International territory

February 22, 2006 9:36 PM

On a 13 hour layover in the Moscow airport I met a Palestinian refugee who'd been living in the international territory inside customs for 11 months; later I learned about a refugee who's lived in Charles de Gaulle for over a decade. All this makes me curious about international territory: the space between disembarking the airplane & going through customs, & the empty fenced-off stretch between some national borders (I seem to remember Turkey & Syria have a large Syrian/Druze refugee population living between the borders & at the mercy of assistance from passing tourists, but I could be totally wrong).

Particularly, I'd like to know more about refugees getting stuck between two national land borders (or refusing to cross back to the country they're fleeing), though any other info on the historical/political hows-and-whys of bordercrossing would be really helpful & interesting!

In part this is research for short fiction I'm working on, so I'm very interested in travel narratives, oral histories, & photo-documentaries on the web that'll give me a sense of place & of the individuals there. I've googled this with not much luck, and I think it's because I don't have enough of a background to know which specific places to google or what terms to use.

posted by soviet sleepover to Travel & Transportation (12 answers total)

you have, of course, seen The Terminal
posted by matkline at 9:57 PM on February 22, 2006

Response by poster: Ah, not sure if I was clear: book recommendations and articles in subscription-based journals like Granta (but probably not super-heavy academic ones) are great, too.

(I haven't seen The Terminal yet but I know of its existence.)
posted by soviet sleepover at 10:10 PM on February 22, 2006

I found some good references here:
http://www.snopes.com/travel/airline/airport.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Terminal
posted by chef_boyardee at 10:16 PM on February 22, 2006

Here's an article about Sir Alfred from The Guardian by a filmmaker who spent a year with him. I saw Sir Alfred myself a few months later - here's a couple of surreptitious photos I took to give you that sense of place:


posted by forallmankind at 10:18 PM on February 22, 2006

Whose law would apply? Is "the space before Customs" still in (say) France? Or would this only be a sensible question in "the empty fenced-off stretch between some national borders"?

One thing I'm wondering is why nobody arrested the people living in airports for trespassing.
posted by davy at 10:29 PM on February 22, 2006

In general, airports are NOT international territory. There may be areas of airports (and sea ports) that countries have decided to exclude from their own customs and passport control boundaries.

One thing I'm wondering is why nobody arrested the people living in airports for trespassing.

Why would they? What would they do with these people then?
posted by grouse at 11:24 PM on February 22, 2006

"One thing I'm wondering is why nobody arrested the people living in airports for trespassing."

... they're in international space, and only there because no country will accept them in. where are you gonna take them if you arrest them?
posted by ancamp at 11:37 PM on February 22, 2006

Response by poster: Whose law would apply? Is "the space before Customs" still in (say) France? Or would this only be a sensible question in "the empty fenced-off stretch between some national borders"?

AFAIK the point from when you enter the airport until you pass through customs is your home country. Once you go through customs, and until you arrive at your destination & pass through customs there, you're in international territory. Surely someone has jurisdiction, but the airport/airlines have no power to force people to leave. They can give the person a free flight back to where they came from, but they can't compel the person to take that flight.

This is complicated in a few cases, and the one that comes to mind is another hearsay story from a Canadian friend: because you now go through US customs while you're technically in a Canadian airport, there've been some jurisdiction conflicts. Namely I think a refugee tried to live in the airport, but somehow because he was on the "American" side of customs in Canada, the US claimed he couldn't because they wouldn't provide him with refugee status. I'm not sure how this was resolved.
posted by soviet sleepover at 11:59 PM on February 22, 2006

Once you go through customs, and until you arrive at your destination & pass through customs there, you're in international territory.

That's just incorrect. What possible basis do you have for asserting this?
posted by grouse at 1:54 AM on February 23, 2006

Sir Alfred wrote a book about his experiences and why he still is at the airport after all these years. I found it a very interesting tale.
posted by vagabond at 2:06 AM on February 23, 2006

Soviet, got any more info about your refugee? Describe the interaction you had with them?
posted by By The Grace of God at 2:28 AM on February 23, 2006

First off, let's clear one thing up: customs is for stuff, immigration is for people. Clearing customs just means you aren't a smuggler (or caught smuggling at least), going through immigration means you've been granted entry.

Some countries consider the part of the airport from the gate to immigration to be a no-man's land of sorts. People in this area have yet to be granted entrance into the country, however they have been stamped out of their departure country. If they refuse to be sent back or the departure country refuses to take them back then they are in limbo.

In the US we don't do this. Many departure points, such as Canadian airports, have pre-screening, so technically you've already been granted entry before you even leave. Also we have a system called parole. Rather than forcing some poor guy to live for decades in the airport, the US will parole him to live on his own.
posted by Pollomacho at 6:54 AM on February 23, 2006