The unlucky in the ‘lucky country’: asylum seekers, irregular migrants and refugees and Australia’s politics of disappearance

Abstract

This article considers the Australian response to new global migration flows with a focus on irregular migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. The effects of temporary status and invisibility on lived experience and on social and legal norms are explored, with the off-shore processing of asylum seekers at the extreme end of state policies of externalising borders and irregular migrants. The article problematises the official categorisation of migrants into administrative and legal domains and the consequent construction of a normative hierarchy of good and bad migrants. In the Australian context, political narratives of deserving and undeserving migrants and of asylum seekers as disturbing the ordered migration system are used to justify the need for the protection and security of the nation. The article argues that articulations of a just society and the spread of human rights are weakened through such official narratives of fear and rejection that dehumanise irregular migrants such as asylum seekers, and highlights the work of civil society organisations in attempting democratic accountability.