Customs Regimes and the Materiality of Global Mobility
2007
Chalfin, Brenda
Focusing on customs operations at the Port of Rotterdam, this essay investigates the problematic of commercial governance at a historical moment characterized by the unprecedented volume and velocity of cross-border and transoceanic trade and an increasingly globalized security mandate. Although Netherlands Customs officers, facilities, and regulatory authority are visibly evident at the Port of Rotterdam, Customs operates largely through forms of indirect control rather than direct oversight. These trends reflect the influence of the World Trade Organization and World Customs Organization as well as International Maritime Organization and U.S. Customs and Border Protection provisions. They also belie a strongly neoliberal move toward minimal or consolidated government, backed up when necessary by security. They equally entail processes of private government involving the delegation of responsibilities to private authorities, the ceding of commercial privilege to select firms, and dependence on information and management models from the private sector.
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