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While "good refugee" stories have the potential to soften attitudes toward forcibly displaced people, there are hidden implications associated with this construct that must be considered. Based on 60 qualitative interviews with asylum seekers and refugees, this paper examines the ways forced migrants adopt and reproduce "good refugee" discourses that unintentionally position their belonging as contingent upon upholding narrowly defined, and arbitrary, ideals about deservingness. By critically analysing this discourse, we highlight the importance of reconsidering the construction of refugees' deservingness along moral and neoliberal lines and instead present a case for approaches that focus on rights‐based, humanitarian grounds for refugee resettlement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many Global North contexts are experiencing conflict in feminist discourses between supporters of trans and gender diverse self-identification and self-proclaimed 'gender critical' feminists who consider this to undermine feminist goals. We argue that the channelling of contemporary feminist discourse into defensive and oppositional channels has foreclosed the space for more nuanced and future-oriented, utopian thought around freedom from sex/gender, limiting the prospect of developing a coalition of actors focused not on difference, but rather on commonality. Putting classic feminist works by Simone de Beauvoir, Shulamith Firestone and Luce Irigaray into dialogue, we consider an alternative approach to freedom premised on an ontology of potentiality combined with acceptance of the materiality of the binary gender hierarchy, that nonetheless remains utopian and open-ended, demonstrating the capacity to transcend these impasses and potentially overcome these divides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article charts the evolution of former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's (2007–2010) asylum-seeker policies alongside contemporaneous media narratives from two major Australian newspapers, the Age and the Australian. While initially successful, Rudd eventually abandoned his progressive approach to asylum, due in part to mounting pressure precipitated by a sharp increase in the number of irregular maritime arrivals occurring under his watch. While this phenomenon was broadly interpreted at the time through the prism of border security, this article explores the role that the news media played in framing the issue as one of policy failure. In particular, it argues that the media amplified a narrative of crisis that contributed significantly to the breakdown of the policy as public opinion shifted against Rudd. Under increasing pressure, driven to a large extent by the news media, Rudd abandoned his humane approach in favour of a politically expedient securitised response, reminiscent of his predecessor's. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The argument of this paper is that, despite their limits, gender 'proliferations' like nonbinary and genderqueer are the most effective and pragmatic approaches to overcoming or dismantling the gender binary whilst also expanding the range of 'cultural resources' of gender in the meantime. We make this case with the political and ethical caveat, however, that it would be politically ideal for these invocations of proliferation to be complemented by ongoing attempts to challenge sex/gender itself. We first outline the many ways that non-binary and genderqueer identities are invoked by numerous commentators as either symbols of progress, or weaponised for antithetical political purposes by a coalition of forces hostile to their proliferation. We then outline a defence of these identities as ontologically, pragmatically and socially justified, with feminist and queer political potential. We will make an argument as to why the invocation of non-binary and genderqueer as identity or subject positions is both understandable, due to the cultural constraints of the compulsarity of gender identity in society, and a potentially politically effective strategy. We then go on to engage, generously, with some potential limitations around non-binary and genderqueer and their potential collapse in to normativity, and consider how these may be addressed or mitigated against by a queer ethics. In short, we argue that non-binary and genderqueer can be understood as ways to make space in a structure that is not likely to crumble any time soon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]