Dr Ari Jerrems1
1University of Western Australia, Australia
Biography:
Ari Jerrems is a Lecturer in International Relations and Politics at the University of Western Australia. Previously he was Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of International Relations, Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, Australian National University. His research focuses on the spatial and temporal dimensions of global politics with a particular interest in how notions of security and politics are articulated through novel bordering practices and in relation to socio-spatial transformations such as planetary urbanisation.
Abstract:
There has been substantial interest in the ‘makeshift’ in recent scholarship in critical border and migration studies. Scholars have noted how informal and transient arrangements are mobilised to govern migration in a wide range of ‘crisis’ and post-crisis situations. In this paper, I seek to illustrate the value of linking such interventions to just-in-time modes of production via a grounded study of the history of the Port Hedland detention centre in Western Australia. The Port Hedland centre opened soon after detention became mandatory for asylum seekers arriving by boat in the early 90s by repurposing barracks initially built for miners. The town of Port Hedland is located in Northwestern Australia and is notably the world’s largest bulk export port, transporting raw materials extracted from the surrounding Pilbara region. I sketch three moments in the life of the centre to outline how it becomes integrated into changing constellations of geopolitics, geoeconomics and forms of extraction. First, I explore the construction of the centre as accommodation for miners during the first mining boom in the 60s and 70s. Second, I trace the emergence of a fly-in, fly-out labour force and the repurposing of the site as a detention centre in early 90s. Finally, I outline the decline of the centre in the context of offshore detention in the early 2000s and the repurposing of the site as real estate.