Sub Ratione Dei

Tampering with Asylum

Frank Brennan, Tampering with Asylum: A Universal Humanitarian Problem,University of Queensland Press, Rev ed, 2007.

I have been reading quite a lot on the politics of asylum recently, mainly because it is to my mind a direct corollary of what has been termed the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) in international relations - although I am not aware of much written directly on the relation of the two. In the same way that R2P is a doctrine made "on the fly", that is, if state actors were genuinely sovereign (based on R2P's doctrine of sovereignty) there would be no external responsibility to protect by international actors and therefore an a posteriori argument, likewise the refugee, as Emma Haddad has argued, is an anomalous phenomenon - since sovereignty implies sufficiency of protection to all state residents, there should be no such phenomenon as a person unable to avail themselves of sufficient protection in their country of origin, irrespective of reason. That there is phenomenon such as "the refugee" and "the failed state" shows that such ideal theory is suspect at best. In any case, back to the book at hand. Tampering with Asylum is the third book I have read recently written from a critical advocate's perspective (the first was Dummett, the second Hayter), it is also the best. At the background of Brennan's account which focuses on the Australian Government's asylum / temporary protection policies is the Tampa incident where a large number of - at the time assumed - Afghan asylum seekers picked up by a merchant ship were forcibly prevented from entering Australian territorial waters. They were therefore prevented from making an in-country claim for asylum which, as a signatory of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. they would have been obliged to consider. The Tampa incident, which garnered widespread attention, is not an isolated case. The majority of asylum seekers / refugees come from two sources. First, there are those 12000 individuals accorded refugee status outside Australia by the officials working for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) who Australia accepts annually and secondly there are those who enter the country through legal means (those with visas) who then claim in country. Although the systems to deal with the above two groups are discussed it is not on these groups of people on whom Brennan focuses. Instead Brennan concentrates on the relatively small number of "boat people" (such as those aboard the Tampa) who attempt to enter Australia without visas. Such individuals, the Australian Government contends (according to Brennan), are predominately "Secondary Movers"; that is, individuals who have chosen to travel to Australia when they have already passed through other safe countries where a claim for asylum could have reasonably been made. It is against this backdrop that the Government instituted a number of (for me highly suspect) efforts to create a "firebreak" this involves off-shore processing of asylum applications (applicants are not deemed to have entered Australia), upstream disruption (physically paying foreign governments to stop departures of boats to Australian shores), full detention of all applicants, including children. While some of Brennan's conclusions are outdated - the new government has somewhat liberalised the treatment of asylum seekers - the book is still a very good comparative study of different asylum regimes, especially Canada, US, UK and Germany albeit the actual moral criticism is not particularly thought out (I don't say they're wrong, just not well argued).

Buy the Book ... Abe, Amazon (UK), Amazon (US), News From Nowhere.

Elsewhere ... A speech Brennan gave at the book's launch. A blog on the subject by Andrew Bartlett, a former State Senator in Australia. A critical review of the book (PDF) References Emma Haddad, The Refugee in International Society: Between Sovereigns (UK Link), Cambridge University Press, 2008.

The Next Christendom

Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, Oxford UP, 2002.

I do not often buy books on the basis of seeing the book alone, certainly not when we're talking about new books. Instead, sometimes I'll see books mentioned online and do a little research. More often then not however I'll pick up a book based on what the references in other books, normally footnotes. By and large I've found this approach useful - if experts rely or interact with a text it's a pretty good indication it's going to be worth my time. Whether The Next Christendom is the exception that proves the rule remains to be seen, that it is an exception is however clear.

The book, as readers will no doubt have encountered, is referenced heavily in religious and theological literature with the resulting impression that the book constitutes a major advance in scholarship. Now maybe I've missed something and the argument is more subtle than I have apprehended but the The Next Christendom seems to me to be a 200+ page exercise in stating the bloody obvious. As the world population and secularisation (immigration excluded) of the west (which is, it seems, finally hitting the US HT Halden) global Christianity has and will continue to take a southward trend with the new centre being Africa and Latin-America and what was once termed Christendom will find itself more and more marginalised as a player in Christianity's development. To coin a technical theological phrase: No shit, Sherlock!

It is not that the book is bad, it has a thesis and presents it well if a little too repetitively. But the interesting questions that this re-alignment means are by and large ignored. Unfortunately the time I spent reading this is lost to me forever but if my experience can help convince someone else they don't need to go through the same experience then I will take some solace from the fact.