Australia: Australia's Border and Its Discontents - Migratory Flows at the Borders of Our World - Libros y Revistas - VLEX 851096874

Australia: Australia's Border and Its Discontents

AutorNishadh Rego/Carolina Gottardo
Páginas299-338

: ’
   
Introduction
Migration plays an integral role in Aust ralia’s national mythology, the de-
velopment of its ongoing nation-building enterprise, and to a large extent
the reason for its success. However, it is also the subject of a deep-seated
national apprehen sion premised on racism and xenophobia, fear of losing
identity, land, wealth, status, and a perennial sense of geographical and
cultural isolation. Journalist Peter Mares calls it a
deeply held, yet irrational anxiety that Australia is perpetually in dan-
ger of being overrun; that our sovereignty is brittle and our borders
are weak. It is as though this continent were a rickety lifeboat and all
the world’s oppressed and poor are desperately swimming towards us,
threatening to drag us under. (Mares, , p. )
e contradictory roles in the national collect ive psyche emanate from
Australia’s settler-colonial origins. ere has a lways been a need to reconcile
the triumph of European sett lement and the concurrent violent dispossession
of the continent’s aboriginal people; the importance of continued immigra-
tion from Britain to consolidate the settlement endeavour; and the need to
ensure that future sett lement did not threaten the enduring status quo of Bri-
tish dominance (see Cruickshank & Moreton-Robinson, ; Lake & Rey-
nolds, ). In practice, Australian immig ration policy has been premised
on a culture of control from Federation onwards (Manne, ). Successive
Australian governments have always sought to facilitate the ‘right’ kind of
migration while simultaneously se eking to curtail the ‘wrong’ ki nd.
is chapter considers the evolution of this culture of control and
highlights its key ma nifestations as they appear on the Australian border
today. We argue that while a culture of control has existed from Fede-
ration, the focus of today’s exclusionary policies towards ‘boat people’
emerged in the s.
Nishadh Rego and
Carolina G ottardo

Nishadh Rego and Carolina Gottardo
Leanne Weber’s typology will then be utilized to characterize the
functional and spatia l dimensions of a border control policy that has since
been obsessed with the threat of irregular migration to this country. e
extraterritorialization of border control, the interdiction functions that
Australia employs on the high seas, a nd at its airports, the punitive policies
towards those already in Austra lia’s control and care, and the creative ma-
nipulations of space, territory, and sovereignty to justify the continuation
of these policies will be c onsidered.
Finally, several important recent statements by key international
human rights institut ions and leaders, which denote the human rights vio-
lations inherent in some of these policies, will be highlighted. Lastly, this
chapter will conclude with a broad overview of the impacts we are witnes-
sing rst hand on the ground in Austra lia of the Jesuit Refugee Service ().
It is important to note here that there is a vast and impressive amou-
nt of literature on the Australian border and Austra lia’s migration control
policies. Our historical overv iew is by no means a denitive or comprehen-
sive account, but rather a way of denoting the shis in the nature of mig ra-
tion control over time, and the pivot towards stopping the boats post-s.
Similarly, our characterization of the border today, and the human rights
violations highlighted are li mited to specic developments with which we
have a direct or indirect connection th rough our work at the .
A historical overview of migration control in Australia
e individuals involved and the techniques of migration control in
Australia have shied over time. Here, we focus on a major qualitative shi
that separates the pre-s regime from the period aer, noting that the
specic tenor of debate and policy has always been subject to the prevail ing
economic circumstances, public attitudes, parliamentary dynamics, elite
consensus, and global migrat ion trends of the day.
From the s until the mid-s, race was the primary and overt
basis for excluding migrants from settling in Australia. Governments
exercised their sovereign authority to exclude, largely via discursive and
socio-legal mechanisms. In the ea rly post-Gold Rush economic downturn,
thousands of Chinese immigrants, until then essential for the goldeld

Australia: Australia’s Border and Its Discontents
economy, were vociferously targeted as cultura l imposters competing for
local jobs. Newspapers would report the Chinese a s “importing the mindset
of ‘slavery’; threatening the democratic ‘way of life’; bearing social malaise
and sexual degradation; and being vectors of disease” (Mayes & omp-
son, , para. ). By the early s, British colonial outposts across the
Pacic Rim were developing anti-Chinese immigration laws. In , the
New South Wales () government passed the Inux of Chinese Restric-
tion Act to prevent Chinese people from making their way into  from
goldelds in Victoria and Queensland (ompson, ). By the time of
Federation in , approximately  of people in Australia were of Bri-
tish Caucasian heritage, and the majority wanted to live in a country that
remained true to its British customs a nd roots, whilst also l imiting labour
competition from Asia and the South Pacic (Jones, ). It was in this
context that Australia’s rst passed the Pacic Island Laborers Bill a nd Im-
migration Restriction Bill in  with bipartis an support (Neumann, ,
p. ). e Immigration Restriction Bill beca me the legal cornerstone of the
White Australia Policy. It did not explicitly discr iminate against particu lar
races; however, it instituted an ‘education test’ whereby anyone unable to
write a short paragraph in Eng lish or another European language could be
deemed a prohibited immigrant (Neumann, , p. ).
In the rst seven decades of the 
th
the overwhelming majority of
migrants were subject to the limitations imposed by the White Australia
policy (Neumann, , p. ). Prospective refugees did not receive any con-
cessions. For example, in  when the Brisbane Hebrew Congregation en-
quired whether Australia would reset tle Polish and Russian Jewish refugees,
they were told that all Jewish immigrants would have to meet the normal
criteria for non-British migrants (Neumann, , p. ). Neumann notes that
in some circumstances, Austra lia appeared to disadvantage refugees who
belonged to a national ethnic or religious group that was considered undesi-
rable. is became clear, for example, in Australia’s refusal to resett le ,
Anti-Bolshevik Jews from Russia and Uk raine in  (Neumann, , p. ).
During and aer World War II, both the Australian Labor Par ty
() and the Liberal party (the equivalent of today’s Liberal-National Coa-
lition []) expanded and diversied Australia’s immigration program
with the assista nce of the International Refugee Organisation (). In 
alone, Australia resettled , displaced persons from Eastern Europe

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