Negotiating State Logic

Abstract

This article examines the way in which onshore asylum seekers negotiate state logic and harness resources to campaign for their right and opportunity to stay on in the host country permanently. This paper is based on a multi-method study of the case of about 45,000 Chinese nationals, mostly students, no less than 50 percent of whom were over-stayers, living in Australia who sought to stay after the Tiananmen incident of 1989. The Chinese students, as they were called in Australia, succeeded in the end in obtaining residence through pursuing intensive lobbying activities over a period of four or so years from June 1989 to November 1993, and became the largest onshore migration intake in Australian history.BR Regardless of the causality in the relationship, both humanitarian and refugee immigration programs in Australia in 1989 were undergoing the most far-reaching changes, aimed at controlling the increased numbers of illegal entrants and onshore asylum seekers, including the Chinese students. In such a culture of control (Cronin 1993), the Migration Act of Australia had been amended 11 times between 1989 and 1992, and the Regulations governing this country"s immigration programs had seen 58 amendments during the same period. Similarly, during the period covered by this study, more than six major changes to the humanitarian and refugee programs were made, toughening the residence terms for all asylum seekers who would only get four-year permits rather than immediate permanent residence, as was the case at the time. In fact, within the first 12 months after the Tiananmen incident, in the first set of policy responses to the student issue, the Australian government had extended the students" visas unconditionally four times, all of which indicated nothing more than temporary protection similar to the US government position on the Chinese students living in America (Frelick and Kohnen 1995). Despite such an unfavorable situation, the Chinese students prevailed. Active and strategic lobbying delivered residence to not only those who arrived in Australia before the event, but also to tens of thousands of others who arrived afterwards.BR This study is concerned with how the state logic was challenged and broken, and how the migrant logic was formulated and implemented to negotiate the state logic, with a particular focus on the interaction between the two types of logic. The discussion considers three key aspects of the interaction. The first section looks at how the students acquired a number of clues from government policies and created their own logic. This is followed by an analysis of how the changing stance of the Australian government towards onshore asylum seekers led the students to form an organized approach while their temporary protection was repeatedly renewed. Also examined are the organized political activities carried out by the students in order to deal with the politically fundamental issues behind the state logic and to capitalise on the permissiveness of the local polities. The analysis attempts to convey a picture of the typical social experiences of onshore asylum seekers and how they turned the impossible into the possible.