Suchergebnisse

Institutional confinement is paradoxically characterised by intense surveillance, while those confined are often rendered invisible as persons of value and agency. Our capacity to 'see' violence in such sites can also be harder to discern when it is the manifestation of neglect: not so much as mistreatment but untreatment, the failure to act. Drawing on Mbembe's concept of necropolitics and Agamben's conceptualisation of the exception and abandonment, I propose that the deaths resulting from the untreated skin wounds of Annunziata Nancy Santoro, in aged care, and those of Hamid Khazaei, in immigration detention, are the effect of their location in what I call 'zones of neglect'. Whether in places of care or punishment, neglect functions here as a form of power, in which responsibility for suffering paradoxically recedes from view. This analysis contributes to a growing body of research on quasi-carceral sites that sit uneasily along a continuum of care and control.

The outsourcing of refugee protection obligations is reshaping state relations in the Asia Pacific and Southeast Asian region and has underscored a progressively punitive approach to 'irregular' refugee movement. Such a shift can be partially but importantly traced to the deterrent foundations of Australia's dual-track processing system, introduced as an outcome of the 1989 Comprehensive Plan of Action on Indochinese Refugees (CPA). Although the CPA was a multilateral attempt to improve access to refugee protection through a coordinated regional response, in many respects it undermined the potential for refugee protection. By examining the history and motivations of regional responses, we can trace their impact as an exercise in either affirming or disavowing regional responsibility for refugee protection, while enabling some states to retain and even increase their capacity for control in the region. Given the call by the Global Compact on Refugees for coordinated regionally responsive approaches based on humanitarian principles, the crafting of regional and global plans, their motives and their governing logic, require ongoing and careful attention to ascertain the forms of responsibility or irresponsibility for refugee protection which they might sustain over time.

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In August 2019, academics, practitioners and advocates as well as individuals with lived experiences of confinement, came together at the University of Melbourne to reflect on the parallels between the spaces and practices of care and control in diverse sites of confinement. This research workshop sought to generate insights into places of confinement from varying perspectives. In the following dialogue between former migration support worker, Judge, and one of the editors of this Special Themed Collection of papers, Loughnan, the daily violence of Australia's immigration detention system is brought to light. Judge shares her stories of working in regional offshore processing centres. This provides important insights into the Australian government's border protection policies, described as one of the harshest in the world. Judge witnessed this first-hand when she was employed by the Australian Government to implement these policies and laws as a migration support worker. During this time, she was consistently faced with a tension between her role responsibility and her ethical obligations to others. The decisions she made to document these practices, to resist and then speak out have had a lasting impact on her: she says she is compelled to continue to document these stories, despite the severity of potential criminal repercussions for doing so under 'gag orders' on imposed on detention staff through laws enacted by the Australian Government.

On 9 August 2019, a workshop convened at the University of Melbourne, Australia, brought together academics, practitioners and advocates to explore patterns of violence and neglect within and across a range of confined settings: youth and adult prisons, immigration detention, aged and disability care and residential 'child protection'. Some of the participants in that workshop reflect here in eight pieces of writing that comprise this Special Themed Collection on 'Confinement: The spaces and practice of care and control'. The contributions are anchored and connected by the parallels in how violence manifests within and across these diverse sites of confinement – corporeally and subtly, individually and collectively. Yet as we reflect, separately and together, the differentiation and demarcation of these sites and systems of confinement serves to maintain their material and symbolic separation, and to conceal their connecting threads and commonalities. In our Editorial Introduction, we draw out themes running through the contributions to illustrate how they connect and collide, and how they illuminate intersections, differences and (sometimes unexpected) resonances between spaces, practices, settings and experiences of confinement. We identify three themes running through the seven other pieces that comprise this collection: erasure, identity and voice. Against the backdrop of the global pandemic and its implications for how we think about and experience freedom, autonomy, isolation and connection, we consider these themes: how violence is hidden from view and erased from public and political memory; how identities are shaped and swallowed by institutional practices and patterns of dehumanisation, coercion and control; and how the voices of those with lived experience of confinement – both as 'keepers' and the confined – help deepen our understanding of the threads that connect and comprise the carceral webs in which we are all entangled.

What role does physical and virtual space play in gender-based violence (GBV)? Experts from the Global North and South use wide-ranging case studies - from public harassment in India and Kenya to harassment on Twitter - to examine how spaces can facilitate or prevent GBV and showcase strategies for prevention and intervention. Students and academics from a range of disciplines will discover how existing research connects with practice and policy developments, the current gaps in research and a future agenda for GBV studies