This article explores inconsistencies between Australia’s idealised identity as a modern egalitarian society concerned with the welfare of all and the economic and social reality for a significant and growing number of citizens.

Abstract: Border anxieties pervade discussions of refugees, asylum seekers and the defence of white privilege. Many scholars have explored the significance of borderlands/borderscapes in shaping and defending the white western self. The defence of a ‘vulnerable’ white subject includes the demonisation of the asylum seeker other and a deep fear of the erosion of ‘patriarchal...

This report begins by examining what is, in the committee’s view, a fundamental question in the administration of the Migration Act – the nature of the Minister’s responsibility for the actions and administrative ‘culture’ of their department. It then assess the migration process in roughly the order in which an applicant will encounter them: initial...

In this research brief, Peter Prince discusses legal issues arising from the mistaken detention of Cornelia Rau, an Australian permanent resident, under the Commonwealth Migration Act for some 10 months between the end of March 2004 and early February 2005.