Refugee Policies and Narratives in the Globalised Era

One of the effects of globalisation has been population mobility as a result of famine, climate warming and war conflicts, among other things. This flow of refugees, however, is often seen as a menace to the rule of law and human rights concomitant with the Western lifestyle. Refugees are no longer regarded as human beings and victims, but rather as danger, even as potential terrorists, which has led many governments, including the Australian, to detain them indefinitely in detention centres where they are confined in inhuman conditions. The main aim of this paper will be to describe Australian immigration policies and how contemporary Australian narratives on and by refugees are reflecting this situation, mainly by analysing a selection of texts from three recently published collections, namely, A Country Too Far (2013), They Cannot Take the Sky (2017) and Seabirds Crying in the Harbour Dark (2017), and Behrouz Boochani’s No Friend but the Mountains (2018).

Welcoming the Unwelcome: Refugee Flows, Refugee Rights, and Political Violence

This article examines refugee-related violence by exploring the effect of extensive refugee rights on the risk of civil conflict and violent attacks against refugees by local population. The provision of fundamental rights, such as the freedom of movement, can reduce refugee groups’ grievances, the risk of radicalization, and the ability of militant organizations to recruit refugees, thereby decreasing the risk of civil conflict. Regarding the behavior of local population toward refugees, two opposing effects of refugee rights may be at play. Extensive refugee policies may trigger civilian backlash by aggravating the perception of threat posed by refugees and increase the risk of civilian attacks against refugees. On the other hand, allowing refugees to integrate into society may provide economic benefits for locals and facilitate socialization between groups, reducing the motivation of citizens to target refugees. Using an original global dataset on refugee rights, I find that liberal refugee policies are associated with a reduction in the risk of civil conflict as well as anti-refugee violence in host states. This suggests that host governments and international organizations should give greater priority to guaranteeing refugee rights and promoting income-generating activities among uprooted populations to minimize potential security risks associated with refugees.

Solidarity Cities in Germany and Switzerland: A Brief Overview of Initiatives

Introduction Cities play a central role in the reception of migrants and refugees and their participation in the social and political life of the arrival society. While the nation state deliberately excludes many migrants and refugees through immigration and refugee policies and various visa, permit, and status categories (Bauder, 2013), cities often react with approaches of their own which enable migrants and refugees to belong to and participate in the urban community, independent of national status. Following such approaches, an increasing number of cities in the countries of the global north declare solidarity with excluded migrants and refugees (Ridgley, 2008; Darling & Bauder, 2019).

Solidarity Cities in Germany and Switzerland: A Brief Overview of Initiatives

Introduction Cities play a central role in the reception of migrants and refugees and their participation in the social and political life of the arrival society. While the nation state deliberately excludes many migrants and refugees through immigration and refugee policies and various visa, permit, and status categories (Bauder, 2013), cities often react with approaches of their own which enable migrants and refugees to belong to and participate in the urban community, independent of national status. Following such approaches, an increasing number of cities in the countries of the global north declare solidarity with excluded migrants and refugees (Ridgley, 2008; Darling & Bauder, 2019).

Part III Regional Regimes, Ch.24 Regional Refugee Regimes: Oceania

This chapter discusses three of the most prominent approaches to refugee law and displacement issues in Oceania and analyses what they might reveal about the field of refugee law and the region of Oceania. The chapter looks first at the extent to which actors in the region have engaged with international refugee law. While adherence to international refugee law treaties is relatively low, it is not non-existent. The chapter then considers the approach to refugee law of the traditional regional hegemon: Australia. For decades, Australia has worked to encourage its regional neighbours to adopt policies that complement its own approach to refugee matters. Although Australia has had some success in obtaining support for its refugee policies from Pacific Island States, there have also been pockets of strong resistance. Finally, the chapter assesses some of the approaches to displacement adopted by Pacific Island States.

When the lens is too wide: The political consequences of the visual dehumanization of refugees

Photojournalistic images shape our understanding of sociopolitical events. How humans are depicted in images may have far-reaching consequences for our attitudes towards them. Social psychology has shown how the visualization of an ‘identifiable victim effect’ can elicit empathic responses. However, images of identifiable victims in the media are the exception rather than the norm. In the context of the Syrian refugee crisis, the majority of images in Western media depicted refugees as large unidentifiable groups. While the effects of the visual depiction of single individuals are well-known, the ways in which the visual framing of large groups operates, and its social and political consequences, remain unknown. We here focus on the visual depiction of refugees to understand how exposure to the dominant visual framing used in the media, depicting them in large groups of faceless individuals, affects their dehumanization and sets off political consequences. To that end we brought together insights from social psychology, social sciences and the humanities to test a range of hypotheses using methods from social and political psychology in 10 studies with the participation of 3951 European citizens. Seeing images of large groups resulted in greater implicit dehumanization compared with images depicting refugees in small groups. Images of large groups are also explicitly rated as more dehumanizing, and when coupled with meta-data such as newspaper headlines, images continue to play a significant and independent role on how (de)humanizing we perceive such news coverage to be. Moreover, after viewing images of large groups, participants showed increased preference for more dominant and less trustworthy-looking political leaders and supported fewer pro-refugee policies and more anti-refugee policies. In terms of a mechanistic understanding of these effects, the extent to which participants felt pity for refugees depicted in large groups as opposed to small groups mediated the effect of visual framing on the choice of a more authoritarian-looking leader. What we see in the media and how it is shown not only has consequences for the ways in which we relate to other human beings and our behaviour towards them but, ultimately, for the functioning of our political systems.

What asylum and refugee policies do Europeans want? Evidence from a cross-national conjoint experiment

The protection of asylum seekers and refugees has become one of the most politically divisive issues in the European Union, yet there has been a lack of research on public preferences for asylum and refugee policies. This article analyzes which policies Europeans prefer and why. We advance a theoretical framework that explains how asylum and refugee policies that use limits and conditions enable individuals to resolve conflicting humanitarian and perceived national interest logics. Using an original conjoint experiment in eight countries, we demonstrate that Europeans prefer policies that provide refugee protection but also impose control through limits or conditions. In contrast to the divisive political debates between European Union member states, we find consistent public preferences across European countries.