Claudia Tazreiter - Asylum Seekers and the State: The Politics of Protection in a Security-Conscious World

The Politics of Protection in a Security-Conscious World

Claudia Tazreiter
University of New South Wales, Australia

First published 2004

by Ashgate Publishing

Published 2016

by Routledge
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Copyright Claudia Tazreiter 2004

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Tazreiter, Claudia
Asylum seekers and the state: the politics of protection
in a security-conscious world
1.Asylum, Right of - Germany 2.Asylum, Right of - Australia
3.Refugees - Government policy - Germany 4.Refugees
Government policy - Australia 5.Germany - Emigration and
immigration 6.Australia - Emigration and immigration
I.Title
323.6'31

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tazreiter, Claudia.
Asylum seekers and the State: the politics of protection in a security-conscious
world / by Claudia Tazreiter.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Refugees--Government policy. 2. Refugees--Government policy--Germany. 3.
Refugees--Government policy--Australia. 4. Refugees--Legal status, laws, etc. 5.
Asylum, Right of. I. Title.
JV6346.T39 2004
362.87'56--dc22
2004006897

ISBN 13: 978-0-7546-4069-1 (hbk)

My deep gratitude goes to the many non-government organisations and advocates for asylum seekers in both Germany and Australia who gave generously of their time and expertise and contributed to this research by taking part in interviews and making documents available to me. Many of the Germany NGOs were also gracious and generous hosts at a time when I was far away from home.

Maria Markus provided guidance, encouragement and displayed her generous humanity throughout the process of writing this book. Michael Pusey, Michael Humphrey, Clive Kessler, Jocelyn Pixley and Paul Jones from the School of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of New South Wales, offered collegiality, support and encouragement. Klaus Bade, Director of the Institute for Migration and Intercuitural Studies (IMIS), at the University of Osanbrck was a gracious host during a research visit to Germany. The German Academic Exchange Fellowship (DAAD) assisted the research with a grant which enabled me to stay in Germany for an extended period. Diarmuid Maguire in the Department of Government and International Relations at University of Sydney, supported the early stages of my research.

Finally, my family have been a source of steadfast support and encouragement through the process of research and writing.

Media outlets around the world are saturated with stories focused on security, war and terrorism. From many vantage points, East and West, in economically developed and less developed countries, fear and suspicion of outsiders has intensified into visceral hatred expressed in overt and covert acts of violence. Some acts of violence against outsiders are carried out by individuals, others are the actions of states using coercive force in both symbolic and in tangible ways to exclude certain groups and individuals. Some of these actions may well be justified. Many are not.

Individuals express opinions, and states carry out actions premised on a complex interplay of social, economic and political anxieties. Caught in the web of these anxieties are refugees and asylum seekers. Those individuals seeking protection have faced an increasingly hostile reception in the countries in which they seek asylum in the period since the end of Communism in Europe. Hostility toward refugees and asylum seekers has intensified since 2001. In no small measure, such sentiment rests on a fear of terrorism. The human rights of the most threatened and marginalised people in the world; those at risk of severe forms of persecution, torture, or loss of life - have been put at greater risk by the new emphasis on security in the developed world since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

This book seeks to deal with an aspect of the global dilemma of people moving across borders in search of protection and safety. The way in which such people are received and treated in countries which are signatories to International Human Rights Conventions is significant in a number of ways. With a world that is increasingly interconnected in economic, political and in cultural ways, harsh and exclusionary measures by one state are likely to have negative knock-on effects for neighbouring states. To be sure, the root-causes of refugee flows need to be identified, and real solutions found to the violence which causes flight. At the same time, the obligations placed on states who are signatories to the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention (hereafter, Refugee Convention ) are fundamental to ensuring those in need of protection are not placed in danger by being sent back to the source of their persecution - refouled. Indeed the test of a state's commitment to human rights principles and the spirit of the Refugee Convention, is in the treatment of asylum seekers who will almost always of necessity enter a country in a clandestine fashion in order to ask for protection. This book examines the dilemma which asylum seekers present to states they enter through the case studies of Germany and Australia.