Detention and Dwelling: Levinas and the refuge of the asylum seeker

Abstract

The Australian government introduced mandatory immigration detention in 1992 as a means of deterring ‘unauthorised arrivals’ from coming to these shores and it has since been supported and extended by successive federal governments. Whilst immigration detention only forms one component of Australia’s Migration Act 1958 (Cth), it has attracted widespread attention in recent years as the federal government has turned increasingly towards modifications in the Act, arguably as a means of augmenting its capacity to exercise punitive control. Such modifications, aside from the introduction of mandatory detention, have included the introduction of offshore processing, whereby asylum seekers are dis..