A Response: Stagnation and Closed Minds – Australian Refugee Activism Now
“No One is Illegal” is a very interesting attempt to move action in support of asylum-seeking forward in Australia. I especially agree with Brankovich’s conclusions about the impasse currently facing the ‘refugee movement’ here. However, her prescription for a divestment movement aimed at corporations benefitting from government refugee / asylum-seeker policy and practice faces real problems.
Burning fossil fuels now threatens all humanity, and increasing numbers of Australians are recognising that its eventual impact will be both local and concrete. Hence the signs of progress in the public impact of divestment from the industries involved. Unfortunately, there is no parallel ‘anti-asylum-seeker industry’ with any roughly-equivalent concrete consequences flowing from its actions. We are thrown back on the essentially immoral quality of government practice in this space. That burning fossil fuels today is fast being recognised as also immoral doesn’t ‘concretize’ the impact on Australian voters of that practice.
One dimension of the concert between capitalist state and corporate interest regarding the movement of people internationally hasn’t been probed by Brankovich: why, exactly, does finance capital support increased state control over the movement of international human capital? (It is easy to see why the capitalist state, best illustrated now by Australia, seeks it: electoral reasons [political power] predominate.)
- Does capital want to preserve, as long as possible, cheap labour pools in ‘less developed’ countries?
- Does it want to suppress evidence – in any recognition of the experience of asylum-seekers – of its exploitative and oppressive roles in many of those countries?
- Is it because the elimination of ‘uncontrolled’ people-movement clears the decks for bi- and multi-lateral agreements between states in favour of cheaper labour (as exemplified in the recent Australia-China trade agreement)?
- Or is it just in capital’s broad interest to support state control of any peoples’ rights that are founded on ‘aspirational’ conventions like the UNRC?
- Or?
It is interesting to note that, while asylum-seekers are bad-mouthed, hounded, persecuted, grilled, abused and detained – or ignored – by Australia’s government (depending on the requirements at the time of the state’s policy mechanism) the movement of selected human capital is facilitated (usually quietly, and often eagerly): corporate executives, sports and media talent, cashed-up investors and, on the other end of the scale, ‘temporary’ and cheap construction, agricultural and domestic workers. (Temporary here means ‘welcome in host country so long as required by capital’.)
Further clarification of the contemporary stake of international capital in dominant refugee policies, here and elsewhere, through discussion and research may expose lines of political action with greater potential impact on Australian citizen voters.
Perhaps, also, a radical rethink about regional refugee responses – shared with states and leaders in the region – could actually get regional governments interested in a multi-track refugee program. Such could eventually both reduce informal refugee flows and replace the cost to Australia of its crude and cynical refugee policy. Certainly we need to work for a way to go further than the myopically reactive and visionless compassion of established alternatives to Coalition and Labor refugee policy.
Thank you for an engaging and thoughtful response, Ken.
I will address one aspect of your response, while I agree that other aspects require a collective reckoning. I will address the aspect you name as ‘anti-asylum-seeker-industry’.
In 2014-2015 financial year, the government spent a record $3.3b on maintaining the current policy of indefinite mandatory detention, and this is, veritably, the ‘asylum seeker industry’ at play. The ‘anti-asylum-seeker’ industry’, in this instance, is constituted by ALL OF US. There is no need for claiming the attributes of alternatives (as is the case of alternatives to the fossil fuel industry, in the shape of solar, wind and other energy resources), because the only alternative here is about changing the conversation.
That is the most obvious, and the most difficult, part.
I think that what we need to realise is that human lives are threatened as much by the current policy on asylum seekers as they are by the government’s support for fossil fuels. The day when we see climate-change refugees, is not a fantasy at all. We need to think about interconnections, in a holistic sense, before we give into the idea that borders are the be-all and end-all.
One more thing: I am very cautious about any attempt at ‘regional refugee response’, for a number of reasons:
1. We are surrounded by developing nations which have little capacity to ‘deal’ appropriately and responsibly with refugees, not least because countries like Indonesia and Malaysia are not the signatories to the Refugee Convention;
2. Refugees and asylum-seekers are products of a colonial system, in which Australia is implicated more than any other nation-state in the Pacific rim:
3. It is unlikely that any cooperation with the nation-states can be engendered on the grounds of ‘compassion.’