Leaking boats and borders: The virtu of surveilling Australia’s refugee population

TY - JOUR

T1 - Leaking boats and borders

T2 - The virtu of surveilling Australia’s refugee population

AU - Heemsbergen, Luke

AU - Daly, Angela

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © The author(s), 2017.

PY - 2017

Y1 - 2017

N2 - When refugees displaced to Australia’s offshore detention do speak, it is through surveillance upended through publicity and violations of privacy. Weak legal rights to privacy in Australia juxtapose the increasing secrecy under which the Australian state operates its own offshore detention centres (Manus Island and Nauru) while increasing the mandate of data retention at home. Australia’s institutional context offers visibility to these concerns of surveillance whereby we find an acceleration of prohibitive privacy for government and prohibitive transparency for individuals. Our analysis of this country synthesises media-law in practice with theories of mediated visibility (Flyverbom 2016, 2017; Brighenti 2010), to understand Australian privacy, media and immigration law in the context of pervasive surveillance and the radical management of visibility. Our contribution speaks to applicable privacy concerns for states grappling with invasive data collection and its relation to the (prohibiting of the private) voice of the surveilled, which we see as doubly acute for those left vulnerable in Australia’s borderzones.

AB - When refugees displaced to Australia’s offshore detention do speak, it is through surveillance upended through publicity and violations of privacy. Weak legal rights to privacy in Australia juxtapose the increasing secrecy under which the Australian state operates its own offshore detention centres (Manus Island and Nauru) while increasing the mandate of data retention at home. Australia’s institutional context offers visibility to these concerns of surveillance whereby we find an acceleration of prohibitive privacy for government and prohibitive transparency for individuals. Our analysis of this country synthesises media-law in practice with theories of mediated visibility (Flyverbom 2016, 2017; Brighenti 2010), to understand Australian privacy, media and immigration law in the context of pervasive surveillance and the radical management of visibility. Our contribution speaks to applicable privacy concerns for states grappling with invasive data collection and its relation to the (prohibiting of the private) voice of the surveilled, which we see as doubly acute for those left vulnerable in Australia’s borderzones.

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85027402805

U2 - 10.24908/ss.v15i3/4.6629

DO - 10.24908/ss.v15i3/4.6629

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85027402805

VL - 15

SP - 389

EP - 396

JO - Surveillance and Society

JF - Surveillance and Society

IS - 3-4

ER -