Claudia Tazreiter

Local to Global Activism: The Movement to Protect the Rights of Refugees and Asylum Seekers

This paper explores the emergence of social movement action on the rights of asylum seekers in the Australian case. It focuses on new and growing collective action in the context of the neoliberal and neoconservative government of John Howard (1996–2007) and situates this rise within a generalizable and universal human rights movement. The detention and deportation of asylum seekers, which resulted in revitalized collective action, is detailed as the trigger for collective action. The paper argues that a combination of neoliberal values and new nationalism created a hostile environment for newcomers and proved a difficult environment for the solidarity evident in this new social movement.

Between state sovereignty and invisibility: monitoring the human rights of returned asylum seekers

In few domains do states assert sovereignty as vigorously as in the control and regulation of borders and territory to migration movements. Moreover, such regulation is particularly evident in the case of asylum migration, often also considered a security threat to the state. This article explores the human rights of asylum seekers who are subject to removal and return from Western states. The article argues that these individuals can be left without rights through the practice of removal and return. The evident gap in establishing the legitimacy of return is seen in the absence of adequate monitoring of individuals after their removal from one state and return to another. The role of non-government organisations is explored as one of many ‘organisational actors’ necessary to a robust global human rights system.

Asylum-seekers as Pariahs in the Australian State

During the last decade measures of overt and covert surveillance, information sharing and deterrence of the illegal movement of people has increased within and between states. Border security has come to dominate international relations, and increasingly

Emergence, crisis politics, and future horizons in irregular migration: mobility, stasis and invisibility

This article considers the global context of irregular migration, focusing on irregular, or temporary, migrant workers and asylum seekers who in many jurisdictions are similarly labelled ‘illegal’ and are purportedly the cause of anxieties and crises in receiving societies. Within this context, the article evaluates the concept of crisis. Crisis is considered in relation to governmentality and the biopolitics of everyday life where imagined heterotopias are applied to manage perceived crises in irregular migration. Through considering crisis both as concept and in its deployment as a politics and device of governmentality, human rights as a normative framework of law and as values are considered.

Dignity and the Invisible Spaces of Irregular Migration: Rendering Asylum Seekers Invisible Through Off-Shore Detention

During 2015 the European Union experienced what many media commentators and European politicians called a crisis with close to one million migrants, mostly asylum seekers, arriving through the southern islands and port cities of Italy and Greece. The majority of the migrants were Syrians who had fled the civil war and had come to Europe after spending considerable time in the overcrowded refugee camps that were running short of basic supplies such as food and water. The “crisis” from the perspective of the dominant European debate is a crisis of the arrival of these irregular migrants in such large numbers. Yet at its heart this is a crisis of political will. Though there are many voices in the European debates, a strong thread of continuity voiced early by the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel and later by others has been one of shared responsibility and finding a just solution rather than closing borders.

The unlucky in the ‘lucky country’: asylum seekers, irregular migrants and refugees and Australia’s politics of disappearance

ABSTRACT This article considers the Australian response to new global migration flows with a focus on irregular migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. The effects of temporary status and invisibility on lived experience and on social and legal norms are explored, with the off-shore processing of asylum seekers at the extreme end of state policies of externalising borders and irregular migrants. The article problematises the official categorisation of migrants into administrative and legal domains and the consequent construction of a normative hierarchy of good and bad migrants. In the Australian context, political narratives of deserving and undeserving migrants and of asylum seekers as disturbing the ordered migration system are used to justify the need for the protection and security of the nation. The article argues that articulations of a just society and the spread of human rights are weakened through such official narratives of fear and rejection that dehumanise irregular migrants such as asylum seekers, and highlights the work of civil society organisations in attempting democratic accountability.

In Search of ‘Fluid Security’: The Outline of a Concept

This chapter introduces the key conceptual framework of the book and sets out the problems faced by temporary migrants in Australia that were revealed through the case studies carried out during the course of our research. We consider contemporary migration patterns at both a global and regional level (in the Asia-Pacific region) with reference to key literature on migrant transnationalism, labour mobility and the global market in tertiary education. The discussion explores the tension between mobility and security by considering the nexus of human (in)security, human rights and border control, with reference also to state practices that create insecurity by criminalising some border crossing activities and creating conditions conducive to the exploitation, marginalisation and victimisation of non-citizens.

Samoan-Born New Zealanders as Trans-Tasman Denizens

The traditional Polynesian skill of navigating long sea journeys is legendary. From a Polynesian perspective, the precolonial Pacific was a ‘sea of islands’ within which people moved freely and maintained active social links and trading networks (Lee 2009, citing Hau’ofa 1993a). In effect, the ocean served to connect, rather than divide, the region’s inhabitants. The Samoan word malaga, which is usually translated as ‘travel’ or ‘movement’, has the connotation of moving back and forth (Lilomaiava-Doktor 2009a) in a manner that is now recognised in migration scholarship as circular migration. Malaga was originally undertaken to fulfil fa’alavelave (obligations) to aiga (kin groups) in order to obtain resources to use as gifts to be presented at births, marriages and funerals (Lilomaiava-Doktor 2009a). While the reasons for international travel among Samoans have expanded, contemporary belief systems still embody explicit cultural understandings of the meaning and purpose of mobility that defy neat legal categorisation as either temporary or permanent. As Lilomaiava-Doktor (2009b, p. 64) explains: ‘For Samoans, migration and circulation are not the disparate processes that such categorisation implies. They are part of the dialectic and a different conception of place.’ This different conception of place conceives of malaga in terms of ‘reciprocal flows, irrespective of purpose or duration’.

Tongan Seasonal Workers: Permanent Temporariness

Migrant transnationalism has dominated the Tongan national experience since the 1960s, when the Pacific Islanders’ long history of interisland mobility transformed to become a form of mobility more closely tied to the nation-state and the pursuit of individual, familial and national survival and prosperity (see Pyke et al. 2012). An important feature of the Tongan diaspora is that it is largely a ‘labour diaspora’ (Pyke et al. 2012, p. 5), with temporary and permanent overseas employment opportunities being the predominant drivers of migration (Pyke et al. 2012). However, kinship ties are also important in this diaspora, and they are maintained via the financial ties of remittances sent home by permanent and temporary Tongan migrants (see Lee 2007).

Indonesian Temporary Migrants: Australia as First Preference or Last Resort?

Large-scale emigrations do not occur in a vacuum but are related to the social and political contexts of the individuals who leave their country of origin for short or long periods. A decade and a half ago, Indonesia was in the grip of political upheaval and economic crisis that manifested as interreligious violence and social instability in many parts of the Indonesian archipelago. The Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s in part precipitated this period of instability and violence, with large numbers of workers losing their jobs and the Chinese minority targeted as a scapegoat in some regions. Aside from the economic crisis, other more deeply rooted factors in Indonesia’s history were also contributing influences. The authoritarian oligarchies of Sukarno and General Suharto from 1968 to 1998 continue to have a significant impact on Indonesia’s political culture, though in new, moderated forms (Buehler 2014). The transition to democratic governance is evident in political institutions and the rule of law, but the memories of military dictatorship remain potent for many Indonesians. After General Suharto lost power, Indonesia experienced a period of instability marked by sectarian violence and the rise of radical Muslim groups (Ford and Pepinsky 2014; Pisani 2014; Barton 2001; McGregor 2007). The first direct presidential election was held in 2004, resulting in the election of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who was re-elected in 2009. On 20 October 2014, President Joko Widodo was sworn in, representing a departure from rule by Indonesia’s dynastic elite. In contrast to previous political leaders, Widodo is a provincial businessman who ran a furniture business until his rise to prominence as mayor of Surakarta (Solo) and, subsequently, governor of Jakarta (Lindsey 2014).