“I See Nothing but a Fence of Tears”: The Impact of Australia’s Immigration Detention and Border Protection Policies on the Asylum Seeker Child’s Geographies of Hope and Hopelessness

Dani McAlister; Harriot Beazley; Wynonna Raha

doi:10.1353/jeu.2019.0018

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“I See Nothing but a Fence of Tears”: The Impact of Australia’s Immigration Detention and Border Protection Policies on the Asylum Seeker Child’s Geographies of Hope and Hopelessness

Journal article

Peer reviewed

“I See Nothing but a Fence of Tears”: The Impact of Australia’s Immigration Detention and Border Protection Policies on the Asylum Seeker Child’s Geographies of Hope and Hopelessness

Dani McAlister, Harriot Beazley and Wynonna Raha

Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures, Vol.11(2), pp.74-103

2019

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/jeu.2019.0018

Appears in UniSC Diversity and Inclusion Research Collection

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Abstract

Literary Studies

unaccompanied

asylum seeker

child

Australia

Nauru

borders

emotion

UniSC Diversity Area - Cultural and Linguistic Diversity

UniSC Diversity Area - Life Stages

As a signatory to both the United Nation Refugee Convention and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Australia's border protection policy to detain offshore asylum seekers who reach Australian borders by boat, including accompanied and unaccompanied minors, is under intense international scrutiny. In the context of Australia's "Operation Sovereign Borders," however, the asylum seeker child's perspectives and their geographies of hope and hopelessness have not yet been fully explored. Drawing on recent literature within children's geographies, which emphasizes the "emotional" matters within policy development and professional practice, and how they affect children, this paper seeks to contribute to emerging debates exploring borders, asylum seeker children, and children's emotional geographies. Utilizing drawings, letters, and poems produced by children for an Australian Human Rights Commission's National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention on Nauru, a child-centred approach was applied to privilege children's own perspective of their indefinite internment. The primary focus of the paper is to emphasize the ways in which "the asylum seeker child" constructs their own emotional geographies within the inherently complex and restrictive context of Australia's border protection policy.

Details

Title: “I See Nothing but a Fence of Tears”: The Impact of Australia’s Immigration Detention and Border Protection Policies on the Asylum Seeker Child’s Geographies of Hope and Hopelessness
Authors: Dani McAlister (Author) - University of London, United Kingdom
Harriot Beazley (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast - School of Social Sciences
Wynonna Raha (Author)
Publication details: Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures, Vol.11(2), pp.74-103
Publisher: University of Winnipeg - Centre for Research in Young People's Texts and Culture
Date published: 2019
DOI: 10.1353/jeu.2019.0018
ISSN: 1920-2601
Organisation Unit: Indigenous and Transcultural Research Centre; School of Social Sciences - Legacy; University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland; School of Law and Society; Sustainability Research Cluster
Language: English
Record Identifier: 99450811502621
Output Type: Journal article

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Collaboration types: Domestic collaboration; International collaboration
Web Of Science research areas: Humanities, Multidisciplinary

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