Antje Missbach

This paper examines how contemporary ocean governance in the Andaman Sea operates as a technology of abjection, transforming maritime spaces into abject seascapes where irregularised migrants become trapped subjects of intensified state management: intercepted, punitively expelled and abandoned rather than rescued and disembarked. We demonstrate how South(east) Asian states exploit the juridical ambiguities of ocean space to enforce migration control while evading protection and rescue obligations. Through maritime interceptions that result in push-backs, delayed or deliberate non-assistance to boats in distress, and even illegal maritime deportations, state actors weaponise the ocean against migrants, creating zones of expulsion and prolonged strandedness at sea while maintaining plausible deniability of responsibility through sovereignty claims. The paper contributes to critical ocean governance debates by exposing how seemingly technical and humanitarian maritime policies, including search and rescue operations, function as bordering technologies. We term the pattern governing these abject seascapes haphazard oceanic governance : dispersed and often unilateral modes of sovereign power that exploit jurisdictional ambiguities at sea to evade rescue and protection obligations, remaining rooted in territorial paradigms of control and abandonment.

This article examines the criminalization of unauthorized border crossings in the Global South through an analysis of court cases connected to the facilitation of Rohingya maritime movements in Indonesia. While the arrival and onward movement of Rohingya refugees has been known to take place in Indonesia since at least 2009, local law enforcement has generally ignored those unauthorized movements and those facilitating them. From 2020 onwards, efforts to ‘stop the boats’ and the number of cases brought to court have increased significantly. By analysing the verdicts and sentences, this article identifies a distinctive pattern with regard to penalizing the facilitators either as human traffickers or human smugglers. It argues that the differential criminalization of facilitation in Indonesia is shaped not only by juridical considerations but also by wider socio-political considerations, international relations and domestic interests as well as the exercise of substantial discretion in implementation.

While the field of Southeast Asian studies in US, European, and Australian academies faces challenges and decline, the discipline has developed significantly in Southeast Asia and elsewhere in Asia. Given the apparent shift in academic investment, this examination of patterns in awarding prizes for work in the field over the past two decades seeks to understand where “prestige” in the field is located. Assuming that prizes are more than just recognition for a scholar’s individual work, and that they also act as indicators for the development of Southeast Asian studies in a broader sense, this analysis concludes that prestige continues to be bestowed predominantly to those studying, working, and publishing in countries outside the region, particularly the United States. Our analysis reveals that overwhelmingly awardees of the preeminent book prizes given for excellence in Southeast Asian studies completed their higher research degree in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia (91 percent) and are currently affiliated with institutions in Europe, the United States, and Australia (94 percent). Although the number of institutions based in Asia, both old and new, has increased in recent decades, these institutions do not yet award book prizes akin to those under study, nor is there a regional association that does. It may be that a lack of institutionalized collaboration across these regional centers is one of the factors that indirectly boosts the ongoing dominance of institutions based in the US, Europe, and Australia. Rather than explaining this absence, in this article we seek to raise questions about the current state of Southeast Asian studies, who is shaping global ideas about Southeast Asia, and who currently—and will in the future—constitute their “communities of assessment” (Appadurai 2000).

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The focus of this chapter are micro-ruptures resulting from refugee activism initiated for and by refugees in Malaysia and Indonesia. These two Southeast Asian countries have not acceded to the International Refugee Convention but host substantial numbers of refugees and are both affected by Australia’s externalised border and migration regime. Neither country has domestic asylum legislation, nor do they offer durable solutions or intend to offer effective refugee protection for the foreseeable future. This leaves the non-government sector with a large range of essential tasks in relation to refugees. In addition, refugees have also organised themselves along ethnic lines and according to causes and events. While refugee activism has contributed to political change in both countries, individual stakeholder contribution to change is often hard to measure. By contrasting selected cases of refugee activism, covering refugee-led activism and caretaker activism, as well as rights-based and humanitarian approaches, this chapter offers insights regarding the scope, visibility, impact and sustainability of different initiatives as well as unintended side-effects of refugee activism, such as ethnic competition, corruption and public backlashes.

Despite having hosted refugees for more than two decades, Indonesia does not offer local integration as a durable solution for refugees and grants only limited rights to them. Under Indonesian law refugees are not allowed to work and earn an income, leaving many of them dependent on minimal monthly stipends from charities and international organisations, their own savings, and remittances. This chapter focuses on how some refugees manage to earn a living while waiting for resettlement. Although violation of work prohibitions can have severe sentences and disciplinary measures, such as arrest and detention, more and more refugees engage in income-generation strategies that circumvent the prohibitions. Using qualitative interview data collected during fieldwork, this chapter presents three case studies of how refugees make a living in Indonesia. From these case studies and field observations of the Indonesian government’s growing preparedness to consider some form of work rights for refugees, usually framed as ‘livelihoods’ or ‘productivity empowerment’, this chapter concludes with a cautious optimism for positive change ahead.

This article examines a case in which three fishermen were sentenced for people smuggling after having rescued 99 refugees from their sinking ship near Indonesia. The analysis is grounded in the juxtaposition of three different sets of mobility rules – Indonesian migration law, customary law of the sea, and international law for search and rescue at sea. It argues that recent mobility restrictions at the Indonesian state level implemented to deter maritime movements are in violation of longer-standing local and international sets of mobility rules meant to protect lives at sea. The findings show a legal precedent that could cause potential non-state rescuers to abandon rescue to avoid state sanctions, while states may enjoy impunity for disregarding international law concerning the rescue of people in distress at sea.

By presenting the political engagements of a young refugee from Myanmar who was stuck in Indonesia for nine years, this article discusses the role, value, and importance of refugee writing. Refugees are prohibited from working in Indonesia. Any form of income-generation can result in serious pitfalls, including detention and other punishments. Writing—for international newspapers, blogs, and journals—presents a unique opportunity for earning money while also providing a platform for voicing refugee concerns and engaging in activism beyond borders. Yet, politically motivated writing also comes with certain risks, i.e., exposing the refugee authors to authorities. While this collaboratively written account portrays the struggles and the small and big successes in gaining a voice and communicating across borders of one refugee activist, it remains cautious in prescribing writing as an effective tool for all refugees stuck in transit, thus acknowledging also their ongoing destitution and precarity.

In the first decade of the 21st century, diaspora studies blossomed and produced a number of innovative conceptual changes in how to perceive migrant communities that maintain links with people in ...