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ABSTRACT
This article considers the Australian response to new global migration flows with a focus on irregular migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. The effects of temporary status and invisibility on lived experience and on social and legal norms are explored, with the off-shore processing of asylum seekers at the extreme end of state policies of externalising borders and irregular migrants. The article problematises the official categorisation of migrants into administrative and legal domains and the consequent construction of a normative hierarchy of good and bad migrants. In the Australian context, political narratives of deserving and undeserving migrants and of asylum seekers as disturbing the ordered migration system are used to justify the need for the protection and security of the nation. The article argues that articulations of a just society and the spread of human rights are weakened through such official narratives of fear and rejection that dehumanise irregular migrants such as asylum seekers, and highlights the work of civil society organisations in attempting democratic accountability.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. In principle ‘refugee’ and ‘asylum seeker’ are categories that denote the stage of legal recognition a person has gained, or has access to. ‘Refugee’ denotes a legal category of a person recognised either by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), or by a state that is a signatory to the Refugee Convention as a genuine refugee while ‘asylum seeker’ denotes a person who claims they require protection under the Refugee Convention but have not had the opportunity to have their claim assessed. This means that the same person can be labelled either refugee or asylum seeker at different stages of the process of having a claim for protection assessed.
2. Article 31(1) of the Refugee Convention refers to obligations to persons who wish to claim protection and enter a country unlawfully (see http://www.unhcr.org/protect/PROTECTION/3b66c2aa10.pdf): ‘The Contracting States shall not impose penalties, on account of their illegal entry or presence, on refugees who, coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened in the sense of Article 1, enter or are present in their territory without authorization, provided they present themselves without delay to the authorities and show good cause for their illegal entry or presence’.
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Claudia Tazreiter
Claudia Tazreiter is Associate Professor of sociology at UNSW, Sydney. Her research focuses on the social and affective impacts of forced and irregular migration, on human rights culture, the role of civil society in social change and gender in migration. She is the author of numerous books, journal articles and book chapters. Claudia’s recent book, Fluid Security in the Asia Pacific: Transnational Lives and State Control, is a collaboration with Sharon Pickering, Leanne Weber, Marie Segrave and Helen McKernan (Palgrave 2016). Claudia has had visiting appointments at the Center for Place, Culture and Politics, City University New Work CUNY (2014) and the Centre for International Studies (CERI) Science Po (2011) and is a fellow at the Institute for Migration and Intercultural Studies (IMIS), University Osnabrück.