governmentalities of an airport: heterotopia and confession

Governmentalities of an Airport:Heterotopia and Confession

MARK B. SALTER

University of Ottawa

Airports are barometers of the balance between mobility and securitysought by governments, industry, and the traveling public. This articleexamines this dynamic at a Canadian international airport, evaluatingthe legal and practical elements of the policing of movement with thiscrucial site of politics. Using two under-studied concepts from Foucault,the heterotopia and the confessionary complex, it is illustrated howcontemporary aviation security arrangements are dependent on boththe exceptional nature of the airport and the predisposition of citizens toconfess in the face of agents of the state.

The modern international airport represents and reflects the intersecting forcesthat organize contemporary politics, facilitating transit while simultaneously sec-uritizing identity. I take this site seriously and ask: how is the airport governed? Imake use of two neglected notions from Foucault’s considerable body of work: theconfessionary complex and the heterotopia. Modern subjects, according toFoucault, are conditioned by a Christian notion of continual, exhaustive confes-sion in the face of state apparatus, securing not only a docile body but also ananxious, self-disclosing citizen. The airport, while emancipatory and open for some,represents a locus of anxiety and interrogation for many others. In his lecture ‘‘OfOther Spaces,’’ Foucault proposes an examination of heterotopias, locations thatare ‘‘in relation with all other sites, but in such a way to suspect, neutralize, or invertthe set of relations that they happen to designate, mirror, or reflect’’ (1986:24). Theairport connects the national and the international (also the national to itself), thedomestic and the foreign, in a way that problematizes those connections. In par-ticular, I argue that within this multifaceted environment dominated by doctrines ofrisk management and customer service, the confessionary complex facilitates theself-policing of transiting individuals and that the overlapping and obscured lines ofauthority subtly restrict the possibilities of resistance.

International political sociology balances theoretical analysis and empirical ma-terial, with an overtly political but not prescriptive frame. By focusing on the systemof policies, practices, and discourses that govern particular intersections of the local,national, and global, international political sociology explores the intersections of

Author’s note: Support for this research was provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council ofCanada through the Surveillance Project at Queen’s University, under the direction of David Lyon, Elia Zureik, andYolande Chan. The author would like to thank those individuals at Canadian Air Transport Security Authority, theCATSA Act Review Secretariat, and YOW, who generously provided very thoughtful feedback. The author would

also like to thank Didier Bigo, Rob Walker, and two anonymous reviewers at IPS for both sharpening the analysisand pushing the argument forward into new areas.

r 2007 International Studies Association.Published by Blackwell Publishing, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK.

International Political Sociology (2007) 1, 49–66

power and authority that shape the governance of these specific institutions. Byeschewing a strict linguistic turn, international political sociology examines notsimply the language of politics but also a wider notion of discourse including prac-tices, institutions, and authorities. Bigo’s attention to the rise of international riskconsultancies and Walters’ examination of the deportation and decitizenship re-gimes provide new ways of looking at policing and security. International politicalsociology is well situated to reflect critically on the airport, taking as its subjectmatter not the grand structure of a universal politics, but more modest examin-ations of specific sites and institutions where politics are enacted, or as Foucaultterms it ‘‘humble modalities, minor procedures, as compared with the majesticrituals of sovereignty or the great apparatuses of state’’ (1977:170).

Civil aviation presents an excellent case study in this regard, because power andauthority are diffuse in this sector (Poincignon 2004). International standards areset by an international organization, the International Civil Aviation Organization,which operates through consensus of the members but not without the politics ofinfluence of donor versus receiving countries. Governments and airlines are jointlyresponsible for different aspects of aviation security, while some countries havetasked dedicated aviation security agencies (like the Canadian Air Transport Se-curity Authority [CATSA] or the Transportation Security Authority, part of theAmerican Department of Homeland Security). Airports themselves have been in-creasingly privatized in North America and Europe over the past 20 years, sug-gesting a neoliberal shift in governance. The governing of international movementis grounded in the rights of mobility and the responsibilities of public security, andit is imperative that we measure the cost of security in terms of mobility and privacy.

This article suggests a fruitful engagement with other sociologists of the global:specifically, those critical human geographers and those in surveillance studies whohave theorized mobility, subjectivity, and spatial politics (Heyman 2001; Lloyd2003; Mountz 2003; Adey 2004b, forthcoming a, forthcoming b; Fuller and Harley2005). I am also influenced by sociologists such as Heyman (1995, 2001), Lyon(2003a, 2003b, 2006), and the team of Ericson and Haggerty (1997), who haveexamined the dynamics of surveillance and control that typify modern societies byexamining specific sites. Heyman examines the ‘‘bureaucratic thought-work’’ doneby customs and immigration inspectors at the border (1995); Lyon examines theairport as a ‘‘data-filter’’ that enables self-sorting according to both class and char-acter (2003a). I am particularly drawn by the notion of the ‘‘security assemblage’’theorized by Haggerty and Ericson who argue that ‘‘this assemblage operates byabstracting human bodies from their territorial settings and separating them into aseries of discrete flows. These flows are then reassembled into distinct ‘‘data dou-bles’’ which can be scrutinized and targeted for intervention. In the process, we arewitnessing a rhizomatic leveling of the hierarchy of surveillance, such that groupswhich were previously exempt from routine surveillance are now increasinglybeing monitored’’ (2000:606). By decentering the panopticon as the primarymetaphor for surveillance, Haggerty and Ericson’s analysis suggests a more agent-centric approach to the expansion of surveillant control while examining the actualpractice of power within institutions and the fields or networks of power in whichsubjects construct meaning. Using the work of Deleuze and Guattari (1987), statepower is seen as expanding horizontally over the topology of political life, ratherthan simply an imposition of power from above. This kind of analysis opens the-oretical space for empirical analyses of the expansion of surveillance practices andcontrols over mobilities in the site of the airport.

The airport is a crucial node in the global migration regime, and a place ofintensified policing, particularly since 9/11 (Miles 1999; Poincignon 2004). Oftenthe focus of the ‘‘remote control’’ of borders, airports are at the interface of nationaland international relations as immigration and citizenship laws are instantiatedthrough border and admittance procedures (Bigo 2002). For this case, I take a

Governmentalities of an Airport50

Canadian international airport (YOW)1 as the site of our study. As Bigo and othershave demonstrated, modern policing has become dominated by the paradigm ofrisk, which aims to focus institutional resources on the greatest dangers calculatedin terms of frequency and impact: mobility control has shifted ‘‘from the control ofand hunt for individual criminals . . . to the surveillance of so-called risk groups,defined by using criminology and statistics’’ (Bigo 1999:70). The empirical case ofYOW supports this analysis, and yields two key tactics of risk management (seeBrodeur 2006). Risk management is dominant in the Canadian government to theextent that ‘‘It is government policy to identify, and reduce or eliminate risks to itsproperty, interests and employees, to minimize and contain the costs and conse-quences in the event of harmful or damaging incidents arising from those risks, andto provide for adequate and timely compensation, restoration and recovery’’(Treasury Board of Canada 2001).

The two tactics of risk management analyzed here are: the facilitation of low-riskpassengers in civil aviation, and the acceptance of inherent dangers and failures inthe aviation security system. First, to facilitate the passage of ‘‘safe’’ transit passen-gers, airports, airlines, and governments use voluntary ‘‘opt-in’’ programs, whichmaterially assist the screening profile by the self-sorting of groups into safe andhigh-risk groups. This empirical case, also, highlights the incompleteness of sur-veillance and control in the modern airport. Second, to obscure the fact that nosystem of aviation security is totally reliable, airport security screens solely for dan-gerous objects, not dangerous individuals. There is a disconnect between the pop-ular and practitioners’ assessment of aviation security risk: politicians say thatanother terror attack is unacceptableFthe practitioners say that it is unavoidable.This difference is concealed by a sleight of hand in the object of security screening.Beck points to a hidden part of the risk paradigm: the acceptance of certain nega-tive consequences of industrialization, such as car accidents or environmentalaccidents, which are represented as inevitable (1992). I see this dynamic in thepractitioner’s acceptance of airport screening failure, and in the complete absenceof identity checks at Canadian airports, which is masked by the extensive screeningfor ‘‘dangerous’’ objects. Our shoes are removed, our nail-clippers confiscated,while terrorists may collect air-miles.

This article first examines the institution of the airport as a heterotopia. Second,I explore the multiple agents and authorities at play in the airport. Third, I ex-amine the driving ideas behind the administration of mobilities at the airport.Fourth, I take Foucault’s confessionary complex as a crucial element of policing atthe airport. Finally, I examine the analytical purchase of this form of internationalpolitical sociology.

Heteropia: Dynamics of Transit Life

Train stations, ports, and airportsFall the sites of institutionalized mobility presentthe state with a policing challenge. Although he does not examine these transit sitesin particular, Foucault is particularly useful in placing discussions of territory,population, and control within a theoretical frame that analyzes both sovereign andgovernmental modes of power. The airport represents a combination of the sov-ereign power to ban or exclude, and the disciplinary surveillance of mobile citizens.Throughout his work, Foucault illustrated an interest in the way that political andpower relationships could be demonstrated or obscured through spatial arrange-ments. In modern Europe, Foucault argues that ‘‘architecture [. . .] is no longerbuilt simply to be seen, or to observe the external space, but to permit an internal,articulated and detailed controlFto render visible those who are inside it; in more

1All Canadian airport codes have the prefix ‘‘C’’ in International Civil Aviation Organization parlance (CY�).The code YOW designates the Ottawa Macdonald–Cartier International Airport Authority.

MARK B. SALTER 51

general terms, an architecture that would operate to transform individuals: to acton those it shelters, to provide a hold on their conduct, to carry the effects of powerright to them, to make it possible to know them, to alter them’’ (1977:172). Heencourages the analysis of ‘‘heterotopias’’ as ‘‘spaces which are linked with all theothers, which however contradict all the(se) sites . . .’’ (1986:24). Airports are anarchitectural shell in which mobility is channeled even as the buildings themselvesare ‘‘in a constant state of flux, flirting with obsolescence, reshaping themselves, andadapting to new technologies’’ (Gordon 2004:167); though they remain ‘‘metasta-ble: stable in their constant instability’’ (Fuller and Harley 2005:114). Analyses ofthese kinds of heterotopic spaces populate Foucault’s work on prisons, clinics,workhouses, and archives. He argues that ‘‘crisis heterotopias’’ such as convents,boarding schools, military academies, and so on, in which dangerous rites of pas-sage are spatially contained are being replaced by ‘‘heterotopias of deviation: thosein which individuals whose behavior is deviant in relation to the required mean ornorm are placed.’’ (1986:25). Although Foucault does not examine it, the airportcertainly qualifies as this kind of heterotopia, both in terms of the isolation of therites of passage of entry into and exit from the territory of the state, and in terms ofthe containment of deviant, mobile subjects. International mobility is deviance in asystem of territorial nation-states. As Fuller and Harley aver, ‘‘transit-life’’ is a directchallenge to more placed notions of self and citizen (2005:38). Torpey (2000) andNoiriel (1996) examine how the machinery of government identification attemptsto ‘‘know’’ the mobile population in order to control it. Where I gain the mosttraction, however, is in Foucault’s delineation of heterotopias as ‘‘capable of juxta-posing in a single real place several places, several sites that are in themselvesincompatible’’ (1986:25). In an extension of Bigo’s mobıus ribbon metaphor, onemight argue that in the airport the national, the international, and the non-nationalspaces of transit are all proximate if not coterminous in the space of the terminal.Further, ‘‘heterotopias always presuppose a system of opening and closing that bothisolates them and makes them penetrable’’ (2001:26), as the airport is both sep-arated from its own proximate urban space and connected to distant urban spaces(Adey 2006:343–345).

In using Foucault, I want to dispute the claim that airports are either exclusively‘‘non-places’’ (Auge 1995) or ‘‘spaces of flows’’ (Castells 1982). Although Iyer dis-cusses being at home in the homelessness of the airport, it is a peculiarly privilegedhomelessness (2001). It is the rare case of actually being at home in the airport, suchas Merhan Karimi Nasseri forsaken in Charles de Gaulle for over 10 years, whichillustrates how unhomely the airport is. Equally rare is seeing the homeless at theairport indicating that bordering functions are often present, if subterranean. Inparticular, I want to refute Wood’s notion of the airport terminal as a smooth spaceof international mobility in which ‘‘a common experience marked by homogeneity,ambiguity, and anonymity, transforms multiple spaces into a sense of singular place’’(Wood 2003:326). This glorification of translocality helps direct analytical attentiontoward identities and politics that do not fall into the territorial trap (Mandaville1999). However, in praising the no-place or mobility of the airport, I do not wantignore the very real incarceration and policing which happens there. Despite Fullerand Harley’s otherwise excellent analysis of the ‘‘aviopolis,’’ they also fall into thecommon trap of describing the airport as a ‘‘city [which] exists in no single location. . . a mutant geometry, a mobile polis of invasive security procedures and hyper-surveillance mixed in with the comfy banality of global franchising’’ (2005:11).

Balibar’s argument that the border is ‘‘polysemic’’ applies equally to the airport: theporosity or penetrability of the airport is different for different categories of traveler(2002). For the citizen, the immigrant, the refugee or the asylum-seeker, airports areplaces of extreme interrogation of one’s identity and homeFand one airportmay represent oppression and another potential freedom. Differing exchange ratesand class dynamics make airports impossible palaces of wealth for some travelers,


and boring ‘‘mall[s] for the mobile’’ for others (Lyon 2003a:13). Airports are spaces ofpolicing that also represent the constitutive gate of entry into population.

Airports are spaces that represent the policing power of the sovereign state, thatcontain the dangerous or risky elements of the unknown, and that render certainmobilities visible and others impossible or invisible. The trick of the modern airportis to present immobility as mobility, stagnancy as efficiency, and incarceration asfreedom. Adey (forthcoming b) takes this interrogation of the space further todisrupt the common avowal of airports as exclusively spaces of flows. He argues that‘‘passengers are often made relatively immobile, encourage to dwell and stay withinspecific areas of the airport space’’ (forthcoming b:3). Evaluating the intertwiningcommercial and managerial imperatives, Adey illustrates how airport design andfunction serve ‘‘to create relatively stationary passengers’’ (forthcoming b:10). Themobility machine creates dead time at odds with its aim of efficient transit (arriving3 hours before departure), which is then consumed by shops and restaurants. Theairport is not the place of the idle flaneur who strolls among the vaulted terminalsthat characterize modern airport architecture. Pedestrian movements and transittime are both structured by design to enable consumption, mobility, and socialsorting. It should not surprise us that the same architects design modern airportterminals, shopping malls, and penitentiaries (Gordon 2004:238).

Fuller and Harley argue that, similar to the prison or the clinic, the disciplinarytactics of the airport are made possible through a logic of exceptionality: ‘‘in ourneed to move, we submit to a series of invasive procedures and security checks thatare becoming more pervasive and yet are still rationalized through a discourse ofexceptionF‘only at the airport’’’ (2005:44). Modern international airports areborders, where claims to citizenship, immigration, and refugee status are adjudi-cated. Moreover, the bordering or sorting process takes place throughout the ter-minal in the airline check-in lines for economy and business class travelers, thecustoms lines for foreigners and nationals, the frequent flyer lounges, and depor-tation holding cells. The utility of a heterotopic analysis, in the face of competingmodels of a ‘‘non-space’’ stems from the attention Foucault pays to the contradict-ory elements in these spaces. Following Lisle’s discussion of mediated power at theairport, heterotopias are deceptive in that they ‘‘seem to be pure and simple open-ings, but [. . .] hide curious exclusions’’ (2003:26). In the judicial trial, the accused isthe author of his/her testimony, but not the final arbiter of truth about themselves.In the clinic, the patient is the author of the symptoms and history, but not the finalarbiter of the diagnosis. So too in the airport, a traveler is the author of one’sidentity, but not the final arbiter of his/her belonging or mobility. The space oftransit is fragmented so that arriving, departing, accompanying, and supportingstaff are all hidden from one another. The connection of domestic to foreign is alsosmoothed by an international uniform language of iconic signs, and in the cases ofBen Gurion and Incheon airports, great walls of stones that simulate a solidboundary between inside and outside. As engaged critics, we must take note notsimply of travelers eager to limit their time in the airport through frequent flyerand trusted traveler programs but also those travelers reluctantly hustled out of theairport aboard ‘‘deportation class’’ (Walters 2002).

Although a primary function of the airport is security, the most fundamentalpolicing functions are conducted out of sight. Many of the gates and check-pointsthat structure mobilities in the airport are invisible (Adey 2004a, 2004b). Indeed,given most airports’ detachment from urban space, travelers have already been‘‘pre-cleared,’’ if only by their ability to arrive at the airport itself. Lloyd argues thatthe space of the airport has been configured into a space of consumption so that‘‘the figure of global traveler is allied to the global consumer, whereas the nationalcitizen’s ‘‘othered’’ figures, the homeless person and refugee, are precluded byconsumption practices . . . This imagescape of free mobility in the internationalterminal is markedly different from the backstage containment of national

MARK B. SALTER 53

othersFin identity checks, detention, and deportationFthat takes place within thevery same institution’’ (2003:106). The airport attempts to make all of these in-congruous forces appear smooth and systematic, as if all travelers were safe, allplanes on time and all policing efficient. Analyzing the airport as a heterotopia leadsto three insights: the disaggregation of sovereignty and territory, the importance ofconfession and surveillance at the airport, and the hidden dynamics of airportsecurity screening.

Governmentalities of the Airport: Public, Private, and In-Between

Since the attacks of September 11 laid bare the deficiencies in American civil aviationsecurity, reinforced by the near-successful attack by Richard Reid, the so-called‘‘shoe bomber,’’ there have been dramatic reorganizations of private and publicsecurity authorities and increases in the public scrutiny of airport security. Bush’sseemingly offhand remark in a recent speech on homeland security illustrates boththe new measures and persistent criticism of the system: ‘‘. . . security is strong atthe airports. I hope they stop taking off the shoes of the elderly. (Laughter.) I mustconfess, they haven’t taken off my shoes lately at the airport. (Laughter)’’ (2005).These concerns about security take place within a global neo-liberal trend towardthe privatization of both the civil aviation sector and much security work (Lippertand O’Connor 2003, Poincignon 2004). As sites of multiple vectors of authority,airports present fascinating illustrations of network power. Foucault intended dualanalyses of sovereign and disciplinary power (1980a:108), of which the airport is anexample in both its role as a port of entry and the sovereign power of entry/exit,and also in its role as constituting and disciplining mobile subjects. He definesgovernmentality as ‘‘the ensemble formed by the institutions, procedures, analysesand reflections, the calculations and tactics that allow the exercise of this veryspecific complex form of power, which has as its target population, as its principalform of knowledge political economy, and as its essential technical means appar-atuses of security’’ (1991:102). At the airport, there are a number of public andprivate authorities that monitor and control the essential element of global transit.Following Bigo’s outline of IPS methodology, this article studies one empirical siteto open up a wider discussion of practices and discourses of security. In particular, Iwill ‘‘analyze through the configurations or fields the topology of the nexus ofrelations of the different agents’’ at the airport, and in particular the ways in whichthese authorities overlap and obscure networks of power (Bigo no date).

I would argue that there are multiple governmentalities at work in the airport,which are mutually constitutive and in tension. Neoliberal governance marked byderegulation and liberalization is both resisted and supported by the movementtoward risk management and policing at a distance. Designs for consumer ‘‘dwelltime’’ at airport arcades are at odds with the operational imperatives of the dim-inution of turn-around times for low-budget airlines. I will focus on the securitygovernmentality, the negotiations between the various polices and agencies that aimto provide civil aviation security. This report does not identify a single source of‘‘real’’ power in the airport, but rather hopes to illuminate the ways in whichmultiple lines of force are arranged.

YOW started as a local flying club in the 1920s and was used as a training center bythe Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II. A Canadian Forces Base wasactive at the site until the early 1990s, when it was closed as part of the downsizing ofthe Canadian military. Its modernist main terminal building was opened in the early1960s, and underwent an expansion in the late 1980s. A new terminal building hasrecently opened, funded by an airport surcharge collected by airlines from departingpassengers that has dramatically changed both the profile and capacity of the air-port. While not one of the busiest airports in Canada (Toronto Pearson, Vancouver,and Montreal Trudeau), it is within the top 10 (Statistics Canada 2004).


Transport Canada (TC), a Ministry of the Canadian government, provides theregulations for airport design and operations. It is the lead department for aviationsecurity. The Ottawa Macdonald–Cartier International Airport Authority is a pri-vate corporation that operates under a 60-year lease with TC, a result of a drivetoward privatization through the 1994 National Airports Policy. NavCanada is aprivate corporation that manages Canadian civil airspace and operates a terminalcontrol unit at YOW; it is responsible to the government and the airport authoritiesfor the organization of flights, and responsive to both the airlines that pay a usagefee and the companies from whom they must buy aviation insurance. For domesticflights, airlines vet passengers according to their photo identification and tickets,granting them a boarding pass. Airlines may also restrict or enable mobility andretain the right to prohibit travel.2

Local police services have a substation at the airport, as do the federal police, theRoyal Canadian Mounted Police. At larger airports, there are numerous branchesof regional and federal police. Airports themselves are responsible for airportsecurity, which often hire commissionaires to police the entrance to restricted areas.For example, a senate report listed ‘‘82 agencies at the Toronto airport that haveenforcement of regulatory responsibilities’’ (Standing Senate Committee on Na-tional Security and Defence 2003). Within the terminal itself, the authority to arreststays with the local and federal police forces as an extension of urban policing.Expectations of privacy are reduced in the airport in both Canadian and Americanlaw (McArthur 2002:124). This acceptance of a reduced expectation of privacy hasnot yet reached the Supreme Court of Canada but is corroborated by Ontario andAlberta Court of Appeals in R. v. Lewis (Ontario Court of Appeals 1998), R. v.Matthiessen (Alberta Court of Appeals 1999), and R. v. Daley (Alberta Court ofAppeals 2001), respectively. In R. v. Truong, the Court of Appeal for British Col-umbia ruled ‘‘the expectation of privacy of luggage checked in at a large airport isnegligible’’ (2002:1). Further, personal screening by metal detector and the ‘‘mag-netic wand’’ was similarly described as ‘‘routine’’Fscreening of both person andluggage is described as outside the normal expectation of privacy: ‘‘Security is ofcourse an exception.’’ The Canadian Border Services Agency, Health Canada, theFood Inspection Agency, and Citizenship and Immigration Canada secure flightsfrom abroad and police the border into Canada. Each of these authorities shapeand constrain the limits of the possible mobility within the airport.

The CATSA is responsible for prescreening boarding passengers, the maintenanceof air-side security, and monitoring cargo. Paralleling the creation of the Transpor-tation Security Agency in the United States after the 9/11 attacks, the Canadiangovernment reasserted its role at 89 airports across Canada. It should be noted thatairport passenger screening was only introduced in North America in 1973 as aresult of a spate of hijackings (Gordon 2004:233); between the 1970s and 2001, inboth America and Canada, airlines were responsible for preboard screening (PBS).Hainmuller and Lemnitzer provide a clear and insightful analysis of the governanceof airport security by comparing American and European structures, institutions,and policies. They conclude: ‘‘airport security needs to be left to the government,preferably with a single, fully accountable institution that has no commercial interestin air travel, a sufficiently long time horizon, and whose organizational goal is tieddirectly to high security performance’’ (2003:2). CATSA is a crown corporation: itacts as a private corporation; it is responsible to the Minister of Transport; it isfunded through the government; and its stock is held entirely by the Government ofCanada.3 The aim is to provide the flexibility and efficiency of a private corporation

2Transport Canada is currently developing the ‘‘Passenger Protect’’ program, which will bar those who presentan ‘‘immediate risk to civil aviation’’ from flying. The details of the program are currently unknown.

3Funding of CATSA poses an interesting issue of governance. Although a specific ‘‘air traveller’s security charge’’is levied on all passengers, CATSA is not funded by this charge. Its budget comes through the Treasury Board.

MARK B. SALTER 55

with the accountability and public service of a government ministry (Lippert andO’Connor 2003:349). To this end, CATSA writes the terms of reference for its sub-contractors, which bid competitively for screening duties at the various airports.CATSA conducts random screening of nonpassengers who enter restricted areas,and operates a biometric identity security card program. Between hold baggagescreening and PBS, CATSA screeners make in excess of one million decisions peryear about the security of passengers and luggage. At PBS, individuals must submitto a search of their belongings and person by CATSA-designated screeners. How-ever, while CATSA may confiscate prohibited items, they have no power to arrest,nor does CATSA have the authority to examine identity documentsFother than tocheck a non-photo ID against the same name as the boarding pass.

All of these authorities we might expect to police the processing of cargo andpassengers through a busy international airport. These agencies reinforce the au-thority and sovereignty of the Canadian government to define and enforce the lawswithin national territory and to determine the constitution of the populationthrough the adjudication of citizenship and residency claims. However, this imageof the Canadian government policing sovereign territory is shattered by a purpose-built American border post within YOW. Through agreements between Canadianand American governments, the United States has established border posts withinCanadian territory at several airports. American-bound travelers are inspected andadmitted into the United States within Calgary, Edmonton, Montreal, Ottawa, To-ronto, Vancouver, and Winnipeg airports before even boarding the plane, whichthen arrives at a domestic terminal in the United States. The up-streaming ofinternational borders has led the United States to post its Port-of-Entry in theCanadian airport itself. Sovereignty is understood as the legal preeminence of agovernment on its territory, and limitations on that preeminence are tightly con-trolled. But, in the establishment of remote border posts, following the work ofBigo and other Paris School analysts, here is a concrete example of the deterri-torialization of sovereignty, where a state enjoys authority and legal precedenceoutside of its national territory.

The origin of the practice of U.S. remote border postsFor ‘‘preclearance’’FisCanadian. At the request of American Airlines, a preclearance system was estab-lished in 1952 in Toronto, ON (Customs and Border Protection 2002), which hassince been expanded to a number of countries. This arrangement was formalized inthe 1974 Canada–United States Air Transport Preclearance Agreement, which wasupdated in 1999 as the Preclearance Act coming into force in 2001 (Bill S-22).Travelers to the United States are cleared by American authorities while still insidethe Canadian terminal. Adey (forthcoming a) and Sparke (2004, 2006) discuss pre-clearance programs such as NEXUS, INSPASS, and registered traveler programs,as extensions of the border process are time and space on the individual level. Thissection will examine the preclearance spaces in the airport. In accordance with theAgreement on Air Transport Preclearance, the laws of both countries apply inthe preclearance area, even as the inspecting officers are administering them in thehost country (Art II Sec 3). Here there are variegated authority and overlappingsovereignties. Inspecting officials may frisk, but only host officials may strip; in-specting authorities may detain (secondary inspection, though mandatory at thediscretion of the officer, is not legally detention), but only host authorities mayarrest; inspecting officials may examine aircraft outside of the preclearance area,but only host authorities may escort a passenger back to the preclearance area forfurther (re)examination. American Customs and Border Patrol officers accrue theauthority to search from American, not Canadian, laws (19 U.S.C. 1467 and 19C.F.R. 162.6) which are posted in the main Canadian terminal. Foreign inspectingofficers themselves are afforded a kind of quasidiplomatic (also tax-free) status:‘‘preclearance officer shall enjoy immunity from the civil and administrative


jurisdiction of the Host Party with respect to acts performed or omitted to beperformed in the course of his/her official duties’’ (Art X Sec 1).

This is a clear example of mixed sovereigntyFwhere the laws of the UnitedStates are administered by American officials on Canadian soil, but under the Ca-nadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. American officials use a search authoritygranted by an American law, but rely on the Canadian authorities to detain andarrest any criminals. There is no absolute right to enter another country in inter-national law. Refugees must prove to the governmental agents that their fear ofpersecution is well founded, and even nationals must convince their own govern-ment that they have a valid claim to entry (for which the passport is the mostconvenient proof). All travelers who wish entry into Canada have a legal obligationto submit to a search by Canadian officers, and to tell the truth to that officer:(Immigration Act R.S.C., 1985, c. I-2 Section 12 (4)). All travelers who wish to enterinto America are subject to a similar inspectionFbut how does that obligationFinAmerican lawFcome to be applied on Canadian territory?

Additionally Canada has initiated a practice of enforcing their own immigrationstandards outside of Canadian territory through the remote posting of CanadianBorder Services agents in other countries to conduct ‘‘pre-emptive’’ screening ofCanada-bound passengers. The Canadian Border Services Agency is responsibleunder the Customs Act for deciding admissibility into Canada at the border, ac-cording the risks to Canadian society, public health, and security. CBSA officialsconduct a pre-arrival risk assessment of passengers. Adey (forthcoming a) arguesthat this other kind of preclearance represents a temporal rather than spatialdelocalization of the bordering process. The addition of a temporal, preemptiveelement is useful, although I would not wish to emphasize time over space inimportance. Again, the idea of the assemblage is useful. The examination of ‘‘datadoubles,’’ constructed by the information provided by Advanced Passenger Infor-mation and Passenger Name Record data through the High-Risk Traveler Iden-tification Initiative establishes common standards with the U.S. Customs andBorder Protection Agency. While the HTII simply identifies in-bound travelerswho might be subject with their baggage to additional or more careful scrutiny,Canadian officials abroad also use private carriers to prevent risky individuals fromeven arriving in Canada (Walters 2002; Kruger, Mulder, and Korenic 2004:79).This preemptive restriction from entering the airplane that will enter Canadastands without appeal or process of review, whereas there is a judicial appeal for areview of the face-to-face examination once in Canada. How is this ‘‘remote controlimmigration’’ possible (Zolberg 2003)?

Following Foucault, I would argue that the answer comes in the form of ‘‘tacticsrather than laws, and even in using laws themselves as tactics’’ (1991:95). How dothe Canadian and American governments dispose of forces, spaces, and power/knowledges to render the mobile population docile and subject to a disciplinarypower of inspection that seems to contradict the sovereign logic of territory? I arguethat the confessionary complex and the heterotopic space of the airport renderboth of these moves obscure.

Practice I: Surveillance and Confessionary Complex

There is simply no ‘‘inter’’ national space in international travel: a traveler entersthe United States before she leaves Canada, and before she has left Canadianairspace, her data double has already traveled to the United States. This is also truefor in-bound passengers to Canada, and Canadian passengers heading to Europe(Mitsilegas 2005). How are travelers trained to submit to examination or to havetheir data double examined in the airport (Salter 2006)? To contribute to Lyon’s(2003b) discussion, how do public and private authorities gain our consent for oursurveillance and social sorting? Here I find the link to the confessionary complex.

MARK B. SALTER 57

Foucault argues that there is an element of confession in modern subjectivity that isoften overlooked, which Elden (2005:36–38) argues is central to the progression ofFoucault’s later work. Foucault argues in ‘‘Other spaces’’ that ‘‘the individual has tosubmit to rites and purifications [. . .] to get in one must have a certain permissionand make certain gestures’’ (1986:26). The imaged anonymity of the travelerignores the grid of surveillance in both the spaces and data-flows of the airport,made possible by the confessionary complex.

Foucault plainly spends a great deal of his work describing the change in gov-ernmentality away from the subject as authority on the self. He asks: how is itpossible that the judge, the physician, the psychiatrist all gain authority over theindividual not only to describe what is normal and what is abnormal but also todefine what is true and what is false about that individual. But companion to thisdiffuse disciplinary power, Foucault is also deeply concerned with the character ofself-confessing subjectivity that makes the smooth operation of this authority un-problematic. He argues that one of the key characteristics of the individual as aneffect of disciplinary power is the capacity for confession: ‘‘unconditional obedience,uninterrupted examination, and exhaustive confession . . . appears as an indis-pensable component of the government of men by each other . . .’’ (1997:84). Theconfessionary complex emerges in Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, is explored in‘‘On the Government of the Living,’’ and finally becomes the subject of The Historyof Sexuality in which he claims that

we have become a singularly confessing society. The confession has spread itseffects far and wide. It plays a part in justice, medicine, education, family rela-tionships, and love relations, in the most ordinary affairs of everyday life, and inthe most solemn rites; one confesses one’s crimes, one’s sins, one’s thoughts anddesires, one’s illnesses and troubles (1978:59).

He defines confession as ‘‘all those procedures by which the subject is incited toproduce a discourse of truth about his sexuality which is capable of having effectson the subject himself ’’ (1980b:216). For sexuality, I read all of those Foucauldianaxes of normality/deviance: criminality, sexuality, indolence, but also add a key axisneglected by FoucaultFmobility. The border represents an important site of ex-amination for criminal, sexual, class or labor-related deviance and the master de-viance in international relations: the nature of mobility. In the border examinationthere is a questioning of our narratives of travel and belonging, which is adjudi-cated solely by the ‘‘customs’’ agent of the sovereign.

Foucault argues that the initial religious overtones of confession are medicalizedin the eighteenth century so that subjects were conditioned for ‘‘the nearly infinitetask of tellingFtelling oneself and another, as often as possible, everything . . .’’(1978:20). The techniques and dynamics of confession are intimately related to the‘‘techniques of listening’’ (1980b:214): as the disciplinary state emerges in theeighteenth century, the machinery of confession is professionalized through med-ical, judicial, and governmental institutions.4 It is this predisposition, this trainingtoward unconditional, uninterrupted, and exhaustive confession of the travelerupon which the techniques of listening at the border rely.

Some purchase can be gained by using the anthropological model of the ‘‘rite ofpassage’’ to understand the national border (Salter 2005). In thinking of the borderboth as a ritual and as an institution, the degree to which the integrity of the border,found in the quality of its policing, depends on the confession and examination.The ability of the state to police its inside/outside is dependent on the subject’s

4In my own institutional work in policing the rituals of academic citation, I am struck by the degree to which thejudicial temperament of my colleagues is conditioned by the degree to which students confess their actions and thewrath generated by ‘‘refusing to take responsibility’’ understood as that confession.


willingness to accept the authority of the sovereign to constitute the quality andquantity of the population. In this case, the traveler is confessing not their sexualnature (necessarily), but rather the conditions of their travel (Luibheid 2002). Mo-bility, leaving the state to become foreign and wishing to return, becomes a deviancythat must be explained to the agent of the government. Separate from the ma-chineries of surveillance that are applied at the border, the crucial rite is that ofconfession: Where have you been? Why? What did you buy? How long will youstay? As travelers are conditioned to confess their history, intentions, and identity,they submit to the examining power of the sovereign. This ritual of sovereignsubjectivity enacts our obedience to the agents of government to constituteand authorize our identity. Confession is the toll of our entry into the politicalcommunity.

Adey (forthcoming b:7) makes an interesting parallel between the design struc-tures of spectatorship and the resulting response of attention. It is the bodily still-ness, or rather the interpretation of our embodied attention, in front of thecustom’s agent that provides the truth for our speech. As Vaz and Bruno argue thatin addition to being afraid of external persecution, we must examine the intern-alization of that judgment: ‘‘individuals . . . refrain from doing what would char-acterize them, in their own eyes, as abnormal’’ (2003:278). The sovereign’s powerto admit or exclude is manifest in the necessary anxiety of confession to produce thenational subject. And, as anthropological studies of administrative discretion atthe border illustrate, that anxious confession becomes readable by border agents(Gilboy 1991; Heyman 1995, 2001). Suspicion by a border guard, which is derivedfrom their discretionary power of examination, is enough to warrant further ques-tioning, detention, and expulsion from the country.

Border guards build up a common stock of acceptable travel narratives andtraveler characteristics. These are derived from the statistical calculation of riskgroups with evidence from convictions of travelers from particular countries, withspecific ethnicities, or with suspicious travel paths. This stock of experience isalso built through experience and informal communications among the workers(Heyman 2001). O’Malley argues that the accretion of these narratives within a riskmanagement framework may create additional vulnerabilities (2006:415–417). Inaddition to being from a refugee-prone country or region, guards are attendant toother risk factors: buying a plane ticket in cash, having another person purchasethe ticket, purchasing a ticket close to departure time, traveling a long distance for ashort time. When the guard’s anxiety mounts, more force and interrogation areapplied. The power of the state to expel or exclude any traveler, even citizens withno cause or appeal, is internalized into an anxiety of the confession. We do notworry ‘‘will the state exclude me because it can?’’ But rather we think: ‘‘have I toldthe whole truth? Is my story believable?’’ With ‘‘Please step over here’’ we panic. Atthe utterance of ‘‘Welcome’’ or ‘‘Welcome home’’ we sigh in relief to have passedthe sovereign test. Travelers are reduced from citizens, foreigners, and refugees,with complex identities and claims to home into objects of danger or benefit, whichperhaps afford entry or exit into the national population. Further that confession isconnected with other disciplinary elements of the sovereign: ‘‘the examination thatplaces individuals in a field of surveillance also situates them in a network of writ-ing; it engages them in a whole mass of documents that capture and fix them’’(1978:189). Through the passport, the visa, the customs declaration, our testimonybefore the customs and immigration official, we tell the story of ourselves thatdefines us as docile, obedient sovereign subjects. Each of these documents is sup-ported by other documents, all of which situate us within the apparatus of the state:the birth certificate, the pardon, the social insurance card, the driver’s license, theproof of employment, etc. (Salter 2003). The introduction of biometric measureshas done nothing to diminish either the examination or the reliance on documen-tation. As Muller explains, the body comes to be read as a document in itself (2004).

MARK B. SALTER 59

I might argue that the body comes to confess automatically and remotely identify itsbearer. The confessionary complex conditions mobile subjects to submit to theseremote and intense examinations of not just our status (in terms of nationality) andour characteristics, but also our very character.

The discourse of risk management takes advantage of this confessionary complexto mobilize ‘‘opt-in’’ programs for ‘‘trusted travelers.’’ Bigo has identified the pri-mary way that modern airports and other kinds of police/security forces have at-tempted to control the space for which they are responsible. He argues that in thepast, there was an attempt to incarcerate, isolate, and immobilize problematic in-dividuals. But, the current wisdom seeks ‘‘proactive control and risk managementtypified by disengagement’’ (Bigo 2002). I want to expand this discussion of riskmanagement, as it seems to saturate most public security discussions. Risk man-agement seeks to focus scarce resources on risks that are ranked according tofrequency and impact. Focusing on a pragmatic assessment of the possible andlikely sources of danger for an organization, institutions have been prompted toreconsider old models to focus on the ‘‘new’’ threat environment. Ericson (2006)demonstrates the dangers of adopting the risk paradigm for security, although bothHaggerty and Doyle indicates that risk has become the dominant model for mostbusinesses and governments. Airlines, for example, have adopted a risk manage-ment strategy that borrows from their experience with quality and safety con-trolFjust as an engine or aircraft structural failure is catastrophic, so is a terroristattack. The primary tactic of risk management in Canadian airport security is thedelocalization of the screening function. By delocalization, I mean the removal ofthe discerning of desirable and undesirable travelers away from the gate (Flynn2002). This means preclearance or facilitation programs. The confessionary com-plex comes into play by diffusing concern for privacy and security in these pre-clearance sites or facilitation programs. There is a convergence between riskmanagement and the confessionary complex in the ‘‘opt-in’’ traveler pro-gramsFsuch as NEXUS at the US/Canada border, PRIVIUM at Schiphol, andthe Express Entry system at Ben Gurion airport (Sparke 2006; Adey forthcominga). Applicants provide greater biometric and personal data (criminal and financialrecords) which are compared with existing profiles and records in order to beprecleared. This individualized preclearance has become a standard strategy in riskmanagement: the fast and reliable elimination of ‘‘safe’’ travelers by extendedexamination. The NEXUS Air program between the United States and Canada willrefuse participation to any applicants ‘‘who have been convicted of a criminaloffence in any country for which [they] have not received a pardon’’ (CanadianBorder Services Agency 2005).

We should not be surprised that there is an alignment of consumer and sur-veillant forces, which scholars such as Gandy (1993), Lyon (2003a), and Parenti(2003) have convincingly demonstrated. Relying on the adage ‘‘if you havenothing to hide, you have nothing to fear’’ (Lyon 2001:1), others argue that thesesurveillant forces have gone underground and are largely unnoticed by an uncrit-ical public. For the Privium card at Schipol airport, not only is there priority park-ing, but ‘‘You will usually be able to check in at the business class desk of theparticipating airlines irrespective of the class that you will be traveling in . . . evenif you have an economy class ticket’’ (Schiphol Amsterdam Airport 2006). In ad-dition to exchanging privacy for efficiency in the border process, these facilitationprograms depend on the confessionary complex to self-disclose their character andhistory.

Practices II: Objects of Screening

Heterotopias isolate deviant individuals, or those going through rites of passage,through the arrangement of space, technologies, and authorities. But, here the


contradictions of the airport are laid bare. Despite repeated security checks andregulations, there is no inherent place where identity is checked against the singleclearest threat: known criminals or terrorists. This is separate from the impossibilityof the detection of ‘‘clean’’ terrorists or those like Ahmed Ressam who carry au-thentic documents (which have been issued fraudulentlyFas opposed to fraudu-lent documents, which have been stolen) (Salter 2003:35). Canadian governmentofficials are moving forward with a ‘‘no-fly’’ list of ‘‘immediate threats to civil avi-ation’’ who will be prohibited from boarding, similar to the America system whichcurrently contains over 350,000 entries. However, at the moment, there is no placein the security architecture for any kind of domestic check of identities, either interms of document authenticity or anti-terrorism policing. This bears repeating:there is no institutionalized interface between mobility and security data at theCanadian airport. A known terrorist or criminal might travel from Halifax to Van-couver without ever necessarily being before an officer with sufficient intelligencedata to know to arrest them. If a traveler bothers to interact with a human airlineagent, which is optional in the age of e-tickets and self-serve kiosks, that agent willhave only the briefest training in the recognition of false documents. Airline agentsare not given watch lists. Police are not given passenger information (although theymay request specific information about specific flights). PBS, which is performed byprivate service providers contracted by CATSA, is entirely isolated from any widerdataveillance. Screening is performed for objects and explosives, and further in-vestigation of individuals’ identity, behavior, or documentation is prohibited by TC.CCTV surveillance of the areas is entirely for post hoc investigation rather thanreal-time detection. Airline agents at the gate simply check ID with boarding passnameFinconsistently and with minimal training. The object of screening forCATSA and airport security is a dangerous object, rendering the fact that ‘‘terroristsfly all the time’’ in Canada invisible to the general public.

There are two conflicting pressures at work in the processing of passengersthrough the airport: flow and detection. Adey (forthcoming b) points out that flowand detection operate quite differently in the general spaces of the airport, where‘‘dwell time’’ may be sought precisely for economic reasons. However, at the se-curity points, ‘‘dwelling’’ becomes a risk category. Training and public awarenessprograms at Halifax International Airport, for example the Jetway Operations andiWatch programs, exhort all airport staff to be vigilant of those individuals whoseem to be waiting in screening areas. While airports and airlines focus on aneconomic model of ‘‘throughput,’’ the number of passengers and aircraft per hour,security services focus on ‘‘detection.’’ But these security organizations have a dif-ficult time quantifying or qualifying success in security. Currently, inspectors verifythe adherence to the Security Screening Orders, as interpreted by CATSA into theircontracts with the screening providers, and through infiltration tests. Results arethen communicated indirectly to the private screening providers through CATSAheadquarters, unless there is an immediate breech in which case the screener isimmediately decertified and removed from the security post. CATSA is currentlyredrafting its performance measures to monitor screening success more close-lyFbut this presents a fundamental epistemological and methodological problem.How does one research and describe this kind of activity?

There is a dilemma: ‘‘error or failure in the commercial air travel system ispublicly unacceptable . . . and high levels of delay in the air travel system are alsounacceptable’’ (Frederickson and LaPorte 2002:34). Faced with internal pressuresby subcontractors for profit and external pressures by airlines and airports forconsistent and efficient through-put, the demand by government administratorsfor detection is expressed in terms of ‘‘customer service.’’ While the CATSA Actdetails the primary responsibility of the Crown Corporation to be ‘‘effective andefficient screening of persons who access aircraft or restricted areas throughscreening points,’’ this mandate is translated by CATSA in its own mission statement

MARK B. SALTER 61

as to ‘‘protect the public by securing critical elements of the air transportationsystem as assigned by the government (and be) responsible for the delivery ofconsistent, effective and professional services at or above the standards set by’’(Canadian Air Transport Security Authority 2004). ‘‘Effective and efficient’’ in theAct becomes ‘‘consistent, effective and professional services.’’ Within the govern-mentality of the airport within this neoliberal economic and political framework,the bureaucracy with the greatest numeracy or statistical weight wins. The currentfocus by CATSA on customer service is indicative of this victory of risk manage-ment. Throughput is more easily measured than detectionFand that is thedirection of greatest pressure by all stakeholders.

The second direction of pressure on screening comes from the impossibility ofdetecting the dangerous traveler. As above, the confessionary complex is a neces-sary substructure for the border examination or security screening to function. Inthe account of the interaction of the 9/11 terrorists and American border security,these terrorists had no trouble lying to the authorities (Salter 2004). There is noquantitative measure of ‘‘security’’Ffalse positives do not indicate the success ofdetection any more than false negatives do (Frederickson and LaPorte 2002). Fur-ther, there is no process of learning within this system insofar as terrorists neitherself-declare their beating the detection system nor indicate their subversion of se-curity on customer service surveys (Barnett 2004). Faced with this impossible task,CATSA focuses on the detection of dangerous objects: ‘‘CATSA’s primary respon-sibility is to enhance the security of the traveling public by ensuring that threatitems are not carried onto an aircraft’’ (Canadian Air Transport Security Authority2005:6). The threat items stopped replace the individuals who pass freely. Screen-ers have no mandate or authority to check for the integrity or authenticity ofidentity documents or the behavior of the passenger. There is of course the ‘‘nojoking’’ rule: ‘‘you should never joke or make ‘small talk’ about bombs, firearms orother weapons while going through PBS’’ (Canadian Air Transport Security Au-thority 2004). But, the security screeners do not carry the same authority as thepolice, CBSA, or American officialsFthere is no correspondent obligation for in-dividuals to tell the truth to screeners, only an obligation not to joke or make smalltalk. There is a consensus within the profession of aviation security agents that aterrorist attack by a determined, dedicated suicide bomber cannot be prevented ordeterred. Faced with the impossibility of perfect, reliable security screening, CATSAfocuses on the policing of objects rather than passengers. In their efficient, reliable,and professional policing of these objects, the lack of screening for dangeroustravelers themselves is obscured.

Conclusion: IPS

IPS is useful for directing our critical attention to these understudied sites of local,national, and global politics. Airports are spaces of shared authority where sover-eign and disciplinary powers are both mediated and disaggregated. Within thespecific workings of preclearance and airport security, the airport is neither asmooth transit zone nor simply a gate into the nation, but a complex of private andpublic agencies wrestling with the impossible task of perfect security and perfectmobility. As Pearman suggests: ‘‘airport capacity is about runways and the ability ofterminal buildings to process people and to provide, in retail and entertainmentterms, an ‘experience’ ’’ (2004:235). Scholars of the airport or mobility must not beseduced by the romance of translocality without first understanding the ways thatthe ‘‘experience’’ of the airport varies dramatically according to who is traveling,on what documents, in what class, and with what sociocultural political baggage.The celebration of the airport as a supermodern space of ambiguity, resistance,and freedom is overplayed. While the airport may be a ‘‘machine for processingand controlling mobility’’ (Fuller and Harley 2005:43), a ‘‘space of flows’’ (Castells


1982), a ‘‘space between spaces’’ (Iyer in Crusher 2006) it has the inverse effect ofrendering mobility entirely problematic, shattering notions of sovereign space, andcomplicating the assumptions of stable identities upon which the nation rests. Nei-ther scholars nor citizens should confuse the freedom of mobility for some with theopenness of the institution. The dominance of the risk management paradigmdepends on the confessionary complex and the self-sorting of safe and dangeroustravelers. The acceptance of self-policing, as part of the risk management strategy,leads individual travelers to accept greater and greater intrusions into their privacyand liberties. Given the propensity we have as confessing subjects, we must be onguard for the expansion of interrogators.

The search for dangerous objects obscures the fact that aviation security screen-ing cannot effectively deter or detect dangerous people. Within Foucauldian anal-yses of total institutions, there is a tendency to assume the smooth functioningof knowledge/power networks in a way that reproduces relations of dominanceand obedience with little room for resistance. Critical theorists have also exagger-ated the abilities of governmental institutions to mobilize technologies of surveil-lance and control, especially in response to the war on terror. In the case ofairport screening, as Bennett (2005) confirms with respect to passenger name re-cord data, the state has not become big brotherFit is not all-seeing, all-knowing.Without relinquishing our vigilance to the increased ambit and abilities of stateauthorities to police mobile populations, at present in Canadian airports, that abilityis limited.

This analysis of the governmentalities at play in this international airport invitesseveral questions. What are the politics of resistance at the airport, beyond theromanticism of the global nomad or the protest of specific policies? As Haggertyand Ericson aver, it is the particular ethereality of the surveillance assemblage thatmakes resistance such a challenge: ‘‘In the face of multiple connections acrossmyriad technologies and practices, struggles against particular manifestations ofsurveillance, as important as they might be, are akin to efforts to keep the ocean’stide back with a broomFa frantic focus on a particular unpalatable technology orpractice while the general tide of surveillance washes over us all’’ (2000:609).

Further empirical study is needed into the question of administrative discretion,‘‘as an active mode of governance in the context of liberal rule’’ (Pratt 2005:214). Towhat extent are the agents of customs freely able to make decisions? Bigo and Guild(2005) suggest that this discretion is constrained by bureaucratic codes and work-place surveillance, whereas I have argued elsewhere (2006) along similar lines toPratt, Heyman, and Gilboy that the cloak of justice at the border is preserved onlywhen there is ample room for discretion. Correlated to the study of administrativediscretion must be further examination into the confessionary complex. Does ouridentity as confessing subjects facilitate social sorting and social conditioning, lead-ing us to opt for exhibitionism as a preemptive redefinition of our public personae?In the cases of loyalty cards, blogging, and webcams in which individuals voluntarilygive up privacy, how do contemporary notions of the private rely on expectations ofconfession in the face of social, market, or state power?

The governance aspect of aviation security in Canada is about to undergo asea-change with the introduction of new performance-based regulations and theimplementation of the Security Management System. Over the next 5–10 years, TCand CATSA are expected to reorient their security activities toward a more flexibleand adaptive approach. Alongside this, there is the imminent development of the‘‘Passenger Protect’’ system, a ‘‘made-in-Canada’’ no-fly list that will prevent indi-viduals who present a present danger to civil aviation from boarding Canadiancivil aircraft. Internationally, IATA is promoting a ‘‘Simplifying Passenger Travel’’initiative, which aims to make security screening an integrated and seamless part ofthe airport experience. These major changes will require careful evaluation bycitizens, privacy and civil liberties advocates, and scholars alike.

MARK B. SALTER 63

References

ADEY, PETER. (2004a) Secured and Sorted Mobilities: Examples from the Airport. Surveillance andSociety 1:500–519.

ADEY, PETER. (2004b) Surveillance at the Airport: Surveilling Mobility/Mobilising Surveillance. Envi-ronment and Planning A 36:1365–1380.

ADEY, PETER. (2006) Airports and Air-Mindedness: Spacing, Timing, and Using the Liverpool Airport,1929–1939. Social and Cultural Geography 7:343–363.

ADEY, PETER. (forthcoming a) ‘Divided we Move’: The Dromo-Logics of Airport Security and Sur-veillance. In Security and Surveillance: Technological Politics in Everyday Life, edited by T. Monahan.New York: Routledge.

ADEY, PETER. (forthcoming b) ‘May I have your Attention’: Airport Geographies of Spectactorship,Position and (im)Mobility. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 25.

ALBERTA COURT OF APPEALS. (1999) R. v. Matthiessen: 31.ALBERTA COURT OF APPEALS. (2001) R. v. Daley: 155.AUGe, MARC. (1995) Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, trans. by John Howe.

New York: Verso.BALIBAR, ETIENNE. (2002) What Is a Border? Politics and the Other Scene, edited by E. Balibar. London:

Verso.BARNETT, ARNOLD. (2004) CAPPS II: A Foundation for Aviation Security? Risk Analysis 24:909–916.BECK, ULRICH. (1992) Risk Society: Toward a New Modernity. London: Sage Publishing.BENNETT, COLIN J. (2005) What Happens When You Book an Airline Ticket? The Collection and

Processing of Passenger Data Post-9/11. In Global Policing and Surveillance: Borders, Security,Identity, edited by E. Zureik and M. B. Salter. Cullompton: Willan.

BIGO, DIDIER. (no date) International Political Sociology: An alternative? Cultures et conflits, Available athttp://www.conflits.org/document1173.html (Accessed February 1, 2006).

BIGO, DIDIER. (1999) The Landscape of Police Co-operation. In Boundaries of Understanding: Essays inHonour of Malcolm Anderson, edited by E. Bort and R. Keat. Edinburgh: International SocialScience Institute, University of Edinburgh.

BIGO, DIDIER. (2001) The Mobıus Ribbon of Internal and External Security(ies). In Identities, Borders,Orders: Rethinking International Relations Theory, edited by M. Albert, D. Jacobson and Y. Lapid.Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

BIGO, DIDIER. (2002) Security and Immigration: Toward a Critique of the Governmentality of Unease.Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 27:63–92.

BIGO, DIDIER AND ELSPETH GUILD, EDS. (2005) Controlling Frontiers: Free Movement into and within Europe.London: Ashgate.

BRITISH COLUMBIA COURT OF APPEALS. (2002) R. v. Truong, 315.BRODEUR, JEAN-PAUL. ED. (2006) Air Transportation and Risk Management. Canadian Journal of

Criminology and Criminal Justice 48(3):323–344.BUSH, GEORGE W. (2005) President Discusses Global War on Terror at Kansas State University.

Available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/01/20060123-4.html (AccessedFebruary 1, 2006).

CANADIAN BORDER SERVICES AGENCY. (2005) NEXUS Air. Available at http://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/travel/nexus/air/menu-e.html (Accessed March 26, 2006).

CANADIAN AIR TRANSPORT SECURITY AUTHORITY. (2005) 2005 Annual Report. Available at http://www.catsa-acsta.gc.ca/english/about_propos/rep_rap/pdf/2005.pdf (Accessed March 16, 2006).

CANADIAN AIR TRANSPORT SECURITY AUTHORITY. (2004) Frequently Asked Questions. Available athttp://www.catsa-acsta.gc.ca/english/help_aide/faq.htm (Accessed July 19, 2004).

CASTELLS, MANUEL. (1982) Crisis, Planning, and the Quality of Life. Environment and Planning D 1:3–20.CRUSHER, ZOE. (2006) Out the Window (LAX). Los Angeles: LA Forum. Available at http://www.

zoecrosher.com/lax/ (Accessed February 5, 2006).CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION. (August 13, 2002) U.S. Customs Service Celebrates 50th Anni-

versary of Preclearance Operations Available at http://www.customs.gov/xp/cgov/newsroom/press_releases/archives/legacy/2002/82002/08132002_2.xml (Accessed January 10, 2005).

DELEUZE, GILLES, AND FELIX GUATTARI. (1987) A Thousand Plateaus. Minneapolis: University of Min-nesota Press.

ELDEN, STUART. (2005) The Problem of Confession: The productive failure of Foucault’s History ofSexuality. Journal for Cultural Research 9:23–41.

ERICSON, RICHARD V. (2006) Ten Uncertainties of Risk Management Approaches to Security. CanadianJournal of Criminology and Criminal Justice 48:345–357.


ERICSON, RICHARD V., AND KEVIN D. HAGGERTY. (1997) Policing the Risk Society. Toronto: University ofToronto Press.

FLYNN, STEPHEN E. (2002) America the Vulnerable. Foreign Affairs 81:60–75.FOUCAULT, MICHEL. (1977) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. by Alan Sheridan. New

York: Vintage.FOUCAULT, MICHEL. (1978) The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, trans. by Robert Hurley. New York:

Vintage.FOUCAULT, MICHEL. (1980a) Two Lectures. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–

1977, edited by C. Gordon, trans. by C. Gordon, L. Marshall, J. Mepham and K. Soper, NewYork: Pantheon.

FOUCAULT, MICHEL. (1980b) The Confession of the Flesh. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and OtherWritings 1972–1977, edited by Colin Gordon, trans. by Colin Gordon, Leo Marshall, John Mep-ham and Kate Soper. New York: Pantheon.

FOUCAULT, MICHEL. (1986) Of other Spaces. Diacritics, trans. by Jay Miskoweic 16(1):22–27.FOUCAULT, MICHEL. (1991) Governmentality. The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, edited by

Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon and Peter Miller. Boston: Harvester Wheatsheaf.FOUCAULT, MICHEL. (1997) On the Government of the Living. Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth. Essential Works of

Foucault 1954–1984, Vol. 1. edited by Paul Rabinow, trans. by Robert Hurley. New York: New Press.FREDERICKSON, GEORGE H., AND TODD R. LAPORTE. (2002) Airport Security, High Reliability, and the

Problem of Rationality. Public Administration Review 62:33–43.FULLER, GILLIAN, AND ROSS HARLEY. (2005) Aviopolis: A Book about Airports. London: Black Dog Pub-

lishing Ltd.GANDY, OSCAR. (1993) The Panoptic Sort: A Political Economy of Personal Information. Boulder: Westview.GILBOY, JANET A. (1991) Deciding Who Gets In: Decisionmaking by Immigration Inspectors. Law and

Society Review 25:571–599.GORDON, ALISTAIR. (2004) Naked Airport: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Revolutionary Structure.

New York: Metropolitan Books.HAGGERTY, KEVIN D., AND RICHARD V. ERICSON. (2000) The Surveillant Assemblage. British Journal of

Sociology 51:605–622.HAINMULLER, JENS, AND JAN MARTIN LEMNITZER. (2003) Why Do Europeans Fly Safer? The Politics of

Airport Security in Europe and the US. Terrorism and Political Violence 15:1–36.HEYMAN, JOSIAH MCC. (1995) Putting Power in the Anthropology of Bureaucracy: The Immigration

and Naturalization Service at the Mexico–United States Border. Current Anthropology 36:261–289.HEYMAN, JOSIAH MCC. (2001) Class and Classification at the U.S.–Mexico Border. Human Organization

60:128–140.IYER, PICO. (2001) The Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, and the Search for Home. New York: Vintage.KRUGER, ERIN, MARLENE MULDER, AND BOJAN KORENIC. (2004) Canada After 11 September: Security

Measures and ‘‘Preferred’’ Immigrants. Mediterranean Quarterly 15:72–87.LIPPERT, RANDY, AND DENNIS O’CONNOR. (2003) Security Assemblages: Airport Security, Flexible Work

and Liberal Governance. Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 28:331–358.LISLE, DEBBIE. (2003) Site Specific: Medi(t)ations at the Airport. Rituals of Mediation: International

Politics and Social Meaning, edited by Francois Debrix and Cynthia Weber. Minneapolis: Univer-sity of Minnesota Press.

LLOYD, JUSTINE. (2003) Airport Technology, Travel, and Consumption. Space and Culture 6:93–109.LUIBHEID, EITHNE. (2002) Entry Denied: Controlling Sexuality at the Border. Minneapolis: University of

Minnesota Press.LYON, DAVID. (2001) Surveillance Society: Monitoring Everyday Life. London: Open University Press.LYON, DAVID. (2003a) Airports as Data Filters: Converging Surveillance Systems after September 11th.

Information, Communication and Ethics in Society 1:13–20.LYON, DAVID. (2003b) Surveillance as Social Sorting: Computer Codes and Mobile Bodies. In Sur-

veillance as Social Sorting: Privacy, Risk, and Digital Discrimination, edited by David Lyon. New York:Routledge.

LYON, DAVID, ED. (2006) Theorizing Surveillance: The Panopticon and Beyond. Cullompton: Willan.MANDAVILLE, PETER G. (1999) Territory and Translocality: Discrepant Idioms of Political Identity.

Millennium: Journal of International Studies 28:653–673.MCARTHUR, ROBERT L. (2002) Reasonable Expectations of Privacy. Ethics and Information Technology

3:123–128.MILES, ROBERT. (1999) Analysing the Political Economy of Migration: The Airport as an ‘Effective’

Institution of Control. In Global Futures: Migration, Environment, and Globalization, edited by AvtarBrah. London: Macmillan.

MARK B. SALTER 65

MITSILEGAS, VALSAMIS. (2005) Controle des etrangers, des passagers, des citoyens: Surveillance et Anti-Terrorisme. Cultures and Conflits 58:155–181.

MOUNTZ, ALISON. (2003) Human Smuggling, the Transnational Imaginary and Everyday Geographiesof the Nation-State. Antipode 35:622–644.

MULLER, BENJAMIN J. (2004) (Dis)Qualified Bodies: Securitization, Citizenship and ‘Identity Manage-ment’. Citizenship Studies 8:279–294.

NOIRIEL, GERARD. (1996) The French Melting Pot: Immigration, Citizenship, and National Identity, trans. byGeoffroy de Laforcade. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

O’MALLEY, PAT. (2006) Risks, Ethics, and Airport Security. Canadian Journal of Criminology and CriminalJustice 48:413–421.

ONTARIO COURT OF APPEALS. (1998) R. v. Lewis: 7116.PARENTI, CHRISTIAN. (2003) The Soft Cage: Surveillance in America from Slavery to the War on Terror. New

York: Basic Books.PEARMAN, HUGH. (2004) Airports: A Century of Architecture. London: Laurence King.POINCIGNON, YANN. (2004) Aviation Civile et Terrorisme: Naissance et enjeux d’une politique eu-

ropeenne de surete des transports aeriens. Cultures and Conflits 56:83–119.PRATT, ANNA. (2005) Securing Borders: Detention and Deportation in Canada. Vancouver: University of

British Columbia Press.SALTER, MARK B. (2003) Rights of Passage: The Passport in International Relations. Boulder, CO: Lynne

Rienner.SALTER, MARK B. (2004) Passports, Mobility, and Security: How Smart Can the Border Be? Interna-

tional Studies Perspectives 5:71–91.SALTER, MARK B. (2005) At the threshold of Security: A theory of borders. In Global Surveillance:

Borders, Security, Identity, edited by Mark Salter and Elia Zureik. Padstoe: Willan Publishing.SALTER, MARK B. (2006) The Global Visa Regime and the Political Technologies of the International

Self: Borders, Bodies, Biopolitics. Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 31:167–189.SCHIPHOL AMSTERDAM AIRPORT. (2006) Privium: Frequently Asked Questions. Available at http://

www.schiphol.nl/privium/ (Accessed March 15, 2006).SPARKE, MATTHEW. (2004) Passports into Credit Cards: On the Borders and Spaces of Neoliberal

Citizenship. In Boundaries and Belonging, edited by Joel Migda. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-sity Press.

SPARKE, MATTHEW. (2006) A Neoliberal Nexus: Citizenship, Security and the Future of the Border.Political Geography 25:151–180.

SUPREME COURT OF CANADA. (1992) 1 S.C.R. Canada (Minister of Employment and Immigration)v. Chiarelli:711–748.

SUPREME COURT OF CANADA. (1993) 1 S.C.R. Dehghani v. Canada (Minister of Employment andImmigration): 1053–1079.

STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY AND DEFENCE. (2003) The Myth of Security atCanada’s Airports, January. Available at http://www.parl.gc.ca/37/2/parlbus/commbus/senate/Com-e/defe-e/rep-e/rep05jan03part1-e.htm (Accessed February 16, 2003).

STATISTICS CANADA. (2004) Aircraft Movement Statistics Aviation Statistics Centre. Available at http://www.tc.gc.ca/pol/en/Report/TP577/pdf/TP577_04.pdf (Accessed March 15, 2005).

TORPEY, JOHN. (2000) The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship and the State. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.

TREASURY BOARD OF CANADA. (2001) Risk Management Policy. Available at http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/pubs_pol/dcgpubs/riskmanagement/riskmanagpol_e.asp (Accessed March 31, 2006).

VAZ, PAULO, AND FERNANDA BRUNO. (2003) Types of Self-Surveillance: From Abnormality to Individuals‘At Risk’. Surveillance and Society 1:272–291.

WOOD, ANDREW. (2003) A Rhetoric of Ubiquity: Terminal Space as Omnitopia. Communication Theory13:324–344.

WALTERS, WILLIAM. (2002) Deportation, Expulsion, and the International Police of Aliens. CitizenshipStudies 6:265–292.

ZOLBERG, ARISTIDE. (2003) The Archeology of ‘‘Remote Control.’’ In Migration Control in the NorthAtlantic World, edited by A. Fahrmeir, O. Faron and P. Weil. New York: Berghahn Books.


governmentalities of an airport: heterotopia and confession

Documents