actually Angela, my post was not meant to be a provocation, but rather an invitation to talk more. It would seem that my little jesting sally was overweighted however. nevermind. Let's focus on the very interesting questions that your informative answer raises.
I'm interested in how a refugee subject position is made or claimed. Also, how that position is formed in relation to nation-state territories, persecutions, and citizenship. Lastly, how governments and NGO's and other interested parties are going to negotiate shifting populations through the use of what are scarily known as 'population policies' or whether different kinds of strategies will be invented and deployed. And what will those strategies be called, and who will shape them?
Giorgio Agamben describes the position of the refugee as a paradox: "The paradox from which Arendt departs is that the very figure who should have embodied the rights of man par excellence - the refugee - signals instead the concept's radical crisis". [c.f. Homo Sacer p126]
It seems to me that the current conditions in Australia are exemplary of that crisis of the concept of human rights, and of the concept of the refugee (although I am not here pursuing Agamben's argument in further detail). I note that you refer later in the post to an 'open borders' strategy. This might be a useful point from which to unpack something -
>For me, the answer is simple: open borders.
Aren't refugees constituted in relation to borders? How does the refugee subject position emerge without recourse to borders (when those borders are being claimed as the refuge)? How do states protect without reinforcing their territorially defined statehood?
you said:
>There is no "illegal immigrant problem" for Australia in the way you seem
>to imagine.
Really? I said that? That's funny, I can't imagine ever describing either refugees or new diasporas as a 'problem' or as a 'flood', but you seem to impute those reactionary positions to me. I wouldn't claim to know a lot about how those diasporas function or who they are made up of, or why, but that is precisely what I am hoping to learn through raising these points of debate. I do not regard changing world systems, with effects on concepts of identity and actual living conditions, as anything less than something that will redefine categories such as 'humanity', 'state', and 'rights'.
you said :
>People do not move for no reason
>Again with the granting of credence to definitions of "illegality", as the
>site of a 'problem'?
Are all of those reasons equal? Are all 'illegal immigrants' refugees? Or do both of these categories have to be ditched, if a 'no borders' model is introduced? I can't work out from this particular post whether you are advocating the removal of all state forms of control, or an overhaul of its measures. Where does the state go without its borders? I'd like to hear what terms can be mobilised to think this through.
Also, how is it *not* possible to give credence to a version of 'illegality'? Are you suggesting that all forms of a legal system also be removed? (Please note that I did not use the word 'problem'). How would removing all forms of state borders and legal systems grant justice to refugees? Wouldn't the subject position of the 'refugee' become redundant? How would addressing violent persecution occur sans law? I'm happy to hear a long range vision of where this is taking us in terms of definitions of community, of the human, the ethical, and rights of the individual.
>Whatever. First, no one has ever explained to my satisfaction why
>refugees have to be poor before they can be considered 'genuine' under the
actually, i wasn't agreeing with the reported comments of the Christmas Island residents, only describing the way that a particular representation emerged in the media. I think that you rather jumped to conclusions there. You imputed further nasty reactionary positions to my question (ho hum), describing it as 'odious' and suggesting that I was lobbying with the Pauline Hanson's of the world to stop immigrants 'stealing' our way of life. Yeah, every time. What is interesting about the Gucci-Versace refugee is not whether they exist or even whether they are 'real' refugees but precisely what you point out here: the perception that a real refugee doesn't wear Prada. The visibility of the figure of the 'well-off' refugee could usefully challenge people's perception of what constitutes a refugee, but generally, as I mentioned, it is portrayed with skepticism.However, I would be interested in hearing more about how class factors mediate the conditions of persecution (that is, how different classes might appear to suffer different forms of persecution - do they? I don't know), and how class factors enable escape from persecution. I think that's a valid question.
This touches on the question I raised at the end of my post, but which I clearly didn't express very well. I wasn't referring to a critique of commodity fetishism (I only wish I had such a critique attached to my credit card) : if the West has a constitutive relation to many of the situations that people are claiming or would like to claim asylum from (inc. armed conflicts, genocide, sterilisation, political persecution, depressed and 'immiserated' economies, and religious dictatorships) which I assume that it does, how can the West refuse entry to such subjects? It would seem to me that it ethically cannot. But what kind of articulation of Western responsibility for those refugees is emerging? Not much, here in Australia.
>> The detention centres are buildings, have beds, latrines, regular meals,
>and are staffed with doctors, counsellors, and case advisors.<
>
>How comfortable.
How different is it in other countries? What, for example, are the methods currently in use for the evaluation of asylum seekers, in US, UK, and Canada?
Just out of curiosity, are the recent Iraqi arrivals in Australia from the camps that you mention below, or have they exited directly from Iraq?
>been increases in the proportion of asylum seekers from Iraq
>Thousands of Iraqi refugees have been living
>in squalid camps in Pakistan, Jordan and Iran for the last four years,
>many of these facing deportation to Iraq in the last year, many of these
>already deported.
thanks, I wasn't aware of these citations -
>In May of last year, the UN Committee Against Torture found that the
>policies of the Australian Govt breach the Convention Against Torture.
>Amnesty International has released numerous reports highly critical of
>these policies. A 1998 report by the Australian Human Rights and Equal
>Opportunity Commission (HREOC) found similar breaches of international
>conventions, esp under the Conventions on the Rights of the Child,
>arbitrary detention, etc. In 1995, Australia was adversely cited in the
>US State Department's report on human rights abuses for its policy of
>mandatory detention of asylum seekers, the only western country to have
>received that accolade.
hope that clarifies something, anyway. Deborah -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20000323/4c79619a/attachment.htm>