Seeking Asylum in a Global World

The book looks at refugee and asylum policies of
Australia, Canada and New Zealand in light of
current debates on globalisation and citizenship.
The resettlement of refugees was a by product of the
Cold War, coupled with a quest on to boost
populations and to fulfil labour shortages. The
pressures of global restructuring have resulted in a
reformulation of refugee policies. The
once humanitarian responses have been converted into
policies of containment, with increased controls to
prevent the arrival of asylum seekers. Measures
imposed have resulted in barriers for asylum seekers
and exclusion by nation states by reference to
national sovereignty and security. The
authors stress that so called illegal migration is
primarily related to the political and economic
structures across the world, primacy of
transnational capital. Border controls and
interdiction measures are bound to fail as they
reinforce this divide.The authors call for the
entrenchment of rightsfirmly into the Refugee
Convention as well as the development of a new form
of citizenship, where citizenship and belonging is
not embedded in a single nation.