The Refugee Tales is a modern reconstruction of Chaucer’s classic pilgrimage – this time, telling the largely unspoken realities of immigration detention.
ASEAN stood on the sidelines as thousands of refugees were stranded at sea, but it should apply its policy of constructive engagement to ending the persecution that drives Rohingya people out of Myanmar.
A summit in Bangkok is discussing the fate of thousands of people who were stranded at sea. Australia is represented but refuses to resettle any refugees, casting doubt on its commitment to a regional solution.
The political rhetoric would suggest that asylum seekers are deserving and economic migrants are undeserving. Yet their motivations overlap and are complex – forced migrants do not fit easily into one category.
Under enormous pressure, countries in south east Asia are at last offering help to thousands of stranded migrants – but their gesture is far less meaningful than it seems.
Australia may have ‘stopped the boats’ but the tragedy of people drowning at sea continues to our north and is getting worse. A regional solution to the refugee crisis is urgently needed.
The problem with auctioning immigration places is that it puts the focus on short-term revenue-raising, rather than immigration’s more important medium- to long-term nation-building role.
The migration of early Africans into the Middle East, then across the Mediterranean into Europe and Asia – and eventually into the Americas and Australia and the Pacific Islands – is the origin of today’s humanity.
The death of a New Zealand citizen who returned to Iraq has led some to query his status as a refugee. We need to be clear about what it means to be granted asylum and the rights of citizenship.
In condemning Indonesia’s execution of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, Australia has relied on the same human rights obligations that it rejects when applied to asylum seekers.
Political leaders have a ready culprit in people smugglers for drownings at sea. The problem is that this ignores responsibility for eliminating all other options for these people to avoid harm.
Professor of International Migration and Forced Displacement and Director of the Institute for Research into International Migration and Superdiversity, University of Birmingham