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Book part
Publication date: 10 June 2019

Jennifer Balint

This chapter discusses the use of law and legal institutions by the emerging social movement seeking to end Australia’s policy of mandatory detention for refugees and asylum…

Abstract

This chapter discusses the use of law and legal institutions by the emerging social movement seeking to end Australia’s policy of mandatory detention for refugees and asylum seekers. Through an examination of Australian inquiries and court cases alongside social campaigns, it considers the ability of legal institutional responses to identify the harms, in particular state and institutional responsibility, and the subsequent impact of these legal processes in inhibiting and promoting social and structural change. It shows how social movements are harnessing law and creating new legal and civic spaces in which to contest Australia’s refugee and asylum seeker regime.

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Studies in Law, Politics, and Society
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78973-727-1

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Book part
Publication date: 19 January 2023

Sunaina Gowan

Since 1945, there have been significant changes in the pattern of Indian overseas immigration. Australia has become a popular destination for Indians, particularly skilled…

Abstract

Since 1945, there have been significant changes in the pattern of Indian overseas immigration. Australia has become a popular destination for Indians, particularly skilled immigrants, during this time. Until the 1950s, Australia maintained a strict ‘White Australia’ immigration policy, which was eased by a formal agreement to favour immigrants from select European nations, particularly the United Kingdom. The policy’s original aim was to increase the population for defence purposes. Its goal in the 1950s and 1960s was to bring in workers to help with Australia’s industrial development. It wasn’t until the 1970s that Australia began to see the benefits of a multicultural immigration policy, a mostly bipartisan approach that has helped Australia’s economy grow and its society become one of the world’s most progressive. By the early 1990s, the immigration policy had become more flexible, incorporating humanitarian, social, and economic goals. Over the previous two decades, the policy has placed a strong focus on skilled immigration. As a result, Australia now has a genuinely global immigration policy that promotes a culturally diversified and socially united society. In Australia, the pattern of immigration has changed dramatically, and the Indian population is rapidly growing. Even though most of the research on cultural diversity in Australia has centred on unskilled foreign labour, many immigrants hold management positions. On a daily basis, however, several of them face prejudice, discrimination, and racism.

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The Ethnically Diverse Workplace: Experience of Immigrant Indian Professionals in Australia
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80382-053-8

Book part
Publication date: 23 November 2023

Biplab Debnath

Uncontrollable movement of people across international borders is one of most pressing contemporary challenge encountered by nation-states. Their response to this challenge is…

Abstract

Uncontrollable movement of people across international borders is one of most pressing contemporary challenge encountered by nation-states. Their response to this challenge is often rooted on a reconceptualisation of (in)security from a state-centric to a non-state-centric one. This has been the case with Australia where insecurity from asylum seekers, or what is referred to as the ‘boat people’, dominating the country's discourse on protecting its borders. Such conceptions are rooted on historical anxieties from ‘foreigners’, resulting in exclusionary policies of ‘White Australia’ to recent assertions of exclusive sovereignty over the refugee intake. In this context, while reviewing government documents, reports and other secondary sources, the chapter examines Australia's policy towards asylum seekers domestically as well as at the regional level, while placing them within the broader debate between deterrence and human rights. The chapter is significant as it provides an important case study of the inherent contradictions that come into light in a nation-state's response towards refugees on the one hand and undocumented arrivals, in this case, the ‘boat people’ on the other. This chapter provides analytical support to the primary assertion that while Australia has been an active international player regarding refugee issues, there is bipartisan exclusivity and hard-handedness towards asylum seekers.

Abstract

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Sport Business in Leading Economies
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78743-564-3

Book part
Publication date: 18 October 2017

Lucy Taksa and Dimitria Groutsis

Most publications on the management of diversity in Western countries pay homage to history by referring back to the way regulatory frameworks developed to promote equal treatment…

Abstract

Most publications on the management of diversity in Western countries pay homage to history by referring back to the way regulatory frameworks developed to promote equal treatment and to oppose discrimination. In work on English speaking countries, particular attention has been given to the struggles waged in the USA for civil rights and for gender equality in the 1960s and their impact on the emergence of equal employment opportunity and affirmative action laws and policies. Generally, these developments are depicted as the antecedents to the emergence of diversity management in the USA. This genealogical orientation is usually designed to establish historical foundations. However, as we see it, this approach to history has promoted an impression of linear evolution. Our general aim in this chapter is to show how an historical perspective can help uncover continuities in regard to equal employment opportunity, affirmative action and diversity management policies and strategies in Australia, particularly in relation to the management of cultural diversity in Australian workplaces. Rather than seeing development in linear terms, our aim is to highlight connections and the implications of such connections. Accordingly, this chapter relates each of these policies/strategies to analogous political and legal developments that emerged concurrently, in particular such initiatives as multiculturalism, anti-discrimination laws and what became known in Australia as ‘productive diversity’ policies.

Book part
Publication date: 6 October 2017

Howard Harris

Various achievements of Australia in the field of applied ethics from the 1980s to 2016 are outlined. The review covers academic scholarship, research and teaching; the ethics of…

Abstract

Various achievements of Australia in the field of applied ethics from the 1980s to 2016 are outlined. The review covers academic scholarship, research and teaching; the ethics of business and actions to build ethics into the structures of enterprises. This follows the 3-fold categorization developed by De George (2012). A brief account of the formation and history of the Australian Association for Professional and Applied Ethics is included, as is a selection of scandals involving Australian organisations. Australia is shown to have made a significant contribution to the academic discipline of applied ethics and to have been aware of its position, distant from the English-speaking West and in the midst of nations of the global south.

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Ethics in the Global South
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78743-205-5

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Book part
Publication date: 28 February 2019

Ann Black

British colonization of Australia had lasting consequences for Australia’s legal system. Although designed as a “one law for all system” based on the English common law, the…

Abstract

British colonization of Australia had lasting consequences for Australia’s legal system. Although designed as a “one law for all system” based on the English common law, the reality was, and is, that there have always been people regulating their lives according to their own distinctive culture and religion. Recognition of de facto legal pluralism, has only recently given rise to instances of de jure legal recognition. The latter necessitated a role for cultural expertise in a range of legal cases. The first considered is how social science expertise was employed in redressing the dispossession of the continent’s first peoples: indigenous Australians and Torres Strait Islanders. The landmark case of Mabo No 2 laid the legal ground for native title land ownership which fueled a demand for cultural experts in indigenous traditions, laws, and customs. The second aspect is Australia’s response to recent immigration from non-European nations, including from Muslim countries. Many Muslims continue to regulate their interpersonal relationships exclusively, or partially, by principles of Islamic law and their “homeland” culture. This is particularly evident in family matters and the prism for exploring the nascent role for cultural expertise is through post-divorce parenting orders. The third issue is the extent to which a court can accept an accused’s cultural practice or religious belief as a defense to a criminal act or omission. In all three, who is a “cultural expert” can be contentious. While cultural expertise in indigenous matters is well established, the role for cultural experts in the resolution of family disputes and criminal cases is just emerging.

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Cultural Expertise and Socio-Legal Studies
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78769-515-3

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Book part
Publication date: 31 March 2010

Rae Dufty and Chris Gibson

Rural welfare is more than addressing problems of ‘poverty’. As we argue here, social policy initiatives are also conceived by governments as solutions to geographical problems…

Abstract

Rural welfare is more than addressing problems of ‘poverty’. As we argue here, social policy initiatives are also conceived by governments as solutions to geographical problems about uneven regional development and population distribution. What these problems were, and how welfare provision could solve them, has varied from generation to generation and takes shape in place-specific ways. That welfare provision has operated as de facto geographical development and population policy is particularly the case in Australia, in its context of massive continental size and heterogeneous rural places. In Australia, the ‘rural’ means much more than just the ‘countryside’ surrounding or between networks of cities and towns (in the traditional European sense; see Gorman-Murray, Darian-Smith, & Gibson, 2008). ‘Rural Australia’ is inserted into national politics as a slippery geographical category, coming to encompass all of non-metropolitan Australia (each of Australia's states only having one major city), within which there is great diversity: broadacre farming regions involving the production of cash crops at scales of thousands of squared kilometres; regions producing rice and cotton with state-sponsored irrigation; coastal agricultural zones with smaller and usually older land holdings (often the places of traditional ‘family farming’ communities); single industry regions focused around minerals extraction or defence (many of Australia's major defence bases being located outside state capitals either in sparsely populated regions in Australia's north or in smaller ‘country towns’ in the south, where they dominate local demography); semi-arid rangelands regions dominated by enormous pastoral stations leased on Crown land (single examples of which rival the United Kingdom in size); and remote savannah and desert regions many thousands of kilometres from capital cities, supporting Aboriginal communities living on traditional country mixing subsistence hunting and gathering with government-supported employment and food programmes. In this context, rural welfare performs a social policy function, but also becomes a means for government to comprehend, problematise and manage geographical space.

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Welfare Reform in Rural Places: Comparative Perspectives
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84950-919-0

Book part
Publication date: 16 September 2014

Umesh Sharma

This chapter reports the development of special education in Australia. The chapter begins with a discussion of general information about the country. This discussion is important…

Abstract

This chapter reports the development of special education in Australia. The chapter begins with a discussion of general information about the country. This discussion is important to understand the overall development of special education considering Australia is a young country with a number of events directly influencing educational activities. It then presents some of the key historical milestones in special education in Australia. Information about the relevant legislation and policy reforms that are relevant to people with disabilities is also discussed. Some of the recent national initiatives that have had significant influence for students with disabilities are also discussed. The last part of the chapter delineates challenges that Australia faces related to the education of children with special needs.

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Special Education International Perspectives: Practices Across the Globe
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78441-096-4

Abstract

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Migration Practice as Creative Practice
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83867-766-4

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