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Asylum Seeker Narratives

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  • Acculturation Experiences of Iraqi Refugees in Australia: The Impact of Visa Category

    Journal article: Journal of Intercultural Studies (Carlton, Vic), v.27, no.4, Nov 2006, p.393-412.

    Abstract:

    This paper examines the acculturation challenges facing Iraqi refugees in Australia, and the impact of humanitarian visa category. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with Temporary Protection Visa (TPV) holders and Permanent Protection Visa (PPV) holders living in Melbourne. The findings indicate that TPV holders identify the temporary visa regime as the primary obstacle to successful integration into Australian society. The findings also suggest that TPV refugees have developed a greater level of social ties outside their ethnic groups and are less focused on issues of cultural maintenance than refugees with PPVs. The insecurity associated with the temporary protection regime appears to have led to a decreased focus on cultural maintenance, in favour of the more immediate 'survival' focus on material settlement needs and visa status. While the increased social contacts of TPV refugees with some mainstream groups may be considered a partial indicator of successful acculturation, these developments cannot be equated with 'settlement' as the social ties are of a temporary or unstable nature. The overriding impact of the temporary visa regime is one of creating obstacles to the effective integration of TPV refugees.

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  • Acting for Asylum: Asylum Seeker and Refugee Theatre in Australia 2000-2005

    Ph.D. dissertation: La Trobe University. School of Communications, Arts and Critical Enquiry, 2008.

    Abstract:

    Between July 1999 and December 2001, approximately 9500 asylum seekers arrived on Australia's shores seeking sanctuary and protection. This most recent wave of asylum seekers to Australia consisted mainly of Afghans, Iraqis and Iranians, and has been referred to as the 'fourth wave' of asylum seekers to arrive in Australia by boat. The Howard Coalition Government's response to this group of asylum seekers was characterised by exclusionary policies, media censorship, and information control. As a result of restrictions placed on journalists seeking to report on detention centres, the Australian theatre has played a vital role in challenging the Government's censorship and propaganda by exposing details about the conditions in detention centres and by revealing the stories of those who have been imprisoned inside. As a result, the Australian theatre has witnessed a renaissance in political theatre and performance in recent years directly engaging with the plight of asylum seekers arriving on Australian shores.

    This thesis charts the Australian theatre's response to the asylum seekers of the fourth wave. The study presents a comprehensive catalogue of the contributions in the field of the performing arts dealing with the fourth wave of asylum seekers which have been staged in Australia over a five-year period from November 2000 to October 2005. Challenging the Government's policies of exclusion, the Australian theatre has emerged as an important socio-political practice geared towards including those who have been excluded by the state. In contrast to the Government's policies of media censorship and information control, the Australian theatre responding to the plight of asylum seekers attempts in various ways to return the theatre to its etymological and radical associations as 'a place of seeing' where audiences can contend with the experiences and stories of those silenced by the state. This thesis argues that the theatre responding to the plight of asylum seekers constitutes an important contribution and development in the field of political theatre in Australia.

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  • Advocacy in the Dark: Seeking Justice for Asylum Seekers

    Journal article: Pacific Journalism Review, vol. 10, no. 1, 2004, p.46-56.

    Abstract:

    Two members of the Australian refugee support NGO ChilOut detail the lack of public access to Immigration Detention Centres (IDCs), to the detainees within them and to the policies and procedures governing such centres. ChilOut organises visits to IDCs so ordinary Australians can know and befriend detainees. However, stringent and sometimes arbitary control of IDC visitors mean their visits cannot ensure transparency. More formal written attempts to establish accountability such as ChilOut's submission to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) inquiry into children in detention and ChilOut's report on contractual compliance within IDCs have been dismissed or refuted by the Australian Government. Unaccountability also arises from confidentiality clauses in the 1998 contract between the Government and ACM (the private company which ran IDCs), the Governments shielding of ACM from adverse publicity, contractual incentives to cover up negative incidences, and commercial-in-confidence deletions from publicly available versions of the contract. This article argues that the lack of access to detention centres reaches its zenith on Nauru offering further proof that Australia's current refugee policy is deliberately structured to hinder transparency and accountability.

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  • A Fair Queue?: Australian Public Discourse on Refugees and Immigration

    Journal article: Journal of Australian Studies, no.77, 2003, p.23-30.

    Abstract:

    The term 'queue-jumpers' and variations on this theme have been widely applied in recent months in Australian public discourse, especially since the commencement of the so-called 'Tampa crisis' on 27 August 2001, when a boat carrying 438 unauthorised arrivals heading for Australia sank in international waters in the vicinity of Christmas Island. This paper analyses this discourse in three components. First, I will identify the use of the queue analogy within contemporary Australian public discourse. I will consider definitional and historical uses of the term 'queue', and explore the implicit themes embedded in the meaning of queues, with a view to identifying an established word-use. Finally, I will examine elements of refugee immigration policy in Australia to establish whether this policy conforms to the characteristics and thematic underpinnings of a queue as defined earlier. The focus of this paper will be on the use of the terms 'queue' and 'queue-jumpers' in Australia between 26 August and December 2001, during and immediately after the Tampa crisis. Restricting the word-use to this specific timeframe enables a coherent analysis of immigration policies, procedures and outcomes within a rapidly changing policy area.

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  • Afghan Hazara Refugees in Australia: Constructing Australian Citizens

    Journal article: Social Identities, vol. 13, no. 2, 2007, p.31-50.

    Abstract:

    This paper explores the construction of Australian citizenship, in particular contestations over membership in the community, through the interactions between two groups of people who live and work in a regional town in Australia: volunteer English language tutors and Afghan Hazara refugees who were granted temporary protection visas (TPVs). The paper examines the power relations which operate between the two groups and other relevant institutions. Of particular interest is the way the tutors and other groups tend to infantalise the Hazara through their efforts to 'protect' them and the way the Hazara in turn attempt to deal with and resist this treatment. In contrast to the mostly negative media images of Afghan refugees in the Australian media, the English language tutors construct and represent the Hazara using a discourse of citizenship, couched in terms of their membership in and economic contribution to the community. This membership is contested by certain groups when the Hazara are seen as not being adequately grateful for the help given to them by the community.

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  • Afghan Refugee Women: Their Struggle Continues in Melbourne

    Dissertation: University of Queensland. Dept. of Anthropology and Sociology, 2000.

    Abstract:

    Due to the continued danger, turbulence and violation of human rights occurring in Afghanistan and surrounding countries, Afghan refugees continue to be assisted by Australia's humanitarian resettlement program. However, for many Afghan refugee women arriving and living in Australia their ordeal continues as they struggle to adjust to life in a new country.

    This thesis is a qualitative study assessing the appropriateness and utilisation of resettlement services available to Afghan refugee women in Melbourne. Most particularly services relating to housing, English language assistance and tuition, medical and counselling facilities, income support, employment services, information distribution and childcare support. The objective being to identify the difficulties that Afghan women face during their first five years of resettlement in order to develop a more suitable and sustainable approach.

    Semi-structured indepth interviews were carried our with Afghan refugee women, social workers and Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs employees and the findings compared with the conclusions of previous studies.

    Results clearly indicate that current support services are not adequately meeting the needs of Afghan refugee women in Melbourne. They continue to be a vulnerable group, poorly prepared to handle the obstacles they encounter on arrival in Australia. Short-term recommendations presented assume a community-based approach to address the identified problems adversely affecting Afghan women. It is proposed that by pursuing a 'self help' model focusing on local empowerment, the Afghan community will take responsibility for its own needs and gravitate towards a self-sufficient and self-managing community. It is hoped that in the longer term, this will reflect positively on the perception of Afghan refugees in Australia in both public and Government arenas.

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  • All I Ask for Is Protection: Young People Seeking Asylum in Australia

    Monograph: Carlton, Vic. : Centre for Multicultural Youth Issues, 2002.

    Abstract:

    The purpose of All I Ask for Is Protection: Young People Seeking Asylum in Australia is to provide an opportunity for young people from a refugee background to speak about their experiences, hardships and discoveries in the process of seeking protection and sanctuary in Australia. The aim of this paper is to highlight some of the issues and needs of this particularly vulnerable group whose voices are yet to be heard in the current debate of international people's movements, border protection and asylum seeking in Australia. In recent years, Australia has witnessed significant changes to policies concerning immigration and settlement of refugees. Prior to 1999, any person deemed to be a refugee was granted permanent protection in Australia and given access to government-funded support services. In October 1999, Temporary Protection Visas (TPVs) replaced permanent visas. This new visa type delayed access to permanent residency. In September 2001, the visa regime was further amended with the result that some refugees can never be eligible for permanent residence. This shift to temporary protection was intended to deter asylum seekers from continuing their journey to Australia.

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  • The Archive of the Displaced

    Journal article: JASAL, vol. 11 no. 1, 2011, p.1-6.

    Abstract:

    Paula Abood's 'Archive of the Displaced' presents a related lacuna in the present institutionalised account of the nation. Abood writes of a current community cultural development program working to provide refugee women with the means to record the 'living repository' of war, displacement, racism and resistance through collective storytelling. Her account and the project itself provide a mindful response to the fleeting nature of the present and its traces in the face of official records.

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  • Asylum-seekers and National Histories of Detention

    Journal article: Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol. 48, no. 4, 2002, p.509(19).

    Abstract:

    The Australian system of mandatory detention of asylum-seekers has become increasingly controversial. Insofar as commentary on detention has been framed historically, critics have pointed to Australia's race-based exclusionary laws and policies over the twentieth century. In this article, we suggest that exclusion and detention are not equivalent practices, even if they are often related. Here we present an alternative genealogy of mandatory detention and protests against it. Quarantine-detention and the internment of 'enemy aliens' in wartime are historic precedents for the current detention of asylum-seekers. Importantly, in both carceral practices, non-criminal and often non-citizen populations were held in custody en masse and without trial. Quarantine, internment and incarceration of asylum-seekers are substantively connected over the twentieth century, as questions of territory, security and citizenship have been played outin Australia's histories of detention.

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  • Australian Journal of Human Rights

    Periodical.

    Description:

    Established in 1991, the Australian Journal of Human Rights is the first journal of its kind in Australia to be devoted to the publication of articles, commentary and book reviews about human rights development in Australia, the Asia Pacific region and internationally. The 'A' ranked Journal is published twice a year and aims to monitor and provide a forum for scholarship and debate about contemporary human rights developments in Australia and globally.

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  • Beyond the Razor Wire: An Evaluation of Australian Government Policy towards Onshore Asylum Seekers from 1975 - Present

    Honours dissertation: University of Adelaide, School of History and Politics, Discipline of History and Politics, International Studies, 2007.

    Abstract:

    This thesis seeks to evaluate Government policy towards onshore asylum seekers from late 1975, when Malcolm Fraser took office, until the present. In doing so, it is argued that there has been a successive tightening of policy over time, but continuance of humanitarian principles can still be seen throughout the Governments of Fraser, Hawke, and Keating. However, no such moral compass has guided policy development under the current Howard Government.

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  • Children in Detention: Juvenile Authors Recollect Refugee Stories

    Journal article: Papers: Explorations into Children's Literature, vol. 17, no. 2, 2007, p.67-74.

    Abstract:

    Dark Dreams: Australian Refugee Stories by Young Writers aged 11-20 Years, which is considered as one of the most original literary attempts made to grapple with the overwhelming number of often untold and nameless refugee stories in Australia, is discussed. Two short texts which cover the war and migration zones of Vietnam and Afghanistan, and are biographical accounts which differ in genre and style are considered for discussion.

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  • Captive Hearts

    Newspaper article: Sydney Morning Herald, 3-4 Apr 2004, p.6-7.

    Abstract:

    Nowra examines the phenomenon whereby women form strong emotional attachments, often leading to marriage, with men who are incarcerated in prison or in detention centres.

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  • Children in Detention: Shayan's Story

    Journal article: Human Rights Defender, vol. 15, no. 2, Aug 2006, p.15-16.

    Abstract:

    Concerns over children in detention centres - story of eleven year old boy and psychological effects of detention and events witnessed during detention - government compensation.

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  • The Christmas Island Exception: The Impact of Border Security and Detention on Asylum Seekers and Christmas Islanders

    Conference paper: Paper presented at Displacement, Division and Renewal: Borneo Conference 2010, Sarawak, Malaysia, 8-9 July 2010.

    Abstract:

    The free movement of people is a major facet of globalization. Another corollary is globalized security threats in the post September 11 climate where the sovereign state seeks to protect its borders. For asylum seekers who constantly transgress state borders, they are caught in the interface between national security threats and state sovereignty. Giorgio Agamben argues some sovereign states declare national emergencies premised on globalized security threats - real or perceived requiring exceptional responses. This leads to a state of exception where sovereign leaders suspend the rule of law in the name of national security or emergency. Agamben posits that the state of exception results in an exclusionary space forming the camp where victims of the exception are completely devoid of rights and are at the mercy of the sovereign leader. While Agamben's notion of the camp is premised on concentration camps his argument is relevant to discussions about asylum seekers in immigration detention centres today.

    Often entwined in national debates about Australia's sovereign right to protect its borders from security threats, asylum seekers create much controversy in both political and media domains. In recent years, asylum seekers have made the journey on unseaworthy boats to Christmas Island. A small speck in the Indian Ocean, this Australian island 350 km south of Java and over 2600 km from the Australian city of Perth is the first point of call for many asylum seekers in dire need of Australia's protection. Upon arrival at Christmas Island, asylum seekers find themselves incarcerated in Australia's own camp: the Christmas Island immigration detention centre. Subjected to Australias exclusionary migration laws such as excision, unauthorized boat arrivals fall victim to Australia's punitive asylum seeker policies while indefinitely detained. However, asylum seekers are not the only ones to suffer Australias exceptional policies. Christmas Islanders have been severely impacted on since the Australian government began incarcerating asylum seekers. Like the voiceless detained asylum seeker, little opportunities exist for a Christmas Islander to speak out against the effects of detention on their island. The paper discusses the history of detention on Christmas Island in light of its rapid development since the security threat discourse frequented the arena of political rhetoric. Theorizing Agambens state of exception, the paper considers the intersection between the detained asylum seeker and Christmas Islander both who lose their rights in the name of Australia's border protection in a globalised era.

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  • The Citation of Injury: Regarding the Exceptional Body

    Journal article: Journal of Australian Studies, vol. 33, no.4, 2009, p.459-472.

    Abstract:

    Australia's instrumentalisation of non-citizen bodies via the practice of extrajudicial immigration detention produces a context for abjection in the form of hunger strikes and self-mutilation. This article examines the representation of these self-injuries in the poems 'Asylum' by Mehmet al Assad (2002) and 'Make a whistle from my throat' by an anonymous Baxter detainee (2005); Shahin Shafaei's solo play Refugitive (2002-04); solidarity fasts by Australian activists (2002-04); and Mike Parr's performance installation Close the Concentration Camps (2002). While presenting Australian audiences with the possibility for imaginative encounter with injured bodies that seem immutably 'other', these works also offer something more troubling, but potentially transforming: a context for recognition of proximity (both ethical and political) to the sovereign-produced position of exception.

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  • Conjunctions: Life Narratives in the Field of Human Rights

    Journal article: Biography, vol. 27, no. 1, p.1-24.

    Abstract:

    The last decades of the twentieth century witnessed the unprecedented rise in genres of life writing, narratives published primarily in the West but circulated widely around the globe. This "memoir boom" has certainly occurred in English-speaking countries, from Australia to Jamaica, from England to South Africa, and in European countries, especially France and Germany. However, there has been a relative boom in personal narratives coming from elsewhere in the world as well. In many global locations, in post-Maoist China and Latin America, in North Africa and the Philippines, in Northern and Eastern Europe, life narratives have been told, transcribed, published, and translated, gaining both local and international audiences.

    This rise in the popularity of published life narratives has taken place in the midst of global transformations, both cataclysmic and gradual, that have occurred in the decades since the end of World War II: a succession of wars of prolonged and short duration; repeated instances of mass genocide in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and elsewhere; violent and nonviolent decolonization movements in South America and Africa; the intensification and dissipation of the Cold War in Europe; mass migrations of peoples; and the speed of change and the fragmentation of contemporary life. These geopolitical and temporal transformations form not so much a backdrop, but rather a fractured web of intersecting geographic, historical, and cultural contingencies out of which personal narratives have emerged and within which they are produced, received, and circulated. These global transformations have spurred developments in the field of human rights as well, developments that demand, for their recognition in the international community, multiple forms of remembrance of and witnessing to abuse.

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  • Critical Perspectives on Refugee Policy in Australia

    Conference proceedings: published Burwood, Vic.: Deakin University, 2003.

    Contents:

    • What Next for Australia's Refugee Policy? (Peter Mares)
    • One Year after Tampa: Refugees, Deportees and TPVs (Chris Sidoti)
    • The Tension of Re-other-ing Bodies (Snezana Dabic)
    • Acting for Asylum: The Nexus of Pro-refugee Activism in Melbourne (Helen Hintjens and Alison Jarman)
    • Biopolitics and the 'Problem' of the Refugee (Matthew Holt)
    • Temporary Protection of Refugees: Australian Policy and International Comparison (Fethi Mansouri &​ Michael Leach)
    • The Not-so-special Benefit and Non-mutual Obligation: Refugees on a TPV and Income Support Arrangements (Greg Marston)
    • Family Separation: Somali Women in Melbourne (Celia McMichael and;​ Malyun Ahmed)
    • Embodying Exile: Protest, Performance, Trauma and Effect in the Formation of -East Timorese Refugee Identities (Amanda Wise)
    • A Personal Experience of the TPV Policy (Mueen Al-Breihi)
    • A City of Refuge?: Protecting the Social and Cultural Rights of Refugees in Brisbane (Renae Mann)
    • Temporary Protection Visas, Recovery from Trauma and Personal Identity (Helen Martin)
    • All I Ask for Is Protection: Young People Seeking Asylum in Australia (Samira Mohamed)

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  • Detention, Displacement and Dissent in Recent Australian Life Writing

    Journal article: Life Writing, vol. 8, no. 4, p.375-385.

    Abstract:

    Narratives of persecution, imprisonment, displacement and exile have been a fundamental aspect of Australian literature: from the convict narratives of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to writing by refugees and migrants to Australia following World War II, to the narratives of those displaced by more recent conflicts. This paper will focus on two texts published in Australia in the past few years which deal with experiences of persecution and displacement from Afghanistan. Mahboba's Promise (2005) and The Rugmaker of Mazar-e- Sharif (2008) are texts that have to some extent bypassed the quarantining that Gillian Whitlock has argued works to locate potentially disruptive discourse at a safe distance from mainstream consumption. The publications discussed here demonstrate that refugee narratives can negotiate their way into the public sphere and public consciousness. In this process, however, representations of dissent almost necessarily give way to conciliation and integration as former refugee subjects attempt to realign their lives in terms that will provide the best outcomes for themselves, their families and their communities.

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  • Dialogue and Decentralisation in Australian Asylum Anthologies

    Journal article: Life Writing, vol. 7, no. 3, 2010, p.285-302 .

    Abstract:

    In Australia, the field of contemporary creative representation of asylum is enriched by diverse non-professional and community-based work, including self-narratives by asylum seekers and refugees. This essay situates three Australian asylum anthologies as products of heterogeneous community engagements and dialogues...In each anthology, a range of subject types - men, women and children from different ethnic, cultural, religious and educational backgrounds - coalesces so that a diversity of voices is presented within the privileged space of the book. Drawing lines of rhizomatic connection between autonomous sections of society, the texts map the grassroots structures of support, advocacy and community within which relations between asylum seekers, refugees and Australians operate. In each, writers engage in acts of speaking across the borders of language, culture, education and power, claiming a subaltern stake in cosmopolitan conversation.

  • Displaced Narratives of Iranian Migrants and Refugees: Constructions of Self and the Struggle for Representation

    P.D. dissertation: Victoria University, 2007.

    Abstract:

    This thesis discusses the multiple narratives of Iranian migrants and refugees living in Melbourne, Australia. The narratives are constructed by men and women who left Iran immediately after the 1979 revolution; the Iran and Iraq war; and Iranians who are recent arrivals in Australia. The narratives of the participants are particularly influenced and contextualized by the 1979 revolution, the 1980 to 1988 Iran and Iraq War and the post 9/11 political framework. It is within these historical contexts, I argue that Iranian experiences of displacement need to be interpreted. These historical periods not only provide the context for the narratives of the participants but it also gives meaning to how they reconstruct their identities and the emotions of their displacement.

    This thesis also argues that Iranian migrant and refugee narratives are part of a holistic story that is united rather than separated from one another. These narratives are part of a continuum that are influenced by historical events that have caused their displacement. For Iranians in this thesis displacement and a traumatic past often creates many different forms of rupture that includes spatial, temporal, cultural and emotional experiences that are constantly being revaluated, renegotiated and changed. In the narratives of the participants we find people struggling to negotiate their identity; devising strategies to cope with displacement and a traumatic past; and they tell stories on the ways they are stereotyped and caricaturized in western discourse. The participants recount stories about how the objectification of their cultural background fails to take into account the complexity of their experiences and their suffering. For the participants the simplistic notions about their identity and experience in the popular imagination of western culture they believe ignores how their narratives of home (Iran) are connected with the host (Australia) context. The narratives of the participants have a lugubrious tone which tries to express the effects of the cultural, social, political ruptures they have experienced.

    The thesis addresses the theoretical issues underlying such experiences and focuses on a narrative methodology to bring to light the problems of identity, stigmatization, cultural trauma, and the significance of representation in the lives of Iranian migrants and refugees.

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  • Embridry

    Journal article: Profession [Annual], 2011, p.85-97.

    Abstract:

    Life narratives about asylum seekers and refugees provoke strong emotions, both compassion and aversion. Drawing on Lauren Berlant's work and archives of asylum seekers' letters held at the Fryer Library in the University of Queensland, this article explores the compassionate emotions, their aesthetic conventions, and the mutual implications of compassion and aversion by using object biography. The life of an embroidery archived in the Elaine Smith collection suggests the agency of humanitarianism and human rights discourse, yet it also speaks to the limits of compassion and the fundamental break with the human that occurs at scenes of structural violence.

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  • Enter at Own Risk?: Australia's Population Questions for the 21st Century

    Edited collection: Perth, W.A.: Black Swan Press, 2010.

    Abstract:

    The essays in this volume, although they mostly predate 2010 'population debate', explore the retun in contemporary form of many historical practices and discourses for policing racial-national borders. Focusing on three key groups of outstiders within - temporary workers, international students and refugees and asylum seekers - the contributions address key aspects of border tensions and panics as the boundaries of belonging and cultural citizenship are continually drawn, patrolled and policed in new and old ways.

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  • Fear and Loathing Down Under: Australian Refugee Policy and the National Imagination

    Journal article: Refuge, vol. 22, no.1, 2004, p.83(13).

    Abstract:

    This paper looks at Australias refugee policy in light of incidents that took place in the summer of 2001, with the refugees aboard the Tampa. Analyzing the discourse that resulted from these incidents, I show how Australia believes it is a nation under threat that prides itself as generously welcoming as many refugees as it can and who, of late, is only trying to protect its borders from so-called refugees who really are queue jumpers. I contrast this view with what emerges from the facts: that Australias racialized past makes it very easy for it to believe that it is under siege from refugees, and that it has done all that is legally possible to disinvest itself from its international obligations. This has meant turning boats away at sea, excising certain territories from its jurisdiction, and interning the refugees who arrive in Australia. Through this analysis, I argue that the current policy is a re-emergence of the earlier White Australia policy.

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  • Fear, Anger, Perceived Threat and Attitudes towards Afghan Asylum Seekers

    Honours dissertation: Thesis (B.Sc.(Psych.)(Hons.)), Flinders University, School of Psychology, 2006.

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  • 'Finding Voice': Learnings and Insights from a Participatory Media Project with Recently Arrived Afghan Young Men with Refugee Backgrounds

    Journal article: Youth Studies Australia, vol. 29, no. 2, June 2010, p.33-41.

    Abstract:

    Participatory media approaches were used as a strategy to provide space for youth with refugee backgrounds to narrate their early settlement experiences. The paper describes the challenges of participatory media approaches as both a research tool and as a strategy. The key learning was that giving freedom for voices also requires giving structure freedom and structure go hand in hand in creating spaces for exploring and expressing early settlement experiences.

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  • Human Rights and Narrated Lives: The Ethics of Recognition

    Co-authored book: New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

    Abstract:

    Personal narratives have become one of the most potent vehicles for advancing human rights claims across the world. This text explores what happens when autobiographical narratives are produced, received and circulated in the field of human rights.

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  • Human Rights Defender

    Periodical.

    Description:

    The Human Rights Defender is a human rights magazine published by the AHRCentre featuring articles, commentary, art and photographs across a broad range of contemporary human rights issues. It provides a forum for the expression of critical thinking and discussion of conceptual developments in human rights.

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  • Human Rights Overboard: Seeking Asylum in Australia

    Co-authored book: Carlton North, Vic. : Scribe Publishing, 2008.

    Abstract:

    In 2005, in the wake of the Cornelia Rau scandal, a citizen's inquiry was established to bear witness to events in Australian immigration-detention facilities. Until then, the federal government had refused to conduct a broad-ranging investigation into immigration detention in Australia, and the operations within detention centres had been largely shrouded in official secrecy. The People's Inquiry into Detention (as it came to be called) heard heartbreaking evidence about asylum-seekers journeys to Australia, their detention process, life in detention, and life after detention. In total, around 200 people testified to the inquiry, and a similar number of written submissions were received. Human Rights Overboard draws together, for the first time, the oral testimony and written submissions from the inquiry in a powerful and vital book that stands as an indelible record of one of Australias bleakest legacies. Clearly and comprehensively presented, the book is a haunting journey guided by voices from every side of the fence: former immigration detainees, refugee advocates, lawyers, doctors, psychiatrists, and former detention and immigration staff. Together, their stories bear testimony to a humanitarian disaster that Australia caused, and that must be remembered so that it never happens again. With a foreword by prominent humanitarian lawyer Julian Burnside, Human Rights Overboard is an essential book that will resonate with the Australian public and, indeed, the world, for years to come.

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  • Hypocrisy and Human Rights

    Extract: Bulletin (Law Society of S.A.), vol. 24, no.10, November 2002, p.12-15.

    Description:

    Extract from a longer version forming the basis for the keynote address at LawFest 2002 - Australia's international law obligations to refugees and how the treatment of asylum seekers accords with those obligations.

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  • 'I'm 21 and Have No Any Happy Days': An Oral History Narrative from the Hazara Refugee Community

    Journal article: Oral History Association of Australia Journal, no. 27, 2005, p.28-33.

    Abstract:

    The hostility pervading much of Australia's response to the current worldwide refugee crisis has motivated the author to seek a fuller perspective, through the humanising insight afforded by oral history, on the situation facing refugees often subjected to harsh treatment by Australian authorities. This paper outlines the narrative of one interview she [sic] has recorded with a refugee in Australia, discusses the methodology used, and also explores how oral history can highlight the circumstances of persecution and flight, deconstruct prevailing myths, and bring understanding of the refugee experience within Australia. Methodological and theoretical perspectives were widely sourced, and analysis of various ethical challenges presented includes the potential bias of authors' own pro-humanitarian approach. The value of contributing to the documentation resources for a particular community is also noted.

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  • Immigration Detention in Australia

    Dissertation Deakin University, Faculty of Arts and Education, School of International and Political Studies, 2010.

    Abstract:

    This thesis explains the use of immigration detention in Australia, demonstrates the punitive consequences of immigration detention for detainees, and indicates the significance of the policy for Australian democracy.The thesis provides three explanations for the social and political function of immigration detention in Australia. The first is a genetic explanation that locates immigration detention within a longer history of administrative detention in Australia. Second, the thesis draws on social theories of incarceration, classification and control to explain how and why certain categories of people are subject to administrative detention. The third explanation focuses on the contemporary politics of immigration detention in Australia. The thesis demonstrates further that there has been an incremental consolidation of Executive power over immigration detention. One significant consequence of this trend is that detention centres, contrary to the legal fiction, have increasingly become punitive environments. The implications of these findings for Australian democracy, its citizens, and those who aspire to be citizens are significant. By punishing detainees, immigration detention breaches the principle of separation of powers, whereby the Judiciary alone has the power and discretion to incarcerate for purposes of punishment. The thesis argues that Australias political system has insufficient checks and balances to limit Executive power, particularly with regards to non-citizens.

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  • Integration or Exclusion?: The Resettlement Experiences of Refugees in Australia

    Ph.D. dissertation: University of Adelaide, School of Social Sciences, Discipline of Geography and Environmental Studies, 2007.

    Abstract:

    This thesis considers the experiences of recently arrived refugees within the economic, social, cultural and political spheres of resettlement, in order to develop a deeper understanding of the inter-related nature of the resettlement process and the impact of visa category on the integration of refugees in contemporary Australia. Kuhlmans (1991) model of refugee resettlement, and definition of integration form the basis of the theoretical framework of the thesis. A multiple method approach has been applied to the study and data from the second cohort of the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Australia (LSIA) was analysed to present a macro level understanding of the resettlement experiences of recent arrivals in Australia. In Adelaide, interviews with key informants and service providers were undertaken in conjunction with a series of in-depth interviews with 10 Sudanese offshore-visaed Humanitarian entrants and 9 Iraqi onshore-visaed refugees, to provide detailed descriptions of the resettlement experience.

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  • In the Wake of the Tampa: Multiculturalism, Cultural Citizenship and Australian Refugee Narratives

    Essay: published in Postcolonial Dislocations, Oslo: Novus Press , 2006, p.21-35.

    Abstract:

    Through the concept of cultural citizenship, Ommundsen comments on recent literary portrayals of asylum seeking and refugee experiences and how they might speak to contemporary views on multiculturalism in Australia.

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  • Letters from Nauru

    Journal article: Life Writing, vol. 5, no. 2, 2008, p.203-217.

    Abstract:

    In the recent past, collection of letters exchanged between asylum seekers held as part of the Pacific Solution and their advocates on the Australian mainland have begun to enter the archives and become available to scholarly work. This article considers the Burnside/Durham collection of letters from Nauru recently acquired as part of the Fryer collection at the University of Queensland. It uses Stanley's concept of the epistolarium to examine how the letter operates as a particularly appropriate medium for these narratives of grief and loss; how they mediate processes of testimony and witnessing; and how Durham's art work, included in the collection, speaks to the situation of the second person.

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  • Located Subjects

    Book chapter: Teaching Life Writing Texts. New York: Modern Languages Association of America, p.214-220.

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  • Lost and Found: The Life Narratives of Child Asylum Seekers and Their Significance as a Form of Australian Life Writing

    Journal article: Life Writing, vol. 3, no.1, 2006, p.39-57.

    Abstract:

    In this paper I explore the emergence of asylum seeker narratives, and suggest their significance as a form of Australian life writing. These narratives have emerged strongly in recent years and have functioned to raise awareness of the experiences of asylum seekers. I use the examples of Julian Burnside's From Nothing to Zero: Letters from Refugees in Australia's Detention Centres and Heather Tyler's Asylum: Voices Behind the Razor Wire to explore the dynamics of these narratives and issues such as testimony, counter-memory, witnessing, advocacy and collaboration. I focus this study by closely examining particular examples of life narrative occurring within these publications: the life narratives of child asylum seekers. The child figure has become central to the debates surrounding asylum seeking in Australia: from news and documentary footage of the innocent child being held in a detention centre, to the ambiguous images of children overboard. It is clearly significant that children's stories are being foregrounded in asylum seeker life narratives. Thus, it is crucial to look at the ways in which children's life narratives, for example, the physical image of the child or the representation of their narrative voice, is being deployed in these collaborative life narrative publications. I explore the significance and implications of this deployment, the political utility of these narratives more broadly, and their importance to life writing scholars.

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  • Kissing the Noose of Australian Democracy: Misplaced Faiths and Displaced Lives Converse Over Australia's Rising Fences

    Journal article: Borderlands, vol. 2, no. 3, 2003.

    Abstract:

    This essay examines some reactivated conversational traces in contexts of displacement, detention and release, sites that overlap in the memories of those who inhabit them and that jostle for effective space around the margins of current Australian conversation. It applies the conversational model to a reading of memory-based texts on the limits of national discourse, in particular those of poet and Iranian refugee Mohsen Soltany-Zand, the late Baarkanji author and educator Evelyn Crawford and child of holocaust survivors Lily Brett.

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  • Missing the Boat?

    Conference paper: Paper presented at Reporting on Asylum Seekers and Refugees: A Walkley Media Forum, 19 June 2007, Regatta Hotel, Brisbane, Australia.

    Abstract:

    Are journalists missing the boat when it comes to covering refugee and asylum seeker in issues? Angela Romano explores past complaints about journalists' performance and whether their coverage has changed or improved in recent years. She finds that the situation has improved overall. However, she also identifies ongoing problems in some journalists' continuing use of 'loaded' language, failure to extend contacts with a wide range of potential interviewees and information sources, and limited inclusion of background in their stories about asylum seekers and refugees. These problems mean that the stories are far less meaningful and resonant to media audiences than they might otherwise be.

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  • 'A Modern-day Concentration Camp': Using History to Make Sense of Australian Immigration Detention Centres

    Book chapter: published in Does History Matter?: Making and Debating Citizenship, Immigration and Refugee Policy in Australia and New Zealand, Canberra: ANU E Press, 2009, p.65-80.

    Abstract:

    In this chapter, I examine the discourse that links detention centres with concentration camps. Specifically, I analyse letters that appeared in the mainstream print media to demonstrate the different ways in which this discursive shortcut facilitated public discussion. I then argue for an understanding of detention centres that positions them firmly within Australias history. Aboriginal reserves, quarantine stations and enemy-alien internment camps were institutional predecessors. While they were implemented at different times and targeted different categories of people, there were striking similarities between these carceral practices. An analysis of these practiceswho was incarcerated, for what purpose and to what effectreveals a continuity between the different forms of incarceration and facilitates a more informed understanding of the function of immigration detention in contemporary Australia.

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  • Museums, the Media and Refugees: Stories of Crisis, Control and Compassion

    Co-authored book: New York: Berghahn Books, 2008.

    Abstract:

    Across countries and time, asylum-seekers and refugees have been represented in a variety of ways. In some representations they appear negatively, as dangers threatening to 'over-run' a country or region with 'floods' of incompatible strangers. In others, the same people are portrayed positively, with compassion, and pictured as desperately in need of assistance. How these competing perceptions are received has significant consequences for determining public policy, human rights, international agreements, and the realization of cultural diversity, and so it is imperative to understand how these images are perpetuated. To this end, this volume reflects on museum practice and the contexts, stories, and images of asylum seekers and refugees prevalent in our mass media.

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  • The News Media's Representation of Asylum Seekers

    Book chapter: published in Yearning to Breathe Free: Seeking Asylum in Australia, Leichhardt, NSW, Federation Press, 2007, p.183-197.

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  • Of Murmels and Snigs: Detention Centre Narratives in Australian Literature

    Journal article: Overland, no.185, Summer 2006, p.38-42.

    Extract:

    These books range from picture books to junior and young adult fiction, and include two anothologies of fiction by young writers. I have no doubt that each of these books was produced in order to educate young readers about the experiences of detainees in order to facilitate an acceptance of cultural difference, and most of them explicitly advocate against mandatory detention. Unsuprisingly, however, there are ideological contradictions in most books that echo potentially unavoidable problems inherent in multiculturalism in Australia in general; the promotion of cultural diversity and a respect for difference is undermined by a seemingly unshakeable impulse to view the other as the 'same as me'.

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  • Only Human; Only Just: Lawyer Julian Burnside Measures the Human Costs of Australia's Present Refugee Policy through the Voices of Asylum Seekers in our Detention Centres

    Commentary: Meanjin, vol. 63, no. 1, 2004, p.34(7).

    Abstract:

    An opinion is presented that Australia cannot claim to be a 'decent' and 'just' society in the background of its harsh treatment of asylum seekers. Some letters written by asylum seekers held at detention centres indefinitely are presented to emphasise that Australia is violating their human rights, leaving them with no self-respect, self-worth or hope by failing to treat them as human beings.

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  • Paper(less) Selves: The Refugee in Contemporary Textual Culture

    Journal article: Kunapipi, vol. 30, no. 1 2008, p.58-72.

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  • The Place Where Travel Stops

    Journal article: Meanjin, vol. 62, no. 4, 2003, p.108-114.

    Abstract:

    A writer discusses the Villawood Immigration Detention Centre near Sydney, which she considers as a disturbing place in Australia. She believes that refugees who have come to Australia to escape the oppression in their own countries must not be kept in such centres indefinitely, but be given the freedom to move about freely as Australians do.

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  • The Politics of Exclusion: Australia and Asylum Seekers

    Ph.D. dissertation: La Trobe University, 2004.

    Abstract:

    In August and September 2001 Australia embarked on a new approach for dealing with asylum seekers who arrived in the country without prior authorisation. Beginning with the Tampa incident, asylum seekers arriving by boat have been excluded from landing in Australia. The new policy of exclusion signalled not only an important shift in asylum policy, but reflected a change in Australian political culture. Combined with the terrorist attacks of September 11 and in the context of an election campaign, the exclusion of asylum seekers was part of a move from the radical right wing populists around the world. Underpinning this exclusionary nationalism is the 'new' or 'cultural' racism in which asylum seekers, because of their cultural backgrounds, are deemed to be unable to coexist with other Australians. This thesis examines the way asylum seeker policy in Australia has developed to culminate in exclusion.

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  • The Politics of Representation: The Discursive Analysis of Refugee Advocacy in the Australian Parliament

    Ph.D. dissertation: University of Adelaide, School of Psychology, 2006.

    Abstract

    In recent years an extensive body of discursive research has accumulated on race, immigration and asylum seeker debates in western liberal democracies. This work has primarily focussed on oppressive discourses that are employed to exclude and marginalise minority groups. Comparatively, however, there has been significantly less research on anti-racist and pro-asylum seeker accounts in these debates, despite the potential of such work to provide a greater understanding of contemporary race and immigration discourse, and to contribute to the development of anti-racism and refugee advocacy. The present thesis adds to the further analysis of exclusionary discourse and asylum seeking, and examines this in the as yet unexplored context of the Australian parliament, but its primary focus is on refugee advocates' accounts. Using critical discursive social psychology ( Wetherell, 1998 ), this thesis examines Hansard transcripts of speeches made in the Australian parliament on the new restrictions against asylum seekers introduced in 2001. Analysis focuses on the interpretative repertoires that proscribe and deny responsibility for asylum seekers, and those that are used to construct ' the nation ' and ' racism '. These repertoires are explored with a view to tracing their intellectual history, the subject positions for asylum seekers and Australia/​ns they make possible, and the rhetorical tools and strategies used in building them. It was found that those supporting the new legislation positioned asylum seekers as having made a personal choice to come to Australia, and presented the legislation as : a rational, practical response to the emotionally-driven, unreasonable demands of humanitarianism ; as the necessary defence of sovereign rights, the national space and Australian citizens from the incursions of asylum seekers ; and as non-racist. These discourses reproduced the liberal valorisation of reasonableness and rationality, the liberal concepts of sovereign and citizens' rights and individualism, and utilised new racist strategies to present their position as ' not racist '. On the other side of the debate, advocates criticised the legislation as a violation of : the duty of care owed to those who have been persecuted ; human rights and the liberal principle to assist those in need ; and of Australia's national values. Advocates also worked up some aspects of the new laws and the debate on this issue as racist. These repertoires drew upon the liberal discourses of internationalism, human rights, humanitarianism, multiculturalism, equality and egalitarianism. Although these advocacy discourses have considerable cultural currency, they were constrained and marginalised by the hegemonic representations of asylum seekers as ' bogus ' and ' illegal ', of humanitarianism ( as refugee advocates understand it ) as dangerous, and of the new legislation as an assertion of threatened sovereign rights. In addition, some of these discourses, such as multiculturalism and a construction of racism as ' generated by politicians ', functioned to minimise and deny racism. On the basis of this analysis, I conclude that the study of anti-racist and pro-refugee discourse contributes to a broader understanding of the language of contemporary debates about race, ethnicity and immigration as a dynamic, argumentative dialogue, and to critical evaluations of the discourses used in these contexts. However, I also argue that discourse analysis may not offer the requisite tools for developing, as well as critiquing, anti-racist and refugee advocacy discourses. I also suggest that there may be sites of resistance other than political discourse where change to refugee policies may be better effected.

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  • Refugee Identities and the MV Tampa

    Journal article: Antipodes, vol. 16, no. 1, June 2002, p.66-71.

    Opening paragraphs:

    On August 26 2001, the Norwegian cargo vessel MY Tampa was requested by Australian Safety and Rescue topick up 438 mainly Afghan refugees from their sinking vessel, the I Palpina, chartered by 'people smugglers' 140 kilometers north of Christmas Island. The safest destination for the Tampa was Christmas Island, given that its Captain, Arne Rinnan, did not want to risk 'potentially dangerous factors across an open ocean which may have resulted in massive loss of life. ' The refugees on the Tampa also threatened to jump if the boat turned back to Indonesia. On August 27, Cabinet Office told Bill Taylor, Administrator on Christmas Island, to prevent any vessel reaching the Tampa.J Two days later, Rinnan assessed that the medical situation on the Tampa was deteriorating, and rang for assistance from authorities on Christmas Island. When none was forthcoming, Rinnan moved to within four nautical miles off Christmas Island. Forty-five Australian SAS troops were sent out to intercept the vessel. A standoff ensued which saw the MY Tampa stranded at sea while the Howard Government deliberated on its options. The HMAS Manoara subsequently shipped the refugees to the Pacific Island of Nauru. Most refused to leave the boat, having been promised by traffickers a place of asylum on the Australian mainland. The Tampa refugees were subsequently shipped to detention centers erected on Nauru, Vanuatu, and Papua New Guinea as part of the Howard Government's 'Pacific Solution.'

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  • Sending Them Home: Refugees and the New Politics of Indifference

    Essay: Quarterly Essay, issue 13, 2004.

    Abstract:

    In the first Quarterly Essay of 2004, Robert Manne tells the stories of individual asylum seekers and finds in their experience the seeds of a devastating critique. Balancing sorrow and pity with a controlled anger, Manne develops a sustained argument about what could, and should, be done for the nine thousand refugees who remain in limbo on temporary protection visas. Sending Them Home also contains a groundbreaking account of conditions in the offshore processing camps on Nauru, whose operations have until now been shrouded in secrecy, and a damning forensic investigation of the recent efforts to return - frequently against their will - many of those who sought our protection and whose countries remain in turmoil. Combining ethical reflection and acute political analysis, this essay initiates a new phase in the refugee debate. 'No one ought to pretend that the unanticipated arrival of the Iraqis, Afghans and Iranians did not pose real ... problems for Australia. However these problems arose not because these people were not genuine refugees. They arose, rather, precisely because the overwhelming majority of them were.'

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  • Soft Weapons: Autobiography in Transit

    Book: Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.

    Abstract:

    Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran, Marjane Satrapi's comics, and 'Baghdad Blogger' Salam Pax's Internet diary are just a few examples of the new face of autobiography in an age of migration, globalization, and terror. But while autobiography and other genres of life writing can help us attend to people whose experiences are frequently unseen and unheard, life narratives can also be easily co-opted into propaganda. In Soft Weapons, Gillian Whitlock explores the dynamism and ubiquity of contemporary life writing about the Middle East and shows how these works have been packaged, promoted, and enlisted in Western controversies. Considering recent autoethnographies of Afghan women, refugee testimony from Middle Eastern war zones, Jean Sasson's bestsellers about the lives of Arab women, Norma Khouri's fraudulent memoir Honor Lost [Forbidden Love], personal accounts by journalists reporting the war in Iraq, Satrapi's Persepolis, Nafisi's book, and Pax's blog, Whitlock explores the contradictions and ambiguities in the rapid commodification of life memoirs. Drawing from the fields of literary and cultural studies, Soft Weapons will be essential reading for scholars of life writing and those interested in the exchange of literary culture between Islam and the West.

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  • States of Exclusion: Narratives from Australia's Immigration Detention Centres, 1999-2003

    Ph.D. dissertation: University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, 2006.

    Abstract:

    This thesis interrogates immigration detention as a space of intricate ambivalence - one which seeks to exclude, but which is also entreated to protect. The focus is so-called unauthorised asylum seekers detained both within Australia and offshore on the Pacific island of Nauru between 1999 and 2003 - when the numbers of detained asylum seekers reached its maximum and the government introduced offshore processing centres. Australia's immigration detention regime sits awkwardly with the discourse of universal human rights and brings into sharp conflict two robust political values: the right of endangered people to seek refuge and the right of the nation to determine who will enter. Focusing on the experiences of detainees reveals immigration detention as a complex regime through which the states dominating power targets the stateless, non-white, male body. This targeting is intentional, serving to secure sovereign borders and to rearticulate the naturalised ties between the national population and the modern state. Immigration detention holds the seeker in a limbo that sets parameters for the seekers experience of ongoing and intensifying insecurity. It specifically and intentionally fractures the identity of detainees: masochistic actions and collective protests, from hunger strikes to breakouts, reflect the common currency of anxiety and violence. ... [more] The creation of offshore camps was, in part, a response to ongoing protests within onshore detention and the failure of onshore detention to stop boat arrivals. My chief focus here is the largest Pacific camp, Topside, on the island of Nauru. Unlike the onshore detention centres where publicised protests and breakouts screamed of continuing detention of asylum seekers, those on Nauru were effectively silenced.

    The thesis explores purpose as inscribed within the body of the exile. To give up hope for asylum is to face the possibility of endless wandering and death. Mechanisms of resistance, whether explicit protest or more passive waiting, are parts of the continuing struggle by the detained against mechanisms of exclusion and exception. The detained carve out small openings to contest their exclusion and to reassert an identity as survivors. There is a complex and fluid interplay between such resistance and government policies aiming to silence protest and limit identity and ultimately to deter all unauthorised boat arrivals.

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  • 'Strange Words': Refugee Perspectives on Government and Media Stereotyping

    Journal article: Overland, no. 172, Spring 2003, p.19-26.

    Extract:

    In the study reported in this article, we interviewed a number of temporary protection visa (TPV) holders living in Melbourne, as part of a larger project documenting the personal narratives, experiences and journeys of TPV holders in Australia, who as asylum seekers experienced prolonged mandatory detention first hand. The primary objective of the project is to provide a forum for TPV holders to have their stories and experiences heard, in order to document and record their personal journeys. This collection will, we hope, facilitate a greater understanding of the experiences that led these TPV holders to seek political asylum in Australia.

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  • Telling the Refugee Story: The 'Ordinary Australian', the State of Australia

    Journal article: Law and Critique, vol. 14, p.29-43.

    Abstract:

    By international standards, few uninvited asylum-seekers arrive in Australia. However, in 2001, a conservative federal government trailing in the opinion polls reversed its fortunes and won the November 2001 election largely, it seems because of its tough refugee policy, which the Opposition could only feebly endorse, deeming opposition electorally suicidal. Using some insights from Lacan and writers in the Lacanian tradition, this paper examines how the refugee story was written, and why it was that the intentions of its authors so successfully shaped its reception by the majority of the electorate.

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  • Temporary Protection and the Refugee Convention in Australia, Denmark and Germany

    Journal article: Refuge, vol. 26, no. 1, 2010, p.135-147.

    Abstract:

    This paper reports on a comparative study of temporary protection (TP) mechanisms in Australia and selected European jurisdictions. Specifically, it analyzes policy developments and trends in the use of TP mechanisms in Denmark, Germany, and Australia through a systematic examination of the evolution of substitute protection mechanisms; their implications for effective protection and their impacts on key stakeholders. The policy analyses are augmented by interviews and survey questionnaires with key NGO service providers in the three target jurisdictions. The paper argues that the traditional link between Refugee Convention protection and national territorial jurisdiction and responsibility is being undermined by extraterritorial processing and offshoring arrangements.

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  • Temporary Protection, Anxiety and Refugee Deterrence

    Journal article: Arena Journal, no.21, 2004, p.51-62.

    Abstract:

    The following article is an exploration of issues faced by Temporary Protection Visa (TPV) holders, refugees who were held in immigration detention for a number of years and who were eventually granted this limited form of visa protection. I recorded informal interviews with over thirty refugees released from detention at Woomera, including fifteen Kurdish, Iranian, Afghani and Iraqi TPV holders who are now living in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney. In 2002-2003 we talked about their experiences since immigration detention, including issues of identity, family and the TPV.

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  • Till Human Voices Wake Us: Responding to Refugee Testimony

    Journal article: Life Writing, vol. 6, no. 2, 2009, p.175-191.

    Abstract:

    Personal narratives by people who have been displaced by injustice or war are often included in the genre of 'testimonial' witness to atrocity, and mobilised by human rights advocates as ways to promote sympathy. However as 'refugee stories', they also circulate within 'refugee discourse'. This article undertakes a rhetorical analysis of the ways in which this discourse and its associated viewing and speaking positions can work to reduce the impact of such stories.To begin with it surveys some of the encounters and interactions which take place between individual refugee stories, international refugee discourse, and national border protection regimes, tracking the ways in which speech is alternately and in different contexts prohibited, demanded, circumscribed or objectified through these regimes. The essay then considers the question of how to read or respond to those testimonials that do reach public availability, arguing that the assumptions and rhetorical structure of refugee discourse must be taken into account, even actively resisted, if the testimonials are to have their full effect. So too must the structures which continue to work to prevent some of the people caught up within these regimes from coming to speech at all.

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  • Two Years and Counting: The Nauru Detainees

    Briefing paper: Australian Rationalist, no.65, Summer 2003, p.40-45.

    Description

    Briefing paper compiled by 'A Just Australia', following the Nauru National Summit, 21 November 2003, updated 16 December 2003 - more asylum seekers are detained at Nauru than at any other Australian detention centre - detainees have been denied access to lawyers and denied judicial review on claims - reports of serious medical conditions which have come about as a result of detainees time at Nauru - the hunger strike of December 2003 - problems with management and staffing.

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  • Under the Wire: Detainee Activism in Australian Children's Literature

    Journal article: Papers: Explorations into Children's Literature, vol. 16, no. 2, December 2006, p.17-22.

    Abstract:

    Debra Dudek critiques two novels by Morris Gleitzman, Girl Underground (2004) and Boy Overboard (2002), analysing the representation of ethical relationships between detainees and Australian citizens. In relation to children's multicultural fictions and non-fictions, Dudek suggests that in terms of cultural citizenship, Australia needs to move from 'an ethics of compassion to an ethics of responsibility' in order to understand tolerance as 'a way of respecting absolute differences' (20-21).

    Dudek explains how an ethics of responsibility requires the citizens of Australia to actively participate in the dismantling of mandatory detention as an enactment of justice that works towards realizing the meaning of a 'fulfilling social life' (20-21). For Dudek (and others) this begins with the recognition of difference rather than its effacement.

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  • Voices from the Margins: School Experiences of Refugee, Migrant and Indigenous Children

    Edited collection: Rotterdam: Sense, 2008.

    Abstract:

    This collection of studies by an international group of researchers provides a place for migrant, refugee and indigenous children to talk about their school experiences. Refugee children from the Sudan, Afghanistan and Somalia, indigenous children from Sweden, Australia, New Zealand and Vietnam, migrant children in Canada, Iceland and Hong Kong, urban and rural children from Zanzibar all speak out through drawings, small group and individual discussion. For some children their school experiences are positive ones in which systems and teachers work together to meet their needs. For others their experiences are of racism, isolation, inadequately equipped and poorly funded schools, unsympathetic teachers and education systems designed to cater for majority groups. Despite these differences all the children remain enthusiastic about school. They are, in the words of a boy from Afghanistan, 'thirsty to learn'. The children and the researchers all argue for education as a means to redress, rather than perpetuate, disadvantage. A vital first step in this process is to hear what is being said by those most affected by current practices. The narratives in this text offer a chance to do just that.

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  • Waiting for Asylum: Figures from an Archive. Collaborative Witness: Artists' Responses to the Plight of the Asylum Seeker and Refugee

    Published for the exhibitions 'Waiting for Asylum: Figures from an Archive' and 'Collaborative Witness: Artists' Responses to the Plight of the Asylum Seeker and Refugee', held at the University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane, 11 June - 7 August 2011.

    Artists exhibited: Ross Gibson, Carl Warner, Benjamin Armstrong, Lyndell Brown, Jon Cattapan, Tim Johnson, Karma Phuntsok, Rosemary Laing, David Ray, Judy Watson and Guan Wei.

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  • Why Narrative? Reflections on the Politics and Processes of Using Narrative in Refugee Research

    Journal article: Tamara Journal for Critical Organization Inquiry, vol. 8, no. 2, 2009.

    Abstract:

    This paper contends that knowledge-making is a political act. In reflecting on the nature of personal narrative and its uses for refugee research, three insights emerge: first, just as the personal is political, so too, the political is personal; next, any storytelling is political in its attention to audience, and is inflected by the discourses available at the time; and finally, researchers must understand that if storying is to grapple with the richness and complexity of lived experience, it will probably be chaotic and messy, as well as clear and straightforward. Researchers wanting to investigate the sociology of refugee experiences might be well advised to ensure that the stories they gather from research participants are not too neat, too straightforward, too much reduced to bare essentials in their telling, lest the chance to allow the stories to become personally and politically resonant be lost. Further, researchers who are conscious of the political resonance of narrative are advised to ensure that they draw attention to the narrative element embedded in their research reports and papers by finding ways to communicate the narratives directly to the commissioning policy makers and politicians through verbal and pictorial seminar presentations, as well as through the reports themselves. These insights have implications for research processes (the gathering and analysis of data) and for the presentation and writing up of research documents.

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  • Witnessing on the Web: Asylum Seekers and Letter-Writing Projects on Australian Activist Websites

    Journal article: Auto/Biography Studies, vol. 21, no.1, 2006, p.44-57.

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  • Words of Water: Reading Otherness in Tourmaline and Oyster

    Journal article: JASAL, vol. 3, 2004, p.143-157.

    Description:

    Article on fiction that examines issues of Australia's view of 'otherness' and makes specific reference to the representation of asylum seekers in fiction as a counterweight to how they are represented in the media and in political discourse.

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  • Wounded Memory of Hazara Refugees from Afghanistan: Remembering and Forgetting Persecution

    Journal article: History Australia, vol. 7, no. 3, 2010, p.75f.

    Abstract:

    This article explores oral histories of Hazara refugees who fled to Australia and the significance of subjectivity when using memory as a historical source. In forming modern Afghanistan, Hazaras were brutally subjugated and continue to suffer persecution a century later. Ricoeur argues that a nation’s founding violence creates ‘wounded memory’, in which past grievances dominate, while other experiences are forgotten. Through interdisciplinary analysis, the tensions between remembering and forgetting within the Hazaras’ narratives reveal both the effects of trauma and their assertion of agency, and highlight the complex interplay between history, memories of suffering, and the present.

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  • Yearning to Breathe Free: Seeking Asylum in Australia

    Edited collection: Leichhardt: Federation Press, 2007.

    Abstract:

    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.

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