Technologies of Identification in White Australia: Sher Mohamed's files

This paper explores the interactions of Sher Mohamed, an Indian man who lived in Western Australia from 1897 until at least 1937, with the administration of the White Australia policy. This study, stretching over many years, conveys the lived experience of a person of colour living under the White Australia policy, and charts his growing resistance to the policy and its identification and surveillance technologies and processes. A necessary corollary to the determination for a White Australia was a regime of ‘racialised surveillance’ of people of colour living in Australia. Under the Australia Federal Immigration Restriction Act (1901), Sher was required to apply for a permit to re-enter Australia each time he visited India. His files document the Australian government’s changing policies and documentation over four decades. The Australian state employed various technologies of identification and surveillance, including the descriptive list, photography and hand and fingerprints, all of which were shared with or drawn from criminal and colonial jurisdictions. The precise, repetitive and racialised surveillance to which Sher Mohamed was subjected shows how people of colour living in Australia were regarded with suspicion. Rather than just a snapshot in time, this paper undertakes a longitudinal study of one individual through his numerous interactions with the Australian immigration authorities.