A grievable life? The criminalisation and securing of asylum seeker bodies in the ‘violent frames’ of Australia’s Operation Sovereign Borders

The life of those seeking asylum from persecution and other human rights abuses has become interminably precarious. As minority world governments deploy various apparatuses of security to govern the circulation of ‘unruly’ populations, the world’s most vulnerable people have been reconstituted as security threats. In this paper I trace this ‘transfer of illegitimacy’ and criminalisation of asylum seeker bodies in the context of the Australian government’s newly deployed Operation Sovereign Borders. Drawing on Foucault’s governmentality as a domain of security and Butler’s articulation of recognition, precariousness and grievability, I explore both the subjectivities formed as a function and technique of securing Australia’s borders and the way this framing produces a certain governed reality that ‘acts upon the senses’ to delimit public discourse. I argue that the range of discursive and non-discursive practises that make up Operation Sovereign Borders has dire implications for those seeking asylum in Australia. Not only do these practises constitute a social crafting where conditions for a flourishing life are diminished, but this crafting of precarity is carried out in the name of securing citizens lives. The life of the asylum seekers is a life unrecognised in the violent frames of Operation Sovereign Borders.     

Welcome to Woodside: Inverbrackie Alternative Place of Detention and performances of belonging in Woodside,South Australia,and Australia

Alternative Places of Detention (APODs) are a new way of detaining asylum seekers in Australia. The establishment of APODs creates a new formal structure of belonging in Australia which challenges everyday practices of belonging and senses of belonging at the local and national scale. This paper examines practices of belonging which emerged following the establishment of the Inverbrackie APOD in Woodside, South Australia. Using a critical discourse analysis approach, informed by the insights of theories of performativity, this research explores the competing stories of two broadly defined groups (opponents and supporters of Inverbrackie) engaged in a dialogue about asylum seekers, refugees, immigration detention and belonging. While opposition to the APOD was vocal and frequent in the lead-up to the establishment of the detention centre, once the Inverbrackie APOD became operational opponents’ voices began to fade. On the other hand, supporters continued to say things—and more importantly continued to do things—to nurture belonging for asylum seekers in Inverbrackie, Woodside, and Australia.     

The slow violence of life without cash: borders,state restrictions,and exclusion in the U.K. and Australia

In the U.K., refused asylum seekers who are considered destitute are provided with subsistence‐level financial support through the Azure card, a cashless technology similar to a debit card. In Australia, identical technology is used to quarantine fifty percent of the welfare benefits of mainly Aboriginal residents of the Northern Territory. In this paper, I explore the underlying state logics driving such punitive financial policies directed at these populations, arguing that cashless technologies represent a form of slow violence that employs financial tactics to undermine the provision of care for populations with precarious citizenship status. Financial tactics enact new forms of border securitization, slowly but permanently excluding people with precarious claims to citizenship from participation in the nation     

基于量化加权的居住空间准则决策方案

求职者对居住环境的选择是基于主观意愿与客观环境相互作用的结果,其实质为一个多目标、多准则的决策过程。针对目前缺乏结合个人就业现状与需求偏好对居住环境进行选择的研究的现状,该文分析并构建了影响因子的准则决策评价体系。以前台可视化界面获取求职者自身录入的偏好信息,确定各因子的准则权重;结合量化的基本思想与距离衰减的空间扩散形式,以赣州市为实验区制作准则因子的适应性分布图,而后加权计算得到居住环境的多级决策方案。     

Distancing Asylum Seekers from the State: Australia's evolving political geography of immigration and border control

Australia's border enforcement strategies and immigration control policies operate in distant geographies, concealed from human rights groups, media and the public. From offshore detention to militarised maritime defence operations, Australia's exclusion of asylum seekers is increasingly dependent upon geographical processes that ensure asylum seekers do not have access to the state's systems of protection. This article explores a critically overlooked geopolitical strategy of mobility regulation that relies on processes simultaneously expanding geographies of control, while contracting spaces of rights. The outcome of these rapidly evolving bordering practices is the exaggeration of the distance separating asylum seekers from the state, suspending them within a space devoid of an operational system of rights, and emphasising a new and restructured maritime legal geography.     

Giving space: Care, generosity and belonging in a UK asylum drop-in centre

This paper examines the political negotiations which underpin the performance of charitable spaces. In particular, the paper draws upon a period of ethnographic research at a UK drop-in centre for asylum seekers to consider how notions of charity, generosity and the right to give are structured within the daily accomplishment of an environment of care. Through considering the accounts of both asylum seekers and volunteers within this site, the paper outlines how the interactions and relations brought forth in the drop-in centre served to produce a space associated with ideas of welcome and generosity. The political nature of such a space is brought to the fore when considering how practices of care and generosity within the drop-in relied upon, and actively reinscribed, normalised visions of charity, belonging and citizenship. Through highlighting moments of transgression in which positions of giving and receiving are questioned, the paper suggests that the relations of the drop-in centre may reproduce a politically passive and marginalised vision of the asylum seeker within the UK. This reading of an environment of care for those seeking sanctuary has implications for how we understand the spatial experience of asylum itself, and for how we might envision more politically attentive and ethically responsive spaces of sanctuary.     

Routes to illegal residence: A case study of immigration detainees in the United Kingdom

This paper investigates the various ways in which migrants to the United Kingdom become illegally resident. Drawing on findings from a pilot study of undocumented migrants held in detention centres in the United Kingdom, it explores why respondents had chosen to come to the United Kingdom, how they came, and how they ended up residing illegally. In contrast to common assumptions about ‘illegal immigrants’, the present study reveals the diversity of paths into illegal residence, and stresses the importance of perceived safety, both from ‘persecution’ and more generalised violence, as well as the ease of finding work in a strong economy. The sample included both those who had knowingly come to the United Kingdom to live and work illegally, and those who had become illegal during their stay.     

Climate,conflict and forced migration

Despite the lack of robust empirical evidence, a growing number of media reports attempt to link climate change to the ongoing violent conflicts in Syria and other parts of the world, as well as to the migration crisis in Europe. Exploiting bilateral data on asylum seeking applications for 157 countries over the period 2006–2015, we assess the determinants of refugee flows using a gravity model which accounts for endogenous selection in order to examine the causal link between climate, conflict and forced migration. Our results indicate that climatic conditions, by affecting drought severity and the likelihood of armed conflict, played a significant role as an explanatory factor for asylum seeking in the period 2011–2015. The effect of climate on conflict occurrence is particularly relevant for countries in Western Asia in the period 2010–2012 during when many countries were undergoing political transformation. This finding suggests that the impact of climate on conflict and asylum seeking flows is limited to specific time period and contexts.     

Doors and fences: Controlling Indonesia's porous borders and policing asylum seekers

Although the partial outsourcing of state border control to non‐state actors is not a new phenomenon, Indonesia is an interesting case study. Border control in an archipelago consisting of more than 17 000 islands is particularly challenging for state authorities. In addition to contending with the exceptional geography, Indonesia's state authorities are also challenged by the political constellation with Australia in regard to irregular cross‐border movements of asylum seekers that has become a controversial issue in recent history. As an important transit country for asylum seekers and refugees en route to Australia, Indonesia's porous borders have rendered it possible to enter and exit the country relatively easily. Given Australia's political pressure and the financial incentives offered to Indonesia to act as a ‘final bulwark’ and control irregular migration flows more effectively, border control nowadays has gained more significance in Indonesia than in the past. Yet, financial constraints and, more importantly, a lack of political will to host asylum seekers in its own territories for the long term remain as obstacles. Fieldwork observations show that due to ongoing funding restrictions for state‐led border control, state‐society cooperation for border surveillance has increased. Civilians in many hotspots for irregular border crossings have been encouraged to report on ‘suspicious foreigners’. State‐society cooperation for border control, however, offers new opportunities for people smugglers to pay off civilian spies or corrupt border authorities.