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Asylum Seeker Narratives

(Status : Public)
Coordinated by AustLit UQ Team
  • Blind Conscience / Margot O'Neill

    Publisher's blurb:

    Mandatory detention of asylum-seekers has been a prominent public issue for almost a decade. It has created an industry, provoked shame and anger across society, been manipulated politically by all sides and has prompted many to become actively involved in campaigns in support of asylum-seekers. The government's recent response to the crisis precipitated by the arrivial of the West Papuans and the widespread protest that followed show that the refugee crisis is not over. Nevertheless the prospects for incarcerated asylum-seekers have improved markedly since the intervention of Petro Georgeiou and other federal Liberal backbenchers. This shift and the time that has passed since the Tampa incident, children overboard and near saturation coverage of individual asylum-seekers provide the opportunity for some reflection. Margot O'Neill has covered many angles of the story herself, but writes now about the way Australian society at large was affected. She uses individuals - activists, psychiatrists, lawyers, politicians, prison guards - with direct experience to tell the broader story. This gives the book a strong narrative drive and a powerful emotional charge.

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  • Child Asylum Seekers Living in Limbo / [researched and written by] Katherine Goode

    This booklet will review the history of Australia's changing policy on refugees and asylum seekers. It will then examine the psychological and physical effects of mandatory detention on asylum seekers, with a particular emphasis on children and unaccompanied minors. It will also look at what happens after they have received a temporary visa.

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  • Desert Sorrow : Asylum Seekers at Woomera / Tom Mann

    Publisher's blurb:

    The great achievement of this book is that the people are real, not figments of media construction, and we get to care about them, and worry for them. Australia has in recent years implemented harsh measures on refugees and asylum seekers, changing laws retrospectively and where necessary, to make anti-asylum seeker policy legal. These measures have been as popular as they have been misrepresented and misunderstood. This book gives an extraordinary and important insight into the secret daily life behind the wire of detention centres.

  • Desert Sorrow at AustLit

    image of person or book cover
    Image courtesy of publisher's website.

    The great achievement of this book is that the people are real, not figments of media construction, and we get to care about them, and worry for them. Australia has in recent years implemented harsh measures on refugees and asylum seekers, changing laws retrospectively and where necessary, to make anti-asylum seeker policy legal. These measures have been as popular as they have been misrepresented and misunderstood. This book gives an extraordinary and important insight into the secret daily life behind the wire of detention centres.

    (...more)
    See full AustLit entry
  • Following Them Home / David Corlett

    'In mid-2004, I travelled to meet asylum seekers whom Australia had returned to Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan. My intention was to witness first-hand the circumstances into which Australia returns people it deems not to need protection. This is the story of that expedition.'- David Corlett 'The Australian government has long declared that it owes no duty of care to those asylum seekers it deports, even after the deportees in question have spent years in our detention system. This duty of care has been boldly assumed by David Corlett, who in these pages gives a graphic picture not only of what befalls the deported, but of what happens to them within Australia's gratuitous, haphazard and damaging system of detention and processing. His book becomes a necessary humanitarian account. But as a record of human struggle and voyaging, it makes good reading as well. In the vacuum of our government's policy, we all owe Corlett a debt.' - Thomas Keneally

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  • Freeing Ali: The Human Face of the Pacific Solution / Michael Gordon

    In April 2005, Michael Gordon was the first journalist to gain unrestricted access to the refugee detention centre on Nauru. Here he interviewed more than half of the 54 asylum seekers (then) on the island. Gordon tells the story of Ali Mullaie, an Afghan asylum seeker who spent three and a half years detained on Nauru.

  • Freeing Ali at AustLit

    image of person or book cover
    This image has been sourced from online.
    In April 2005, Michael Gordon was the first journalist to gain unrestricted access to the refugee detention centre on Nauru. Here he interviewed more than half of the 54 asylum seekers (then) on the island. Gordon tells the story of Ali Mullaie, an Afghan asylum seeker who spent three and a half years detained on Nauru. (...more)
    See full AustLit entry
  • From Under a Leaky Roof: Afghan Refugees in Australia / Phil Sparrow

    Traces the journeys of many Afghan refugees currently living Australia. Common experiences of discrimination and persecution which led them to flee their homes are detailed, the despair of detention in Australia and the fear and uncertainty in beginning new lives here.

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  • From White Australia to Woomera: The Story of Australian Immigration / James Jupp

    Publisher's blurb:

    There has never been a greater need for a sober, historically informed yet critical account of immigration policy in Australia. In this book, Australias leading specialist on migration James Jupp surveys the changes in policy over the last thirty years since the seismic shift away from the White Australia Policy. Along the way the author considers the history of the White Australia Policy, compares the achievements of the Fraser, Hawke and Keating governments, considers the establishment of the 'institutions' of multiculturalism and ethnicity, and then the waves of attacks on multiculturalism. It looks critically at the impact of economic rationalism on migration choices, the environmentalist challenges to migration, and the impact of Pauline Hanson and One Nation. Most importantly the vexed issue of refugees and asylum seekers is covered in great depth.

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  • Future Seekers: Refugees and the Law in Australia / Mary Crock and Ben Saul

    This book has been written to help Australians understand a relatively new phenomenon - non-citizens who enter the country unlawfully and demand protection as refugees. Provides a clear and simple explanation of the legal, administrative and political procedures governing refugee claims made in Australia.

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  • Future Seekers II: Refugees and Irregular Migration in Australia / Mary Crock, Ben Saul and Azadeh Dastyari

    Publisher's blurb:

    This book explores Australia's ambivalent legal and political response to 'irregular' migrants - asylum seekers, 'boat people', 'illegals', 'queue jumpers' and 'economic migrants'.

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  • Gillian Whitlock

    Gillian Whitlock is a graduate of The University of Queensland, where she completed theses on A. G. Stephens and Doris Lessing, and Queen's University, Canada, where she completed a PhD thesis on the role of the magazine (including the Bulletin) in the colonial context. She has co-edited the journal Australian-Canadian Studies and has published widely in the area of feminist criticism, postcolonial studies, Australian studies and women's writing, particularly autobiography. She has held the position of Professor in the School of Humanities at Griffith University and was also founding Director of Griffith Flexible Learning Services.
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  • History of Immigration from Afghanistan [website]

    Museum Victoria gives a brief overview of Afghan immigration to Australia from the cameleers of the 19th century to recent refugee arrivals.

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  • Muslim Communities in Australia / edited by Abdullah Saeed & Shahram Akbarzadeh

    Includes Recently Arrived Muslim Refugee Women Coping with Settlement / Zahra Kamalkhani (chapter five).

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  • The Pacific Solution / Susan Metcalfe

    Between 2001 and 2008, Australia detained a total of 1,637 asylum seekers in offshore camps in Papua New Guinea and Nauru. This Pacific Solution policy caused undeniable damage to vulnerable people seeking sanctuary in Australia.

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  • Questions from the Asylum / Susan Connelly

    A collection of controversial articles focussing on the issue of detention of illegal immigrants.

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  • Refugees: The Tampa Case / Julian Burnside

    The Australian government recently decided to adopt a tougher stance in relation to refugees who arrive here informally. In adopting that stance, the government has exposed Australia to international censure. It has put us in breach of our obligations under international conventions, and it has betrayed a deeply unattractive element in the Australian character. It did this for electoral advantage, at a time when Australia receives a minimal number of refugees, and treats appallingly those who arrive here. The government's handling of the Tampa 'crisis' was a triumph of electoral cynicism over humanitarian need. It exposed the difficulty Australians have in acknowledging the conflict of need and advantage. The refugee problem involves a choice between minor self-sacrifice and major betrayal of humanitarian standards.

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  • Seeking Refuge: Asylum Seekers and Politics in a Globalising World / edited by Jo Coghlan, John Minns and Andrew Wells ; foreword by Tom Keneally

    With a foreword by Thomas Keneally, Seeking Refuge takes a direct look at refugee and humanitarian issues challenging Australia and the world. Detainees tell their own stories in frank interviews. Expert contributors, including Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Andrew Wells and Carmen Lawrence, analyse the role of governments and the UN, as well as the manipulation of public opinion.

    Includes a chapter by Carmen Lawrence.

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  • Time for Change: Australia in the 21st Century / foreword by Geoffrey Robertson ; edited by Tim Wright

    A collection of 12 inspirational, provocative and insightful essays by prominent Australians on a wide range of topics including the environment, the refugee issue, higher education reform, environmental sustainability and an Australian bill of rights.

    Notes: Julian Burnside QC's chapter includes a brief case example of a Middle Eastern family who arrived in Australia in 2001.This appears on pages 42-44. [There is a link in this library record to a Google book search that provides a sample of the text.]

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  • Trafficked / Kathleen Maltzahn

    Trafficked tells the story of a rare human rights campaign that succeeded in changing government policy to protect women smuggled into Australia each year to work in the sex trade. In 2003, the Coronial Inquiry into Puongtong Simaplees 2001 death at the Villawood Detention Centre put the issue of trafficking for prostitution in Australia on the national agenda for the first time. Trafficked contains first-person accounts of women like Puongtang, stories that inspired womens groups to make sure trafficked women could no longer be ignored.

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  • Trapped Behind Bars

    Non-fiction centring on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Story of a prison warden and detention centre employee:

    'At the age of 21, I finished university and commenced employment as a prison officer in a maximum-security male prison. I worked there and at one of Australia's most notorious illegal immigration detention centres for many years, in the capacity of an officer and intelligence/investigations officer. It was during this employment that I was exposed to many traumatic events that were to dictate my future.'

  • Trapped Behind Bars on AustLit

    image of person or book cover
    This image has been sourced from online.

    True story of author's life as an officer in an Australian detention centre.

    (...more)
    See full AustLit entry
  • Yearning to Breathe Free: Seeking Asylum in Australia / editors, Dean Lusher, Nick Haslam ; foreword by Glyn Davis

    Yearning to breathe free presents an overview of the historical, social and political contexts that have shaped Australia's recent treatment of asylum seekers. An eminent group of authors offers a clear-eyed view of the many dimensions of the asylum seeker predicament, including its psychological and humanitarian consequences, and lays out an agenda for change in policy.–Provided by publisher.

    Notes: Includes articles by Carmen Lawrence; Julian Burnside QC; Malcolm Fraser; Phillip Adams; and more.

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  • The Truth Hurts: Facts and Stories about 'Boat People' and Asylum Seekers / Centre for Refugee Research ; [researcher Belinda Lucas]

    [No abstract or description available at this time]

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  • The Worst of Woomera / by Dave and Cherry McKay

    This booklet discusses the difficulties of the refugees detained in Woomera Detention Centre in the early 00s, the ones who remained or were recaptured after the breakout, which the authors participated in, until its closure in 2003. It contains both the background stories of the refugees and the experiences they had in Australia's most notorious mandatory detention centre while waiting for a visa.

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