"We are Like Animals": Negotiating Dehumanising Experiences of Asylum-Seeker Policies in the Australian Community. (31st August 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Hartley, Lisa; Fleay, Caroline
• Is Part Of: Refugee survey quarterly. Volume 36:Number 4(2017)
• Page Start: 45
• Page End: 63
• Publication Date: 2017-08-31
• Subjects: asylum-seekers -- dehumanisation -- coping strategies -- asylum-seeker policy -- Australia; Refugees -- Periodicals; Forced migration -- Periodicals; 325.21
• DOI: 10.1093/rsq/hdx010
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1020-4067

Abstract

Abstract: Industrialised countries have applied increasingly restrictive measures to deter people from seeking asylum. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 29 people seeking asylum living in the Australian community who arrived in Australia by boat, this article explores how restrictive policies, including delays in processing refugee claims and the denial of the right to work and access to basic standards of living, are experienced as fundamentally dehumanising. It also explores how interviewees negotiated this in ways that reasserted their humanity. Thematically, many of the responses mapped onto Haslam's "animalising" conceptualisations of dehumanisation in relation to being subject to restrictive policies. Despite the conditions in the community being described as dehumanising, many interviewees were also working hard to find action-orientated activities that were affordable in order to regain a sense of control and independence over their daily lives, such as accessing education and building social connections with others. A number of interviewees also appealed to human rights via speech when describing dehumanising treatments, in effect realigning themselves as humans deserving of rights. Implications for understandings of dehumanisation and for Australia's asylum-seeker policies are discussed.