Asylum and Extraction in the Republic of Nauru

by Julia Caroline Morris

Overview

Asylum and Extraction in the Republic of Nauru provides an extraordinary glimpse into the remote and difficult-to-access island of Nauru, exploring the realities of Nauru's offshore asylum arrangement and its impact on islanders, workforces, and migrant populations. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in Nauru, Australia, and Geneva, as well as a deep dive into the British Phosphate Commission archives, Julia Caroline Morris charts the island's colonial connection to phosphate through to a new industrial sector in asylum. She explores how this extractive industry is peopled by an ever-shifting cast of refugee lawyers, social workers, clinicians, policy makers, and academics globally and how the very structures of Nauru's colonial phosphate industry and the legacy of the "phosphateer" era made it easy for a new human extractive sector to take root on the island.

By detailing the making of and social life of Nauru's asylum system, Morris shows the institutional fabric, discourses, and rhetoric that inform the governance of migration around the world. As similar practices of offshoring and outsourcing asylum have become popular worldwide, they are enabled by the mobile labor and expertise of transnational refugee industry workers who carry out the necessary daily operations. Asylum and Extraction in the Republic of Nauru goes behind the scenes to shed light on the everyday running of the offshore asylum industry in Nauru and uncover what really happens underneath the headlines. Morris illuminates how refugee rights activism and #RefugeesWelcome-style movements are caught up in the hardening of border enforcement operations worldwide, calling for freedom of movement that goes beyond adjudicating hierarchies of suffering.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501765841
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	02/15/2023
Pages:	318
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.12(d)

About the Author

Julia Caroline Morris is Assistant Professor of International Studies at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. Building the Workingman's Dream
2. Mineral Meets Migrant Metallurgies
3. Securing the Offshore Industry
4. Resource Frictions
5. Ekamawir Omo
6. Bitter Money

What People are Saying About This

Peter Gatrell

This book is fascinating, highly original, and timely. Julia Caroline Morris expertly contextualizes what goes on in Nauru through a close engagement with local, regional, and global history and invites us to reflect on the true costs of the offshore processing of refugees.

Jana K. Lipman

This book is essential for anyone interested in refugees, detention, and our modern world. Rejecting simplistic dichotomies, Julia Caroline Morris digs deep into the past and present of Nauru. With brilliance and sensitivity, she juxtaposes the experiences of Nauruans, refugees, activists, and international NGO workers.

Editorial Reviews

What Morris covers in her magnificent book is perhaps the most concrete and well-researched understanding of these phenomena we have to date.

PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review