ABSTRACT
An important component of the politics of borders is the shifting of policing operations and border controls beyond the territorial boundaries of the states. Governments argue that people encountered in these spaces are outside the state’s territory and therefore do not have access to rights. States increasingly police international waters and even the territorial waters of foreign countries (on maritime interdiction: Ataner 2004; Barnes 2004; Hathaway 2006; Legomsky 2006; Pugh 2000, 2004; Rothwell 2002; Tauman 2002; Young 2003; UNHCR 2002a). Boats with migrants crossing the Caribbean toward the United States, the Mediterranean toward Europe and the Pacific toward Australia have become the targets of these policing operations. Distinctions provided by international law among different zones – territorial waters, contiguous zone and the high seas – as among different vessels are increasingly becoming blurred in common sovereign efforts to curb unauthorized migration. Policing takes place outside the sovereign space delimited by territorial waters, and includes the high seas and foreign territorial waters. Legal approaches have opened the space for policing the high seas, and even foreign waters, and provided the justification for the sovereign right to interdict beyond their international territorial borders. The borders of interception have thus shifted constantly toward ports of embarkation hindering any possibility to leave. How are these spaces constituted? What are their characteristics? This chapter analyzes maritime spaces located beyond the state territory. It studies maritime interdiction practices of the United States in the Caribbean and of European states in the Mediterranean. The emphasis here is on policing beyond borders and interception practices. Maritime spaces merit a special analytical category, as they are constituted under a special international framework, the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS 1982), applicable to all states. For the purpose of this inquiry three legal spaces that derive from the Law of the Sea are of interest – territorial waters, the high seas (international waters) and foreign territorial waters – to explore how policing and interdiction measures are justified beyond the state’s territory and how rights are limited.
