Research Seminar - The bizarre paradox of boat people

The bizarre paradox of boat people​

Presented by Dr Stephen Crofts

Date: 2 March, 2018
Time: 3pm-4pm
Location: Digital Learning Space (Room 224, Level 2), Joyce Ackroyd Building (#37) 

Abstract:

At the heart of the national controversy about asylum seekers arriving by boat is a bizarre paradox, some would say a monstrous disproportion.  On the one hand, a tiny number of powerless, desperate and publicly invisible people seek to live in Australia. Yet they are indefinitely detained in centres effectively controlled by the Australian state, at a cost to the taxpayer of roughly $3 billion per year.  This presentation disengages seven negative constructions of boat people, and sets out to account for the intense hostility directed towards them and the punitive forms this takes.  It suggests that the enormous anxieties they seem to provoke might find some explanation in terms of the Australian imaginary.