Lobbying to Stay: the Chinese Students’ Campaign to Stay in Australia

This paper examines the way in which onshore asylum seekers lobby to stay in the host country permanently, and how they interact with local institutions. This study is based on a multi‐method case study of about 45,000 Chinese nationals in Australia, mostly students, who sought to stay after the so‐called political disturbance of 1989 in China. The students succeeded in obtaining residence by pursuing intensive lobbying activities over a period of about four years from June 1989 to November 1993, becoming the largest onshore migration intake in Australian history. This paper is concerned with how the students and their organizations negotiated the changing stance of the Australian government towards asylum seekers, and the way in which the students harnessed resources in the campaign. It examines the strategies adopted by the students, the roles of the main local institutions in the issue, and analyses the permissiveness of local polities.