Public Policy
Book Details

Asylum Seekers

Australia's Response to Refugees

Don McMaster

Asylum Seekers reveals the inherent racism of Australia’s refugee and immigration policies.

Opinion

‘McMaster presents a persuasive and at times, he confesses, a “polemical” account of Australia’s handling of asylum seekers.’ (Christopher Bantick, Panorama, 26 May 2001)

‘Australians should find [the book] more provocative of real thought about the issue than the rhetoric now spouting from the mouths of most Australian politicians.’ (Penelope Mathew, Australian Book Review, June 2001)

About this Title

‘Australians should find [the book] more provocative of real thought about the issue than the rhetoric now spouting from the mouths of most Australian politicians.’
Penelope Mathew, Australian Book Review, June 2001

Two groups of refugees arrived in Australia in 1999: Kosovar refugees and Chinese boat people. One group was welcomed with open arms; the other was interned.

Don McMaster analyses Australia’s discriminatory policy towards the group that it has constructed as its ‘other’: the ‘hordes from the north’, the ‘yellow peril’. He locates the earliest fear of ‘Asians’ in attitudes to Chinese goldminers in the 1850s. Half a century later this fear culminated in the White Australia policy, enshrined in the first legislation of the new federal Parliament. Thus the very beginnings of Australia’s immigration policy were explicitly racist.

Asylum Seekers sheds new light on events of the last few decades, from the first refugee policy of the Fraser Government, to the Blainey immigration debates of the 1980s and the moral panic about ‘Asianisation’ articulated by Pauline Hanson in the late 1990s.

Comparisons with the policies of other countries show that immigration control can be achieved and the claims of asylum seekers can be examined without resorting to the inhumane policy of prolonged detention. The complex meanings of ‘belonging’ and ‘citizenship’ are examined, and the Australian identity is exposed as fearful and immature, dependent on constructing and demonising its ‘other’.

In its response to ‘ boat people’, Australia has breached the international treaties that it has signed and has violated human rights. Asylum Seekers is an indictment of present policies and a call to create a more humane response to people who desperately seek asylum.

Table of Contents

Preface 2002
Abbreviations

1 Australia's 'Other'
2 The Wretched of the Earth
3 Australian Immigration and Its 'Other'
4 The Politics of Detention
5 International Comparisons
6 The Politics of Race
7 The Politics of Belonging
8 Detention, Exclusion and the 'Other'

Notes
Select Bibliography
Index

About the Author

Donald McMaster has a PhD from the University of Adelaide and is currently employed at the Research Branch, University of Adelaide.

Book Preview

978-0-522-84961-5