Australian settlement education policy, representations and material effects for refugee women

Reinvoking Marston’s (2004) view that the subjects of social policy can be represented from privileged positions as innately problematic, I look for the ‘problem subject’ upon whom Australian policy is premised. Marston counsels that it can be useful to understand how certain social issues come to be constituted as ‘problems’ and, ‘how certain meanings come to be partially fi xed within the cultural practices that govern the identifi ed “target” population’ (Marston 2004, 77). I do this by looking to the ‘solution’ that is provided for the problem (Bacchi 1999); that is, I look to certain purposes of Australian settlement education and broad aspects of the curriculum provided as indicators of what is seen to be problematic about participant subjects.