Contentious politics, human rights and Australian immigration detention

Abstract

ABSTRACTAustralian immigration detention has been a contentious political issue for over two decades. Although Australia is a signatory to each of the major human rights instruments, the avenues to political reform in Australia in the area of immigration detention, including for the realisation of detainees’ human rights, are limited. This is variously due to immigration detention’s status in Australia as “administrative detention”, the bipartisan support that immigration detention receives in Australia, and the hostility that the Australian Government appears to harbour towards human rights generally. While these conditions have made pursuing change by traditional legal and institutional means challenging, it has not rendered defending human rights impossible. Human rights can be, and have been, defended in other powerful ways. This article shows how human rights shape, and are shaped by, contentious political action. It discusses the relatively impactful grassroots actions that have emerged in response to Australia’s immigration detention policies and argues that considering human rights as “contentious” can help to explain why human rights are an effective means by which to challenge such policies. Finally, it discusses the importance of ongoing research and action in this area.