1/2010: The Great Escape: Refugees, Detention and Resistance

Abstract: In my book, Border Crimes: Australia’s war on illicit migrants, I develop Green and Wards (2004) focus on institutional deviance to argue that the Australian states alienation, criminalisation and abuse of unauthorised migrants constitute state crime. In this context, state crime is defined by the forceful denial of the legitimate expectations of unauthorised migrants, rather than breaches of formal rights under international humanitarian law selectively bestowed by the state. This paper employs these themes to develop an analysis of the resistance by refugees to the Australian state, with a particular emphasis on escapes from detention. The paper outlines the extensive and often unreported forms of resistance undertaken by refugees before detailing particular examples of escapes. It then proceeds to analyse the High Court of Australias decision in the case of Behrooz and its role in legitimising the mandatory detention policy. The paper then discusses how refugee resistance might be conceptualised within a state crime paradigm. It argues that in comparison to the state of absolute rightlessness epitomised by the Muselmann of Auschwitz, refugees in Australian detention centres are more appropriately understood as being in a liminal state, in which they have a limited but fluid degree of agency and some capacity to engage with the civil society of the detaining state. Recognition of this liminal state is important for two reasons: in practical terms, it helps cohere opposition to state practice and policy within civil society; in conceptual terms it provides insight into the nature of the social audience capable of rejecting state practice as deviant and the ways in which such deviance can be formulated.