Asylum–Seekers and National Histories of Detention

Abstract

The Australian system of mandatory detention of asylum-seekers has become increasingly controversial. Insofar as commentary on detention has been framed historically, critics have pointed to Australia's race-based exclusionary laws and policies over the twentieth century. In this article, we suggest that exclusion and detention are not equivalent practices, even if they are often related. Here we present an alternative genealogy of mandatory detention and protests against it. Quarantine-detention and the internment of "enemy aliens" in wartime are historic precedents for the current detention of asylum-seekers. Importantly, in both carceral practices, non-criminal and often non-citizen populations were held in custody en masse and without trial. Quarantine, internment and incarceration of asylum-seekers are substantively connected over the twentieth century, as questions of territory, security and citizenship have been played out in Australia's histories of detention.

Welcome to Woodside: Inverbrackie Alternative Place of Detention and performances of belonging in Woodside, South Australia, and Australia

“…As Table 2 shows, the narrative threads woven through opposition texts reflected those found in previous literature on asylum seekers in Australia, and represented asylum seekers as illegal queue jumpers (see Klocker 2004;Klocker & Dunn 2003;McKay et al 2011), criminals (McKay et al 2011Pickering 2001), a threat to the Australian 'way of life', 'national identity' and security (Bashford & Strange 2002) who do not belong. In common with other negative narratives about asylum seekers, asylum seekers were dehumanised by those opposed to the centre, who focused on boats rather than people (Klocker & Dunn 2003;Pedersen & Fozdar 2010).…”

Global Trends in Immigration Detention and Alternatives to Detention: Practical, Political and Symbolic Rationales

“…These "informal" (Leerkes and Broeders 2010) or "noisy" (Welch and Schuster 2005) functions of detention are not codified in law but nevertheless remain crucial to its ongoing use (Mainwaring 2012;Welch and Schuster 2005). Immigration detention thus continues a tradition in which administrative detention is used to address social anxiety and maintain social order, as seen historically in reservations for indigenous populations and internment of enemy aliens (Bashford and Strange 2002;Nethery 2009). …”

Conceptualizing detention

“…The borders of the European Union are conceptualized as both tightening and filtering, employing biometric and passport technologies to select individuals to be detained or deported (van Houtum, 2010, also see Andrijasevic, 2009: 161, Broeders, 2009). These processes of ordering bodies construct categories of illegality via exclusion, just as remote locations and legal ambiguities are themselves borders that exclude migrants from the wider society (Bashford and Strange, 2002;Conlon, 2010). Expansion of border enforcement through detention practices leads to exclusion of migrants even after their release (Coutin 2010 (Bashford and Strange, 2002;Macklin, 2003).…”

“…These processes of ordering bodies construct categories of illegality via exclusion, just as remote locations and legal ambiguities are themselves borders that exclude migrants from the wider society (Bashford and Strange, 2002;Conlon, 2010). Expansion of border enforcement through detention practices leads to exclusion of migrants even after their release (Coutin 2010 (Bashford and Strange, 2002;Macklin, 2003).…”

“…Offshore detention practices and excision of national territories for purposes of migration in Australia signal how practices of detention work to exclude migrants through the externalization or retraction of national borders (Bashford and Strange, 2002;Hyndman and Mountz, 2008;Mountz, 2010;Papastergiadis, 2006).…”