The Denial of Human Dignity in the Age of Human Rights under Australia’s Operation Sovereign Borders

How and why Manus Island became a cornerstone of Australian policy toward asylum seekers stems from the complex relationship between political economic dispossession and the biopolitical strategies and ideologies that are used to justify global inequality and to relegate the wretched of the earth to...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Contemporary Pacific 2020-09, Vol.32 (2), p.512-521
Main Author: Salyer, J C
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agreements
Asylum, Right of
Biopolitics
Border security
Civil rights
Dignity
Emigration and immigration
Government regulation
Hopelessness
Human dignity
Human rights
Humanitarianism
Inequality
Interpretation and construction
Laws, regulations and rules
Narratives
Passports & visas
Personhood
Political aspects
Political asylum
Prospects
Refugees
Relocation
Right of asylum
Sovereignty
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Summary:How and why Manus Island became a cornerstone of Australian policy toward asylum seekers stems from the complex relationship between political economic dispossession and the biopolitical strategies and ideologies that are used to justify global inequality and to relegate the wretched of the earth to spaces of exception. For the refugees and asylum seekers subject to the Regional Resettlement Agreement, how they are seen and described both by Australian policy and by people in Papua New Guinea (PNG) is not how they see themselves. As a result, not only are their material prospects sharply curtailed, their own subjective personhood is defined by narratives and assumptions not of their own making, and the aspects of their life that they see as most salient are ignored, erased, and denied. At the same time, the decision to use PNG as the site for the Regional Resettlement Agreement is premised on it being seen as a deterrent to future would-be asylum seekers, which requires PNG to be seen as a site of danger and despair.
ISSN:1043-898X
1527-9464
1527-9464
DOI:10.1353/cp.2020.0044