First, it's still not clear to me what prompted this discussion in the first place. To ask you again, then, what precisely about the letter to the Irish paper did you find "inflammatory" or even incorrect? Without answering that, I fear we'll go 'round in circles.
Deborah wrote:
> 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.
If you mean the how and why of official definitions of refugee, I thought I replied to that some. You'll have to be more specific, perhaps. If, otoh, you mean the reasons for why people move, then I thought I referred to this also -- though somewhat crudely. Again, you'll have to specificy what it is you think, or what it is you disagree with about what I wrote.
>'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?
A very long topic, and on which Doug, Jim H and others are often interested in as well, but for a start: the rise of the so-called 'safe haven' provisions around the world, which Ruddock seeks to have legitimated by the UN in a full-blown affirmation of global enclosures. From the Sydney Morning Herald article, "UN convention manipulated - Ruddock", March 22: "Mr Ruddock is also pressing for greater support to be given to the UNHCR to force refugees to stay in the first country they go to, rather than be pushed on to other, richer nations." Could it be any clearer? Actually, the UNHCR has already been doing this on an ad hoc basis already, as well as supporting and arranging involuntary deportation in December 1997 for the first time ever, to Tanzania and Bosnia-Herzegovina -- one could say that the UN has been carving the world into ethnic enclaves, and how could it do otherwise given the entire precepts with which it works like genocide and so on.
On a more positive note, there are numerous links to various actions and groups, most of which can be found via:
No One is Illegal! http://www.contrast.org/borders <
For international solidarity - against Euro-fortress! http://come.to/tampere
Autonoom Centrum http://www.xs4all.nl/~ac/
De Fabel van de Illegaal http://www.dsl.nl/~lokabaal/index.html
Check out the via Correlli actions, which i'm pretty sure are linked.
> 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]
And if I recall right, he suggests that this paradox is also that of sovereignty (the exceptions to the rule of law as the founding of sovereignty), and indeed, with the help of Foucault's discussion of biopolitics, a discussion of the ban, and so on, renders Arendt's reliance on the the rights of man instead as the site wherein the exemptions and limit-c0ncepts are assumed and created. An interesting discussion, and one which emerged from movements with which I'm familiar, namely the Invisibili, Ya Basta! and the autonomia in Italy; the autogestion, situationist and deconstructionist currents in France; amongst others. (Which is why there's been a 14-month campaign in Italy to close down what they refer to as the lagers, and why the massive unemployemd mobilisations in France peaking in 1998 were accompanied by every participating organisation openly signalling their solidarity with the sans papier.)
> Aren't refugees constituted in relation to borders?
Yes.
> How do states protect without reinforcing their
> territorially defined statehood?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but in the case of refugees, states don't actively protect, they grant a secularised version of sanctuary. The concepts of asylum and refuge used to indicate a space of non-applicability of state authority, as its origins in churches suggest -- those given sanctuary were not expected to abide by the authority of the Church, but they were allowed to take flight from the law (the Sovereign) where the law acknowledged its non-absolute jurisdiction, an acknowledgement of church jurisdiction to be sure, but as a definition of the limit of the Sovereign. On a terrain such as border laws, where legality/illegality are widely interpreted as meaning moral/immoral, that distinction between law and justice, of a justice outside of and irreducible to the law seems well worth exploring and insisting on. It's fraught with numerous problems, not least the one of ethics, but still I think worth exploring as a secular notion of the limits of the law and sovereignty rather than its application. I think Jean-Christophe just raised some interesting issues in relation to that.
> I can't imagine ever describing either
> refugees or new diasporas as a 'problem'
You wrote: "If the Irish newspapers want to claim that Australia has taken the wrong approach to managing a sudden increase (from late last year to now) in the illegal immigrant population, it should be remembered that this is an island continent. ...what methods do the newspaper reporters and outraged Irish citizens propose as alternative measures to the ones that are currently being deployed by Australia? " What is the discussion of the "management" of a "sudden increase in the illegal immigrant population", and a query of "alternative measures", other than a discussion of a _problem_ which requires management? See, this is why you need to ask, if not answer, the question I put here again: what precisely about the letter to the Irish paper did you find "inflammatory"?
> 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?
Equal by what measure and whose? I've no inclination to assert a hierarchy here in the least, nor in presupposing the means or assumptions of a need for numerical restrictions of some kind to do so.
> 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.
Hang on a second there. First, why wouldn't I "jump to the conclusion" when it's a "description" presented thusly: "Reports from residents of islands where these people have landed say things like 'well i saw them getting of their boats with their Gucci sunglasses and their Luis Vuitton luggage'. This kind of thing makes people rather skeptical. The amount of money spent by 'refugees' flying from Iraq to Indonesia and then catching a boat to Australia has also been highlighted." Note the placing of refugees in scare quotes, for instance.
Now, I also know that residents from Christmas Isl have also been quoted remarking on carrying babies in from boats as they're dying, that the treatment of people at the sports hall has been awful and "inhuman", and so forth -- so why pick this piece out from the stack? True, you go on to suggest the West's complicity and/or responsibility for, specifically, refugees from Iran and Iraq -- but it seems to me here that those specifically absented are Asian, and Chinese in particular -- given that Australian nationalism's perceptions of threat and raison d'etat are almost always China and Asia, I'm perhaps a little sensitive to that omission. And later on you wrote, in order to assert a difference b/n criteria applied in any comparison of Australian and EU treatment of asylum seekers, "Illegal immigration to Australia is highly planned, organised at a numbers of co-ordinated arrival and departure points, and is actually quite expensive (therefore it might be argued that many of the Chines/Iraq refugees come from the more well-off classes in those nations respectively)." Second, I did not say your position was odious, I specifically wrote that it "suggests to me the strong possibility of a slippage to one or more of three rather odious discourses", only one of which mentioned Hanson, another a version of underdevelopment as authentic and/or exotic. I still don't know what "fetishisation of commodity culture seems to be at least one factor in the production of refugee subjects" means other than a claim about 'pull factors', 'they' want what 'we' have. I can't see how I was "jumping" to a conclusion; I was responding to that statement. Ok, so maybe it was badly put, as you now say; but that doesn't mean I am supposed to already know, somehow, that you don't agree with what you wrote. Which is also why some consideration of what you find inflammatory as distinct from what I do here might be a matter for discussion rather than avoidance.
> 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.
It is. And this is why the UN Convention is limiting, and why the term 'illegal migrants' isn't something to repeat as if it bears any relation to legitimacy for us.
> But what kind of articulation of Western responsibility for those refugees
is emerging? Not much, > here in Australia.
No, it isn't much at all. But the notion of responsibility is a little fraught IMO.
> 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?
Comparisons of numbers of apps refused and granted in each of these countries is I'm pretty sure on the Refugee Council of Australia's website. Australia has also had the most significant drop in the proportion of apps accepted in the last decade, to this very moment when all offshore apps have been frozen. Out of these countries, Australia has been the only one singled out by all the regular orgs: UNHCR, UNCERC, Amnesty... and I would say for good reason.
> 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?
Don't know. One guy interviewed on 4-corners mentioned a refugee camp, but I can't recall if he said which one (Pakistan, Iran, Jordan?).
Angela _________