Floating carceral spaces: Border enforcement and gender on the high seas

To examine the micro politics of new carceral spaces this article considers the very human(e) interactions that occur in an increasingly depersonalized, technologically remote-driven space: the border. This interrogation is also specifically interested in the enactment of gender at the border in relation to the increasing numbers of women making irregular maritime journeys and the competing paradigms of enforcement (masculine) and rescue (feminine) in the use of interception and custody in the border's daily operation. In an effort to ground recent theoretical excursions empirically into the geographical margins of the state, this article examines the narratives of Australian customs agents who undertake maritime border enforcement and are charged with the custody of asylum seekers.