ABSTRACT
The Stop the Boats! era is an extreme yet endemic feature of 21st-century Australian politics and foreign affairs. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, referred to Australia’s border control as ‘very strange’, ‘very, very, very dramatic’ and ‘a kind of collective sociological and psychological question’. The answer to this question lies in the steady yet incremental way that asylum and irregular migration were militarized during the Stop the Boats! era. During this time, boatpeople were regarded not as people on the move or seeking protection, but rather as imperilling Australia’s values and security. They were demonized and dehumanized for political gain by both the Liberal-National Coalition and the Labor Party, which reasoned that border control was necessary to both retain and win votes. The Conclusion of this book considers better approaches to asylum and forms of nation-building that are informed by Indigenous people, feminists and refugees themselves.
