Refugee Journeys presents stories of how governments, the public and the media have responded to the arrival of people seeking asylum, and how these responses have impacted refugees and their lives. Mostly covering the period from 1970 to the present, the chapters provide readers with an understanding of the political, social and historical contexts that have brought us to the current day. This engaging collection of essays also considers possible ways to break existing policy deadlocks, encouraging readers to imagine a future where we carry vastly different ideas about refugees, government policies and national identities.
Examining resettlement practices worldwide and drawing on contributions from anthropology, law, international relations, social work, political science, and numerous other disciplines, this ground-breaking volume highlights the conflicts between refugees’ needs and state practices, and assesses international, regional and national perspectives on resettlement, as well as the bureaucracies and ideologies involved. It offers a detailed understanding of resettlement, from the selection of refugees to their long-term integration in resettling states, and highlights the relevance of a lifespan approach to resettlement analysis.
The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781315268958, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. The image we have of refugees is one of displacement – from their homes, families and countries – and yet, refugee settlement is increasingly becoming an experience of living simultaneously in places both proximate and distant, as people navigate and transcend international borders in numerous and novel ways. At the same time, border regimes remain central in defining the possibilities and constraints of meaningful settlement. This book examines the implications of ‘belonging’ in numerous places as increased mobilities and digital access create new global connectedness in uneven and unexpected ways. Belonging and Transnational Refugee Settlement positions refugee settlement as an ongoing transnational experience and identifies the importance of multiple belongings through several case studies based on original research in Australia and New Zealand, as well as at sites in the US, Canada and the UK. Demonstrating the interplay between everyday and extraordinary experiences and broadening the dominant refugee discourses, this book critiques the notion that meaningful settlement necessarily occurs in ‘local’ places. The author focuses on the extraordinary events of trauma and disasters alongside the everyday lives of refugees undertaking settlement, to provide a conceptual framework that embraces and honours the complexities of working with the ‘trauma story’ and identifies approaches to see beyond it. This book will appeal to those with an interest in migration and diaspora studies, human geography and sociology.
Combining theoretical and practical information, this book presents a holistic overview of refugee settlement in Australia. It focuses on numerous critical aspects of refugee settlement which play a vital role in refugee integration into Australia. Starting with an overview of immigration history in Australia, the book then places an emphasis on 21st-century settlement of refugees. The chapters explore a gamut of topics including how culture is transmitted in refugee families, how media portrays refugees, and how to work with refugee communities in various contexts, without focusing on one specific refugee cohort/country group. This interdisciplinary angle is presented via the inclusion of voices from interviews with key refugee settlement providers, educators, former refugees, researchers, and second-generation youth from refugee backgrounds. It covers current Australia political debate and politicisation of refugees, digital technologies, the role of language in enabling successful settlement, education trajectories, social cohesion, the fractured diasporic family, and the impact of media coverage, which underpin the settlement of refugees in Australia. This is an ideal resource for advanced undergraduates, postgraduates, and scholars of refugee settlement in the disciplines of communication, media, politics and international relations, social work, education, and demographic studies, as well as government entities, policy makers, service providers, and NGOs looking to gain an understanding of the factors impacting refugee settlement in Australia.
The voices Australia should hear This beautifully illustrated book captures the stories of those who have lived the experience of seeking asylum. In their own voices, contributors share how they came to be in Australia, and explore diverse aspects of their lives: growing up in a refugee camp, studying for a PhD, changing attitudes through soccer, being a Muslim in a small country town, campaigning against racism, surviving detention, holding onto culture, dreaming of being reunited with family. There are stories of love, pain, injustice, achievement and everything in between. Accompanied by beautiful portrait photographs, they show the depth and diversity of people’s experience and trace the impact of Australia’s immigration policies. Seeking Asylum also includes a foreword by Liliana Maria and an essay by Abdul Karim Hekmat on the human, social and political impact of Australia’s treatment of people seeking asylum over the last fifty years. With an afterword by Kon Karapanagiotidis and supporting material demystifying Australia’s current policies from Julian Burnside, Seeking Asylum redefines assumptions about people who have sought asylum and inspires readers to take action to create a more welcoming Australia. 100% of the proceeds from Seeking Asylum: Our Stories will be reinvested by the ASRC to fund projects that build people’s capacity to tell their story in their own way and provide opportunities to amplify their voices. One area of investment will continue to be the ASRC’s Community Advocacy and Power Program (CAPP). The CAPP training program, offered nationally, provides participants with skills in advocacy, community organising / mobilising, public speaking and effective media engagement.
Winner of Australia’s richest literary award, No Friend but the Mountains is Kurdish-Iranian journalist and refugee Behrouz Boochani’s account of his detainment on Australia’s notorious Manus Island prison. Composed entirely by text message, this work represents the harrowing experience of stateless and imprisoned refugees and migrants around the world. In 2013, Kurdish-Iranian journalist Behrouz Boochani was illegally detained on Manus Island, a refugee detention centre off the coast of Australia. He has been there ever since. This book is the result. Laboriously tapped out on a mobile phone and translated from the Farsi. It is a voice of witness, an act of survival. A lyric first-hand account. A cry of resistance. A vivid portrait of five years of incarceration and exile. Winner of the Victorian Prize for Literature, No Friend but the Mountains is an extraordinary account — one that is disturbingly representative of the experience of the many stateless and imprisoned refugees and migrants around the world. “Our government jailed his body, but his soul remained that of a free man.” — From the Foreword by Man Booker Prize–winning author Richard Flanagan
Migration and its associated social practices and consequences have been studied within a multitude of academic disciplines and in the context of policies at local, national and regional level. This edited collection provides an introduction and critical review of conceptual developments and policy contexts of migration scholarship within an Australian and global context, through: political economy analyses of migration and associated transformations; sociological analyses of ‘settling in’ processes; multi-disciplinary analyses of migrant work; a historical review of scholarship on refugees; a Southern theory approach to cultural diversity; sociological reflections on post-nationalism; Cultural Studies analyses of public culture and ‘second generation’ youth cultures; interdisciplinary and Critical Race analyses of ‘race’ and racism; feminist intersectional analyses of migration, belonging and representation; the theorising of cosmopolitanism; a transdisciplinary analysis of gender, transnational families and care; and a comparative, transcontextual analysis of hybridity. An essential contribution to the current mapping of migration studies, with a focus on Australian scholarship in its international context, this collection will be of interest to undergraduates and postgraduates interested in fields such as Sociology, Cultural Studies, Geography and Politics.
Through a global series of case studies, this pioneering book delves into refugee entrepreneurship - a major economic, political and social issue emerging as a top priority. Stories from Australia, Germany, Pakistan and many other countries, highlight the obstacles facing refugees as they try to integrate and set up businesses in their new countries. Engaging contributions set the stage for a cross-analysis of the particularities and limitations faced by refugee entrepreneurs, culminating in an extended discussion about the future implications of refugee entrepreneurship for theory, policy and practice. This interdisciplinary book explores the motivations and drivers of refugee entrepreneurship, making it an insightful read not only for those engaged in entrepreneurship, but also for those interested in migration studies from a variety of academic disciplines.
The heart-rending story of a child 'Tampa' refugee who grew up to become a Fulbright scholar, highlighting the plight and potential of refugees everywhere. When the Taliban were at the height of their power in 2001, Abbas Nazari's parents were faced with a choice: stay and face persecution in their homeland, or seek security for their young children elsewhere. The family's desperate search for safety took them on a harrowing journey from the mountains of Afghanistan to a small fishing boat in the Indian Ocean, crammed with more than 400 other asylum seekers. When their boat started to sink, they were mercifully saved by a cargo ship, the Tampa. However, one of the largest maritime rescues in modern history quickly turned into an international stand-off, as Australia closed its doors to these asylum seekers. The Tampa had waded into the middle of Australia's national election, sparking their hardline policy of offshore detention. While many of those rescued by the Tampa were the first inmates sent to the island of Nauru, Abbas and his family were some of the lucky few to be resettled in New Zealand. Twenty years after the Tampa affair, Abbas tells his amazing story, from living under Taliban rule, to spending a terrifying month at sea, to building a new life at the bottom of the world. A powerful and inspiring story for our times, After the Tampa celebrates the importance of never letting go of what drives the human spirit: hope.
The first in-depth exploration of the persistence and pervasiveness of a dangerous legal fiction about people who cross borders: the binary distinction between migrant and refugee. Today, the concept of "the refugee" as distinct from other migrants looms large. Immigration laws have developed to reinforce a conceptual dichotomy between those viewed as voluntary, often economically motivated, migrants who can be legitimately excluded by potential host states, and those viewed as forced, often politically motivated, refugees who should be let in. In Crossing, Rebecca Hamlin argues against advocacy positions that cling to this distinction. Everything we know about people who decide to move suggests that border crossing is far more complicated than any binary, or even a continuum, can encompass. The decision to leave home is almost always multi-causal and often involves many stops and hazards along the way--a reality not captured by a system that categorizes a majority of border-crossers as undeserving, and the rare few as vulnerable and needy. Drawing on cases of various "border crises" across Europe, North America, South America, and the Middle East, Hamlin outlines major inconsistencies and faulty assumptions upon which the binary relies, and explains its endurance and appeal by tracing its origins to the birth of the modern state and the rise of colonial empire. The migrant/refugee binary is not just an innocuous shorthand, indeed its power stems from the way in which is it painted as objective, neutral, and apolitical. In truth, the binary is a dangerous legal fiction, politically constructed with the ultimate goal of making harsh border control measures more ethically palatable to the public. This book is a challenge to all those invested in the rights and study of migrants, to interrogate their own assumptions and move towards more equitable advocacy for all border crossers.
