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The Hidden Globe
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Chapters 9-11Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary: “Excised”
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism, death, sexual content, and animal cruelty.
Abrahamian grounds her discussion of the offshore detention of migrants by Australia with the story of Sudanese migrant Abdul Aziz Muhamat. Aziz was held in a migrant detention center run by the Australian government on the island of Manus, part of Papua New Guinea, for about six years. The conditions were awful. Abrahamian describes it as a “man-made hell” (234).
Aziz was born into a wealthy, politically active family in Sudan. Aziz became active in organizing a unity movement that then-President Omar al-Bashir saw as a threat. In 2013, fearing for his safety due to his political organizing, Aziz fled to Indonesia. He still felt unsafe there, so he decided to attempt to get to New Zealand. When the ship he was on began to sink, Aziz was rescued by the Australian Navy who sent him to Christmas Island and then on to Manus. While there, he became active in organizing and drawing attention to the poor conditions at the detention center.
The Australian laws governing Aziz’s detention were largely shaped by a 2001 controversy. In August of that year, a fishing boat carrying 433 Afghan refugees capsized near Christmas Island (an Australian territory). They were rescued by the Norwegian freighter Tampa. The Tampa’s captain, Arne Rinnan, was to return the migrants to Java, but they begged him to take them to Australia. When Rinnan approached Australian shores, the government threatened to repel his ship with military force. The subsequent controversy resulted in Australia’s “Pacific Solution,” inspired by the American migrant detention in Guantánamo. Australia excised a number of its islands from being subject to its migrant laws, while maintaining full sovereignty over these territories. lawyer Daniel Ghezelbash calls this kind of legal fiction “hyper-legalism.” As part of its Pacific Solution, Australia created two migrant detention centers offshore: the one on Manus and one on the island of Nauru, which is where the migrants on the Tampa were taken.
Papua New Guinea is a formerly colonized but now sovereign state from which Australia leases land to run their prison. Beginning in 1888, Nauru was governed by a complex web of British, German, Japanese, and Australian companies and government structures. It gained independence in 1968. The main industry in Nauru was phosphate mining. When the mines were depleted, Australia proposed opening prisons there instead. Critics argue that these detention centers violate international law. The camps opened around 2001, and were briefly closed from 2008 through 2012. Conditions in the camps were very poor, especially for children, some of whom exhibited resignation syndrome, a kind of catatonia.
In 2016, the Papua New Guinea Supreme Court ruled that the Manus camp was unconstitutional. The migrants were transferred to the capital of Papua New Guinea. Shortly after, Aziz was nominated for a human rights award in Switzerland. With the support of his sponsors, he was able to travel from Papua New Guinea to Geneva. After winning the award, in his keynote address, Aziz described the horrific conditions of the detention camp. He ended up staying and making a life in Geneva. Most of the other migrants held on Manus and Nauru were resettled in the United States.
In an interview with Abrahamian, Aziz challenged her comparison of freeports to offshore detention facilities as false equivalence that dismissed what he and other detainees had gone through. However, Abrahamian notes that both systems create a “loophole of deniability” (255). Law professor Sam Moyn argues that capitalism and the international human rights framework are mutually entwined.
Chapter 10 Summary: “Laos Vegas”
The Boten SEZ is a Laotian territory on the Chinese border that is run by Chinese interests. This creates many oddities. For example, time in Boten is strange because the city officially operates on Chinese time (and China has a single time zone), but effectively uses Laotian time, a one hour difference. Similarly, businesses only accept Chinese currency, not Laotian currency.
In 2023, Abrahamian went to Laos. She landed in the Laotian capital, Vientiane, where she and her translators took the new Chinese-built and managed Laos-China Railway (LCR) to Boten. It is the only railway in Laos, used both for passenger rail and freight rail for Chinese goods. Geographer Jessica DiCarlo argues that the LCR is a way to “find space to invest excess Chinese capital” to prevent currency devaluation (264).
When they arrived in Boten, the translators were struck by how much it felt Chinese rather than Laotian. Prior to enclosure, Boten was part of a stateless region called Zomia. Following the Laotian Civil War and the US government’s bombing campaign as part of the Vietnam War, impoverished Laos established the Boten SEZ to encourage economic development. Developer Huang Mingxuan was tapped to oversee the project. His company, Fuk Hing Travel Entertainment Group, was given a wide range of sovereign powers, including the ability to collect taxes and deploy police. The company displaced original residents and built casinos to cater to Chinese tourists. With the casinos came other marginal and criminal markets, including sex work and animal trafficking. Researchers of flexible forms of jurisdictions and markets have found that SEZs like Boten often result in more crime, particularly smuggling and fraud. By 2011, crime in Boten had spiraled out of control. In response, the Chinese government shut down telecommunications and power to Boten, while the Laotian government closed the casinos.
As of 2023, Boten had a new Chinese developer, Haicheng. They are focused on building condos for Chinese nationals. The hope is for the border between China and Boten to be unrestricted for Chinese visitors, like state borders in the European Union. The city has been largely hollowed out since the closure of the casinos, but some sex work and other businesses still operate. Abrahamian struggled to find anyone to talk to her about what daily life was like there, in part because the population is so transient. Abrahamian took a tour around the region with a guide. They visited a model traditional village created as a tourist destination by Haicheng.
The morning before she left Boten, Abrahamian visited the Lao customs border where goods entered. It was separate from the border for people where she had entered the country. She notes that “divorcing these lines had made Boten what it was: a place free of duties, a place in between” (284).
Chapter 11 Summary: “Terra Nullius”
Svalbard, also known as Spitsbergan, is a Norwegian archipelago north of the mainland above the Arctic Circle. Abrahamian describes Svalbard as “a free zone for people, not just commerce, taxes or things” (288): Provided they can get there, anyone is permitted to live there. Norway governs the territory, but its sovereignty is shaped by the 1920 Svalbard Treaty, which holds that the land cannot be used for belligerent purposes, that the natural environment must be protected, and that taxation must be kept to a minimum. The Treaty also states that non-Norwegians in Svalbard must be treated as equal to Norwegian citizens.
Abrahamian provides a short history of territorial disputes over Svalbard. It was likely first discovered by a Dutch explorer in 1596. In 1607, British explorer Henry Hudson noticed whales there and it became a popular whale hunting ground. In 1904, Sweden and Norway claimed sovereignty over the territory, but when Russia disputed the claim, the parties reached a diplomatic compromise declaring Svalbard terra nullis, or land owned by no one. Around the same time, British, Norwegian, and American prospectors found coal seams in Svalbard, prompting disputes about who was to manage labor rights, property ownership, and other conflicts.
American businessman John Munro Longyear, who hailed from a small town in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, was a prominent investor in coal mining on Svalbard at that time. As he developed the Arctic Coal Company, he began to lobby the US government to ensure that his mining interests would be protected. His rival, Norwegian nationalist (and Nazi) Adolf Hoel, complained to his government that Longyear and others were not respecting land claims on Svalbard. During World War I, Arctic Coal ceased operations and was sold to a Norwegian company. However, Longyear’s property rights were recognized in the 1920 Svalbard Treaty, which held that private interests and property would be respected without any fiscal responsibility, such as taxes or tariffs. Moreover, anyone would be allowed to live on Svalbard without facing visa requirements or similar restrictions. Abrahamian argues that the Svalbard Treaty represents a “tiny miracle” about “how a company town can turn into an open community” (299).
In 2019, Abrahamian visited Svalbard for two weeks as part of an art residency. She was struck by how many non-Norwegian people she encountered in the town of Longyearbyen. She reflects on the ongoing dispute over oil rights and snow crab fishing within what typically would be considered Norway’s coastline; because of the Svalbard Treaty, it is disputed whether Norway has jurisdiction over that portion of the ocean and its resources. There is a large Russian presence in Svalbard that dates to the 17th century. Today, Russia is represented through a state-owned Russian coal company, Arkikugol, which operates its own company towns like Barentsburg. Abrahamian visited one former USSR company town, Pyramiden, which is “experiencing the beginnings of a revival” (305) through tourism. Abrahamian then went to Sarstangen, a beach covered in trash, a byproduct of fishing boats and overtourism. Abrahamian met with the sysselmesteren, or governor, of Svalbard, Kjerstin Askholt, who explained that the government keeps immigration low by offering very few services to residents.
Following Abrahamian’s trip to Svalbard, COVID-19 lockdowns went into effect. The liminal time of the lockdowns reminds her of the liminal space of The Hidden Globe’s subjects. Abrahamian reflects on the importance of Svalbard to the narrative of Frankenstein, which opens with a crew of a snow-locked ship in the Arctic ice finding scientist Victor Frankenstein. Frankenstein’s monster is not “an evil creature” (310) but rather a morally complex being. Abrahamian argues that, like the monster, the places covered in this text are a hodgepodge of different elements that cannot “be definitively written off as all good or all evil” (311).
Chapters 9-11 Analysis
Every chapter in The Hidden Globe opens with an epigraph that alludes to the theme or overall message of the chapter. The work cited in the epigraph may or may not be referenced explicitly in the body of the chapter. For instance, the epigraph of Chapter 9 is a quote from Behrouz Boochani’s memoir Freedom, Only Freedom (2022), which describes the migrant detention camp in which Boochani was held as “different from all the villages, cities, and continents” (233). This notion of placelessness highlights The Impact of Liminal Jurisdictions on Vulnerable Peoples. In Chapter 9, Abrahamian argues that states hold migrants in liminal spaces to abdicate responsibility for the human rights abuses that occur there. It is an example of how the tools of globalism, such as the creation of extraterritorial legal frameworks, can be used to meet nationalist ends like the detention and expulsion of migrants.
The epigraphs also serve an important role of signposting—citing particular authors, ideas, or literary works to signal adhesion to or understanding of an ideology, domain, or framework. For instance, the epigraph of Chapter 10 comes from William Cronon’s Nature’s Metropolis (1991). This history of the development of the city of Chicago, Illinois, is considered a landmark work in environmental history, a field that focuses on human interaction with the environment. In particular, Cronon focuses on rail, arguing that “the railroad is not a technology, it’s a cultural system. It’s a set of human relations, a set of power relationships that get articulated through what seems like a machine but is in fact an enormous social system” (Cronon, William with Patrick T. Reardon. “Nature’s Metropolis Turns 25: A Conversation with William Cronon.” Edge Effects, 2017). By referencing this work prominently, Abrahamian is signposting that her analysis of Bonen reflects Cronon’s analysis of the railway. Abrahamian signposts in other ways as well. For instance, in Chapter 9, when discussing how the limitations of the human rights framework are concomitant with capitalism, Abrahamian quotes from an interview she conducted with law professor and historian Samuel Moyn. Samuel Moyn is probably best known for his 2018 monograph Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World, which makes a similar argument. Although Abrahamian does not cite this text explicitly, her reference to Moyn’s ideas in relation to this argument signals that she is familiar with recent scholarship in this domain and its relationship to her ideas.
In the final chapter, Abrahamian analyzes Svalbard in relation to the theme of Differing Modes of State Sovereignty. Abrahamian writes admiringly about the form of sovereignty exercised there, noting, “What Svalbard does not have is borders […]. As long as you can support yourself, you can live there footloose and visa-free” (288). This admiration is reflective of Abrahamian’s long-held advocacy for open borders: “I believe people should be allowed to live where they want to live” (130). She rearticulates this belief in the final chapter, stating that nations should “tear [walls] down, let [newcomers] in” (288). She tempers this admiration with an acknowledgement that the harsh weather conditions and lack of government support in Svalbard makes it unlikely that, for instance, people with disabilities would be able to live there long-term. This tempered view of Svalbard is resonant with Abrahamian’s final argument in The Hidden World. She contends that “I don’t think [the places covered in the text] can be definitively written off as all good or all evil” (311). However, the two modes of sovereignty about which Abrahamian is most complimentary are the charter cities of Chapter 5 and Svalbard. These models are both closely associated with libertarian politics. This suggests that despite her signposting of leftist thinkers like Karl Marx, Quinn Slobodian, and James Scott throughout the work, Abrahamian’s political views are not doctrinaire but rather somewhat heterodox. This heterodoxy is reflected in the final reference to Frankenstein’s monster: Abrahamian sees her subject, her politics, and the monster as complex composites with moral valences.
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