Asylum, Refugee, and Immigration Movements in Australia

Abstract

Abstract Asylum, refugee, and immigration movements in Australia represent distinct, as well as overlapping, repertoires of collective action on behalf of others who are often silent, or silenced in public debates. Various categories of newcomers have differential rights as noncitizens, residents, or “illegals” and these differences are also reflected in the emergence and vigor of social movements in defence of the “rightless” (Agamben 1998; Dauvergne 2008). These movements have formed, engaged in forms of protest, advocacy, and collective action, and subsided in various waves in reaction to public policy that seeks to restrict the rights of migrants. In Australia such restrictions have manifest in forms of border control, in limiting access to courts and judicial review processes, through detention, and through deportation. Often the most vulnerable groups of migrants have been the targets of such measures, and it is these groups that movement actors have been engaged in defending.