Visible Policing Subjects and Low Visibility Policing

Abstract

This chapter argues that street-based migration policing in Australia is the site of two important dynamics in contemporary practices of racialization. It explores migration policing as a process that racializes the putatively race-neutral legal categories of citizenship and unlawful non-citizenship. Immigration status checks of both citizens and non-citizens reveal how assumptions about ethnicity have informed whether a person is stopped on the street, how investigations into identity and citizenship have been conducted, and whether a person is detained under immigration laws. This chapter also briefly explores the limited oversight over migration policing as a practice which props up the myth of legal racial neutrality. Thinking through these practices, this chapter raises questions about how race is formed and obscured through the low visibility of migration policing and the methodological implications for migration and policing research.