‘Our lives is in danger’: Manus Island and the end of asylum

Abstract

The Australian-funded and operated immigration detention centre on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea, serves as a frontline for Australia’s border policing measures against unauthorised refugees. The willingness of the Australian state to forcibly transfer and detain refugees at sites such as Manus Island reflects its commitment to deterring unauthorised arrivals by punishing them for their methods of travel. Comparing the outcomes of the 2016 refugee global summits and recent public inquiries into the conditions on Manus Island, this article considers the disconnect between Australia’s criminogenic border policing practices and its supposed commitments to a humanitarian refugee resettlement policy. It argues that the dominant view of resettlement as an outcome to be bestowed on ‘worthy’ refugees removes refugee agency and enables ongoing and systemic human rights abuses at sites such as Manus Island. For refugees this can only be resolved by establishing a right to free movement.

Suffering and its Depiction through Visual Culture

“…Mobile, digital technologies are vital in producing, tracking, and distributing the artistic interventions explored in the examples detailed below. While some asylum seekers have been resettled in third states, many remain on Nauru and Manus Island, still waiting for their cases to be resolved after five years of incarceration (Grewcock, 2017;Cave, 2017).…”

Spectropolitics and Invisibility of the Migrant: On Images that Make People “Illegal”

“…59 Spectropolitics, by removing the refugee from the picture and replacing her with a ghost, have performed the ultimate trick of creating the Agambenian homo sacer: 60 the subject so far outside the law that their existence is no longer ghostly in the image only, but also within and between the legal systems. 61 Invisible in domestic migration laws in the places where they are detained, not allowed to be recognised by the places willing to host them due to Australian control of their status, and barred from accessing legal processes allowing for their recognition in Australia where their only legal status is that of an illegal, the offshore detention centre detainees captured at sea during Operation Sovereign Borders are the ultimate ghosts paying the price of the spectropolitical play with invisibility.…”

Regional deterrence and ‘non-genuine’ refugees: The punitive legacy of the 1989 Comprehensive Plan of Action

“…I suggest that there are two key attributes which characterize the use of place as deterrence: it must be both perceived as impoverished in GDP terms, and relatedly, it must be regarded by western states as potentially vulnerable to offers of external financial support. With its landscape marred by decades of resource depletion through phosphate mining, Nauru has limited alternatives for wealth generation (Grewcock, 2017: 14). In PNG, reports into resettlement and processing of refugees at Manus have conveyed the impact of Australia's use of land and resources in a society which is beset by other challenges, including a human development ranking of 154, compared to Australia's ranking of two (United Nations Development Program, 2016).…”

“…The responses by local communities are often in conflict with their governments' decision to deliver offshore processing and resettlement of refugees, who they believe are more properly the responsibility of Australia. The ‘local resentment at the disproportionate resources seen to be devoted to the center’ and ‘tensions between sections of the local Manus Island community and the detainees are rooted in the socio-economic impacts of locating the center in one of the poorer regions of PNG’ (Grewcock, 2017: 78). Cambodia, Nauru and PNG are positioned in an exchange relationship which is made possible by Australia's capacity to draw on its financial resources (through incentives to refugees and payments to resettlement countries) to outsource its obligations while maintaining its signatory status (Mathew and Harley, 2016: 14).…”