Sovereignty, Protection and the Limits to Regional Refugee Status Determination Arrangements

This case note explores the recent Australian High Court decision of Plaintiff M70/2011 v Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, which declared a proposed regional refugee status determination arrangement between Australia and Malaysia to be unlawful under Australian law. While the decision was determined by the specific statutory construction of Australian's migration legislation, it nonetheless draws attention to the legal character of what constitutes 'protection' under international refugee law and suggests the necessary legal and factual conditions that must exist in a 'third country' in order for any transfer of refugee processing and recognition procedures to be seen to satisfy Convention obligations. It thus represents a significant judicial challenge to the contemporary trend pursued by wealthy industrialised nations in the Global North towards erecting barriers for accessing domestic asylum regimes and adopting policies that in effect outsource and extraterritorialise asylum processing under the guise of 'burden sharing' or regional 'harmonisation'. This case note reads the decision as a particular re-articulation of sovereign authority, borders, belonging and place-making

Accusing 'Europe': Articulations of Migrant Justice and a Popular International Law

This chapter examines a recent civil society initiative, Tribunal 12, as an internationalised articulation of migrant justice.1 Tribunal 12 was held in Stockholm in May 2012, and sought to put ‘Europe’ on trial for the systematic violations of the rights and dignity of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants. By adopting a legal and aesthetical framework, the initiative aimed to draw attention to the increased global securitisation of borders, criminalisation of unauthorised migrants and systemic exploitation of undocumented people in Europe. It also intended to generate support for migrant struggles within Europe by highlighting the morally unjust and harmful effects of European border practices. Although the Tribunal differed significantly from earlier international peoples’ tribunals in that it did not hear any witness testimonies from migrants themselves, I nonetheless locate Tribunal 12 within a legacy of peoples’ tribunals and their entanglement with international law and institutions

Refugee Policy: A Cruel Bipartisanship

Facing the media after a reported 5.6 per cent swing against him in the Brisbane seat of Dickson, Australian Minister for Immigration and Border Protection Peter Dutton defiantly declared that the Coalition was ‘a victim of our own success’.1 ‘The fact that we stopped boats and got children out of detention’, Dutton asserted, meant the ‘issue’ of ‘border protection’ and people arriving in Australia unauthorised by boat to seek asylum ‘had gone off the radar’ (quoted in Hutchens 2016). The minister’s assertion was certainly provocative, if a little misleading. While Australia’s policies towards refugees and asylum seekers did not appear to feature prominently in the 2016 election campaign, this was largely due to a confluence of circumstances, not all of which were of the Coalition’s making. These circumstances primarily included the bipartisan support for the three key pillars of Australia’s increasingly draconian deterrence model (namely, boat turn backs, regional processing and the mandatory detention of certain asylum seekers) and the exceptional government censorship of information from inside immigration detention centres and the official secrecy surrounding the implementation of Australia’s military-led Operation Sovereign Borders (OSB). This meant that the Coalition and Labor had both orchestrated a situation where there seemed to be little political mileage to be gained from foregrounding the issue of Australia’s refugee laws and policies during the campaign. Instead, the election contest predominantly played out across more traditional issues of economic and social policy, such as job creation and the funding of healthcare. Despite being a highly volatile political issue, refugee policy could rarely be seen to determine the outcome of elections—perhaps with the exception of the Coalition’s major 2001 electoral victory in the wake of the Tampa affair. Since 2004, fewer than 10 per cent of surveyed voters have ranked the issue of ‘refugees and asylum seekers’ as the ‘most important non-economic issue’ in federal elections (McAllister and Cameron 2014: 21). Despite the lack of prominence given by the two major political parties to the issue of refugee policy relative to previous election campaigns, it nonetheless surfaced at key moments to reveal its political potency. For example, some minor political parties, certain media outlets and community activist groups were particularly vocal on the issue. This chapter argues that these moments attest to both the anxious nature of Australian nationalism and multiculturalism, and the increasingly prominent deep discursive linkages between asylum seekers, terrorism and the securitisation of migration and borders

Transnational Migration Law: Authority, Contestation, Decolonization

This chapter trace how “transnational migration law” has come to construct human mobility. It argues that transnational migration law is best conceived of as a useful methodological approach, rather than a distinct area of legal doctrine or spatial domain of law. Conceived as a method, transnational migration law can reveal the juridical assemblage of practices, subjects, and relations for regulating migration. This chapter illuminates some of the core and potentially rival sites, forms, and practices of transnational migration lawmaking, drawing attention to the productive and coercive forces of transnational migration law that have resulted in the maintenance of a “global hierarchy of mobility.” Yet, recognizing that state attempts to monopolize “the legitimate means of movement” are incomplete and contested, the chapter argues that scholars of “transnational migration law” must pay attention to diverse and situated Indigenous legal traditions as sources of authority. In doing so, the chapter critically unpacks the relationship between migration and struggles for decolonization and global justice

Light emission, light detection and strain sensing with nanocrystalline graphene

Graphene is of increasing interest for optoelectronic applications exploiting light detection, light emission and light modulation. Intrinsically light matter interaction in graphene is of a broadband type. However by integrating graphene into optical micro cavities also narrow band light emitters and detectors have been demonstrated. The devices benefit from the transparency, conductivity and processability of the atomically thin material. To this end we explore in this work the feasibility of replacing graphene by nanocrystalline graphene, a material which can be grown on dielectric surfaces without catalyst by graphitization of polymeric films. We have studied the formation of nanocrystalline graphene on various substrates and under different graphitization conditions. The samples were characterized by resistance, optical transmission, Raman, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, atomic force microscopy and electron microscopy measurements. The conducting and transparent wafer-scale material with nanometer grain size was also patterned and integrated into devices for studying light-matter interaction. The measurements show that nanocrystalline graphene can be exploited as an incandescent emitter and bolometric detector similar to crystalline graphene. Moreover the material exhibits piezoresistive behavior which makes nanocrystalline graphene interesting for transparent strain sensors