ABSTRACT

Based on research among internally displaced people in Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, this chapter examines the intentions of those seeking refuge. It explains that although some respondents felt that theoretically the only secure option was the internationally coordinated, legal, migration, they were thoroughly sceptical of it coming to fruition. Popular and political discourses continue to routinely condemn asylum seekers for not adhering to rules of law or of fair play. The chaotic nature of refugee dispersal and the resettlement process does not function according to developed country notions of efficient social service. Interviews were carried out over a period of several months in 2010-2011 among Sri Lankan Tamils in Jaffna and Afghanis in Kabul and Jalalabad. As the former Liberal Party MP Petro Georgiou suggested, if the uninvited offend against one's preference for an orderly migration process, attending to the stories of asylum seekers themselves can persuasively elucidate why escaping from persecution is not an orderly process.