Escaping accountability: a case of Australia’s asylum seeker policy

2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (6) ◽  
pp. 947-984 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ken McPhail ◽  
Robert Ochoki Nyamori ◽  
Savitri Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Asylum Seeker ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
National Policy ◽  
Effective Control ◽  
Policy Network ◽  
Immigration Detention ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Government Organizations ◽  
Private Corporations ◽  
The Way

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to address two questions: first, what contracts, instruments and accounting activities constitute Australia’s offshore asylum seeker processing policy in practice? Second, how are notions of legitimacy and accountability mediated through the network constituted by this policy? Design/methodology/approach – The paper is located in the critical interpretivist approach to accounting research. It is based on an exhaustive documentary analysis. Policy documents, contract documents, records of parliamentary inquiries (Hansard) and legislation were analysed drawing on a network policy perspective. Findings – The paper finds that the Australian Government has sought to escape its accountability obligations by employing a range of approaches. The first of these approaches is the construction of a network involving foreign states, private corporations and non-government organizations. The second is through a watered down accountability regime and refusal to be accountable for the day-to-day life of asylum seekers in offshore processing centres through a play with the meaning of “effective control”. Yet while the policy network seems designed to create accountability gaps, the requirement within the network to remain financially accountable undermines the governments claims not to be responsible for the conditions in the detention camps. Research limitations/implications – The paper focuses largely on the period starting from when Kevin Rudd became Prime Minister to the death in Papua New Guinea of asylum seeker Reza Barati on 17 February 2014. Earlier periods are beyond the scope of this paper. Practical implications – The paper will result in the identification of deficiencies inhuman rights accountability for extra-territorialized and privatised immigration detention and may contribute towards the formulation of effective policy recommendations to overcome such deficiencies. The paper also provides empirical data on, and academic understanding of, immigration detention outsourcing and offshoring. Social implications – The paper will inform debate regarding treatment of unauthorized maritime arrivals and asylum seekers generally. Originality/value – The paper provides the first detailed and full understanding of the way Australia’s offshore asylum seeker processing policy is practiced. The paper also provides an empirical analysis of the way national policy and its associated accountability mechanisms emerge in response to the competing legitimacy claims of the international community and national electorate.

Technologies of control: Asylum seeker and volunteer experiences in Australian immigration detention facilities

2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle Peterie
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Distress ◽  
Asylum Seeker ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Immigration Detention ◽  
Volunteer Experiences ◽  
Negative Impacts ◽  
Detention Facilities

This article documents the experiences of volunteer visitors to Australia’s onshore immigration detention facilities, and considers what they reveal about the operation of power within this detention network. While immigration detention systems (including Australia’s) have received considerable academic attention in recent years, few scholars have examined the experiences of volunteers. Further, while the existing scholarship points to the negative impacts of immigration detention on detainees, the question of how these outcomes are produced at the level of daily institutional life has gone largely unanswered. The testimonies presented here provide a valuable window onto daily life in Australia’s onshore immigration detention centres, highlighting the opaque and capricious mechanisms through which they produce emotional distress in both asylum seekers and their supporters. In documenting these mechanisms and their effects, this article shows how ‘deterrence’ is enacted through the small and seemingly innocuous details of institutional life.

scholarly journals Asylum Seekers Living in the Australian Community: A Casework and Reception Approach, Asylum Seeker Project, Hotham Mission, Melbourne

Refuge ◽  
2004 ◽  
pp. 119-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grant Mitchell ◽  
Sara Kirsner
Keyword(s):  
Asylum Seeker ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Viable Alternative ◽  
Immigration Detention ◽  
Governmental Organization ◽  
Mode Of Entry ◽  
The Status ◽  
Australian Community

In Australia, asylum seekers either are detained in immigration detention centres or, depending upon their mode of entry into Australia and the status of their application for protection, live in the community, often in a state of abject poverty. Hotham Mission’s Asylum Seeker Project (ASP), a Melbourne-based non-governmental organization (NGO), is unique in Australia in its comprehensive work in housing and supporting asylum seekers in the community, particularly those released from detention. The work of the Asylum Seeker Project illustrates that it is possible, through the application of a comprehensive reception casework system, to adequately support asylum seekers in the community with their welfare needs and to prepare asylum seekers for all immigration outcomes. The Project thus provides a compassionate model of reception support and a viable alternative to immigration detention.

scholarly journals A qualitative exploration of post-migration stressors and psychosocial well-being in two asylum reception centres in Belgium

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Whitehouse ◽  
Ella Lambe ◽  
Sofia Rodriguez ◽  
Umberto Pellecchia ◽  
Aurelie Ponthieu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Asylum Seeker ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Prolonged Exposure ◽  
Psychosocial Support ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Family Status ◽  
Daily Stressors ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Preventative Measures ◽  
Significant Burden

Purpose Prolonged exposure to daily stressors can have long-term detrimental implications for overall mental health. For asylum seekers in European Union transit or destination countries, navigating life in reception centres can represent a significant burden. The purpose of this study was to explore post-migration stressors during residency in reception centres, and to formulate recommendations for adequate service provision in Belgium. Design/methodology/approach Research was conducted in two reception centres in Belgium. A total of 41 in-depth interviews were carried out with asylum seeker residents (n = 29) and staff (n = 12). Purposive recruitment was used for asylum seekers (for variation in length of centre residency and family status) and staff (variation in job profiles). Interviews were conducted in English, French or with a translator in Arabic or Dari. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim and manually coded using thematic analysis. Findings Asylum seekers face significant constraints with regard to their living conditions, including total absence of privacy, overcrowding and unhygienic conditions. These act as continuous and prolonged exposure to daily stressors. Several barriers to accessing activities or integration opportunities prevent meaningful occupation, contribute towards eroded autonomy and isolation of asylum seeker residents. Inadequate capacity and resources for the provision of psychosocial support in reception centres leads to a sense of abandonment and worthlessness. Originality/value Analysis indicates that structural and practical challenges to adequately support asylum seekers are rooted in policy failures necessary for appropriate resourcing and prioritization of preventative measures. Such deliberate decisions contribute towards state deterrence strategies, eroding both individual well-being and manufacturing a crisis in the systems of support for asylum seekers.

scholarly journals Australian Media and Islamophobia: Representations of Asylum Seeker Children

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 501 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tejaswini Vishwanath Patil ◽  
Helen Jacqueline McLaren
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Asylum Seeker ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Immigration Detention ◽  
Australian Society ◽  
Media Reporting ◽  
Muslim Children ◽  
Risk Framing

Australian media invests considerable attention in asylum seekers and their children, especially those arriving by boat. In this paper, we provide an analysis of Australian newsprint media published during the term of Australia’s Gillard’s government (2010–2013). This period is critical as it coincides with rising numbers of boat arrivals to Australian shores, fear towards Muslims, and growing Islamophobia. At the time, there were government promises to move children from offshore immigration detention into community-based detention, that would involve living among mainstream Australian society. A data set of 46 articles from major Australian newspapers articles was subject to a discourse analysis of representations of children in both the written texts and in silences. Manipulative tactics of ‘risk framing’ and ‘dispersed intentionality’ were identified as discursive acts aimed to confuse compassion and deviancy with respect to asylum seeker children presumed to be from Islamic backgrounds. We argue that this was achieved through binary characterizations in which Muslim parents and people smugglers were constructed as deviant alongside intentional silences, that may have otherwise elicited compassion for asylum seeker children. We propose that this period of media reporting is foundational to understanding the rise of Islamophobic discourses and the implication of Muslim children in Australia.

scholarly journals Emotion and secrecy in Australian asylum-seeker comics: The politics of visual style

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (5) ◽  
pp. 457-485
Author(s):  
Aaron Humphrey
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Asylum Seeker ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Visual Language ◽  
Audience Engagement ◽  
Visual Style ◽  
Customs And Border Protection ◽  
Political Dimensions ◽  
The Way

This article examines two online comics about Australia’s policies of detaining asylum seekers, one created by the Australian government’s Customs and Border Protection Service (CBPS), and one published by the experimental journalism site The Global Mail. Through an analysis of the way online readers responded to these comics, this article shows how digital comics use visual style to imply particular kinds of relationships between their authors and their audience, while generating audience engagement through abstracted emotions and narrative gaps. These features have political dimensions, as in the CBPS’s comic, which elides crucial details about the government’s policies while suggesting (but never directly stating) its disregard for the human rights of asylum seekers, while The Global Mail’s comic uses a hand-drawn visual style to generate reader sympathy for the detainees and opposition to the government’s policies. Both comics use visual language to obfuscate key elements about the sources of their messages while also obscuring the voices of the refugees that their images represent.

Health professionals confront the intentional harms of indefinite immigration detention: an Australian overview, evaluation of alternative responses and proposed strategy

2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Dudley ◽  
Peter Young ◽  
Louise Newman ◽  
Fran Gale ◽  
Rohanna Stoddart
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Health Professional ◽  
Health Professionals ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Conflicts Of Interest ◽  
Immigration Detention ◽  
Aggressive Approach ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Indefinite Detention ◽  
Degrading Treatment

Purpose Indefinite immigration detention causes well-documented harms to mental health, and international condemnation and resistance leave it undisrupted. Health care is non-independent from immigration control, compromising clinical ethics. Attempts to establish protected, independent clinical review and subvert the system via advocacy and political engagement have had limited success. The purpose of this study is to examine the following: how indefinite detention for deterrence (exemplified by Australia) injures asylum-seekers; how international legal authorities confirm Australia’s cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment; how detention compromises health-care ethics and hurts health professionals; to weigh arguments for and against boycotting immigration detention; and to discover how health professionals might address these harms, achieving significant change. Design/methodology/approach Secondary data analyses and ethical argumentation were employed. Findings Australian Governments fully understand and accept policy-based injuries. They purposefully dispense cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and intend suffering that causes measurable harms for arriving asylum-seekers exercising their right under Australian law. Health professionals are ethically conflicted, not wanting to abandon patients yet constrained. Indefinite detention prevents them from alleviating sufferings and invites collusion, potentially strengthening harms; thwarts scientific inquiry and evidence-based interventions; and endangers their health whether they resist, leave or remain. Governments have primary responsibility for detained asylum-seekers’ health care. Health professional organisations should negotiate the minimum requirements for their members’ participation to ensure independence, and prevent conflicts of interest and inadvertent collaboration with and enabling systemic harms. Originality/value Australia’s aggressive approach may become normalised, without its illegality being determined. Health professional colleges uniting over conditions of participation would foreground ethics and pressure governments internationally over this contagious and inexcusable policy.

scholarly journals The People’s Inquiry into Detention: Social work activism for asylum seeker rights

2019 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 100-114
Author(s):  
Linda Briskman
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Asylum Seeker ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Immigration Detention ◽  
Global Context ◽  
Professional Groups ◽  
Professional Advocacy ◽  
Policies And Practices

In 2008, findings from the People’s Inquiry into Detention were published as Human Rights Overboard: Seeking Asylum in Australia. The People’s Inquiry, led by social work academics in Australia, exposed injustices within Australia’s privatised detention network for asylum seekers and interrogated policies and practices that ensued since mandatory immigration detention was introduced by legislation in 1992. With reference to the global context, the article presents a snapshot of policies and practices revealed by the People’s Inquiry that were considered antithetical to human rights and discusses this extensive undertaking within a broader context of asylum seeker social movements and professional advocacy endeavours that continue as harsh policies escalate. The article speaks to the resilience of the asylum seeker movement, often against the odds, a movement that includes responsive and tenacious professional groups.

scholarly journals Detention of Asylum Seekers in Mexico

Refuge ◽  
2002 ◽  
pp. 58-64
Author(s):  
Gretchen Kuhner
Keyword(s):  
Asylum Seeker ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
National Policy ◽  
Eligibility Determination ◽  
Transitional Process ◽  
The Status ◽  
Mexican Government ◽  
The Government

Mexico ratified the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol in April 2000. While Regulations establishing a mechanism for eligibility determination were issued at the same time, the Mexican government began a transitional process to take over eligibility in March 2002. Prior to that time, the UNHCR had been recognizing refugees under its mandate. As of this writing no national policy regarding the detention of asylum seekers has been established, nor have refugee advocates begun to pressure the government to comply with Article 31 of the Convention. Rather, whether an asylum seeker is detained during the eligibility process depends in part on the place and timing of the request as well as on the knowledge and goodwill of the migration authority.

Mental distress and human rights of asylum seekers

2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 43-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Jean Campbell ◽  
Emily Jean Steel
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Mental Distress ◽  
World Health ◽  
Mental Wellbeing ◽  
Systemic Review ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Immigration Detention ◽  
Detention Centre ◽  
Content Type

Purpose – This paper studies the experiences of asylum seekers in Australia. The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between mental wellbeing, living conditions, and Australia’s detention policies in light of human rights. Design/methodology/approach – Using grounded theory, data were collected via observations, semi-structured interviews, key-informant interviews, and document analysis. Participants included seven asylum seekers and three professionals working with them. Findings – In light of a human rights framework, this paper reports on the mental distress suffered by asylum seekers in detention, the environments of constraint in which they live, and aspects of detention centre policy that contribute to these environments. The findings highlight a discrepancy between asylum seekers’ experiences under immigration detention policy and Australia’s human rights obligations. Research limitations/implications – This research indicates human rights violations for asylum seekers in detention in Australia. This research project involved a small number of participants and recommends systemic review of the policy and practices that affect asylum seekers’ mental health including larger numbers of participants. Consideration is made of alternatives to detention as well as improving detention centre conditions. The World Health Organization’s Quality Rights Tool Kit might provide the basis for a framework to review Australia’s immigration detention system with particular focus on the poor mental wellbeing of asylum seekers in detention. Originality/value – This study links international human rights law and Australian immigration detention policies and practices with daily life experiences of suffering mental distress within environments of constraint and isolation. It identifies asylum seekers as a vulnerable population with respect to human rights and mental wellbeing. Of particular value is the inclusion of asylum seekers themselves in interviews.

Major barriers to the diffusion of bio-digestion technology in Pakistan

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 569-582
Author(s):  
Atoofa Zainab ◽  
Rabia Liaquat ◽  
Saadia Meraj
Keyword(s):  
Rural Communities ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
National Policy ◽  
Innovation System ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Government Organizations ◽  
Key Stakeholders ◽  
Technology Dissemination ◽  
Energy Shortage

Purpose In Pakistan, a major portion of population resides in rural areas that suffers severe energy shortage for agricultural and domestic need. Bio-digestion technology can play a significant role in the eradication of fuel energy shortage, given the socio-economic condition of rural communities. Despite of the efforts made by government organizations and NGOs for this technology promotion, it is still hampered by limited functionality and low rate of diffusion. Hence, this paper aimed at comprehensive systematic analysis to find out the underlying causes of slow technology dissemination. Design/methodology/approach In this paper, the authors have analyzed the case of bio-digestion technology using the technological innovation system (TIS) approach. They have identified the barriers that effect the widespread technology diffusion followed by studying their impact on each of TIS functional element. Findings The authors’ analysis points to the two main root causes which are lack of cohesive coordination between key stakeholders and poor functionality in legitimization, knowledge development and resource mobilization domain. Practical implications This paper also provided implications for national policy makers and key stakeholders for the attainment of well-functioning innovation system for bio-digestion technology by removing the existing barriers. Originality/value To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that has incorporated the comprehensive framework of TIS in the context of Pakistan to explain the malfunctioning of innovation system that is hindering the technology adoption and dissemination.

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