Women, Borders, and Violence Sharon Pickering Women, Borders, and Violence Current Issues in Asylum, Forced Migration and Trafficking 1  3 Professor Sharon Pickering Department of Criminal Justice & Criminology Monash University Caulfield East, VIC 3145 Australia [email protected] ISBN 978-1-4419-0270-2 e-ISBN 978-1-4419-0271-9 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-0271-9 Springer New York Dordrecht Heidelberg London © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011 All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 233 Spring Street, New York, NY 10013, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connec- tion with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) Acknowledgements I am grateful to the colleagues who worked with me on this book—Alison Gerard and Marie Segrave who co-author two of the chapters. I am also indebted to the as- sistance of Sarah Segal and Mary O’Kane as well as the painstaking work of Julia Farrell. My colleagues at Monash University have, as always, been enormously supportive and generate a wonderful place to work—Jude McCulloch, Dean Wil- son, Marie Segrave, JaneMaree Maher, Danielle Tyson, Anna Eriksson and Bree Carlton. I am grateful to team at Crest Premedia Solutions, Pune, India for their patience and care of the manuscript. This book owes an intellectual debt to the work of Leanne Weber and Nancy Wonders who always improve my thinking and have engaged me on many of the issues explored in this book. Of course, any errors are mine alone. Parts of Chapter 4 draw on work presented to and published by the International Association of Refugee Law Judges, and some data are reproduced from Picker- ing and Lambert, Global Issues, Women and Justice, published by the Institute of Criminology. Chapter 6 includes excerpts from Pickering, S., ‘Transversal Policing’ in The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology (2004). My love and thanks to Tom and to my parents for their endless and unwavering support. Wesley and Amelia sat just off my elbows for most of the writing of this book and have shown patience and understanding beyond any reasonable expecta- tion for 2- and 4-years olds—thank you. v Contents 1   Women and Extra Legal Border Crossing............................................... 1 1 Introduction ............................................................................................ 1 2 Counting Women’s Extra Legal Border Crossing .................................. 5 3 Women’s Extra Legal Border Crossing ................................................. 9 4 Trafficking ............................................................................................. 10 5 The Feminisation of Survival ................................................................ 11 6 Border Policing ..................................................................................... 12 7 Women at the Border ............................................................................. 14 8 Summary ............................................................................................... 16 2   The Journey to the Border: Continuums of Crossing ........................... 17 1 Introduction ........................................................................................... 17 2 Violence, Rape and Criminality in Conflict .......................................... 19 3 Part 1: Fleeing Conflict, Crossing Borders ........................................... 22 3.1 F leeing Somalia ............................................................................ 22 3.2 Transit: Libya ............................................................................... 23 4 Part 2: Reception: Malta ........................................................................ 28 4.1 Detention Centres ......................................................................... 32 4.2 Open Centres ................................................................................ 34 4.3 Subsidiary Protection ................................................................... 35 4.4 Dublin II Treaty ............................................................................ 36 5 Conclusion ............................................................................................. 36 6 S ummary ............................................................................................... 37 3   Border Policing in the Borderlands: Policing Politically  Active Women on the Thai–Burma Border  ........................................... 39 1 The Transversal Borderland .................................................................. 40 2 Burma .................................................................................................... 41 3 The Thai–Burma Border ....................................................................... 44 3.1 Experiences with Police in Burma ............................................... 45 3.2 Crossing the Border ..................................................................... 46 4 Policing Women’s Activism .................................................................. 48 vii viii Contents 5 Building Relationships with Intelligence .............................................. 48 6 Travel/Mobility ..................................................................................... 51 7 S exual Violence ..................................................................................... 54 8 P olicing the Borderland ......................................................................... 55 9 S ummary ............................................................................................... 56 4   A Gate at the Border?  ............................................................................... 57 1 G etting to the Gate ................................................................................ 57 2 Arriving at Asylum ................................................................................ 60 3 The Refugee Definition: Gender and Particular Social Group (PSG) .......................................................................................... 61 4 The Gate in Operation ........................................................................... 62 5 The Story of Five Cases ........................................................................ 65 5.1 Case 1 ........................................................................................... 65 5.2 Case 2 ........................................................................................... 67 5.3 Case 3 ........................................................................................... 69 5.4 Case 4 ........................................................................................... 70 5.5 Case 5 ........................................................................................... 72 6 The Judicial Operation of the Gate ....................................................... 74 7 R efugee Determination and Female Genital Cutting: Gate Open, Gate Shut, Gate Open, Gate Shut ............................................... 76 8 The Matter of A-T- ................................................................................ 80 9 A Case for Gender Guidelines ............................................................... 82 9.1 A bsence of a Human Rights Framework ..................................... 84 9.2 Ignoring the Role of Cultural Relativism ..................................... 86 9.3 Credibility Issues .......................................................................... 87 10 Recourse to Complementary Protection ................................................ 88 11 Conclusion ............................................................................................. 90 12 Summary ............................................................................................... 92 5   Policing the Border Within: Sex Trafficking and the  Regulation of Sex Work ............................................................................ 93 1 The Nature and Extent of the Trafficking of Women into Sexual Servitude in Australia ................................................................ 95 2 Trafficking into the Sex Industry in Australian Law ............................. 96 3 Catalysts to Change: Factors Contributing to the Development of the Anti-Trafficking Package ..................................... 97 3.1 International Recognition: Raising the Standard ......................... 97 3.2 International Pressure .................................................................... 98 3.3 Limitations of the National Legislation ........................................ 98 4 The National Response .......................................................................... 99 4.1 The Contemporary Situation in Australia .................................... 101 4.2 State-Level Intervention ............................................................... 102 5 Processes of Globalisation and Circuits of Survival ............................. 104 6 Role of the State: Boundary Inscription Practices ................................ 105 Contents ix 7 Conclusion ............................................................................................. 106 8 S ummary ............................................................................................... 106 6   Women, Borders, and Violence ................................................................ 109 1 Transversal Spaces ................................................................................ 112 2 Autonomy and Exception ...................................................................... 114 3 P ermanent Transience ........................................................................... 116 4 Policing a Border ................................................................................... 116 5 Summary ............................................................................................... 119 Bibliography ................................................................................................... 121 Index ................................................................................................................ 131 Abbreviations ABSDF All Burma Students’ Democratic Front AFM Armed Forces of Malta AFP Australian Federal Police ANAO Australian National Audit Office BWU Burmese Women’s Union ECRI European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance EU European Union HRC Human Rights Council HRW Human Rights Watch IDP Internally Displaced Persons ICG International Crisis Group ICJ International Commission of Jurists IOM International Organization for Migration JRS Jesuit Refugee Service MFSS Ministry of Family and Social Services MJHA Ministry of Justice and Home Affairs MSF Médicins Sans Frontières NGO Non-Government Organization NLD National League for Democracy NSO National Statistics Office OAU Organization for African Unity SPDC State Peace and Development Council TIP Trafficking in Persons UN United Nations UNDP United Nations Development Program UNHCR United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees UNODC United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime UNOSOM United Nations Operation in Somalia USCRI US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants USDOS US Department of State xi Chapter 1 Women and Extra Legal Border Crossing Insecurities hover in a circle. Within a secure circle, there are insecure spaces; similarly there are insecure zones at the point where circles meet; within grand security little insecurities persist—little not to those who are insecure but to the custodians of grand security. A feminist perspective suggests a critical view of these grand perceptions, a concern for what passes as the small, and a willingness to stand the existing accounts on their heads. That can be done when women’s chronicles have been given priority in accounts of security. (Banerjee, 2010) Even the freest of free societies is unfree at the edge, where things and people go out and other people and things come in. Here, at the edge we submit to scrutiny, to inspection, or judgement. These people guarding these lines must tell us who we are. We must be passive, docile. To be otherwise is suspect, and at the frontier to come under suspicion is the worst of all possible crimes…. (Rushdie, 2002) 1   Introduction For the vast majority of the world’s women there is no legal migration from the Glob- al South to the Global North. Yet the absence of legal avenues for migration has not quelled the desire for global mobility—women still move across borders for a range of reasons. The effective target hardening of the wealthiest nations of the world of migrants from the poorest nations of the world has created a new (renewed) frontier of illegality: border crossing. Like many other forms of illegality and the attempts to police them, extra legal border crossing has significant gendered dimensions. This book explores women’s extra legal border crossing in the midst of some of the most intractable conflicts and contested border crossing regions of the world. The impos- sibility of legally crossing many borders is not specific to the experience of women. However, the experience of extra legal crossing is significantly different for women. S. Pickering, Women, Borders, and Violence, 1 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-0271-9_1, © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011