ABSTRACT
Jason, as I lay the contours of how I envisage engaging with you in this dialogue I’ll start with the part of my story related to this topic. My personal and professional life has been dominated by experiences related to displacement. The experiences vary – personal displacement through family migration from England to Australia in 1980, professional practice with refugees and asylum seekers fleeing war, and research practice with people/communities experiencing what can be understood as development induced displacement (DID). I have worked with refugees/asylum seekers from El Salvador, Guatemala, Peru, Chile, Sudan, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan … a long list that could go on. And I have worked to understand DID particularly among communities in the Pacific nation of Vanuatu and the African nation of Uganda. It is these elements of displacement, war and conflict, and people’s response to them, that intrigues me in this essay.
