Manus to Meanjin: A case study of refugee migration, polymorphic borders and Australian ‘imperialism’

Abstract

This non-traditional research article argues that the refugee and asylum-seeker protests in Brisbane’s Kangaroo Point between April 2, 2020 and April 14, 2021 can be viewed against a backdrop of Australian colonialism—where successive Australian governments have used former colonies in Nauru and Manus Island in Papua New Guinea as offshore detention facilities—as a dumping ground for asylum-seekers. Within the same context this article argues that the men’s removal to the Kangaroo Point Alternative Place of Detention is a continuation of this colonial policy of incarcerating ‘undesirables’ on occupied land, in this case on Meanjin—Jagera land identified by the colonial name of Brisbane. This extension of Australian sub-imperial and neo-colonial dominion and the imagining of its boundaries is viewed though the theoretical prism of a polymorphic border, a border that shifts and morphs depending on who attempts to cross it. In a departure from orthodox research practice, this article will use visual storytelling drawn from photojournalism praxis alongside more traditional text-based research prose. In doing so, it will use photo-journalistic artifacts and the visual politics that surround them, as core dialogical components in the presentation of the article as opposed to using them as mere illustrations or props.

Necropolitics as accumulation: Enforcement and enclosure in Brisbane during COVID-19

“…Rather, drawing these experiences together better exposes ‘colonialism's multiple, uneven yet interlocking, violences' ( Vimalassery et al, 2016 ). Australia's colonial past is central to understanding the experiences of migration governance in general, and the holding of migrants at Brisbane's Kangaroo Point APOD, in particular ( Ubayasiri, 2021 ). The ‘polymorphic borders’ ( Burridge et al, 2017 ) of Australia's neo-colonial present, which morph depending on who tries to cross it, are crucial to thinking about bordering as practices of division that bring together colonial pasts and presents.…”

“…The distinctive rock hints at the violence that has long clung to the city as Brisbane, and specifically Kangaroo Point, have become key border enforcement sites in Australia. Here, Australia's colonial past and its neo-colonial present converge in the forms of enclosure levelled on racialized and marginalized populations ( Ubayasiri, 2021 ). These uneven social brutalities were acute during the COVID-19 pandemic.…”

Border hotels: Spaces of detention and quarantine

“…Vehicles crossing the compound were searched for ‘intruders’ and contraband going in, across the Federal government’s ‘border checkpoint’, by security subcontractors working for Serco - the Australian Federal government’s transnational detention centre contactor headquartered in the UK; while on the other side of the Queensland state police perimeter, anti-detention activists checked for attempts to spirit refugees out to higher security detention centres elsewhere. State sovereignty, divested and subcontracted, challenged accepted binaries of state/nonstate and legitimacy/illegitimacy, hybridising sovereignty (Fregonese, 2012) and re-spatialising the border (Chambers, 2015; Devetak, 2004; Ubayasiri, 2021) – exposing its polymorphic nature, wherein the border no longer represented the unbroken edge of Australia’s territorial sovereignty projected in traditionalist narratives as “coherent, monstrous, omnipotent and omniscient” (Burridge et al, 2017: 239).…”