The Sri Lankan Civil War and Australia's Migration Policy Response: A Historical Case Study with Contemporary Implications

Betts, Judith; Higgins, Claire

doi:10.1002/app5.181

Cited by 53 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…All participants migrated to Australia in the 1980s and 1990s with the stated intention of escaping the armed violence and economic instability of the civil war in Sri Lanka that lasted from 1983 to 2009 (see Betts & Higgins, 2017; De Mel et al., 2012). Despite the war, participants had access to public primary, secondary, and tertiary education in their home country and, in Australia, to courses in universities, enabling employment in professions that were also included in Australia's points‐based migration system as jobs in high demand.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Digital media, ageing and faith: Older Sri Lankan migrants in Australia and their digital articulations of transnational religion

2022

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To date, older adults have received little attention in the newly emerging technological narratives of transnational religion. This is surprising, given the strong association of later life with spiritual and religious engagement, but it likely reflects the ongoing assumption that older adults are technophobic or technologically incompetent. Drawing on ethnographic interviews with older Sinhalese Buddhist migrants from Sri Lanka, living in Melbourne, this paper explores the digital articulations of transnational religion that arise from older migrants' uses of digital media. We focus on how engagements with digital media enable older Sinhalese to respond to an urgent need to accumulate merit in later life, facilitating their temporal strategies for ageing as migrants. We argue that these digital articulations transform both the religious imaginary and the religious practices that validate and legitimize a life well-lived.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Digital media, ageing and faith: Older Sri Lankan migrants in Australia and their digital articulations of transnational religion

2022

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“…The White Australia policy that prevented people of colour from migrating to Australia was abolished in 1973 (Jupp, 2007: 6–10), and a decade later, the civil war in Sri Lanka that began in 1983 saw Sri Lankans increasingly choosing Australia as a safe haven for migration. However, as the majority ethnicity in Sri Lanka, the Sinhalese were not entitled for humanitarian visas, unlike the persecuted Tamil minority (Betts and Higgins, 2017). Sinhalese, hence, sought to migrate as professionals through Australia’s points-based skilled migration system.…”

Section: Situating Sri Lankans In a Multicultural Australiamentioning

confidence: 99%

Migration, identity, and television audiences: Sri Lankan women’s soap opera clubs and diasporic life in Melbourne

Gamage

2020

Media International Australia

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This article examines a soap opera club of Sri Lankan Sinhalese migrant women in Melbourne and their collective engagement with television soap operas from the home country. Teledramas, as Sri Lankan Sinhalese-language soap operas are known, have a predominantly female viewership in Sri Lanka and also constitute a significant presence in the media diets of Sinhalese migrant women in Melbourne, and elsewhere in the world. Furthermore, at a women’s teledrama club affiliated to a Sri Lankan diasporic association, Sinhalese migrant women come together to exchange and archive reproduced DVDs of teledramas broadcast in Sri Lanka, bought from Sri Lankan grocery shops in Melbourne. This article builds on ethnographic research conducted at the teledrama club to show how what may appear to be an informal gathering of female teledrama fans is complexly interwoven into the expression of identity and belonging in Australian society. The article positions trans-Asia media flows in Australia within the everyday lives of migrants by examining the Sri Lankan soap opera club as a gendered space as well as a cultural space of identity, belonging and expression. This article finds that the teledrama club provided the women a symbolic national identity as an audience and the Sri Lankan narratives offered audiovisual access to the value systems of their distant geography and past.

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“…Implementing this 'turn back the boats' policy meant that Sri Lankan Tamil asylum-seekers were transferred to offshore detention centres on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea, or on Nauru Island (J. Betts & Higgins, 2016). Since then, constant maritime interception has been carried out by Australian Border Force officials in order to combat boat smuggling of Sri Lankans to Australia.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stuck in transit: asylum-seeking habitus and onward migration aspirations of Sri Lankan Tamil asylum-seekers in Bangkok

Shum

2022

Migration and Development

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Asylum-seekers nowadays undertake multiple journeys before reaching a country of resettlement. In Southeast Asia, several countries are playing important roles as transit locations. This paper focuses on Thailand, which serves as a major transit point for Sri Lankan Tamil asylum-seekers who hope to move to resettlement countries through irregular channels. Drawing on in-depth interviews and ethnographic observations from 2018 to 2019, this paper examines the Sri Lankan Tamil asylum-seekers' migration experiences in Bangkok, and how they plan their onward migration and utilise connection networks. Moving beyond traditional pull-push approach that standardises reasons to flee, this research uses asylum-seeking habitus as a conceptual lens to explore the interactive process between structure (economic and cultural) and asylumseekers, and individual/communal interpretations of such structural environment that trigger onward migration aspirations of asylumseekers in a transit country. In Bangkok, because lived experiences do not meet personal and/or familial expectations, insecurity prevails following news from others in their networks, which then triggers onward migratory disposition among Sri Lankan Tamil asylum-seekers. Asylum-seeking habitus as a conceptual lens provides a useful approach in assisting us in understanding asylumseekers' vision of autonomy by investigating their changing perceptions of security at different stages of the journey.

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The Sri Lankan Civil War and Australia's Migration Policy Response: A Historical Case Study with Contemporary Implications

Abstract: Sri Lanka's civil war lasted almost 26 years and cost tens of thousands of lives. Since

Cited by 53 publications

References 4 publications

Digital media, ageing and faith: Older Sri Lankan migrants in Australia and their digital articulations of transnational religion

Digital media, ageing and faith: Older Sri Lankan migrants in Australia and their digital articulations of transnational religion

Migration, identity, and television audiences: Sri Lankan women’s soap opera clubs and diasporic life in Melbourne

Stuck in transit: asylum-seeking habitus and onward migration aspirations of Sri Lankan Tamil asylum-seekers in Bangkok

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