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- Convenors:
-
Gerhard Hoffstaedter
(University of Queensland)
Antje Missbach (Bielefeld University)
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- Stream:
- Citizenship, politics and power
- Location:
- Old Quad-G18 (Cussonia Court Room 2)
- Start time:
- 4 December, 2015 at
Time zone: Australia/Melbourne
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
This panel addresses individual and collective refugee and asylum seeker experiences of lives in limbo in Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
Long Abstract:
Over the last two decades, a number of Southeast Asian countries have become important transit countries for asylum seekers and refugees looking for permanent protection in Australia or other resettlement countries. Moreover, some of these transit countries are also home to significant 'stable' populations of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees, who have spent prolonged time in waiting there.
Australia's latest asylum and migration policy changes under the Abbott government have brought significant changes also for the wider Asia-Pacific region and the handling of asylum seekers and refugees. Next to a number of bilateral agreements and collaboration between Australia and its neighbours, which paved the way for permanent resettlement options outside Australia (Nauru, Cambodia), the Australian policies and bordering interests that seek to defer asylum seekers from coming to Australia have also been transmitted through the work of international organisations. By pushing its border policies further into the Asia-Pacific region, asylum seekers and refugees are left with fewer options to reach Australia regularly and irregularly and face ever more prolonged times in transit. Given the reluctance of some transit countries to take responsibility for these asylum seekers and refugees, overall conditions for them are mostly declining.
The panel aims at bringing together ethnographic contributions that deal with how people at the receiving end of these policies deal with, mitigate or evade them. We especially welcome papers that relate to and provide innovations to policy-making in this area.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
Although Indonesia has been an attractive transit country for asylum seekers for almost 20 years, the Indonesian government has refrained from passing special laws for the handling of asylum seekers during their time in transit.
Paper long abstract:
The absence of an overall legal framework for dealing with asylum seekers and refugees has given way to ad hoc procedures, which often lacked in consistency and sustainability. In particular immigration detention has been un(der)-regulated, which in turn gave way to the development of illicit practices among a number of state officials.
Assuming that asylum seekers would not stay for the long term in Indonesia, the Indonesian government gave way to such laissez fair attitudes and thus for many years has not only refrained from enforcing strict migration control, but also from producing standard operation procedures for immigration detention centres and other forms of community detention. With the closure of irregular pathways to Australia since September 2013, however, the Indonesian government can no longer afford its 'benevolent neglect' vis-à-vis the asylum seekers, as most of them will remain in transit in Indonesia for much longer. Binding regulations for their handling are necessary in order to prevent corrupt practices in detention centres and unjust 'special treatments' among certain ethnic groups.
The paper sheds light on the discretionary powers held by the heads of Indonesian detention centres in order to explain their impact on the treatment of asylum seekers and refugees in detention and it explains the logic behind the ongoing un(der)-regulation.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the viability of an Islamic alternative to the refugee convention for providing refugee protection.
Paper long abstract:
Malaysia has a mixed track record in providing Muslims with refuge, yet it increasingly lays claims to being an Islamic country. The refugee convention and its protocol, meanwhile, have been under intense scrutiny and their ideals are increasingly ignored or circumvented by some of their signatories. This paper explores alternatives to signing up to the convention in providing protection spaces for refugees outside of the convention. Using Malaysia as a case study the paper argues that the Islamic concept of sanctuary has historical application and potential to allow for the temporary and long term integration of vulnerable populations in the region. This also comes with numerous caveats and problems of its own, but considering the large refugee case load in the Muslim world it offers one alternative based on practice in one OIC country.
Ethnographic vignettes from fieldwork with Somali, Rohingya and Afghan refugees demonstrates the limitations of such an approach as well as the possibilities it affords. This paper argues that refugee policy in the region needs to move beyond the conventional durable solutions based on a rights framework that is increasingly meaningless.
Paper short abstract:
Living under precarious circumstances in protracted exile, displaced Rohingya in Malaysia develop resourceful strategies to strengthen their lives. The experiences of four Rohingya families from Kuala Lumpur’s suburbs illustrate how they build more secure lives for themselves.
Paper long abstract:
Rohingya in Malaysia live a life of precariousness. Fieldwork among Rohingya families living in the suburbs of Malaysia's capital Kuala Lumpur reveals they develop strategies to make their lives less precarious.
The UNHCR in Malaysia has been working towards integration for the Rohingya, who have been fleeing Myanmar for decades as a response to the ongoing conflict in its Rakhine state. However, successful integration of the Rohingya community in Malaysia faces a number of basic impediments. Without legal status, without being able to send their children to school, with difficulties obtaining health care and without work rights, Rohingya are essentially living a life of informality. Officially they cannot work, save money in a bank, rent an apartment, drive a car or even a motorcycle.
Yet, Rohingya have developed resourceful ways to overcome these obstacles and to make life more robust. What is more, as much as their undocumentedness limits the Rohingya, being undocumented also creates opportunities to carry out vital activities that take place outside official frameworks.
Based on extensive field research among four Rohingya families living in the suburbs of Kuala Lumpur this paper explores how these Rohingya families experience being undocumented in their daily lives as well as the ways in which Rohingya build more secure lives for themselves and their families.
Paper short abstract:
Based on fieldwork in progress with NGOs and volunteers providing services to asylum seekers in Melbourne, this paper explores their engagements with, negotiations of and possible resistance to increasingly restrictive asylum seeker policies.
Paper long abstract:
Since the 2013 Regional Resettlement Arrangement, public commentary has focused on the inhumane conditions of Australia's offshore processing centres. In fact, most asylum seekers (approx 29,000 out of 33,000) are precariously positioned onshore, in the Australian community. Having arrived since the 2012 policy decision that 'unauthorised' migrants would 'never be settled in Australia', they remain on temporary visas and may eventually be resettled in a third country. Living below the poverty line under controlled conditions that deny work rights and provide a stipend less than a welfare benefit, many depend on NGOs and volunteers to help make ends meet.
This paper is based on ongoing fieldwork exploring the political and moral subjectivities of such volunteers and NGOs working with asylum seekers in Melbourne. I examine the neoliberal conditions that have led to the rise of a mixed economy of welfare provision that disproportionately places NGOs and volunteers at the centre of service delivery to asylum seekers. I also grapple with the moral and political paradoxes of providing humanitarian aid to asylum seekers, paradoxes that have been explored elsewhere by anthropologists such as Didier Fassin and Miriam Ticktin and involve tensions between humanitarianism and securitisation; compassion and repression; hospitality and hostility; governance and resistance. I end by considering whether NGOs and volunteers have the potential and capacity to challenge current policy settings and advocate for progressive political and social change.