Sana
Yasmin Chaudhry.
Sana
Yasmin Chaudhry of University College of London can be reached at sana.chaudhry.12@ucl.ac.uk.
Australia’s engagement with
international humanitarianism is continually undermined by mean-spirited national
policies toward asylum seekers. This took a turn under Hawke-Keating in 1992
when delayed legal access and court amendments of the Migration Acts severely
impeded the assimilation of Cambodian asylum seekers (Manne 2013: 19). Since
then, callous policies have continued despite Australia’s open programme of
accepting refugees during World War II, at a time when political leaders
espoused multiculturalism as a bedrock policy for the nation. However during
the 1990s, appeals to xenophobia were proving to be politically profitable,
therefore punitive policies were introduced for all those who arrived without
proper documentation (Kipnis 2004: 262).
Today, “those seeking asylum who make
it to Australia are sent to detention centres where conditions are harsh and
access to legal aid and the media is strictly limited, if not curtailed
completely” (Mares 2002). What is more, these
detention centres are geographically located in “marginal spaces where social ‘unmentionables’ and dangerous
wastes are located and removed from mainstream society” (McLoughlin and Warin
2003) thus stripping asylum seekers of their rights to a strong network of
social capital. Furthermore,
Howard’s creation of a ‘temporary safe haven’ VISAs means those asylum seekers
continue to live in limbo, constantly fearing forcible repatriation. This temporary
status “legalizes the ambiguity through which asylum applicants are positioned
outside the nation-state” (Mountz et al 2002: 340), consequently leading to
further marginalisation.
Australia's approach remains unparalleled when contrasted to
other industrialised countries: “in terms of the sheer length of detention, the
blanket nature in which undocumented asylum seekers are detained, and the lack
of independent review of the system” (Silove
2003). Australia has the
capability to do better. And it should do so by primarily tackling the media,
in terms of its divisive language, in order that the veil of ignorance may be lifted.
The fact of the matter is that “boat people are around 1% of total migration
and have 100% of the media’s attention” (Vivani 2010). Sorrowfully, “a quarter
of century ago, asylum was a matter of trust, in which the applicant was
presumed to be telling the truth; today, asylum is set in a climate of
suspicion, in which the asylum seeker is seen as someone trying to take
advantage of the country’s hospitality” (Fassin and d’Halluin 2005: 600), because
refugees are still largely regarded to constitute a political form of
migration, as opposed to skilled labourers to appear to offer greater economic
opportunity (Malkki 1995: 496).
The hysteria surrounding Australia’s
intake of boat arrivals, particularly during the Tampa incident, was marinated
in narratives of national interest, domestic politics and the grim shadows of
the White Australia Policy during the 2001 elections which played “on populist
fears and hatreds of an uncontrolled flux of Asians” (Barker 2011: 23). Although
there should be some deterrent, “our expectation that Indonesia should hold all
boats so that we don’t have to process them is completely unrealistic” (Vivani
2010) especially as Indonesia isn’t a signatory to the 1951 UN Refugee
Convention. Ironically the Malaysia solution was fired down as illegal because
it also isn’t a signatory to the convention; however this double-standard
severely undermines Australia’s diplomatic relations. It ill behoves Australia
“to wrongly criticise or arrogantly disrespect Indonesia when it has saved
[them] from very large numbers of Vietnamese boat arrivals in the past” (Vivani
2010). Australia should not strain relationships with its neighbours,
particularly as they are cooperating. This only seeks to undermine its engagement
as a humanitarian middle power and exemplary citizen within the Asia-Pacific.
Unfortunately, the politicisation
surrounding ‘bogus’ asylum seekers only seems to be hardening as years pass, yet
there is hope that a changing demographic within the country may sway
Australia’s engagement toward a more positive light. A key barrier to public
understanding is that it is widely perceived “mass migrations create domestic
instability, generate interstate tension and threaten international security”
(Loescher 1992: 4-5). This white noise conceals the fact that “most refugees
are not poor people. They have not failed within their homeland; they are
successful, prominent, well-integrated, educated individuals who fell because
of fear of persecution" (Stein 1981: 322). Somehow, refugees have become,
instead of a mixed category of people sharing a certain legal status, a
socially constructed homogenous cultural identity in themselves (Stein 1981: 323)
and are demonised through an underlying rhetoric that refugees “are simply too
different to be assimilated” (Kipnis 2004: 273).
Australia is internationally regarded
as an advocator of human rights, however over the past two decades public
policy has been cruel and ineffective in its engagement with asylum seekers. Australia
has a moral responsibility to engage with refugee regimes because “there is
such a thing as international citizenship which has its rights, which has its
duties and which implies a commitment to rise up against any abuse of power,
whoever its author, whoever the victims” (Macey 1993: 437-8). The fact of the
matter is that “the more we seek to deter asylum seekers and refugees through
harsh treatment, the more Australia comes to resemble those repressive nations
from which they flee” (Mares 2001: 202). Ultimately, Australia needs to divorce
its asylum policies from the politics behind illegal immigration.
References
·
Barker,
G. (2011) the Howard-Downer Legacy.
In: Cotton, J. and Ravenhill, J. (2011) Middle Power Dreaming: Australia in
World Affairs 2006-10, Melbourne: Oxford University Press.
·
Kipnis,
A. (2004) Anthropology and the Theorisation of Citizenship, the Asia-Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 5(3):
257-78.
·
Loescher
G. (1992) Refugee Movements and
International Security, Adelphi Paper 268, London: Brassey's.
·
Macey,
D. (1993) The Lives of Michael Foucault: A Bibliography, New York: Pantheon.
·
Malkki,
L. (1995) “Refugees and Exile” From ‘Refugee Studies’ to the ‘National Order of
Things’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 24:
495-523.
·
Manne,
R. (2013) Tragedy of Errors: Australia’s Shipwrecked Refugee Policy, The Monthly, 18-25.
·
Mares,
P. (2001) Borderline: Australia’s treatment of refugees and asylum seekers,
Sydney: University of New South Wales Press.
·
Mares,
P. (2002) Borderline: Australia’s Response to Refugees and Asylum Seekers in
the Wake of the Tampa, Sydney: University of New South Wales Press.
·
McLoughlin,
P. and Warin, M. (2007) Corrosive Places, Inhumane Spaces: Mental Health in
Australian Immigration Detention, Health
and Place, 14(2): 257-78.
·
Mountz,
A. et al. (2002) Lives in Limbo: Temporary Protected Status and Immigrant
Identities, Global Networks, 2(4):
335-56.
·
Silove,
D. (2003) mental health of asylum
seekers: Australia in a global context. In: Allotey, P. (2003) the
Health of Refugees: Public Health Perspectives from Crisis to Settlement,
Melbourne: Oxford University Press, pp. 68–82.
·
Stein,
B. N. (1981) the refugee experience: defining the parameters of a field of
study, International Migration Review, 15(1): 320-30.
·
Vivani,
N. (2010) Immigration: Taking the Long View, the AsiaLink essays, 2(2).
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