Refugee Without Refuge: Wasim, Phillip Adams, and a Nation Divided

JOURNAL OF PACIFIC RIM PSYCHOLOGY Volume 4, Issue 1 pp. 7–18 Address for correspondence: Dr Anne Pedersen, School of Psychology, Murdoch University, Murdoch, WA, 6150, Australia. E-mail: A.Pedersen@murdoch. edu.au or Dr Farida Fozdar, Sociology, School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Murdoch WA 6150, Australia. E-mail: [email protected] The present study develops previous research that examined the situation of a stateless asylum seeker Wasim who has been in Australia for over 10 years without resolution of his situation (Pedersen, Kenny, Briskman, & Hoffman, 2008). Before we outline this particular case, a little background about asylum seeker issues in Australia is appropriate. Australia’s migration policy includes a quota for people who need humanitarian assistance. These places are usually filled offshore with the help of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR); however, some people arrive in Australia by other means and apply for refugee status once here — they are known as asylum seekers. For the last decade, those who arrive without any visa (i.e., usually those who come on unauthorised boats), were held in detention centres until a determination on their case was made. Until 2007, asylum seekers would only be granted temporary protection visas, even if found to be genuine refugees. These asylum seekers, along with those on other visa categories such as temporary humanitarian visas and removal pending bridging visas, were provided limited rights for a limited time (Crock & Saul, 2002; Holinsworth, 2006; Mares, 2002). Asylum seekers have regularly been used for political ends and the issue was credited for the conservative Coalition government’s 2001 electoral win and for the popular appeal of Prime Minister John Howard (Gale, 2004; Jupp, 2002). Discursive analyses of the media and politicians’ speeches identify a climate of hostility that surrounds asylum seekers and refugees. They are routinely represented as illegal, illegitimate and threatening and are constructed not simply as a problem, but as deviant in a variety of ways. To depict asylum seekers as ungrateful, unworthy, aggressive, demanding, economically draining, polluting and different, the language of war and of criminality is recruited (see Gale, 2004; Mares, 2002; Manne & Corlett, 2004; Pickering, 2001; Saxton, 2003). The use of dehumanising terms such as ‘human cargo’ and ‘illegals’, and accusations of deviance such as ‘throwing children overboard’ in order to lure rescue ships, and being queue-jumpers, reinforce the difference between ‘them’ and ‘us’. It is in this context that the discussion of Wasim’s case occurred. Wasim is from Indian-controlled Kashmir; his father was murdered by the Indian forces and his mother died shortly afterward. Wasim was arrested and tortured for 10 days and then taken to what was likely to be his Refugee Without Refuge: Wasim, Phillip Adams, and a Nation Divided