Offshoring International Law? Australia and the Right to Seek Asylum

For many years now, liberal democracies have pursued controversial asylum and border control practices to prevent and deter potential asylum seekers from accessing their in-country asylum systems. Australia is arguably the most extreme and visible proponent of this broader trend in its response to boatpeople arrivals. How can we explain Australia’s shift from implementing and supporting an onshore asylum and border control system (1950s to late 1990s) to one in which those practices are carried out offshore (2001 to present)? Understandably, most observers evaluate this development using arguments about domestic politics and self-interest to explain Australia’s shift in practices. Others maintain that these states actually acknowledge international law, but only because of its instrumental and strategic value. Finding prevailing accounts incomplete and unsatisfying, my dissertation takes a different approach. I use a longitudinal assessment of the relationship between the legal norm governing the right to seek asylum and Australia’s response to boatpeople over time. I argue that the legal norm both shaped and was shaped by Australia’s response to boatpeople. By straddling the divide between domestic and international levels of analysis and treating legal norms as dynamic, I find that Australia’s response to boatpeople can be more accurately explained using a constructivist theory of legal norms.Ph.D