Lost and Found: the Life Narratives of Child Asylum Seekers

Abstract

In this paper I explore the emergence of asylum seeker narratives, and suggest their significance as a form of Australian life writing. These narratives have emerged strongly in recent years and have functioned to raise awareness of the experiences of asylum seekers. I use the examples of Julian Burnside's From Nothing to Zero: Letters from Refugees in Australia's Detention Centres and Heather Tyler's Asylum: Voices Behind the Razor Wire to explore the dynamics of these narratives and issues such as testimony, counter-memory, witnessing, advocacy and collaboration. I focus this study by closely examining particular examples of life narrative occurring within these publications: the life narratives of child asylum seekers. The child figure has become central to the debates surrounding asylum seeking in Australia: from news and documentary footage of the innocent child being held in a detention centre, to the ambiguous images of ‘children overboard’. It is clearly significant that children's stories are being foregrounded in asylum seeker life narratives. Thus, it is crucial to look at the ways in which children's life narratives, for example, the physical image of the child or the representation of their narrative voice, is being deployed in these collaborative life narrative publications. I explore the significance and implications of this deployment, the political utility of these narratives more broadly, and their importance to life writing scholars.