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This paper examines municipal responses to restrictive national policies by focussing on welfare provision for non-removed rejected asylum seekers. Using an analytical framework of multi-level governance, we investigate processes of conflict and cooperation and the demarcation of responsibilities between government tiers at the intersection of migration and welfare policy. In an in-depth analysis of the cases of Amsterdam, Vienna and Stockholm, we argue that in order to explain the divergences of public welfare provisions for non-removed rejected asylum seekers, it is necessary to look into their respective legal-institutional framework and formal competences, but also beyond, meaning into the relations of those municipalities with civil society actors and other local governments. We find that, on the one hand, the relationship between local NGOs and the municipality has an influence on the scope of services provided and that, on the other hand, alliance-building between municipalities is crucial for strengthening a political standing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current era demands our thoughtful attention to how states process asylum seeker claims for safe haven, yet we know little about the practices through which asylum officials carry out that work. Building from literature on the body and knowledge production, this paper illuminates the workings of (dis)embodiment in the asylum process. I use the term (dis)embodiment to refer to an arrangement of separate yet interdependent practices of disembodying and embodying knowledge. These practices of knowledge production together form an integral part of what I call the “epistemic logic” of asylum - the techniques and processes of reasoning used to produce and analyse information to determine if an asylum seeker qualifies for refugee status. Through an ethnography of the asylum process in Brazil, I document how officials produce and privilege disembodied knowledge, while they contrastingly constrain the knowledge of asylum seekers to their bodies and lived experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through an examination of New Zealand legislation governing lunacy and the files from the Seacliff Asylum, this article argues how paperwork served to uphold an elusive ideal of a compassionate society. Paper, in the form of letters, reports and forms, was sent up and down the country in order to prevent wrongful confinement and to monitor costs and cure rates. Paper provided for patients allowed them to challenge their incarceration, sometimes successfully. That maze of paperwork, generated for both statutory and institutional administrative ends, mirrored the disorder of those confined within the institution. The curating of digital exhibitions of such materials flattens out their complexity and smooths over what were often disjointed narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2013, the Nauru government has undermined democracy by reducing the independence of the judiciary, treating opposition MPs as potential traitors, curbing freedom of speech and restricting visits by variously defined groups of people who include journalists, Australians and New Zealanders. New Zealand responded by suspending its aid to Nauru’s justice and border control department. Australia, by contrast, has said little. The Nauru government would not have acted so boldly in curbing civil freedoms and weakening the rule of law if Australia had been less dependent on its goodwill to act as host for Australia’s Regional Processing Centre, which houses asylum seekers who have attempted to reach Australia by boat. Australia’s reliance on Nauru – driven by urgent domestic political considerations – has fostered an atmosphere where the principles of good governance can be flouted with little fear of significant criticism from Canberra. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

One of the key problems at the heart of refugee protection today is that there are large numbers of refugees attempting to seek asylum and insufficient political will in many asylum-host states to receive refugees in their territories. A proportion of these attempt to come to Australia to seek refuge – either by requesting a resettlement place through the auspices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, or by arriving directly in Australian territory (by boat or plane). Asylum-seekers who arrive by boat are disadvantaged and penalised under Australian law in that they are excluded from Australian territory and processed offshore in third countries. Successive Australian governments justify these measures by emphasising that resettlement is the ‘proper’ mode for claiming asylum which ensures protection is given to those refugees who are most in need. This raises fundamental ethical questions: are those chosen by resettlement countries such as Australia necessarily the refugees who are most in need? Is resettlement as a concept ethical? And should resettlement be utilised to prevent and penalise spontaneous arrivals attempting to seek asylum in a country? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australia's border enforcement strategies and immigration control policies operate in distant geographies, concealed from human rights groups, media and the public. From offshore detention to militarised maritime defence operations, Australia's exclusion of asylum seekers is increasingly dependent upon geographical processes that ensure asylum seekers do not have access to the state's systems of protection. This article explores a critically overlooked geopolitical strategy of mobility regulation that relies on processes simultaneously expanding geographies of control, while contracting spaces of rights. The outcome of these rapidly evolving bordering practices is the exaggeration of the distance separating asylum seekers from the state, suspending them within a space devoid of an operational system of rights, and emphasising a new and restructured maritime legal geography. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article critiques policies of deportation and deportability – a technology emanating from three seemingly conflicting rationalities: states' obligations under international human rights regimes, capitalism's need to facilitate the movement of labour, and the need to reaffirm state sovereignty. After outlining the concept of deportability, we argue that although justified by state actors as an integral part of asylum and immigration policies, deportability epitomizes the paradox of immigration regimes at a point of crisis. We use Israel and Ireland as case studies to illustrate that migrant deportability circumvents human rights and domestic legislation that hinder the power of the state to deport unwanted migrants. Paradoxically, in both, policies that engender the deportability of asylum seekers are a response to their undeportability. Despite their differences, Israel and Ireland are unusual immigration destinations and quintessential diaspora nations, whose histories of dispersal configure Jewishness and Irishness in ethno-racially rigid yet spatially fluid terms, as illustrated by their citizenship regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Western states are concerned about maintaining and securing national borders. Across Europe, one response has been to implement restrictive asylum regimes that prevent ‘bogus’ applicants and grant refuge only to the ‘deserving’. Alongside these concerns, states are eager to encourage socially cohesive communities. One recent tool adopted by the UK government has been citizenship policy, including English language/life in the UK tests and citizenship ceremonies. By drawing upon in-depth interviews with refugees in Scotland (UK), this paper explores the impact of the current asylum regime and citizenship policies from the perspective of individual voices that are often absent from wider debates. It explores how temporary refugee status impacts upon individuals' everyday lives including employment and education, and impacts upon children. The data also question the reasons for refugees deciding to become British citizens (or not) and highlight instrumental reasons alongside less tangible factors such as gaining a sense of security. Taking the discussion forward, the study explores some unintended consequences of immigration and citizenship policies in the UK. The research suggests that not only do restrictive asylum policies negatively impact upon refugees and their integration but also serve to elevate fear and uncertainty, which can unintentionally spur individuals to seek naturalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The entanglement of border control technologies and immigration policies and practices with discourses of race, national identity and belonging has long been a focus of scholarly interest. In this paper we discuss the Human Provenance Pilot Project (HPPP), the aim of which was to evaluate the utility of genetic and isotope testing to corroborate asylum seekers' accounts of their nationality. We subject the HPPP to a detailed socio-technical analysis, highlighting how technologies, practices and modes of thought travelled from the policing context to the asylum context, illuminating the unspoken prejudices that made that transfer possible, and reflecting on implications of the HPPP for academic research, policy advice and the asylum system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the Australian government's Displaced Persons (DP) Program from 1947 through 1952, with a particular focus on its publicity campaign to convince World War II refugees from DP camps in occupied Europe to emigrate to Australia. An overview of the Australian government's portrayal of Australia as a country of happiness and employment is provided.

Two areas of scholarship on asylum seekers and detention camps rarely consider the position of LBGTI asylum seekers: the first is legal scholarship on asylum seeker non-entrée regime policies of ?excision' and ?exile', and the second is scholarship theorising the ?bare life', or lack of political and legal rights, and related issues encountered by asylum seekers at the boundary of the nation. This article contributes to and extends these bodies of scholarship by reading LBGTI asylum seekers into Australia's recent asylum seeker non-entrée polices of ?excision' and ?exile'. Using scholarship and reports produced internationally, it raises issues for LBGTI asylum seekers in the implementation of these policies. These analyses highlight some of the different forms in which ?bare life' might be manifested in the space of inclusion/exclusion at the boundary of the nation: ?bare life' is not a monolithic category. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidence is accumulating from Australia and elsewhere that border-control policies aimed at preventing arrival, when they fail to deter asylum seekers and other unwanted migrants from attempting illegalised crossings, significantly increase the risk of fatalities. However, the chains of responsibility for borderrelated deaths are difficult to discern because the visible face of offshore border control is underpinned by a virtual border that is seldom brought into view. While the exercise of sovereignty is readily apparent in the spectacle of direct encounters between border authorities and border transgressors, the virtual border is enacted through electronic information exchange and largely unseen human operators. This bifurcation of the border function is typical of modes of governance in late modernity described by Haggerty and Ericson as ?surveillant assemblages' and referred to by O'Malley as ?simulated enforcement'. In this article I identify the visible and virtual aspects of Australian offshore border controls as parts of a surveillant assemblage, and argue that perceiving these elements as a single border-enforcement system is essential for saving lives and debating new ways of conceiving sovereignty in a globalising world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of the EU asylum and migration policy is often explained as the result of ‘venue-shopping’, that is, the move by policy-makers to an EU policy venue in order to avoid national constraints. This article demonstrates that, contrary to what would have been expected on the basis of this widespread view, EU co-operation on asylum matters has actually led to a rise in the legal standards applicable to asylum-seekers and refugees. This outcome can be mainly explained by broader changes that have gradually affected the EU ‘system of venues’ and have thereby decreased the likelihood of more restrictive measures being adopted in the EU asylum policy venue. This has important implications for the EU governance of asylum and migration in general. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Interest in the integration of refugees has grown with the increase in numbers of asylum seekers dispersed across the UK. The ability to communicate effectively in English is seen as the key priority in facilitating integration, while a lack of English language is seen as one of the major barriers to refugee employment. Some £267 million was spent on English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) classes in 2004/05. However, commentators have observed that asylum seekers and refugees continue to struggle to speak English. This paper examines data from interviews with refugees and ESOL tutors, and statutory data recording retention and achievement of asylum seekers and refugees, to explore the extent to which they are achieving in ESOL, and the effectiveness of the existing monitoring system in assessing whether ESOL meets the needs of asylum seekers and refugee learners. It finds that there are major inconsistencies between the retention and success rates observed in the monitoring data and those reported by tutors and refugees. A range of problems are identified that indicate that monitoring is neither robust nor reliable and that refugees and asylum seekers are struggling to learn sufficient English to enable integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Australian Government recently decided to adopt a tougher stance in relation to refugees who arrive here informally. In adopting that stance, the Government has exposed Australia to international censure. It has put the nation in breach of its obligations under international conventions, and it has exposed a deeply unattractive element in the Australian character. It did this for electoral advantage, at a time when Australia receives a minimal number of refugees, and treats appallingly those who arrive here. The Government's handling of the Tampa 'crisis' was a triumph of electoral cynicism over humanitarian need. It exposed the difficulty Australians have in acknowledging the conflict of need and advantage. The refugee problem involves a choice between minor self-sacrifice and major betrayal of humanitarian standards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artist Naomi Hamer explores complex questions surrounding ideas of response and responsibility in her artwork Mandatory/Monument. Hamer’s large-scale installation draws attention to the Australian government’s policy of mandatory detention of asylum seekers and refugees - largely in offshore sites away from the public eye. Each of her five large orange crocheted banners has the name of a detention centre woven into it. They sit boldly in the performance space and draw the attention of spectators to that which is largely hidden or made invisible by distance, isolation and governmental refusal. Whilst these banners are in themselves arresting, Hamer further complicates things by actively completing the banners during the installation and then inviting spectators to unravel these on the final day. The questions asked here surround the act and politics of unravelling or of abstaining. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]