Asylum seekers experience occupational deprivation in the context of restrictive social structures while awaiting refugee visa-status determination. How do social structures of citizenship status and policy shape asylum seekers’ experiences? Asylum seekers’ experiences in Australia are examined using constructivist grounded theory. Field notes from 10 months of weekly participant observation, 11 formal interviews, 34 survey responses and four policy documents are combined to identify a substantive theory - the Structural-Personal Interaction (SPI). The SPI explains how occupational deprivation arises from an interaction between social structures and personal characteristics. Social structures of citizenship status and policy interact with asylum seekers’ personal characteristics, resulting in experiences of “having nothing to do”, a fundamental component of occupational deprivation. From the SPI, new insights regarding occupational deprivation emerge. Occupational deprivation can stem from an inte...

The structural-personal interaction: Occupational deprivation and asylum seekers in Australia

The number of refugees and internally displaced people is rising every minute worldwide. Furthermore, new categories of refugees, such as climate refugees or nuclear refugees, are adding to the traditional groups of natural disaster and war refugees. Implementing research with this complicated group poses numerous ethical issues for researchers. In this article, the author categorizes refugee groups and presents different concerns and obstacles that may arise during research with diverse communities of refugees. The author discusses ways to cope with sensitive areas of study and examines several options of ethically interviewing refugees, cooperating with host community leaders, trusted members of the society, gatekeepers, and translators.

Ethical Concerns With Refugee Research

INTRODUCTION Scared, shivering, and disheveled, thousands of people float across the Indian Ocean from Asia to reach Australia (1) in search of freedom from the persecution that they face in their homes (2) After these "boat people" land on Australian shores, they are housed in camps, waiting for a better life However, the same hopeful sentiment is not reflected by the receiving country For example, between 2009 and 2010 there was a thirty-one percent increase in asylum seekers in Australia (3) As a result, Australian politics have been in turmoil, trying to create a comprehensive policy to address the thousands of asylum seekers that land on its shores (4) At the end of 2009, there were 433 million forcibly displaced people worldwide (5) Of these, 152 million were refugees and, of that number, 983,000 were asylum seekers (6) More than 922,000 individual claims for asylum or refugee status were registered in 2009, with South Africa receiving the world's largest number of individual applications, followed by the United States and France (7) These refugees have escaped political and cultural persecution for their political views, sexual preference, or gender However, when they arrive at their destination country, they face confusion and uncertainty Asylum seekers encounter several challenges in the current refugee system They endure protracted refugee situations, (8) secondary refugee flows, (9) the extra-territorialization of migration controls, (10) new forms of displacement and asylum, (11) wide discrepancies in the recognition of asylum status, contraction of asylum policies and practices by states, (12) and inconsistencies in refugee status determination (RSD) mechanisms (13) The main issue underlying all of these challenges is the problem of, and confusion surrounding, the determination of state obligations to asylum seekers Human rights are indivisible and inalienable, (14) but states have discretion in granting and providing some of these rights to asylum seekers because no international covenant obligates them to do so There is no uniform system to determine the obligations that states have to asylum seekers other than the base requirements outlined in the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, the main international document on refugees In fact, states, international organizations, and publicists (15) differ on the methodology that should be used to determine these obligations A consensus-based approach is the appropriate method of determining and expanding state obligations within the 1951 Convention But recent attempts to expand the rights of asylum seekers through the new method of evolutionary interpretation of treaties could result in an unpredictable and unwanted application of the 1951 Convention, leaving asylum seekers unsure of their rights and options The application of the classical tenets of customary international law to these obligations offers a better chance of creating stability in the asylum system for both asylum seekers and states While such an approach appears to provide less immediate relief to asylum seekers, the consistency and stability that results from customary international law yields benefits that outweigh the loss in immediate relief This Note examines how states and asylum advocates should determine state obligations to asylum seekers, asserting that states should expand their obligations to asylum seekers based on new norms of customary international law In doing so, Part I introduces some basic refugee law concepts and discusses in detail the aforementioned challenges for states and asylum seekers Part II outlines three different modalities that the international community may use to determine these obligations and asserts that applying the theory of evolutionary interpretation of treaties to the 1951 Convention Relating to Refugees is an unpredictable method of expanding state obligations to asylum seekers that fails to adequately address the problem …

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Manasi Raveendran

Papers

Plight of the Boat People: How to Determine State Obligations to Asylum Seekers