Xenophobia towards asylum seekers: A survey of social theories

In recent decades, there has been a global rise in fear and hostility towards asylum seekers. Xenophobia - or \u27fear of the stranger\u27 - has become a pressing issue in a range of disciplines. Several causal models have been proposed to explain this fear and the hostility it produces. However, disciplinary boundaries have limited productive dialogue between these approaches. This article draws connections between four of the main theories that have been advanced in the existing literature: (1) false belief accounts, (2) xenophobia as new racism, (3) sociobiological explanations and (4) xenophobia as an effect of capitalist globalisation. While this article cannot provide an exhaustive review of theories of xenophobia, it aims to present a useful comparative introduction to current research into the social aspects of xenophobia, particularly as these theories have been applied to asylum seekers. In bringing together divergent models, it also invites interdisciplinary engagement

‘I don’t want anybody to see me using it’: cashless welfare cards do more harm than good

The Australian government touts compulsory income management as a way to stop welfare payments being spent on alcohol, drugs or gambling

The administration of harm: From unintended consequences to harm by design

Harm is a recurring theme in the social sciences. Scholars in a range of empirical areas have documented the deleterious outcomes that at times emerge from social structures, institutions and systems of governance. Yet these harms have often been presented under the rubric of ‘unintended consequences’. The outcomes of systems are designed to appear devoid of intentionality, in motion without any clear agency involved, and thus particularly adept at evading accountability structures and forms of responsibility. Drawing insights from decades of social theory – as well as three illustrative examples from Australia’s health, welfare and immigration systems – this article argues that many social structures are in fact intended to cause harm, but designed not to appear so. In presenting this argument, we offer a clear theoretical framework for conceptualising harm as actively administered. We also challenge scholars from across the social sciences to reconsider the partially depoliticising narrative of ‘unintended consequences’, and to be bolder in naming the intended harms that permeate social life, often serving powerful political and economic interests

Banning mobile phones in immigration detention would make an inhumane system even crueler

Mobile phones are a lifeline for those in immigration detention. But if the government has its way, this thread will soon be cut. A proposed bill would allow the minister to deem mobile phones and other internet-capable devices prohibited items . It would also grant staff new powers to search detainees without a warrant and allow strip searches and detector dogs within the centres

People are Crying and Begging”: The Human Cost of Forced Relocations in Immigration Detention

Between July 2018 and August 2019, the Home Affairs Department spent A$6.1m flying refugees, asylum seekers and other immigration detainees around Australia

Forced relocations: The punitive use of mobility in Australia’s immigration-detention network

In the interdisciplinary scholarship regarding immigration detention, the social, political and psychological costs of confinement are well documented. In recent years, however, scholars have also drawn attention to coerced forms of movement in some detention systems. Drawing on thirty in-depth, semi-structured interviews with volunteer visitors to Australia’s immigration-detention facilities, this article makes two main contributions to this scholarship. First, it presents empirical evidence regarding the use of forced mobility in Australia’s detention system. Dialoguing with work from other countries, it shows how these practices impact detainees and their supporters in the Australian context. Second, it builds upon and extends existing theoretical insights regarding the purposes of such mobility. While previous studies have concluded that relocations serve to isolate, punish and disorient prisoners, this article takes this argument a step further, positing that coerced mobility is also employed to encourage so-called ‘voluntary’ repatriations, thus serving overarching political objectives

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

The Trauma Machine: Volunteer Experiences in Australian Immigration Detention Facilities

This thesis is based on in-depth interviews with volunteers who support asylum seekers in Australia. It compares the experiences of volunteers who visit asylum seekers in immigration detention facilities with those of volunteers who support asylum seekers in the community. This comparison foregrounds the impact of institutional technologies not only on detained asylum seekers, but also on their supporters. While Australia’s detention regime has received considerable academic attention in recent years, few scholars have examined the experiences of volunteers. The testimonies presented here provide a valuable window onto the operation of power within Australia’s detention system. They show that the Kafkaesque mechanisms through which detention centres produce powerlessness, disruption and emotional distress in detainees also extend to negatively impact volunteers. The traumatising dimensions of Australia’s detention network, this thesis argues, should be understood not as evidence of the system’s dysfunction but as indicators of its key purposes. In the context of Australia’s deterrence policy, the production of anguish is politically expedient as it damages networks of resistance and support. In making this argument, this thesis dialogues with broader scholarship regarding carceral institutions and the deprivations and frustrations of imprisonment. In addition to contributing to the literature regarding the negative impacts of immigration detention, this thesis challenges two prominent critiques of care-based volunteer work. It provides evidence to contest the charge that friendship programs are not ‘political’ because they lack universality and do not involve a structural critique. It also disputes the claim that this form of volunteering reduces to an exercise in privilege and emotional gratification

Deprivation, frustration, and trauma: Immigration detention centres as prisons

The relationship between immigration detention and trauma is well established, and scholars have often employed Agamben's notion of the camp to explain the psychological deterioration that asylum-seekers experience in detention. Using Australia as a case study, this article argues that while the camp model is highly instructive in some contexts (such as Australia's offshore processing facilities), it is less useful in understanding facilities that are ostensibly bound by social and legal constraints (such as Australia's onshore detention facilities). Detention centres such as those on the Australian mainland, this article demonstrates, are best understood not as camps but as prisons. In making this claim, this article opens up a rich body of empirical and theoretical research regarding the operation of power - and, in particular, the infliction of psychological pain - in carceral institutions. In doing so, it provides a theoretical scaffolding for understanding how immigration detention facilities can and do inflict harm in situations where governments must maintain an appearance of civility and respect for the law. Furthermore, it provides a grounding and vocabulary for understanding outcomes such as trauma and mental illness not as failures of immigration detention systems, but as some of their core functions

Docility and desert: government discourses of compassion in Australia's asylum seeker debate

In the years since 2001, Australian governments on both sides of politics have at times appealed to compassion to justify their asylum seeker policies. This article takes these discourses of compassion - contradictory and cynical as they sometimes seem - and subjects them to careful and systematic analysis. It seeks to identify the underlying model of compassion that these government discourses employ, and to explain its significance. Ultimately it argues that the model of compassion that has been advanced by successive Australian governments deviates from traditional philosophical understandings of the concept. In reserving compassion for the weak and the passive, government discourses have allowed Australia to understand itself both as good' and as powerful. When privilege replaces solidarity as the basis for compassion, discourses of compassion - like the hardline' rhetoric that scholars have often prioritised in their analyses - speak to the fears and insecurities of the Australian people