Francisco Eduardo Lemos de Matos; Roberto Vilchez Yamato
Rev. Carta Inter., Belo Horizonte, v. 20, n. 2, e1545, 2025
1-27
Playing with maritime lines and
migrant lives: SARs* and Australian
extraterritorial bordering practices at sea
Manipulando linhas marítimas e vidas
migrantes: SARs
*
as práticas de fronteirização
extraterritorial australianas no mar
Manipulando líneas marítimas y
vidas migrantes: SAR
*
y las prácticas
de fronterización extraterritorial
australianas en el mar
DOI: 10.21530/ci.v20n2.2025.1545
Francisco Eduardo Lemos de Matos
1, 2
Roberto Vilchez Yamato
3, 4
∗ The acronym “SARs” refers here to “Search and Rescue regions”, as they are
internationally conceived within the international regime established by the
1974 Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue. We will further comment
SARs throughout this article.
1 (PhD) in International Relations from the Institute of International Relations
(IRI), Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio). Postdoctoral
Researcher at IRI/PUC-Rio.(edumatos@hotmail.com). ORCID: https://orcid.
org/0000-0003-4214-5382.
2 The author acknowledges the support of the Carlos Chagas Filho Foundation
for Research Support of the State of Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ) through the
Postdoctoral Program Nota 10 (Process No. E-26/205.758/2022). Without this
funding, the research would not have been possible.
3 PhD in International Relations from IRI/PUC-RIO. Associate Professor at the
Institute of International Relations (IRI) of the Pontifical Catholic University
of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio). (robertoyamato@puc-rio.br). ORCID: https://
orcid.org/0000-0002-0609-3688.
4 The author would like to thank the Carlos Chagas Filho Foundation for Research
Support of the State of Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ) for its support through the Young
Scientist of Our State Grant (JCNE), process no. E -26/201.240/2022, and the
National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) for its
support through the Research Productivity Grant (PQ), process no. 306573/2023-7.
Artigo submetido em 20/12/2024 e aprovado em 24/10/2025.
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ISSN 2526-9038
Playing with maritime lines and migrant lives: SARs and Australian extraterritorial bordering [...]
Rev. Carta Inter., Belo Horizonte, v. 20, n. 2, e1545, 2025
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Abstract
This article examines how Australia’s maritime migration control practices reveal the strategic
manipulation of Search and Rescue (SAR) regions for extraterritorial border enforcement.
Whilst SAR zones were originally conceived as humanitarian mechanisms, they have been
transformed into instruments of migration control and sovereign bordering practices. Despite
international human rights and refugee regimes, the protection of migrants at sea remains
contingent upon sovereign discretion rather than universal rights. The article argues that the
legalisation of maritime spaces has not led to accountability but rather enabled a ‘sovereign
game’ in which states strategically navigate jurisdictional boundaries, manipulate rescue
protocols, and circumvent responsibilities, thereby enacting juridical limbo at sea. These
practices exemplify necropolitical dynamics where human lives are subjected to strategic
bordering practices and, not uncommonly, abandoned to die at sea.
Keywords: Maritime migration control, Extraterritoriality, Sovereignty, Sea, Mobility.
Resumo
Este artigo examina como as práticas australianas de controle de migração marítima revelam
a manipulação estratégica das regiões de Busca e Salvamento (SAR) para fiscalização
extraterritorial de fronteiras. Embora as zonas SAR tenham sido originalmente concebidas
como mecanismos humanitários, foram transformadas em instrumentos de controle migratório
e práticas de fronteirização soberana. Apesar dos regimes internacionais de direitos humanos
e de refugiados, a proteção de migrantes no mar permanece contingente à discricionariedade
soberana, em vez de direitos universais. O artigo argumenta que a legalização dos espaços
marítimos não resultou em responsabilização, mas sim permitiu um ‘jogo soberano’ em
que os Estados navegam estrategicamente por limites jurisdicionais, manipulam protocolos
de resgate e evadem responsabilidades, instituindo limbos jurídicos no mar. Estas práticas
exemplificam dinâmicas necropolíticas em que vidas humanas são submetidas a estratégias
de fronteirização e, não raramente, abandonadas para morrerem no mar.
Palavras-chave: Controle migratório marítimo, Extraterritorialidade, Soberania, Mar,
mobilidade.
Resumen
Este artículo examina cómo las prácticas australianas de control migratorio marítimo
evidencian la manipulación estratégica de las regiones de Búsqueda y Salvamento (SAR)
para el control fronterizo extraterritorial. Aunque las zonas SAR fueron originalmente
concebidas como mecanismos humanitarios, han sido transformadas en instrumentos de
control migratorio y en prácticas de fronterización soberana. A pesar de los regímenes
internacionales de derechos humanos y, en lugar de a derechos universales. El artículo
Francisco Eduardo Lemos de Matos; Roberto Vilchez Yamato
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argumenta que la legalización de los espacios marítimos no ha resultado en rendición
de cuentas, sino que ha habilitado un ‘juego soberano’ en el que los Estados navegan
estratégicamente por los límites jurisdiccionales, manipulan protocolos de rescate y evaden
responsabilidades, creando limbos jurídicos en el mar. Estas prácticas ejemplifican dinámicas
necropolíticas en las que vidas humanas son sometidas a estrategias de fronterización y,
no raramente, abandonadas para morir en el mar.
Palabras clave: Control migratorio marítimo, Extraterritorialidad, Soberanía, Mar, Movilidad.
Introduction
Australia’s maritime migration control practices, particularly Operation
Sovereign Borders (OSB), exemplify the “sovereign game” of nation-states operating
in extraterritorial maritime spaces. This sovereign exercise involves intercepting
vessels carrying migrants and refugees within Search and Rescue (SAR) zones—
spaces of international responsibility rather than Australian sovereign territory.
Such practices extend state sovereignty at sea, transforming SARs, originally
intended to protect life, into de facto border-control checkpoints. By examining
Australia’s extraterritorial bordering and migration control in international waters,
this article critically interrogates the limitations of international law and policy
in contemporary global governance.
Historically, state sovereignty has been anchored in terrestrial territory. In
the maritime domain, however, states strategically project this sovereignty onto
international seas, exploiting the imprecision of maritime boundaries to evade
responsibility and redefine what is “inside” and “outside” the national territory.
The modern international system continues to operate under a state-centric
territorial logic that legitimises a renewed sovereign game. Consequently, the
protection of migrants and refugees at sea becomes contingent on the strategic
sovereign practices of nation-states, which manipulate SAR rules to achieve
border control objectives, leaving individuals vulnerable and abandoned (Salter
2012; Vaughan-Williams 2015).
Even following the emergence of international human rights and refugee
protection regimes, these frameworks operate within an international legal and
political grammar fundamentally anchored to a state-centric, terrestrial logic. The
recognition of universal human rights and crimes against humanity constitutes a
Playing with maritime lines and migrant lives: SARs and Australian extraterritorial bordering [...]
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systemic challenge to state sovereignty (Lauterpacht 1968; Donnelly 2007; Reus-
Smit 2001). Yet the premise that terrestrial space is the “mythological mother”
of international law and order endures (Schmitt 2003). Critical thinking about
sovereignty at sea reveals how extraterritorial bordering and migration control
exemplify the “sovereign game” in maritime spaces (Parker and Vaughan-Williams
et al. 2009; Parker and Vaughan-Williams 2012).
SAR zones, established under conventions such as SOLAS and SAR, assign
coastal states primary responsibility for responding to distress calls. While
designed to protect life, these zones are susceptible to strategic appropriation for
extraterritorial border control. In this environment, the international protection
of migrants and refugees depends on the sovereign manoeuvres of nation-states.
Legalised infrastructures allow states to navigate, exploit, or avoid international
responsibilities, often leaving migrants abandoned at sea (Agamben 1998 ; Vaughan-
Williams 2015; Salter 2012; Minca and Vaughan-Williams 2012; Gammeltoft-
Hansen and Aalberts 2018; Aalberts and Gammeltoft-Hansen 2018).
SAR zones exemplify a sovereign game of legalised international politics,
combining legalisation and politicisation. States exercise authority through sovereign
vessels and extraterritorial operations, operationalising border control at sea. In
Australia, these practices displace national border management to extraterritorial
maritime spaces, demonstrating the infrastructural capacity of the international
system to enable sovereign strategies while maintaining the illusion of legality
(Schmitt 2003; Parker and Vaughan-Williams 2012).
The international constitution of SAR regions does not guarantee the protection
of migrants or refugees. Instead, it establishes a legalised political arena in which
states can exercise extraterritorial sovereignty, strategically navigating maritime
boundaries while leaving lives at risk (Vaughan-Williams 2015; Salter 2012). This
is evident in the Mediterranean context: in 2023, UNHCR and IOM reported over
200,000 attempted crossings from Algeria, Libya, and Tunisia to Europe, with
more than 3,155 fatalities or disappearances at sea (UNHCR and IOM 2023).
In the Australian context, Operation Sovereign Borders illustrates the sovereign
stakes in maritime migration control. According to the Refugee Council of Australia,
between 2013 and February 2024,5 OSB led to 23 boats with 1,309 arrivals, 47
boats with 1,121 people intercepted and returned, and 112 boats with 3,651
individuals disrupted in cooperation with foreign states. These figures underscore
5 Information available at: https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/asylum-boats-statistics/, last accessed on
December 04, 2024.
Francisco Eduardo Lemos de Matos; Roberto Vilchez Yamato
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the extraterritorial dimension of sovereign power over maritime crossings and
the human consequences of strategic border management.
The MV Tampa incident and OSB further demonstrate how sovereignty is
performatively extended beyond land through legal, spatial, and institutional
mechanisms. Maritime rescue regimes, designed to save lives, are transformed
into instruments of border governance, revealing the persistence of a terrestrial
logic within international law. Cartographically, this is reinforced by the 2022 UN
Map of the World (Figure 2), where land—continents and islands—is delimited
and named as loci of political authority, while oceans appear undifferentiated,
symbolising ungoverned spaces (Walker 2010; Schmitt 2003). Such representations
perpetuate a land-centric international imagination, rendering the sea politically
invisible. Examining empirical cases such as OSB and Tampa reveals the sea as
a contested space of sovereignty, authority, and life.
This article is organised into four main sections. The first analyses Australia’s
extraterritorial maritime practices through the cases of the MV Tampa and
Operation Sovereign Borders. The second examines the conceptual and
cartographic dimensions, interrogating the terrestrial bias of international political
imagination. The third addresses the legal architecture of SAR zones and their
instrumentalisation for sovereign border control. The final section synthesises the
argument, connecting empirical and theoretical insights to the broader problems
of sovereignty, international law, and human rights protection at sea.
By focusing on the maritime dimension, this article challenges assumptions of
state sovereignty tied exclusively to land. It demonstrates that international law,
while appearing universal, is mediated through state-centric and territorial logics
that can enable the strategic manipulation of extraterritorial spaces. Australia’s
practices at sea, alongside Mediterranean migration crises, illustrate that the
protection of human life remains contingent upon sovereign interests rather than
legal obligations. Consequently, examining maritime sovereignty and bordering
practices provides critical insight into the enduring gaps between legal norms,
human rights, and the lived realities of migrants and refugees.
In conclusion, the Australian case highlights how the modern international order
operationalises state-centric sovereignty through extraterritorial maritime spaces.
SAR zones, intended for rescue, are transformed into instruments of border control,
leaving migrants vulnerable and exposed. The terrestrial bias of international law
and political imagination obscures the political significance of the sea, permitting
states to “play” their sovereign game while circumventing accountability. Addressing
these challenges requires rethinking maritime sovereignty, the conceptualisation
Playing with maritime lines and migrant lives: SARs and Australian extraterritorial bordering [...]
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of international territory, and the protection of human rights beyond land-based
frameworks, recognising the sea as a vital site of power, law, and life.
Australian extraterritorial bordering practices at sea
In 2001, the Norwegian-flagged MV Tampa responded to Australian search
and rescue authorities’ request to investigate a distress call from an Indonesian
vessel carrying 433 Afghan refugees. The Tampa rescued them approximately
75 nautical miles off Christmas Island, an Australian territory. Initially heading
for Indonesia, the ship’s captain, Rinnan, changed course under pressure from
the refugees, who were in precarious health and demanded to reach Australian
territory. He sent distress calls and decided to sail to Christmas Island’s harbour.
When Captain Rinnan requested entry to Australian territorial waters, authorities
immediately denied permission. He proceeded regardless, only to be intercepted by
Australian armed forces who seized control of the ship. The 433 Afghan refugees
were eventually transferred to New Zealand and Nauru through an agreement
with the Australian government (Barnes, 2004; Gammeltoft-Hansen, 2008). This
incident precipitated Australia’s “Pacific Solution”, a policy aimed at intercepting
maritime migrants and refugees and transferring them to offshore island states
for migration control and asylum processing (Willheim 2003 ; Barnes 2004; Pugh
2004; Kneebone 2006 , Gammeltoft-Hansen and Aalberts 2018).
Australia’s migration control apparatus represents a paradigmatic case of how
states strategically externalise their international maritime borders and obligations.
This involves the systematic deployment of legal, spatial, and institutional
mechanisms to perform sovereign bordering practices (Parker and Vaughan-Williams
et al., 2009; 2012). Scholars such as Mountz (2011) and Walters (2006) contend that
border control is increasingly detached from territorial limits, effectively relocating
sovereignty to offshore and extraterritorial zones. The “Pacific Solution” (2001) and
its subsequent, militarised reconfiguration as “Operation Sovereign Borders” (OSB)
(2013) embody this shift. These policies established offshore detention regimes
on Nauru and Manus Island—sites deliberately excised from Australia’s legal
migration zone. This political and legal manoeuvre was engineered to decouple
physical arrival from legal entry, thereby preventing asylum seekers arriving by sea
from lodging claims under Australian law and, crucially, from circumventing both
domestic and international obligations. This approach mirrors a broader global
trend towards outsourcing migration control, evidenced by similar deterrence and
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containment mechanisms adopted by the European Union (Scarpello, 2019) and
replicated by the United Kingdom’s “stop the boats” policy.
“Operation Sovereign Borders” introduced a militarised, whole-of-government
approach to irregular maritime migration, reflecting what Vaughan-Williams (2015)
describes as the “everywhere border”—a dispersed, mobile, and deterritorialised
assemblage of control. Key instruments included naval forces to intercept and
forcibly return vessels (“turnbacks”), strategic secrecy to withhold information from
public scrutiny, and robust communication campaigns reinforcing zero-tolerance
stances. Following Mountz’s (2010) analysis of offshore carceral geographies, this
approach transformed international maritime space into zones of containment,
exclusion, and bordering practices (Parker and Vaughan-Williams 2012; Salter,
2012; Vaughan-Williams 2015), where state power operates in legally ambiguous
international contexts, shielded from judicial oversight. Read alongside broader
global trends identified by Menjívar (2014), Australia’s policies reveal an evolving
architecture of migration deterrence that blurs distinctions between international
humanitarian protection and national security. Sovereignty, in this framework, is
no longer confined to territorial national borders but continuously rearticulated
across mobile, fragmented, and outsourced legalised international spatial regimes.
In 2014, an Australian military vessel was captured on ABC News television
towing a small lifeboat back into Indonesian waters (ABC News Australia 2014
a; 2014b). The dinghy was towed for three hours before drifting into a bay near
Kebumen village. Refugees aboard were compelled to jump into treacherous riptides
and swim nearly thirty metres to shore (Coddington 2018). This occurred a year
after the establishment of Operation Sovereign Borders, a military border control
programme designed to reduce the number of migrants and refugees arriving by boat.
6
Particularly noteworthy were the towing operations of intercepted boats returned
to Indonesian waters without a clear delineation of whether interception occurred
within Australian territorial or extraterritorial space. These bordering operations
(Parker and Vaughan-Williams 2012) are performed variably in accordance with
maritime boundaries established by the United Nations Convention on the Law of
the Sea (UNCLOS) and subsequently by the International Convention for the Safety
of Life at Sea (SOLAS) and the Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue (SAR).
Australia’s policy of non-disclosure of interception locations creates critical
hurdles for legal experts attempting to assess compliance with international law.
This calculated ambiguity, alongside complex decision-making regarding distress
6 For more (detailed) information, see the Refugee Council of Australia’s webpage available at: https://www.
refugeecouncil.org.au/asylum-boats-statistics/, last accessed on December 04, 2024.
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declarations, suggests that the interdiction of migrants’ vessels serves as a form
of strategic, legally sanctioned political action. However, if migrant vessels are
deemed to be in danger, they fall under the strictures of the SAR Convention
(Coddington 2008). Therefore, any Australian-flagged vessel claiming to operate
within SAR-governed waters, or asserting a dinghy is in danger, is legally bound
by international maritime law to deliver all rescued individuals from the high
seas to a certified place of safety.
The SAR Convention grants Australia the authority to intercept vessels
deemed to be in distress within its SAR region. By patrolling and conducting
searches along the border with Indonesia’s SAR region (Parker and Vaughan-
Williams 2012), Australia performatively engages in “borderwork” (Rumford
2012) to disrupt migrant vessels. Furthermore, under SOLAS and SAR, rescued
individuals must be disembarked at the nearest coastal port. Given the proximity
of the SAR boundary to Indonesian ports (see Figure 1), Australia strategically
anticipates its migration control by extraterritorially returning or reorienting
migrant boats to Indonesian territory.
Figure 1: IMO Maritime SAR Regions
7
7 Available at: https://www.dco.uscg.mil/Portals/9/CG-5R/nsarc/IMO%20Maritime%20SAR%20Regions.pdf.
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The 2001 Tampa case offers a paradigmatic illustration of the strategic
manipulation inherent in contemporary border governance. This incident unfolded
amid Australia’s implementation of the “Pacific Solution”, a policy designed to
deter irregular maritime arrivals by relocating asylum processing to offshore
facilities. A central feature of this policy was a significant legalised political
manoeuvre: the excision of specific Australian islands—and subsequently, the
entire Australian territory—from the national “migration zone”. This spatial-legal
reconfiguration meant that individuals arriving on excised islands without valid
visas were not legally deemed to have “arrived” in Australia under immigration
law. Consequently, these persons became ineligible to claim protection onshore
and were subjected to detention and processing in extraterritorial facilities,
primarily on Nauru and Manus Island. This strategic severance of the link
between physical presence and legal arrival produced an international juridical
limbo—or space of a-legality (Lindahl 2013)—at sea.8
The Tampa case demonstrates the state’s sovereign capacity to deploy law as a
spatial technology of power. By creatively reinterpreting concepts of territory and
sovereignty, the state systematically evaded international obligations, particularly
those associated with the 1951 Refugee Convention, while simultaneously
performing bordering practices and maintaining effective control over extraterritorial
migration flows. It underscores how international maritime and terrestrial national
borders are intricately interwoven in contemporary statecraft. Borders are revealed
not as mere fixed geographical demarcations, or ‘lines in the sand’ (Parker and
Vaughan-Williams et al., 2009), but as a plastic construct involving numerous
international bordering practices (Parker and Vaughan-Williams 2012; Minca
and Vaughan-Williams 2012; Salter, 2012) and borderwork (Rumford, 2012). This
plasticity allows borders to be performatively extended, enabling states to play
the international sovereign game strategically.
8 For Hans Lindahl (2013: 43), a-legality insinuates that every concrete legal order is fundamentally (de)limited
in spatial, temporal, subjective and material terms, insinuating, moreover, the limits and fault lines of a legal
order. In other words, it insinuates that legal order has an outside – which is not only constitutive, but also
strange and indeterminate. For him, the politics of a-legality is a politics that responds to that which belongs
“to an outside that must be protected as an outside” (Lindahl, 2013, p. 254). Our suggestion in this article is
that the Australian case provides traces of this politics of abandoning (Agamben, 1998; Salter, 2012) migrant
lives at sea to the outside of the international protection of human rights.
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Displacing the telluric international political imagination
The UN Geospatial (2022) world map (Figure 2) reinforces two correlated
assumptions of the modern international political world and imagination. Firstly, it
corroborates the telluric, land-based character of the modern international nomos
of the earth, as Carl Schmitt (2003, 2015) has mythologically articulated. Secondly,
it naturalises the nation-state form (Walker 1993, 2010) and its accompanying
assumptions about fundamental articulations between the sovereign state, the
nation, and the national population and territory. As Hedley Bull (2002) would
have it, this is the world map of the global(ised) society of states. According
to Bull (2002, 8), each state possesses a government and asserts sovereignty
over a particular portion of the earth’s surface and a particular segment of the
human population. Thus, despite its invisibility in the UN’s map, there is yet
another correlated assumption of the modern international political imagination
accompanying that picture of the world: the proper space of and for the individual
human being.
Figure 2: Map of the World, UN Geospatial (2022)9
!
!
!
!
!
M A P O F T H E W O R L D
The boundar ies and n ame s s how n and the desi gna tio ns used on t his m ap do not imp ly off icial endo rse men t o r a ccep tan ce by the Un ited Natio ns.
Fin al boundary between the Repub lic of Sudan an d t he Republi c of Sou th Sudan has not ye t been de ter min ed.
Dot ted li ne represe nts appr oxim ately th e L ine of Contr ol in Jam mu and K ash mir agr eed upon by In dia and P aki stan. T he fin al stat us of Jam mu and K ash mir has n ot yet been agr eed upon by the pa rti es.
A di spu te exi sts bet ween the Gov ernments of Argen tin a a nd the Uni ted Ki ngdom of Gre at B rit ain and N ort hern Ir eland concer nin g s ove rei gnt y ov er the Fa lkl and Is lands (M alv inas ).
*No n-S elf -Go ver ning Terri tory
9 Map of the world, UN Geospatial (2022), available at: https://www.un.org/geospatial/content/map-world,
last accessed on 28/11/2024.
Francisco Eduardo Lemos de Matos; Roberto Vilchez Yamato
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As Walker (1993) argues, the inside of the state is fundamentally naturalised
as the proper space for the individual within the modern international political
world. This world constitutes a scalar, onto-political formation comprising
an international system of nation-states, which are themselves composed of
citizen-subjects (Walker 2010). The modern international political world enacts
a ‘triple exceptionalism’ (Walker 2004, 248), managing the tension between
universality and particularity, unity and plurality. This exceptionalism negatively
(Fitzpatrick 2001; Yamato 2014) normalises the spatial, temporal, and subjective
properties of the modern international system, the nation-state, and the individual
citizen-subject (Walker 2010). Within this multi-scalar architecture of divided
subjectivities (Walker 2018), a core international rule (Schmitt 2005) dictates
that the individual must be a national citizen of one of the system’s constituent
nation-states (Walker 2010).
The crucial implication is that the modern international political world
architectonically naturalises a system-society of sovereign nation-states, composed,
in turn, of individual national citizens. This presupposes that the proper space
for the individual is within their particular nation-state, positioning internal state-
citizen relations as a non-international issue. This historical conditioning led to
a pervasive methodological nationalism in the conventional history of human
rights. Following Hannah Arendt’s famous formulation (2012), a fundamental
correlation exists between the sovereign nation-state form and the effective
protection of individual human rights. Consequently, the decline or failure of the
sovereign nation-state is correlated with the decline, failure, or, indeed, the end
of individual human rights (Arendt 2012). Problems such as denationalisation,
statelessness, genocide, and forced migration are not only interconnected. Still,
they are fundamentally linked to the rupture of domestic relations between the
sovereign nation-state and its individual national citizens.
Indeed, the international human rights and refugee regimes were correlated
responses to these grave problems, which seriously challenged the constitutional
architecture of international society during the Second World War (Arendt 2012;
Donnelly 2007; Haddad 2008). As Monica Herz and Roberto Yamato (2018)
observed, the emergence of those international regimes marked a profound
transformation of international society’s constitutional structure (Reus-Smit 1999,
2001) and its laws governing violence. In close articulation with the emergence
of international criminal law and international tribunals, the reconstruction of
international humanitarian law, and the new international regime of the use of
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force based on the UN Charter, the international regimes of human rights and
refugee protection formally recognised the individual human being as both a proper
object and proper subject of international law and international relations (Herz
and Yamato, 2018). Even if only complementarily, the international community
had now become an appropriate space for the individual human being and her
(inter)national protection (Teitel 2011; Ferris 2011).
The international recognition of crimes against humanity and universal
human rights entailed a fundamental revision of the traditional concept of state
sovereignty and related assumptions about non-intervention, domestic jurisdiction,
and how a sovereign nation-state must legally and legitimately treat its own
national citizens within its territory (Donnelly 2007; Yamato 2014). Conversely,
the international regime establishing the non-refoulement (non-return) rule and
the international protection of refugees and their fundamental human rights meant
that the sovereign nation-state had to (inter)nationally reconsider how it would
control its borders and receive and protect forced international migrants—that
is, non-national-citizens, refugees, and stateless individual human beings fleeing
persecution and grave human rights violations elsewhere and coming into its
sovereign territory and domestic jurisdiction (Haddad 2008; Jubilut 2007).
However, despite these significant and profound transformations, a particular
assumption and characteristic of the modern international order —its land-based
character—remains naturalised and unproblematised. After all, paraphrasing
Schmitt (2003), the terrestrial space of the earth is the mythological mother
of (inter)national law and order. Indissociable from the modern international
political world and its accompanying nation-state form, the telluric nature of
this globalised political order still provides the naturalised ground and condition
of possibility for the lines, borders, and names internationally conditioning and
framing that Map of the World (Figure 2) drawn by the UN Geospatial (2022). But
what would happen if we moved from the delimited and named white continents
and islands of that world map towards its light-blue, unnamed, and undelimited
‘wet ontologies’ (Steinberg and Peters 2015) and spaces? What would happen if
we displaced critical thinking on international human rights and international
protection of migrants and refugees towards the extraterritorial maritime spaces
of the globe?
Moving from land to sea, this article aims to draw attention to and rethink the
limits and fault lines (Lindahl 2013) of international protection for migrants and
refugees in the maritime spaces of the earth. For this purpose, we draw attention
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to particular cases involving Australia and its sovereign bordering practices and
mobility controls in the Indian Ocean and the Timor Sea. By focusing on these
cases, where the intensity of such international displacements is amplified by
the provisions of the 1974 International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea
and the 1979 Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue, this article seeks to
illuminate the international legal and political infrastructure and the dynamics of
sovereign strategies (Gammeltoft-Hansen and Aalberts 2018), bordering practices
(Parker and Vaughan-Williams 2012), and mobility control enabled by maritime
Search and Rescue Regions (SARs) and its accompanying assumptions about the
modern international political world.
More specifically, we examine Australian extraterritorial strategies, bordering
practices, and migration control within the sovereign game (Gammeltoft-Hansen
and Aalberts 2018), enabled by the international playboard composed of maritime
SARs. These issues generally fall within the broader framework of the 1982 United
Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which governs a wide range of ocean-
based activities. However, examining the human rights abuses documented in
those Australian cases reveals a disturbing trend: the international protection
of migrants’ and refugees’ human rights at the high seas is contingent upon the
arbitrary will of sovereign nation-states. Moreover, historical evidence suggests that
there is no effective international obligation, institution, or mechanism to uphold
those (alleged) universal rights in such extraterritorial maritime environments,
leaving individual human beings at the mercy of governmental discretion.
SARs and the international sovereign game at sea
In 1956, the first UN Conference on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS I) took place,
resulting in four international conventions (1958-1960).10 In 1960, with no new
agreements in place, the second UN Conference on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS
II) excluded developing nations from participating in the discussions. In 1962,
the Convention on the High Seas entered into force. In 1964, the Convention on
the Territorial Sea and Contiguous Zone and the Continental Shelf entered into
force. In 1966, the Convention on Fishing and Conservation of Living Resources
10 One on the Territorial Sea and Contiguous Zone; a second one on the Continental Shelf; a third on the High
Seas and Fishing; and a fourth on the Conservation of Living Resources of the High Seas.
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of the High Seas entered into force (Schoolmeester and Baker 2008). In 1973,
the third UN Conference on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS III) initiated a lengthy
process that culminated in 1982 with the adoption of the UN Convention on the
Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which superseded the four 1958-1960 treaties and
entered into force in 1994. Currently, 160 states and the European Union are
parties to the UNCLOS. In addition, 18 states have signed but not yet ratified
the Convention.11
The regulation of maritime mobility gained significant traction after the Second
World War, coinciding with the onset of the Cold War and the establishment of
the UN. Crucially, the sea has since been organised based on a territorial, telluric
international political imagination. This historical context is fundamental to
interpreting the sovereign strategies observed in the Australian cases of migrants
and refugees traversing the Indian Ocean and Timor Sea. The inhospitable maritime
spaces migrants cross are geometrically delimited by sovereign international lines
that enable nation-states to engage in various strategic practices in accordance
with international conventions and laws.
Paraphrasing Gammeltoft-Hansen and Aalberts (2018), the legalisation of
maritime spaces established a new international legalised political game. This game
also facilitated a form of politicisation in which sovereign states are authorised (or
at least not explicitly prohibited) to enact creatively and strategically extraterritorial
bordering practices at sea (Parker and Vaughan-Williams 2012). These practices
substantiate the phenomenon of border externalisation critically analysed by
Cobarrubias et al. (2023), who contend that states project their migration control
power far beyond their geographic boundaries, thereby transforming the sea into
a diffuse zone of control.
Maritime regions exhibit diverse legalised political frameworks, jurisdictional
regimes and state practices. The picture below (Figure 3), borrowed from Elizabeth
Havice (2018), illustrates how these legal regions are internationally delimited and
organised. According to the UNCLOS, for instance, internal waters are defined
as those waters situated landward of the baseline from which the breadth of the
territorial sea is measured. Coastal states exercise complete sovereignty over their
internal waters, treating them as an extension of their land territory. Concerning
the territorial sea, coastal states may claim a maritime zone extending up to twelve
nautical miles from their baselines. The coastal state exercises sovereignty over
11 Schoolmeester & Baker. 2008.
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the sea, airspace, seabed, and subsoil within this zone. In contrast, the Exclusive
Economic Zone (EEZ), a novel concept codified by UNCLOS, starkly contrasts
with other maritime zones that have historical roots in earlier international law.
Coastal states are empowered to claim an EEZ extending 200 nautical miles from
their baselines. Within this zone, the coastal state exercises exclusive rights to
exploit or conserve all resources, both living (e.g., fish) and non-living (e.g., oil
and natural gas), located within the water column on the seabed or beneath it
(Schoolmeester and Baker 2008). Beyond the EEZ, paraphrasing Schmitt (2003),
there is no sovereignty on the High Seas.
Figure 3. Ocean zones and features of sovereignty over highly migratory species
Source: Modified from Schoolmeester et al. (2011), original figure available at: https://www.grida.no/publications/206.
(The colour figure is available online.) In Havice (2018).
The international legal framework governing maritime spaces worldwide
establishes a complex map of legal, political, and even negatively defined sovereign
areas. The high seas, for instance, are legally defined as a space beyond the
territorial seas of sovereign states, devoid of national sovereignty (Aalberts and
Gammeltoft-Hansen 2014). However, the legal regime governing the high seas
imposes several critical obligations, ranging from authorising universal jurisdiction
for combating piracy to upholding the fundamental ethical principle of providing
assistance to individuals in distress at sea (Aalberts and Gammeltoft-Hansen
2014). Crucially, a specific search and rescue protocol was established for the
high seas through two key 1974 International Conventions: the International
Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) and the Convention on Maritime
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Search and Rescue (SAR Convention). These instruments aimed to establish
mechanisms for identifying the coastal state responsible for authorising landings
following search and rescue operations. However, significant amendments to
these conventions did not come into force until 2006.
SOLAS serves as the primary instrument governing ship safety. Under the
1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), every state
is obligated to require the master of its flag vessels to “render assistance to
any person in danger of being lost at sea” and to “rescue persons in distress
at sea as soon as possible upon being informed of their need for assistance”12.
SOLAS subsequently underwent amendments to enhance specificity regarding the
rescue of individuals on the high seas and their requisite disembarkation. In this
context, coastal states must assist both official and private vessels in distress and
must maintain search-and-rescue services. As Aalberts and Gammeltoft-Hansen
(2014, 442) emphasise, SOLAS establishes “the legal duty to render assistance
to migrants and others lost at sea and for coastal states to disembark those
rescued at a place of safety”. This international obligation to assist is extensive,
applying not only within the territorial sea or the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ)
but also, critically, on the High Seas. Nevertheless, the precise contours of this
international obligation on the High Seas remain complex and ambiguous. This
inherent ambiguity deliberately leaves considerable space for sovereign, creative,
and strategic practices by states, even when these are enacted in extraterritorial
maritime spaces. It is precisely this strategic use of legal ambiguity that constitutes
the focus of our critical enquiry.
The SAR Convention regulates global maritime spaces by dividing the world’s
oceans into International Search and Rescue Regions (SARs), as depicted in
the map (Figure 4). Within these non-territorial, international waters, each
coastal state assumes primary jurisdiction and responsibility for receiving and
responding to distress calls (Aalberts and Gammeltoft-Hansen 2014, 441). The
Convention mandates that assistance must be provided irrespective of the rescued
person’s nationality, status, or circumstances (Barnes 2004). Rescue is defined
as the recovery of individuals in distress, addressing their immediate needs,
and transporting them to a place of safety (Barnes 2004). These international
bordering practices (Parker and Vaughan-Williams 2012; Minca and Vaughan-
12 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Art. 98(1) and 1974 International Convention
on the Safety of Life af Sea (SOLAS), Chapter V, Regulations 10(a) and 33.
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Williams 2012; Salter 2012) and borderwork (Rumford 2012), which establish
jurisdictional regions in extraterritorial spaces, corroborate Yuval-Davis, Wemyss,
and Cassidy’s (2019) concept of de/reterritorialisation. This framework views
borders as ongoing processes of ‘frontierisation’ that extend beyond physical
lines to classify and govern populations.
Figure 4: IMO Maritime SAR regions
13
One of the anomic or a-legal ‘gaps’ (Lindahl 2013) in the international
legal framework is the determination of a ‘safe place’ for the disembarkation of
individuals rescued at sea. The challenge is twofold: identifying a safe place and
determining the specific location for landing on dry land. The question remains:
where should these individuals, irrespective of nationality or migratory status, be
disembarked? The 2004 Amendments to SOLAS and SAR stipulate that rescued
individuals must be disembarked at the nearest safe port of call (Aalberts and
Gammeltoft-Hansen 2014, 441). This issue is acutely complex when coastal
states with the closest ports are also the intended destination states for uninvited
13 Imagine available at: https://l1nq.com/TpIcf, last accessed on November 23, 2024.
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migrants and refugees. This dynamic contributes to the creation of confinement
spaces, analogous to the carceral ‘archipelagos’ described by Loyd and Mountz
(2018) and Mountz (2011), where individuals are held in a form of legal limbo
at sea, away from formal detention centres.
From the perspective of these destination states, the situation is problematic.
Aalberts and Gammeltoft-Hansen (2014, 449) argue that the search-and-rescue
procedure has been significantly hindered by the absence of clearly defined
requirements for nation-states to permit disembarkation, coupled with a lack of
specific guidelines for determining where rescued individuals should be landed
ashore. Consequently, confrontations frequently arise between coastal nation-
states, flag states of rescuing vessels, and the governments of the next national
port of call, with all parties often seeking to avoid individual responsibility
(Aalberts and Gammeltoft-Hansen 2014, 449).
In 2009, the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) Facilitation Committee
attempted to resolve this jurisdictional dispute. It proposed that the government
responsible for the SAR region should accept the disembarkation of rescued
individuals if alternative arrangements could not be promptly organised (Aalberts
and Gammeltoft-Hansen 2014: 449). However, this measure failed to resolve
the ongoing disputes. The sustained ambiguity within the rescue regime in SAR
regions—specifically regarding the distribution of obligations for disembarkation
following high-seas rescues—continues to facilitate the strategic evasion of
responsibilities by coastal states, particularly those that are destination points
for migrants and refugees.
Contemporary global maritime dynamics reinforce this strategic evasion. The
newly extended continental shelf limits are profoundly altering the global map,
simultaneously driving migration control further away from territorial borders.
This trend reveals a discernible shift towards bordering practices without the need
for territorialisation. The international legalised composition of SARs actively
facilitates the shift in migration governmentality and border control. It moves
from a fixed, telluric line drawn in the sand (Parker and Vaughan-Williams et
al., 2009; Parker and Vaughan-Williams 2012) to a mobile drawing of the line
and the governing of (im)mobility at the extraterritorial sea. In this context,
Aalberts and Gammeltoft-Hansen (2014, 441) identify a key issue as being ‘the
interplay between the traditional functional logic underpinning the law of the
seas and a territorial logic increasingly superimposed to address politically
sensitive issues relating to the search and rescue regime’. In this article, we
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conceive the High Seas not as an anomic, anarchical space devoid of sovereignty
and normativity, and without ‘character’ (Schmitt 2003: 43),14 but, rather, as a
significantly legalized, politicized, and internationalized maritime space of the
globe, within which states can play an international sovereign game enabled
by both the legalization and the politicization of those maritime parts of the
world, creatively and strategically claiming or disclaiming sovereignty, disputing
jurisdictional plays, and/or evoking or evading responsibility (Aalberts and
Gammeltoft-Hansen 2014, 2018; Gammeltoft-Hansen and Aalberts 2018). Thus,
we argue that territorialisation is not inherently linked to bordering, although the
two can certainly coexist. The crucial aspect for us is the ability to draw sovereign
lines at sea and define the type of governance within each region. While SARs
are not sovereign state territories, they are subject to bordering practices and
the governmentality of (im)mobility, operating either under the auspices of the
customary ethics of the sea, as translated into international spatial-legal terms,
or under the discretionary will of sovereign nation-states.
Confronted with the international spatial-legal reorganisation of the sea,
migrants and refugees are subjected to a complex field of governance. States
strategically evade international obligations by claiming or denying sovereignty as
expediency dictates (Aalberts and Gammeltoft-Hansen 2014, 2018; Gammeltoft-
Hansen and Aalberts 2018). Consequently, international bordering practices and the
governmentality of (im)mobility at sea involve more than a mere realist exercise
of power. Rather, they entail an ongoing struggle between the extraterritorial
bordering strategies of states, the constraints of international normative and
jurisdictional regimes, the resilient, transgressive movements of migrants and
refugees, the resistances of activists, and the mobile, fluid ontological materiality
of the sea itself.
Despite the complexity and contingent nature of this contestation, sovereign
states continually readapt and strategically rethink their plays within the spatial-
legal game enacted by SARs and correlated maritime regimes. States employ
sovereign tactics to relocate search-and-rescue operations to other designated SAR
regions, thereby reinforcing the argument that disembarkation responsibility lies
with a different sovereign state. Alternatively, they initiate operations precisely at
the border between two SAR regions, ensuring the nearest port is not that of the
14 Schmitt (2003: 43) derives the word "character" from the Greek charassein, meaning 'to engrave' or 'imprint'.
His mythological point is that, unlike the terrestrial land, the sea resists demarcation and delimitation, rendering
it fundamentally un-political and an-archical.
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destination state. This manoeuvre epitomises the ‘sovereign game’ of extraterritorial
evasion of responsibility. These actions demonstrate states’ relentless attempts to
maintain control over space and migration flows at sea, even when challenged
by maritime forms of ontological materialities, transgressions, and resistances
that occur outside their traditional territorial jurisdictions.
Conclusion: playing with maritime lines and migrant lives
The complex interplay among state sovereignty, international law, and human
rights in the maritime domain reveals a deeply contested space where nations
engage in creative and often exclusionary practices. The Australian experience
illustrates how the maritime Search and Rescue (SAR) framework—originally
conceived as a humanitarian mechanism—has been transformed into a legal and
political tool for migration control. This instrumentalisation has inspired similar
developments elsewhere, providing the conceptual and operational blueprint
for institutional arrangements in the Mediterranean, such as Frontex’s joint
operations and Italy’s bilateral agreements with Libya, as well as for UK-France
cooperation in the Channel. States have exploited the spatial reorganisation of the
sea enabled by UNCLOS, SOLAS, and SAR conventions to manipulate jurisdictional
boundaries, outsource responsibility, and reshape mobility governance, co-opting
humanitarian frameworks to legitimise exclusionary border regimes under the
guise of rescue and protection.
A critical re-evaluation of the classical liberal and positivist assumption
that greater legalisation leads to better regulation and enhanced protection for
migrants and refugees is necessary. Concrete cases of SAR operations, particularly
those conducted outside the territorial sea and the EEZ, reveal a stark disregard
for the human rights of individuals migrating by sea. The regulation of SARs
has not resulted in the re-territorialisation of the high seas nor in sovereign
states’ accountability. Instead, the high seas remain a domain where sovereign
practices are exercised, exceptions are made, and the search-and-rescue protocol
is used to circumvent states’ responsibilities to protect individual migrants,
refugees, and their allegedly universal human rights. Search and rescue operations
can be understood as a form of bordering practice and migration control, not
only because the legalisation of the high seas creates opportunities to enforce
control over (im)mobility, but also because it enables an extraterritorial, legalised
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politics of bordering and the redrawing of sovereign (inter)national lines at sea
(Walker 2010).
The strategic manipulation of SARs by states, as exemplified by Australian
bordering cases,15 transforms these regions into extraterritorial bordering zones
involving different forms of legalisation, politicisation, borderwork (Rumford,
2012) and bordering practices (Parker and Vaughan-Williams 2012). It represents
a sophisticated international technique of sovereign bordering and boundary-
drawing, a form of governing (im)mobility, and a discriminatory practice by the
sovereign state. When one considers that the individuals affected are migrants
and refugees adrift on the high seas, these maritime bordering zones become all
the more violent, abject, and dehumanising (Vaughan-Williams, 2015; Salter,012;
Minca and Vaughan-Williams 2012).
Within this legalised yet extraterritorial domain, SARs function as arenas for
a sovereign game, in which the fate of vulnerable individuals is contingent on
the discretionary decisions of coastal and flag states. The 2001 Tampa case serves
as a paradigmatic example of the complex legal and political strategies at play.
A Norwegian vessel, having rescued 433 Afghan refugees, sought to disembark
them at Christmas Island, an Australian territory. However, Australia refused
entry and had its armed forces take control of the ship. This event catalysed the
‘Pacific Solution’, a policy designed to intercept maritime migrants and transfer
them to offshore island states for processing. A key part of this strategy was the
legal excision of certain Australian islands, and eventually all Australian territory,
from its ‘migration zone’. This legalised political manoeuvre ensured that anyone
arriving in these excised territories without a visa would not be considered to
have ‘arrived’ in Australia, thus rendering them ineligible to claim protection
onshore and subjecting them to extraterritorial offshore detention.
Australian search and rescue operations, particularly under ‘Operation
Sovereign Borders’, showcase how bordering practices and migration control are
enacted within this border extension. A compelling example is the 2014 incident
where an Australian military vessel towed a small boat carrying refugees back
into Indonesian waters. These ships operate within the limits of other coastal
states’ SARs with the mission of, under the guise of complying with a distress
call, returning shipwrecked individuals—categorised as irregular migrants, asylum
15 And, one could add, numerous incidents in the Mediterranean. For a critical, more in-depth analysis of (some
of) these incidents in the Mediterranean, most specially in relation to Europe's maritime borders, see, for
instance, Vaughan-Williams (2015).
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seekers, or refugees—to coastal states that may not be their intended destination
or even their point of origin. This sovereign play, practised by Australia and legally
enabled by SOLAS and the SAR Convention, has reverberations across all oceans
and seas. The Tampa incident and the practice of towing boats exemplify the
necropolitical dynamics (Vaughan-Williams, 2015; Minca and Vaughan-Williams
2012; Salter 2012) that underpin this game, in which human lives are subjected
to strategic bordering practices and, not uncommonly, left to die at sea.
Through the establishment of SARs, a form of internationalism has not
territorialised the entire globe’s maritime spaces. Instead, it has established
a legalised international border game within which sovereign states can play
strategically across the planet’s non-territorial maritime spaces. These sovereign
bordering plays precede sovereign territory at sea, yet they do not prevent sovereign
discrimination, governmentality of (im)mobility, and abject forms of violence
from occurring. Thus, contrary to Schmitt’s (2003) mythological international
political imagination, the sea—especially the sea delimited and ordered by the
SAR Convention—is not an anomic space of lawlessness and exception. It has
become a legalised international political field within which states engage in their
modern sovereign game, strategically navigating legalised waters through the
renewed politicisation of bordering practices and exceptional sovereign decisions,
including playing with maritime lines and the lives of migrants and refugees at sea.
In this legalised and politicised extraterritorial maritime context, the
international protection of migrants’ and refugees’ human rights is jeopardised
by this sovereign bordering game. The conditions created by SARs enable states,
through their flag vessels, to decide the fate of shipwrecked individuals. Suppose
the individual is an irregular migrant, asylum seeker, or refugee. In that case, the
outcome is likely to be the most violent and abject possible, including serious
human rights violations and the sheer impossibility of international mobility.
Regardless of their condition, these individuals are often returned to the nearest
coastal state port. In the 2014 Australian case, they were towed and abandoned
on an island far beyond the limits of Australian territorial waters, where no
jurisdiction was applicable and no refugee convention obligated Australia to
process their asylum applications.
The international composition of SAR regions does not inherently promote
the protection of human rights for individuals xenophobically dismissed as
‘unwanted’ migrants or refugees. As Aalberts and Gammeltoft-Hansen (2014,
439) assert, ‘legal solutions to these problems have resulted in a re-spatialisation
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of the high seas, extending states’ obligations in the international public domain
based on geography rather than traditional functionalist principles that operated
in the open seas’. The customary international law of the sea has given way to
spatial sovereignty solutions within this maritime international game. Although
this game is not territorialised, it is subject to strategic bordering practices and
plays. Rather than being a space of non-sovereignty, anarchy, and exception,
SARs and the legalised maritime spaces have become the venue for a complex
game between sovereignty, law, and politics. A complex web of overlapping legal
systems offers an added advantage for manipulating sovereignty and circumventing
sovereign responsibility, even at the cost of migrant lives.
These practices not only perpetuate violence and insecurity for migrants
and refugees but also expose the profound limitations and contradictions of the
modern international order. Legal frameworks and infrastructures, rather than
offering protection, can be wielded as legitimising tools for bordering practices,
migration control, and necropolitical legalised exceptions, reinforcing the global
international system of nation-states and its inherent inequalities and lines of
discrimination (Walker 2010). The disconnect between the stated purpose of these
legal frameworks and their practical implementation highlights a pressing need
for reform. To ensure accountability and strengthen the international protection
of human rights at sea, a fundamental re-evaluation of the current legal and
political infrastructures is required.
The sea, once idealised as a space of freedom and cooperation, has become
a battleground for sovereign interests and exclusionary policies. States seeking
to impose land-based logics of control on the fluid and dynamic environment of
the ocean are central to this conflict. However, the perspective of ‘wet ontology’
reminds us that the sea possesses its own ontological materiality and agency,
with tides and currents that can both enable and destabilise state control. In this
context, the practices of rescue activists, guided by seamanship and an ethics
of solidarity, emerge as a form of resistance. They challenge the ‘earth-centric’
logic of states, using the sea itself as an ally in contesting state authority and
destabilising the borders and lines established by international law. Their actions
demonstrate that alternative forms of governance, which prioritise the dignity and
safety of all, are not only possible but essential. The persistent failure to address
these systemic issues means that the promise of universal human rights remains
unfulfilled, and the high seas will continue to be a theatre of discrimination,
injustice, and abjection.
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