Refugees and asylum seekers living in the Australian community: the importance of work rights and employment support

While Australian legislation allows for the mandatory detention of asylum seekers arriving without a valid visa, in recent years the Australian Government has released thousands from immigration detention prior to their protection claims being finalised. This article outlines the results of interviews with eleven men who had been released into such community‐based arrangements after long periods of immigration detention. The major challenge for most of the men who had been granted the right to work upon their release was securing employment, while being denied the right to work was the major challenge for those released without this right. This article explores the social and personal benefits that employment can offer asylum seekers and refugees and the implications it has for integration into their host country.     

The political mobilities of reporting: tethering,slickness and asylum control

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on the coerced mobilities associated with reporting, meaning the mandatory requirement to regularly check-in with authorities for the purpose of control. Drawing on recent calls for a politics of mobility and advances in carceral geographies, we attend to the forces, movements, speeds and affective materialities of reporting with a focus on deportable migrants and the UK Home Office. In doing so we develop two conceptual lenses through which to further understand the politics of mobility. First, we develop the concept of ‘slickness’ in the context of the process of becoming detained at a reporting event. We understand slickness as a property of bodies and objects that makes them easier to move. Second, we argue that reporting functions to ‘tether’ deportable migrants; thereby not only fixing them in place, but also forcing the expenditure of energy and the experience of punishment. The result is that reporting blurs the distinction between detention and ‘freedom’ by enacting the carceral in everyday spaces.     

Refugee community organizations in Canada: From the margins to the mainstream? A challenge and opportunity for social workers

Various waves of asylum seekers and resettled refugees arriving in Canada since the 1980s reflect the eruption of war and ethnic conflicts in parts of Africa, Central America, and South East Asia. Contrary to long‐established immigrant communities such as the Greeks, Italians, and Portuguese, these newcomers have had to fend for themselves and develop their own support networks, leading to new forms of organizing and to the formation of refugee community organizations (RCOs). This article discusses the findings of a 2008–2011 study on RCOs in Canada, specifically in Montréal and Winnipeg. The objective of the study was to understand the context in which RCOs have developed, the populations they serve, and the role they play in their ethnic communities. Working within the RCO paradigm, we analyze the creation of these organizations, contrast findings with research done in the UK, and raise issues for social work practice. Key Practitioner Message: ● Innovative research in Canada documenting refugee community organizations gives fresh insight regarding community organizing practice; ● Documents the situation of asylum seekers and refugees on an individual and a collective basis in terms of needs; ● Focuses on the necessity of building bridges with refugee organizations to bring them into the mainstream.     

Migrant and asylum-seeker children returned to Kosovo and Albania: predictive factors for social–emotional wellbeing after return

The return of rejected asylum seekers has a high priority on the national agendas of European States. In order to make well-informed asylum decisions involving children, knowledge of how asylum-seeker children fare after their return to their countries of origin is needed. This study aims to gain knowledge about the child-rearing environment and the social–emotional wellbeing of migrant children who have returned to Kosovo and Albania after a stay in a European host country. Based on a sample of 106 returned families, the study investigated the predictive factors for children’s social–emotional wellbeing using regression analyses. The findings show that procedural characteristics and ethnicity predict wellbeing, mediated through the quality of the child-rearing environment. The most vulnerable children did not have a stable resident status in the host country, belonged to a minority ethnic group and were older adolescents. The findings indicate that the wellbeing of returned children is not only dependent on conditions after repatriation, but also on the conditions which the families left in the host country. To enable sustainable return in a child’s best interests, the needs of vulnerable families and children should be thoroughly assessed prior to return, and reintegration support should be tailored to their situation.     

关系吸纳制度：寡头治村与基层民主的变异

寡头治村是基层民主失序的极端形态,分析寡头治村的形成机制有助于把握基层民主建设的难点。在宗族分化的社会基础和开放选举的制度框架下,以家族关系为基础的自己人关系在精英的权力竞争中被政治化,成为精英的政治支持集团。寡头治村的形成在于寡头个人的能量超出其他精英,且在村庄内构建了笼罩性的自己人关系网络,从而建立稳固的权力基础。在自己人关系网络居于主导的情况下,公共关系变得私人化,在利益分配和村庄治理中,私人原则均居于主导地位,公共性的制度运作被吸纳,而公共关系的私人化又反过来巩固了寡头的自己人关系网络。在实际的村治格局中,公与私是混合在一起的,而村干部的行为向公的方向还是向私的方向偏移,取决于村干部的自己人关系网络的强弱。     

Beyond control: the criminalization of African asylum seekers in Israel

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes the discursive process of criminalization of African asylum seekers in Israel. The Israeli case illuminates the way that marginalized social groups are constructed as a criminal threat, thus becoming a focal point of moral panic. Using content analysis, in-depth interviews and observations, we assert that the criminalization of asylum seekers is facilitated by their portrayal as ‘infiltrators’ who are beyond state control. State authorities’ ostensible inability to keep asylum seekers under surveillance is dialectically constructed along two main axes: the private space axis and the public space axis. On the private space axis, the asylum seekers are portrayed as unidentified people living beyond the authorities’ field of vision whose largely unreported criminality is directed against vulnerable asylum seeker women and children in the private sphere. At the same time, asylum seekers are portrayed as a prominent, faceless and animalistic presence in public space, a presence that breaches physical-spatial borders as well as social-cultural boundaries, thereby undermining the social order. Thus, asylum seekers are viewed as conspicuously invisible. This rhetoric connects border violation with criminal activity; emphasizes the pent-up potential for violence by asylum seekers; and blurs the lines between criminal threat and security threat.     

East Timorese women asylum seekers in Australia: Extrapolating a case for resettlement services

After up to 10 years of living as asylum seekers in Australia it appears that most of 1650 East Timorese will be granted permanent residency. The present study describes research into the wellbeing of East Timorese women asylum seekers that found severe risks to social and emotional wellbeing associated with prolonged asylum seeker status. The research findings highlighted a need for measures to protect the wellbeing of asylum seekers during the assessment stage of applications for protection visas. The author refers to the research findings to encourage debate around the need for asylum seekers generally to have access to resettlement services as a policy strategy to provide necessary psychological and material support. Arguing that neglect of basic assistance during the assessment phase of protection applications potentially breaches the UN Declaration, the author illustrates individual, community and global benefits of providing adequate support and avenues for personal development to asylum seekers.     

TESTIMONIO AND SPACES OF RISK

Asylum seekers and refugees tend to be marginalized in physical and discursive spaces, especially in times that are orchestrated as socially, politically, financially and environmentally risky. This article explores the interrelationship between genre and social space from the perspective of asylum seekers and refugees, and how refugees and asylum seekers in the USA, Germany and Hong Kong exposed spaces of risk through testimonio (testimonio is a genre term used throughout the paper and will be explained later). Asylum seekers and refugees testified to social practices like lengthy asylum processes, immobility, criminalization of asylum seekers, or distrust by locals in virtual space and in face-to-face encounters. Testimonio, thus, reflected on social practices and through this reflection, exposed spaces of risk that threatened the well-being of forced migrants. However, asylum seekers did not dwell in those spaces of risk. By publishing testimonios in virtual environments, some asylum seekers became agents of their biographies and created spaces in which they could voice themselves on their own terms.     

In liberty's shadow: the discourse of refugees and asylum seekers in critical race theory and immigration law/politics

This article addresses the potential that a kind of engaged research can have in current battles for social justice and in the transformation of college curricula as a way to recover the original critical spirit of ethnic studies. Building on critical race theory, I discuss the work of NGOs such as Human Rights First and Americans for Immigrant Justice on behalf of Haitian refugees and the role of literature in inspiring human rights actions that might redefine practices of citizenship and belonging. At a time when the United States recognises the rights of refugees but criminalises the search for asylum, coalition building between ethnic studies discourse, the legal academy and the community is vital to affirm and protect the internationally recognised rights of refugees. Crucial in this process is the role played by stories as a way to humanise the often impersonal topic of the immigration debate.