Race politics : Australian government responses to asylum seekers and refugees from White Australia to Tampa

Through an examination of Australian Government responses to Irregular Maritime Arrivals from 1901 to 2001, this thesis will provide an assessment of the roles of race and racism in contemporary Australian Government policy regarding the treatment of asylum seekers who arrive in Australia by boat. In particular, it attempts to build on contemporary scholarship regarding Irregular Maritime Arrivals in Australia by focusing on the conjuncture of race, refugees and Australian immigration policy. While it is well known that race and racism have played important roles in Australian immigration history, contemporary Australia is principally portrayed as a diverse, egalitarian and multicultural society. With the official abandonment of the policies of White Australia in 1973, successive Australian governments have endeavoured to foster, both domestically and internationally, an image of a cohesive, egalitarian and multicultural nation. The aim of the thesis is therefore to explore whether (and how) a continuous racial thread is used politically within Australian refugee immigration discourse to maintain a covert race agenda. Centred on the principle that racism is inherently political, this thesis seeks to investigate contemporary xenophobia in order to understand the persistent support for discriminatory and exclusionist political policy. It argues that despite the rhetoric of harmonious multicultural cohesion, Australian immigration policy—specifically in regards to Irregular Maritime Arrivals—is still significantly influenced by racist ideology. While they have conceptually abandoned ideas of a White Australia, contemporary governments have strayed little from historical convictions of ‘race’ difference. In this way, the thesis suggests that successive Australian governments have successfully coalesced an overt multiculturalism with a covert racism that effectively conceals the political nature of race itself. The fundamental argument of the thesis is therefore that in the Australian context, race is often mistakenly viewed in isolated terms or attributed to its White Australia Past. Ideas of race however, are not simply a part of Australian history and rather are structural, thereby continuing to resound in Australia’s contemporary refugee policies. The thesis therefore contends that the arrival of asylum seekers and refugees on leaky boats provided (and continues to provide) a perfect opportunity for successive Australian governments to enact race ideology without appearing racist. In assessing Australia’s outward claim of multiculturalism alongside the continued maintenance of deeply exclusionist political policy, this thesis traces the development of Australian immigration policy—specifically in regards to the treatment of asylum seekers who arrive by boat—to show that ideas of race not only form an integral part of Australian history, but that they continue to resound and manifest in Australia’s contemporary refugee and immigration policies