Anyone following recent news reporting may rightly think Australia’s migration system is in “crisis”. Much of this reporting is fixated on the perceived threat posed by non-citizens to the safety or prosperity of the Australian community.
Last week, this panic was reflected in Immigration Minister Andrew Giles’ proposed revised directive to decision-makers to prioritise vague notions of “community safety” over other important considerations, such as an individual’s connection to Australia, when reviewing visa cancellation cases.
And earlier this month, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton dubiously claimed migration exacerbates Australia’s housing crisis, including through “excessive numbers” of international students.
Such framing misses the real “crisis” of Australia’s migration system and the real harms it enables and produces to non-citizens. Ongoing failures to bring in systemic, migrant-centred reforms has left many non-citizens exposed to situations of exploitation, prolonged immigration detention, painful legal uncertainty or even punitive deportation.
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Sociologist Zymunt Bauman describes “migration panic” as a magnified hostility towards migrants animated by politically motivated fearmongering and xenophobia.
Non-citizen migrants become scapegoats for perceived dangers to the wellbeing of the national population. They can also be blamed for the “uncertainties” of contemporary global capitalism.
Such migration panic fosters an artificial “us and them” divide and creates the perception of a crisis around immigration that is then used to justify more migration controls and restrictions against non-citizens.
Such migration panic is not new. Australia has a long colonial history of racial exclusion through immigration law. The Whitlam government’s formal dismantling of the White Australia Policy in 1973 did not end this racial anxiety. In fact, the Whitlam government........