Global Surveillance and Policing: Border, Security, Identity

Vol. 16 No. 3 (March, 2006) pp.230-232

GLOBAL SURVEILLANCE AND POLICING: BORDER, SECURITY, IDENTITY, by Elia Zureik and Mark B. Salter (eds). Devon, UK and Portland, Oregon: Willan Publishing, 2005. 272pp. Hardback. £45.00/$69.95. ISBN: 1-84392-161-8. Paper. £19.99/$34.95. ISBN: 1-84392-160-X.

Reviewed by H. Ron Davidson, Associate, Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw LLP. Email: hrondavidson [at] mayerbrownrowe.com. This review was not prepared on behalf of Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw LLP.

Elia Zureik and Mark B. Salter collected eclectic essays for their book, GLOBAL SURVEILLANCE AND POLICING: BORDERS, SECURITY, IDENTITY. Some of the selected essays fulfill the book’s broad purpose of offering “both a theoretical frame and empirical cases for the study of borders and the flow of personal information which are accessible to students and scholars in sociology, political science, geography and public administration who are concerned with state power, bureaucracies, borders and border management, and homeland security in an age of terror” (p.2).

Unfortunately, other essays, in particular John Torpey’s modified speech on whether America is an empire, fall outside the scope of the stated purpose of the book. (“Imperial Embrace? Identification and Constraints on Mobility in a Hegemonic Empire,” pp.157-169).

Written before the debate over President Bush’s “domestic spying” program and removed from the issues that lawyers, myself included, face in handling complicated civil liberties issues, GLOBAL SURVEILLANCE AND POLICING, nevertheless, presents a useful—albeit fragmented—conceptual framework for analyzing civil liberties in an age of increased surveillance. In particular, Gary Marx’s essay, “Some Conceptual Issues in the Study of Borders and Surveillance” (pp.11-29), provides a functional outline by explaining the “leaky” process of dividing the internal (e.g. a cell, body, group, or country) from the external. This dividing process continuously re-defines the self in response to physical, cultural and other changes.

Hélène Pellerin’s “Borders, Migration and Economic Integration: Towards a New Political Economy of Border” expands on Marx’s analysis by describing countries as quasi-unions and quasi-cartels, regulating the flow of labor and goods across borders with different levels of restrictions (pp.51-63). These restrictions, as Nancy Lewis explains (pp.97-111), change the natural equilibrium by forcing goods, labor or other resources to amass on one side of a border, which, in turn, creates an incentive for criminal gangs to smuggle goods or labor.

Some governments intend for their borders to be non-porous. For example, India, Israel, Botswana, Saudi Arabia, and Thailand attempted to limit the flow of goods and labor by erecting fences along their borders. As John W. Donaldson notes in his chapter [*231] (pp.173-191), these fences redefined the relationship between the internal and the other. The process, however, also has an effect on society as Mark Salter explains in his piece. We are all now familiar with certain rites of passage, for example waiting in line at passport control, that governments require as a means of regulating their borders, whether airports or other lines of demarcation (pp.36-49).

But there is only so much a government can do to prevent infiltration. As Katja Franko Aas explains (pp.194-211), the border is everywhere, and erecting a fence cannot end the process of separating the internal from the external. Instead, governments resort to regulating citizens within their borders through new technologies as David Lyon (pp.66-80) and Benjamin Muller (pp.83-93) briefly describe. Countries, for example, require residents to have identification cards (p.66) and rely on biometrics where “the body becomes [a] password” (p.84).

Jonathan Finn begins the “case study” portion of the book by describing the American experience of control (pp.139-154), concluding perhaps prematurely that the system was intended to be “overtly discriminatory.” Willem Mass, in “Freedom of Movement Inside ‘Fortress Europe,’” then provides a more detailed analysis of the European experience. (pp.233-245)

The most interesting case study, albeit one that does not seem directly relevant to the other essays in the book, comes from Colin Bennett (pp.113-133), who offers a unique look at how American and European authorities track information about airline passengers.

Thus, each essay in GLOBAL SURVEILLANCE AND POLICING forms a piece of a larger puzzle about the nature of borders, security and identity. Unfortunately, the puzzle is a difficult one to assemble, making the book less accessible than it could have been had Zureik and Salter linked and organized the wide-ranging ideas in a more coherent manner.

As a mere lawyer, I profess no specialized abilities to question the methodologies of the contributing social scientists. Nevertheless, some techniques described in the book strike me as downright odd. Bennett, for example, seems to place too much reliance on responses that airline and government representatives provided him. He notes, “From my brief interviews with representatives from these organizations, I became convinced that the protection of the personal information of travelers was something that each took very seriously” (p.131). At no point does Bennett test the alternative hypothesis that these representatives are just good public relations specialists.

Lyon, meanwhile, engages in a weak guilt-by-association argument. He disagrees with a proposed British identity card program, noting “If the UK were to succeed in implementing its proposed card, it would be joining a list of nations, none of which is taken to be exemplary in its pursuits of racial and ethnic equality” (p.79). Lyon, however, fails to explain how the countries with [*232] such a program (namely, Cambodia, Egypt, Israel, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Russia, Spain and Thailand) are otherwise similar to the United Kingdom, thus leaving the reader unsure of a causal link between the use of the identity cards and racial or ethnic discrimination.

Finally, Don Flynn, like other contributors, is too quick, in my opinion, to allege racism. Flynn notes, “It must be clear that . . . racism and restriction remain present within the new techniques of [border] management, in the form of ‘institutional racism’ and the cultural focus on the values of citizenship, which generate inevitable tensions between administrators and those whose cultural stance is considered problematic” (pp.215-230). To some, Flynn’s observations “must be clear,” but, absent any evidence of discriminatory intent (none of which is provided), I am hesitant to conclude that racism and not national security induces the current British government to act is it does.

If Zureik and Salter’s book is, as it claims to be, the first “anthology on this subject” (p.2), then it will serve as a useful first step towards gathering diverse views about the nature of borders. With the passage of time and increased focus on this issue, future anthologies will no doubt help smooth out some of the wrinkles that remain.

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