‘Spying for Hitler’ and ‘Working for Bin Laden’: Comparative Australian Discourses on Refugees

This paper argues that the complexity of recent debates about ‘illegal’ refugee arrivals in Australia, held since the prominent MV Tampa incident of August 2001, might be better understood by placing them in a comparative historical context. Towards this end, an investigation of previous debates on the subject of Jewish refugees in Australia prior to the Second World War is suggested. Such an exploration reveals a seemingly idiosyncratic ‘Australian’ slant towards refugees that demonstrates a subtle process of marginalization and exclusion based on notions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ refugees. Such an approach further demonstrates the contradictory attitudes of immigrant societies towards refugees notwithstanding the cultural pluralism supposedly inherent in their outlooks.