This paper explores the notion and practice of externalization in the Asia Pacific region with a focus on Southeast Asia. Malaysia and Indonesia are not only transit hubs or corridor states but also viable destination countries for migrants and refugees, especially for the Rohingya. How does externalization reinforce itself not only as a state-imposed mechanism through stricter border control mechanisms, including interceptions and pushbacks, but also as a practice and way of life where the broader, mobile, and multiple concepts of home, belonging, and identities get reflected in kaleidoscopic ways? The paper discusses the impact of externalization on the rights and existence of migrants and refugees and how externalization takes the form of the Foucauldian governmental power in the modern, scientific, rational Westphalian nation-state.
Introduction: Conceptualizing externalization – beyond the North-South Divide
In a general sense, externalization connotes the process where functions normally performed by a State within its own territory are shifted in such a way that they take place, partially or wholly, outside its territory.[1] Further, “measures closely related to, or overlapping with, the externalisation of asylum and/or migration controls have also been characterised in the literature under a range of alternative labels, including ‘remote control’, ‘non-entrée’, ‘deterrence’, ‘off-shoring’, ‘extra-territorialisation’ and ‘protection elsewhere’.”[2] These measures may be implemented through formal, bilateral, or multilateral agreements, alliances, or pacts, such as the EU-Turkey deal, the UK-Rwanda Deal, or the Italy-Libya agreement, or through visa regimes or ad-hoc policies. In essence, as the UNHCR note on the “externalization” of international protection points out, “such measures constitute externalization where they involve inadequate safeguards to guarantee international protection as well as shifting responsibility for identifying or meeting international protection needs to another state or leaving such needs unmet; making such measures unlawful.”[3] These measures also include deterrence, refoulement and non-entrée policies, legacies of which may be traced back to the year 1914, when along with the inception of the First World War, the world also witnessed the SS Komagata Maru incident.[4]
The contemporary times also bear testimony to such externalization measures. These measures are often supported indirectly by international documents, frameworks, compacts and/or conventions which are actually meant for ensuring the Global protection of the human rights of migrants and refugees. The Western-constructed universal narrative evident in the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR), since 2016 exemplifies such a case, where one of its major objectives of expanding access to third-country ‘solutions’ has not only been implemented but also normalized in such a way that has meant shifting ‘burdens’ to third countries, especially to the countries of the Global South. At the same time, measures beyond traditional policies of externalization also proliferated, including acting as ‘sending’ or ‘transit’ states. This has made the entire exercise of defining externalization complex yet dynamic, even more so when there is a scarcity of legal frameworks for externalization in South and Southeast Asia (unlike their Global North counterparts). Instead, ad-hoc policies to control and manage borders, migration and mobility are common in the region. Thus, externalization may be seen not as a policy or a legal operation undertaken conventionally by the states in the Global North, but also as a practice which is becoming a way of life in (parts of) the South, whereby this practice may be analysed not only within, but beyond the spatial North-South architecture.
The phenomenon of problematising migrants and refugees as burdens and of shifting the burden to third countries can also invoke an interesting analogy of situating the problem within and not outside the human being, which could be called the root of all exclusion. SuEllen Hamkins in The Art of Narrative Psychiatry points out that externalization, as a practice, was developed by Michael White, as a process of objectifying problems instead of objectifying individuals. White was inspired by the thoughts of Michel Foucault who revealed how, in the modern century, people confronted with mental health and other challenges are treated as damaged objects and identities. Taking a cue from this, White said that problems should be understood in an externalized way so that people can differentiate an identity from a problem; the problem and not the person then is the actual problem. In addition, he also pointed out that through the act of externalization, we can situate the problem within a historical and cultural context and learn how cultural discourses play a vital role in the manifestations and impacts of the problem.[5] However, the meaning of ‘externalization’ has probably assumed different dimensions, something totally opposite to this, in the modern Westphalian Nation-State where the figure of the refugee and the migrant is not only problematised but also criminalised in several contexts.
Externalization practices in the Asia-Pacific region with particular emphasis on Southeast Asia
The offshore processing decisions taken by Australia over the last two decades have witnessed the contribution of both Malaysia and Indonesia as significant actors, especially since two significant developments in the Asia-Pacific region: i) the trilateral Regional Cooperation Agreement (RCA) among Australia, Indonesia and IOM (2000) and ii) the Bali Process on People Smuggling, Trafficking in Persons and Related Transnational Crime (2002) through which Australia has sought to and continues seeking to outsource its responsibility towards asylum-seekers by attempting to combat transnational crimes committed outside its jurisdiction.[6] In fact, when analyzing the 2023-24 Federal Budget of Australia, it can be seen that offshore processing is budgeted to cost $1.5 billion over the forward estimates to 2026-27, despite only approximately 30 people remaining on Nauru and the Government’s commitment to resettle all people to third countries. Further, during the period from July 2012 to June 2024, the Australian Government, in order to protect its sovereign borders and emerge as the regional hegemon, spent $12 billion on the policy of offshore processing.[7] The Australia-Malaysia refugee swap deal of 2011 also culminated in a new era of deterrence policy as a way of protecting the borders, when the Home Minister of Malaysia stated in clear, succinct terms that the refugee deal was just a small part of the bigger plan. The actual reason behind this kind of an arrangement was to send a message that Malaysia or Australia should not be considered by any refugee, asylum seeker, migrant and/or stateless person and other “syndicates” as a destination or transit country anymore.[8]
However, this paper analyzes the issue of externalization in the Asia-pacific zone not from the perspective of the regional dominance of Australia or the complacency of Indonesia and Malaysia as docile transit or ‘corridor’ states meekly executing the orders of their big brother. Based on existing literature, it rather explores the role of these two states in developing their own mechanisms of externalization. They do this, in two ways: i) as destination states and ii) as implementors of the traditional pushback mechanism[9] in a way undertaken by their Global North counterparts, yet accepting refugees as per their domestic jurisdiction. The paper explores these dimensions based on the experience of Rohingya refugees, who have been excluded from citizenship in Myanmar, who continue to flee Myanmar and Bangladesh, and who undertake dangerous boat journeys across the Asia-Pacific region, in search of a better livelihood. Currently, 981,064 Rohingya individuals, the majority, live in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.[10]
Both South and Southeast Asia have long histories of hosting a massive number of refugees, stateless people, asylum seekers and other vulnerable populations. However, Malaysia’s and Indonesia’s attitude has shifted towards hostility towards refugees and stateless people in recent times, the legacy of which may be drawn from the state of Australia. Both Malaysia and Indonesia are non-signatories to the 1951 Refugee Convention and do not have any national legal and judicial framework for refugees and asylum seekers.
Over the past decade, Indonesia has continued to produce new frameworks which seek to deter migrants and asylum seekers from entering, residing or leaving its territory. Sometimes it has attempted to undertake this task through stricter border control mechanisms, but due to the overwhelming expenses of control, absence of political commitment and increasing corruption among border patrol officers and immigration personnel, its vast sea borders continue to remain porous.[11] Border controls have been enforced in a tougher manner with the onset of the pandemic, when precarity amidst the sea as a site of statelessness gained ever more attention due to pushback mechanisms adopted by a number of Southeast Asian nations.[12] The measures undertaken by the Indonesian state have been accompanied by substantially increasing hatred towards the Rohingya, especially in the Aceh province, where in December 2023 more than 100 Rohingyas were forcibly evicted from their temporary shelters.[13] Further, in November 2023, when three refugee boats arrived in three days, the last of these boats carrying 249 refugees was pushed back into the sea.[14]
Similarly, stricter border control regimes have been observed in the case of Malaysia where new mechanisms have been implemented via state-backed networks and agencies like the Malaysian Check Points and Border Agency (MCBA), an initiation of which was witnessed in the budget of 2023. When this budget was tabled, an allocation of RM20 million was made for maintenance, repair works and procurements of assets at the country’s different entry points.[15] This is again reminiscent of the Australian offshore border control mechanism, a recent example of which may be drawn from the fact that Australia spent $1.67 billion dollars on border enforcement and border management in 2023, apart from planning to provide $17.9 million over 4 years starting from 2023-24 to boost the Australian Border Force’s Airline Liaison Officer Program. Further, Australia will provide $37.4 million in 2022-23 to increase the deployment of Australian defence forces, an integral component of which involves additional surveillance to boost the smooth functioning of Operation Sovereign Borders of the Department of Home Affairs.[16]
However, in case of Malaysia, beyond state-implemented mechanisms, there are NGOs and other migrant networks which often resort to various rescue plans on the basis of increasing restrictions on movement on the one hand and filtering policies of those with possibilities of mobility and those with immobility on the other. Further, asylum seekers, refugees and migrants themselves adapt various strategies or opportunities of mobility, including family and/or market-based networks.[17] For instance, the neoliberal promise of a developed and better life has made many young Rohingyas undertake dangerous journeys across the sea (sometimes to reach Australia and sometimes to stay and make a home in a transit state), the dangers of which have been explored above.
These Rohingyas undertake these journeys sometimes from Myanmar and sometimes from Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, which currently has the largest Rohingya refugee or Forcibly Displaced Myanmar Nationals (FDMN) camp. For them, the two countries of Malaysia and Indonesia are not only transit or corridor states through which they can reach developed nations like Australia, but also prospective countries of resettlement. Thus, externalization may be viewed not only as a governmental policy but also as a space where continuous negotiations take place in terms of rights as well as in terms of belonging.
Impact of externalization on refugees, migrants, asylum seekers and stateless persons in Malaysia and Indonesia
Externalization practices, in law or on the ground, can put unequal pressure on third countries. Often economically weaker, developing nations are forced to ensure the rights of refugees, migrants, stateless persons and asylum seekers. When those rights are violated as a consequence of a destination state’s externalization measures, this can severely affect the practice of state responsibility for both destination and third countries.[18] According to the data collected by the Mixed Migration Centre (MMC) in 2022, the Rohingya while undertaking dangerous journeys across the sea to Indonesia are prone to various human rights violations such as physical torture and violence, injury, health risk from harsh conditions, bribery and/or extortion. Further, on account of their status as stateless persons existing nowhere in the papers, they are prone to compounding risks such as arrest, getting smuggled or trafficked in Indonesia as well as in Malaysia and Thailand.[19] Due to fear of persecution, the Rohingya have continued fleeing Myanmar, hoping for a safe haven in these Southeast Asian Nations, even more so when the country is breathing heavily under political turmoil between the military junta and armed opposition groups. They also flee their largest host nation Bangladesh, sometimes through marriage, with the hope of resettlement in Indonesia and Malaysia.
However, as discussed before, externalization measures may ultimately result in gross violations of rights such as languishing at sea or at land, or getting trafficked, and in extreme cases, death. The story of Abdul Alam, a 33-year-old Rohingya man in Malaysia, can serve as an illustration of such dynamics. Abdul lost his job in 2014 due to a back injury. He arrived in Malaysia in 1995 after violence in Sittwe and had still been struggling for basic survival needs, when he was interviewed in 2014, like his whole community. However, he remained hopeful as he believed that he had an opportunity to be settled in a third country where his children would have a better future.[20]
Many of these refugees, Rohingya and otherwise, who initially fled their home or host countries to reach Australia by boat, spend years, sometimes decades, languishing in the hope for resettlement. For instance, Mohammad and his wife arrived in Jakarta, Indonesia nine years ago from Nyala, Sudan. He said: “We did not know where to go – just looking for a safe space to live. The most important thing was to get out of Sudan to avoid war…”. Living in a socio-political-juridical limbo in a hotel-turned-detention facility near Bintan island, Mohammad has no idea about the ultimate place where he and his family will settle. He wishes to live a normal life like any other citizen, work and earn money so that he can support himself and his family without having to depend on others for subsistence.[21] Currently, the Rohingya due to their legal status neither have access to the formal work sector nor do they have access to legal protection. Most of them are employed in informal sectors in these two countries, such as restaurants, retail and other service jobs as well as agriculture, construction, recycling of scrap metals and other menial jobs that are traditionally considered as very low class.[22]
Further, the arduous journeys from one place to another make and unmake the homemaking practices where home becomes synonymous with multiple allegiances and different forms of belonging, including past memories, present affiliation/s as well as future aspirations. However, as far as aspirations are concerned, it may be said that in the current scenario, when prospects of a spatial home and a permanent place of residence seem bleak and people are unlikely to get recognized as citizens in any country in the near future, what may get topmost priority in an alien country is hospitality rather than protection. The fluidity and complexity of the notion and practice of home and belonging may also be manifested via the fact that the lost home represents not only past experiences and memories of family and friends but also the site where bad, life-threatening things occurred, where state protection failed and where neighbours could no longer be trusted. Likewise, the home that is constructed during exile, apart from being refuge can also be seen as a place of discrimination and alienation.[23] Thus, in the process of externalizing not only the border but also the entire being of the migrant/refugee/asylum seeker, the politics of home and the political nature of rights get well played out in the region.
Conclusion
In this context, it may be pointed out that through externalization, borders not only get multiplicated, but they also reassert themselves as heterogenous, semantic fields.[24] A vivid dimension of this multiplicity is the colonial border reproducing itself in varied forms and constructing kaleidoscopic ways of dependency, especially through externalization in the Asia-Pacific region in general and the Southeast Asian region in particular. Thus, in “that multiplicity of voices, the West enters not only with its mainstream and its famous dissenters but also with its uncelebrated, half-forgotten selves to renegotiate its relationships with others, not merely at home but also outside its borders.”[25] In this context, re-negotiating rights and belonging becomes a part of everyday refugee and stateless life in the borderlands, particularly when externalization becomes an apparatus of governmental power where it symbolizes, as explored in this article, the very ensemble which is constituted by the methods, policies, processes, institutions, calculations and tactics “that allow the exercise of this very specific, albeit very complex, power that has the population as its target, political economy as its major form of knowledge, and apparatuses of security as its essential technological instrument.”[26]
Amidst this paraphernalia of governmental power behind the veils of glorified protection mechanisms emanating from the West on the one hand and the figures of the refugees, migrants, stateless people and asylum seekers expressing their struggles on the other hand, what emerges are multiple forms of belonging, identity and resistance.
Footnotes
[1] David Cantor, Nikolas Feith Tan, Mariana Gkliati, Elizabeth Mavropoulou, Kathryn Allinson, Sreetapa Chakrabarty, Maja Grundler, Lynn Hillary, Emilie McDonnell, Riona Moodley, Stephen Phillips, Annick Pijnenburg, Adel-Naim Reyhani, Sophia Soares and Natasha Yacoub, “Externalisation, Access to Territorial Asylum, and International Law,” International Journal of Refugee Law 34, no. 1 (2022): 122. https://doi.org/10.1093/ijrl/eeac023
[2] Ibid.
[3] UNHCR Note on the “Externalization” of International Protection, 2021, para 5, retrieved from https://www.refworld.org/policy/legalguidance/unhcr/2021/en/121534
[4] The Komagata Maru incident represents one of the most significant events in the history of Canada’s exclusionary immigration policies. On May 23, 1914, the vessel named S.S. Komagata Maru reached the shores of Vancouver, Canada via Japan and Hong Kong. The South Asian passengers were not allowed to disembark and enter the territory of Canada and were forced to stay on the boat for two months without food and water, during which a legal battle continued in Canada on this issue. Ultimately the ruling was in favour of the colonial rulers and the passengers were forced to return to India, where they harboured at Budge Budge in the city of Calcutta. However, they were welcomed with bullets rather than protection. This incident bears a historical testimony not only to systematic racism and colonialism but also to conscious acts of deterrence, non-entrée and refoulement.
[5] SuEllen Hamkins, The Art of Narrative Psychiatry (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 59.
[6] Antje Missbach and Gerhard Hoffstaedter, “When Transit States Pursue their own Agenda: Malaysian and Indonesian Responses to Australia’s Migration and Border Policies,” Migration and Society: Advances in Research 3 (2020): 65. Doi:
[7] 2023-24 Federal Budget: What it means for Refugees and People Seeking Humanitarian Protection, Refugee Council of Australia, November 24, 2023, retrieved from https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/federal-budget-summary/
[8] New Straits Times 2011
[9] ‘Pushbacks are antithetical to the rule of law… Push backs are being used to push people seeking asylum and refugees from a state’s territory to the territory of another state without regard for the individual’s circumstances, running contrary to the prohibition against collective expulsions, the principle of non-refoulement and right to seek asylum…’ See Solvig Als, Sergio Carrera, Nikolas Feith Tan & Jens Vedsted-Hansen, Policy Paper on Externalization and the UN Global Compact on Refugees: Unsafety as Ripple Effect, Robert Schuman Centre, p.12
[10] Joint Government of Bangladesh – UNHCR Population factsheet as of May 2024, retrieved from https://data.unhcr.org/en/country/bgd
[11] Antje Missbach and Gerhard Hoffstaedter, “When Transit States Pursue their own Agenda: Malaysian and Indonesian Responses to Australia’s Migration and Border Policies,” Migration and Society: Advances in Research 3 (2020): 67.
[12] Sreetapa Chakrabarty, “Facing Covid-19 in a State of Rightlessness: Rohingyas at Sea in South Asia,” RLI blog on Refugee Law and Forced Migration, June 1, 2020. https://rli.sas.ac.uk/blog/facing-covid-19-a-state-rightlessness-rohingyas-sea-south-asia
[13] Indonesian students evict Rohingya from shelter demanding deportation, Al Jazeera, December 27, 2023, retrieved from https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/27/indonesian-students-evict-rohingya-from-shelter-demanding-deportation
[14] Aisyah Llewellyn, “Indonesia faces new refugee crisis as Rohingya boat pushed back to sea,” Al Jazeera, November 17, 2023. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/17/indonesia-faces-new-refugee-crisis-as-rohingya-boat-pushed-back-to-sea
[15] Adib Povera et.al., “2024 budget: Single Border Agency to be set up,” New Straits Times, October 13, 2023. https://www.nst.com.my/news/nation/2023/10/966735/2024-budget-single-border-agency-be-set
[16] Federal Budget May 2023-24: Defence, Iris Wang and John Su, May 9, 2023, retrieved from https://www.kwm.com/au/en/insights/latest-thinking/australian-federal-budget-may-2023-24-defence.html
[17] Inka Stock, Ayşen Üstübici and Susanne U. Schultz, “Externalization at Work: responses to Migration Policies from the Global South,” Comparative Migration Studies 7, no. 48 (2019): 4.
[18] Bill Frelick, Ian M. Kysel and Jennifer Podkul, “The Impact of Externalization of Migration Controls on the Rights of Asylum Seekers and Other Migrants,” Journal on Migration and Human Security 4, no. 4 (2016): 197.
[19] Hui Yin Chuah, “Rohingya in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand: Refugee Protection, human smuggling and trafficking,” Mixed Migration Centre, June 2023
[20] Vivian Tan, Rohingya in Malaysia open doors to newcomers, UNHCR, 2014, retrieved from https://www.unhcr.org/in/news/stories/rohingya-malaysia-open-doors-newcomers (name has been kept pseudonymous for security reasons)
[21] “Thousands of refugees in Indonesia have spent years awaiting resettlement,” Al Jazeera, June 24, 2024, https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2024/6/24/thousands-of-refugees-in-indonesia-have-spent-years-awaiting-resettlement (name has been kept pseudonymous for security reasons)
[22] Bhavya Vemulapalli, “In Legal No-Man’s Land, refugees in Malaysia struggle to eat, pay rent,” Al Jazeera, February 7, 2024. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/7/in-legal-no-mans-land-refugees-in-malaysia-struggle-to-eat-pay-rent#:~:text=While%20Malaysia%20is%20a%20member,school%20or%20access%20medical%20care. Also see https://www.unhcr.org/in/news/stories/rohingya-malaysia-open-doors-newcomers
[23] Taylor H (2015) Refugees and the Meaning of Home: Cypriot Narratives of Loss, Longing and Daily Life in London. Palgrave Macmillan, London
[24] Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson, Border as Method, or, The Multiplication of Labour (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2013), vii.
[25] Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983), 121.
[26] Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 108.