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This paper uses critical reflection as its primary methodology to research one Master of Social Work student's former practice experiences as an Australian immigration officer. The paper contextualizes the study by offering a critical analysis of hegemonic constructions of asylum seekers in Australia, which are reflected in Australian law and policy, as well as potentially influencing social work practice. Critical reflection on one of the author's practice provides a rich case study that reveals the tensions of government-employed social workers in restrictive environments, and the espoused social justice values of the profession. The findings hold implications for both social work education and practice, suggesting that critical social work education, and in particular, the use of critical analysis and reflection, can improve ethical practice with refugees and asylum seekers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many of Australia's border protection policies have focused on attempts to deter the arrival of asylum seekers by boat. These include government 'messaging' in the hope this will influence the decision-making of would-be boat arrivals. This article outlines the findings of an exploratory study on the sources of information accessed by asylum seekers, prior to and during their boat journeys to Australia, about their destination country. The findings suggest that government media and Internet strategies focused on deterring asylum seekers are adopted without full regard to how information is sourced before and during these boat journeys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Australian Government policy of mandatory immigration detention has been the subject of critique by human rights bodies and civil society. With many immigration detention facilities being located in remote sites, distance and expense means that few people get to observe detention practices in Australia directly. Through direct observations and through the voices of three men detained in the Curtin Immigration Detention Centre outside of the remote Western Australian town of Derby, the human costs of mandatory detention are presented and discussed. This is done through positioning this discussion as part of the process of bearing witness to mandatory detention in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including psychological impact on detainees, economic impact of detention on island communities, and role of islands in broader national immigration and asylum seeker policies and systems.

This paper explores ethical questions arising from the work of health practitioners in immigration detention centres in Australia. It raises questions about the roles of professional disciplines and the ways in which they confront dual loyalty issues. The exploration is guided by interviews conducted with health professionals who have worked in asylum seeker detention and an examination of the outsider advocacy role undertaken by the social work profession. The paper discusses the stance taken by individuals and professional associations on participation in controlled settings, including as participant, bystander and advocate, and asks when the provision of care becomes collusion with oppression. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article describes the impact of immigration detention on the health of asylum seekers. Drawing on specific examples, it explores the roles of professional staff working within the detention system and/or challenging the practices as advocates. Using oral testimony from a citizen-initiated campaign, The People's Inquiry into Detention, we interrogate the harmful experiences of force-feeding, deportation practices and the incarceration of children, including the role of the health professionals who sometimes betrayed their duty of care. Discussed are the paradoxes of dual loyalty and professional ethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the impact of COVID-19 on international protection applicants in the Irish asylum system. It presents a critical reflection on the failings of direct provision and how the experience of COVID-19 has further heightened the issues at stake for asylum seekers and refugees living in Ireland. In Ireland, international protection applicants are detained in a system of institutionalized living called direct provision where they must remain until they receive status. Direct provision centres offer substandard accommodation and are often overcrowded. During the pandemic, many asylum seekers could not effectively socially isolate, so many centres experienced COVID-19 outbreaks. This article examines these experiences and joins a community of scholars calling for the urgent end to the system of direct provision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic is not a "great equaliser" as some have claimed, but rather an amplifier of existing inequalities, including those associated with migration. Perhaps not surprisingly, it is refugees, often the most marginalised of all migrants, who have had the most to lose. Refugees and displaced populations living in crowded and unhygienic conditions have often been unable to protect themselves from the virus, face increasing economic precarity and often find themselves excluded from measures to alleviate poverty and hunger. The threat to refugees comes not only from material (in)security, but from increasing exclusion and exceptionalism associated with the politics of protection. Evidence from the first nine months of the pandemic suggests that some governments, in Europe and US but also the Global South, are using COVID-19 as an excuse to double-down on border closures and/or dip into their migration policy toolboxes to demonstrate the robustness of their response to it. Refugees are increasingly prevented from accessing the international protection to which they are potentially entitled or used (alongside migrants more generally) as scapegoats by populist leaders exploiting the pandemic for political mileage. Some states have used the pandemic to push through controversial policies that further limit access to protection and/or institutionalize the marginalization of refugees. In this context, it seems likely that COVID-19 will accelerate the course of history in relation to refugee protection, rather than changing its direction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In March 2020, the United States government began a series of measures designed to dramatically restrict immigration as part of its response to the global health crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic. This included Title 42, which deported asylum seekers immediately and prevented them from applying for asylum. These measures worsened an already precarious situation at the US–Mexico border for an estimated 60,000 asylum seekers who were prevented, by the Trump administration's 'Remain in Mexico' (aka MPP) policy enacted in January 2019, from remaining in the United States while they awaited their asylum hearings. In-depth interviews, participant observation, and social media analysis with humanitarian and legal advocates for asylum seekers living in a camp at the border in Matamoros, Mexico reveal that COVID-19's impacts are not limited to public health concerns. Rather, COVID-19's impacts center on how the Trump administration weaponized the virus to indefinitely suspend the asylum system. We argue that the Matamoros refugee camp provides a strategic vantage point to understand the repercussions of state policies of exclusion on im/mobility and survival strategies for asylum seekers. Specifically, we use the analytical lenses of the politics of im/mobility, geographies of exclusion, and asylum seeker resilience to identify how COVID-19 has shaped the im/mobility and security of the camp and its residents in unexpected ways. At the same time, our research illustrates that camp residents exercise im/mobility as a form of political visibility to contest and ameliorate their precarity as they find themselves in conditions not of their choosing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]