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Tracking (Im)mobilities at Sea: Ships, Boats and Surveillance Strategies

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  • Kimberley Peters

Abstract

This paper explores how national governments exercise regulatory power over spaces beyond their jurisdiction, when activities in those extra-territorial spaces have direct impacts within the boundaries of state concerned. Focusing explicitly on the control of shipping mobilities in the high seas and territorial sea zones, it is contended that apparatus of control, in particular, surveillance, are not only complex across spaces of alternate legal composition and between spaces of national and international law, but also across of the differing conditions and materialities of land, air and sea. Indeed, this paper argues that the immobilisation of the undesirable mobilities of ships and boats is inherently difficult at sea because of its very nature - its mobile legal boundaries, its liquidity compared to 'landed' fixity, and its scale and depth. Drawing on the case study of offshore radio pirates and the tender vessels which travelled ship to shore to supply them with necessary goods, it is reasoned that greater attention must be paid to mobilities at sea in view of forms of governance in this space. The sea is not like the land, or air, legally or materially, and mobilities cannot be governed, controlled and contained in the same ways therefore, as these connected spaces. Thinking seriously about the issues that arise when surveillance of mobilities is taken to sea, can help work towards better understandings for why security at sea proves so problematic and how those issues can be resolved, when the sea is the stage for contemporary geopolitical concerns in the twenty-first century.

Suggested Citation

  • Kimberley Peters, 2014. "Tracking (Im)mobilities at Sea: Ships, Boats and Surveillance Strategies," Mobilities, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(3), pages 414-431, September.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:rmobxx:v:9:y:2014:i:3:p:414-431
    DOI: 10.1080/17450101.2014.946775
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    Cited by:

    1. Jason Dittmer, 2021. "The state, all at sea: Interoperability and the Global Network of Navies," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 39(7), pages 1389-1406, November.
    2. Jason Monios, 2023. "When smooth space becomes turbulent: The collapse of Hanjin Shipping and the immobilisation of ships, containers, goods and people," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 55(2), pages 320-338, March.
    3. Lin, Weiqiang, 2019. "Transport geography and geopolitics: Visions, rules and militarism in China's Belt and Road Initiative and beyond," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).

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