ABSTRACT
This chapter considers governance implications of the externalisation of asylum policy. It argues that the governance response to people seeking asylum demonstrates the politics of distance. It is a distancing from effective governance, signifying governance by distance. This has a corrosive effect on the legitimacy of states and of the European Union, assessed in both normative and empirical terms. The chapter examines this politics of distance in Europe and Australia, focusing on two dimensions of externalisation: the values distance and the knowledge distance. It argues that states place themselves at a distance from their espoused values and from knowledge and scrutiny of refugee policy. The attempts to shift responsibility beyond borders undermine the legitimacy of states and the European Union as credible governance actors, not only delegitimating them but also rendering as legitimate and acceptable that which had in the past been considered as unacceptable, with a resultant crisis of governance with a dissonance of values and objectives. Australia, the European Union and European states cannot lay claim to being actors with values. The politics of distance comprehends responsibility-divestment in abandonment of respect for human beings and constitutes an undermining of refugees – one that that requires contestation.
