People and Places that Matter: Racialised Assemblages in Nauru's Hyperextractive Asylum Regime*

Abstract

In recent years, many Western states have moved towards funding the asylum processing and resettlement systems of countries in the Global South. These forms of outsourced migration governance are upheld by a vast industry of state and non-state actors. This chapter draws on fieldwork conducted in the Republic of Nauru to look at the people and places on the frontlines of the extractive asylum industry. Using Alexander Weheliye’s (2014) concept of ‘racialising assemblages’, the author argues that outsourced asylum regimes exacerbate the continuous subjection of Indigenous and migrant communities to toxic practices and discourses. Outsourced asylum is a contemporary practice of resource extraction (much like other forms of mining) that builds on colonial extractive projects that disproportionately target communities of colour. Ongoing processes of dispossession and displacement are occurring as people and places are rendered into resources and frontline sites for the extractive asylum industry. This chapter also shows how humanitarian and liberal democratic discourses are part of the mechanics of racialised geopolitical ordering. Racialised refugees are made into destitute victims, whereas locals become brutish villains, rather than political subjects. In attending to the politics of refusal, where Nauruans and refugees refuse ingrained racialising assemblages that deny them personhood, the author stresses the importance of intersectional advocacy that highlights the toxic effects of extractive asylum regimes on local and migrant populations alike.

Citation

Morris, J. (2024), "People and Places that Matter: Racialised Assemblages in Nauru's Hyperextractive Asylum Regime*", Sharples, R. and Briskman, L. (Ed.) Deter, Detain, Dehumanise: The Politics of Seeking Asylum, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 121-142. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-83753-224-720241010