Eighty thousand entry points: an interview with Antje Missbach.

• Position: Interview

With over 80,000 kilometers of borders, Indonesia has become a transit hub for migrants hoping to reach Australia. However, as Australia tightens its entry and immigration policies under Prime Minister Tony Abott, many migrants have found themselves stuck in this archipelagic country. Some surrender to authorities immediately and end up in detention centers, while others live in secrecy. Dr. Antje Missbach is a research fellow at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, who has been studying these migration flows since 2010. She spoke with the Journal about trends that she has seen from her fieldwork over the last few years.

Journal of International Affairs: How did Indonesia become such a big transit center for migrants? Is it purely because of its geography and proximity to Australia, or are there other factors involved as well?

Antje Missbach: Indonesia's unique geography, an archipelago that consists of more than 17,000 islands, makes it relatively easy to enter the country clandestinely. A typical route for asylum-seekers is, for example, to take a boat from Malaysia and cross over to the Riau Archipelago (close to Singapore) or to the Island of Sumatra, which can be done in a night. However, not all asylum-seekers use the maritime entry spots; many also arrive in Indonesia by plane with tourist visas and genuine travel documents. From this perspective their entry is regular, and only if they overstay their visa do they become "irregulars." Using fraudulent papers and bribery is, of course, another possibility to gain entry into Indonesia.

Until September 2013, it was also relatively easy to exit the country by boat in order to reach Australia's nearest outposts, such as Christmas Island and Ashmore Reef. Given that the entire length of the Indonesian borders spans more than 80,000 kilometers, it is obvious that border protection can never be all encompassing,

passing, as the Indonesian navy, maritime police, and migration authorities are generally understaffed and under-equipped.

Although Indonesia has tried to enforce more border protection measures over the last years, there are still many loopholes that allow asylum-seekers to come in undetected. Many asylum-seekers prefer to be stuck in Indonesia rather than in Malaysia. Not only because the living costs are a lot less and the processing of their applications for protection is often deemed to be faster, but also in Indonesia there are no corporate punishments for so-called "illegals." In Malaysia, immigration offenders not only risk jail time but they also face caning for repeated migration offenses. Although it is a lot easier to find jobs in the informal economy in Malaysia, an important aspect for asylum-seekers who are stuck in transit for many years is that in Indonesia, asylum-seekers and refugees have more chances to receive financial and material support. For example, those under the care of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) receive a monthly stipend and free housing. It is hardly surprising that the IOM receives a lot of project funding from Australia, which wants to keep out unwanted asylum-seekers.

As the world's largest Muslim nation, Indonesia is also attractive to Muslim asylum-seekers, such as those from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the Middle East. Even though most Indonesian Muslims are Sunni, the Sunni-Shia divide has so far not mattered very much, at least not among the asylum-seeking population. Most Indonesians might not even be aware of the fact that many Hazaras are in fact Shia. However, based on my observations in the field over the last five years, Muslim solidarity definitely has its limits, too. This has become obvious in the number of evictions of asylum-seekers from communities where they used to be tolerated by the local population. Despite some xenophobic...