31
May
The Impact of Deterrence on Victims of Torture
Australia’s refugee status determination (RSD) system has been explicitly focused on deterring asylum-seeking since at least 2012 when the former government’s ‘Expert Panel’ was tasked with selecting strategies to prevent asylum-seekers making boat journeys to Australia. Today, deterrence covers the entire migration process. Its impact on victims and survivors of torture is rarely mentioned among... Read More
30
May
The Criminalisation of Migration in Europe: The Way Ahead
The contemporary world is fraught with trends directed at the criminalization of international migration (CoM). The modus operandi of migration management is replete with the flagrant violation of international refugee law (IRL) principles like non-refoulement[1] that does not allow any person to be sent back to the territories inimical to his/her life, liberty and security.... Read More
24
Apr
The State of Statelessness
Being stateless ultimately means having no nationality and having no nationality usually means having no documents to prove your identity. People can become stateless for many reasons, two of which are conflict and forced displacement. Conflict not only impacts stateless people the most heavily in their ability to flee, it also actively contributes to the... Read More
27
Mar
Injustices and the Art of Realpolitik
The latest instalment of Australia’s Pacific Solution has been an exercise in state-sanctioned cruelty. Hardly a week goes by without new revelations about the mistreatment of refugees and asylum seekers on Manus Island and in Nauru. According to a group of legal experts, the “harrowing practices of the Australian state and corporations towards asylum seekers”... Read More
21
Mar
Public attitudes towards asylum seekers and refugees
Australian politicians have a long history of using dehumanising language to influence public opinion against people seeking asylum, particularly those arriving by boat (Clark 2013, Nicholson and Dodd 2012, Cox 2015, Bickers 2017). Often, polarising language is used to distinguish “queue jumping” asylum seekers from “genuine” refugees. The findings of an online survey of 6001... Read More
12
Mar
‘The end is nigh’: What should happen after Nauru and Manus close?
Australia’s offshore processing experiment, involving the detention of asylum seekers on Nauru and Papua New Guinea (PNG), has failed. Earlier last year, the Supreme Court of PNG ruled that detainees’ right to personal liberty had been violated, meaning the Manus Island centre is illegal and unconstitutional. The centre is to close, although a timeline for... Read More
9
Mar
Legal Update: Discrimination Law to Protect Refugees in the ACT
As a practicing lawyer, I heard refugees and asylum-seeker clients describe discrimination and harassment as common. They were often unaware that it was unlawful and not something they just needed to ‘put up with’, even though most of the treatment they described had a clear racial element, and as such ,fell within the Commonwealth Racial... Read More
5
Mar
How Can We Best Understand Public Reactions Towards Migrant Groups?
Ravini Abeywickrama (PhD candidate) Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne Consider the concept of migration from an evolutionary perspective, as detailed by social psychologists Cottrell and Neuberg (2005). Humans possess numerous benefits by co-existing in groups, such as sharing of limited economic resources. These interdependent lifestyles may nevertheless, be compromised by... Read More
10
Feb
Middle Eastern migrants aren’t ‘piling on to the dole queue’
Claims that Middle Eastern migrants are “piling on to the dole queue” are misleading. The data actually shows that, after an initial period of relatively high unemployment, labour force participation and employment rates amongst migrant communities eventually reach parity with the rest of the population. Recently released labour force data indicates that people born in... Read More
21
Jan
What is a refugee camp like?
What is a refugee camp like? What is a refugee camp like? How are children living and learning there? And how can we support them in coping with their war experiences? These questions led me to visiting Zaatari and Azraq, two camps for Syrian people in Jordan. Small cities Both camps are substantial in size... Read More