Border Crimes: Australia's War on Illicit Migrants.

• Jurisdiction: Australia
• Date: 01 August 2010
• Author: McCulloch, Jude

Border Crimes: Australia's War on Illicit Migrants

By Michael Grewcock

Sydney: Institute of Criminology Press, 2009

The book's title hints obliquely at its argument. In the lexicon of law enforcement and mainstream politics and criminology, border crimes are activities such as international terrorism, sex trafficking, money laundering and people smuggling. These transnational crimes are the focus of a whole swathe of new law enforcement, policy and legislative approaches, internationally and domestically. The dominant discourse assumes that these crimes have increased a pace with globalisation, are committed by highly organised criminal groups and represent a grave threat to global security. State and international responses have tended to blend national security and law enforcement to create various interconnecting wars on crime, drugs and terror. Border crimes in the title, however, is not a reference to transnational crime as commonly understood but instead to state actions, specifically Australia's 'war on illicit migrants'. The book's main argument 'is that through the systematic alienation, criminalization and abuse of unauthorized migrants, the Australian state has engaged in state crime' (p. 6). The author aims 'in identifying the state as a source of criminality, rather than protection ... to engage with the ongoing debates over migration policy as well as develop criminological...