challenges the acceptability of this indicate
otherwise.PerhapscomfortablecitizensjointhequeuesMillerdescribesunthink
ingly. It is not so much because they support what the queues represent, but
because they have never really thought about it. As was argued in Chapter 2, for
those who do not personally experience the challenges of unrecognised noncitizenship, and have not been shown its implications, there is little reason to invent it.
AStatemayalsoredefinethephysicalindividual-Staterelationshipsthatan
individual can have with it by changing the nature of the border-zone and
extending the spaces of exception.11 Consider cases of extraterritorial immig
rantdetentioncentres,likethoseofAustraliainNauruandPapuaNewGuinea
(PNG). The acute vulnerability of individuals in extraterritorial immigrant
detention centres has recently been gaining publicity globally. This has been
fuelled, in these Australian cases, by self-immolations of detainees who have
no other way to be heard, by outcry from doctors, lawyers and civil society
memberswhocomeintocontactwiththecentres,andbyfilmsandnewspaper
articles – and by the July 2016 PNG Supreme Court decision that the
Australian detention centre there is unconstitutional.12 This was compounded
by the August 2016 release by the UK newspaper the Guardian of ‘The Nauru
9 Naila Kabeer (2002) ‘Citizenship and the boundaries of the acknowledged community: identity,
affiliation and exclusion’, IDS Working Paper 171, October 2002, Institute of Development
Studies,UniversityofSussex;WillemMaas(2009)‘Unrespected,Unequal,Holow?Contingent
Citizenship and Reversible Rights in the European Union’, pp. 265–280 in Columbia Journal of
European Law15(2);EvelynNakanoGlenn(2004)Unequal Freedom: How Race and Gender
Shaped American Citizenship and Labor, Harvard University Press; Shahram Khosravi (2010)
‘Illegal’ Traveller: An Auto-Ethnography of Borders,PalgraveMacmillan.
10 DavidMiller(2016)Strangers in Our Midst: The Political Philosophy of Immigration, Harvard
University Press, at p. 20.
11 Georgio Agamben (1998) Homsacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Standford University
Press; Nando Sigona (2014) ‘Campzenship: reimagining the camp as a social and political space’,
pp. 1–15 in Citizenship Studies 19 (1).
12 Lucy Fiske (2016) ‘Self-immolation incidents on Nauru are acts of “hopeful despair” ’, available at
http://theconversation.com/self-immolation-incidents-on-nauru-are-acts-of-hopeful-despair-58791;
Ben Doherty (2016) ‘Doctors refuse to discharge “Baby Asha” because of fears for safety on
Nauru’, the Guardian, 12 February 2016; see the work of Australian Lawyers for Human Rights;
for example, using the hashtags #CloseTheCamps and #LetThemStay; The Manus Solution,afilm
made as part of the ABC series, Four Corners; Tendayi Bloom (2016) ‘The Beginning of the End of
Double-Offshoring?ThePanamaPapers,AsyluminAustralia,andthePNGSupremeCourt’,avail
able at www.law.ox.ac.uk/research-subject-groups/centre-criminology/centreborder-criminologies/
blog2016/beginning-end (accessed 2nd April 2017).