Leonie Wittman
Senior Curriculum Adviser
Languages Special Projects
Languages Unit
Curriculum K-12 Directorate
NSW Department of Education & Training
3a Smalls Rd
Ryde NSW 2112
Tel: 61 2 9886 7681
Fax: 61 2 9886 7160
Email: leonie.wittman@det.nsw.edu.au
Dear friends and colleagues
This is to inform you of our next SISC meeting that will
take place on 28 Friday October when Dr Cynthia Hunter will speak on the
subject of failed asylum seekers in Indonesia.
Speaker: Dr Cynthia Hunter
Topic: The ‘people in between’: Indonesia and the failed asylum seekers to Australia
In this paper I describe a unique situation in the Asia – Pacific region. Indonesia, the neighbouring nation to the north
of Australia
has been playing host to hundreds of failed asylum seekers, for some, two years
or more. Their chosen country for migration is Australia. These people have been
caught between people smugglers, transient countries, the Australian government
and its agencies, and the UNHCR. As failed asylum seekers they have no rights.
They do not speak the language, they cannot work, they have no home, the young
are not being educated, and they are not considered citizens and therefore,
have difficulty with any form of integration with host cultures. The
International Organization for Migration supervises their “stay”,
funded by Australia
and other countries.
The ‘people in between’ are stranded
outside their country of desire and marginalized/peripheralized and alienated
from the various agencies, governments and international bodies who they
address. Using ethnographic material I focus on their agency, on their
“making something as a group”, and a struggle of recognition
incorporated in their stories of “persecution”, of “life on
the move”, of “existing without a future” and “people
without much hope”. In the process I propose a humanitarian dimension to
what is considered economic and political in the arena of international
relations between nation-states.
Time and Date: 5.30pm Friday 28 October
Venue: University
of Technology Sydney 5D.02.30
We look forward to seeing you there. All welcome.
Steven Drakeley for the SISC Organising Committee
