Art, writing and activism from the prison camp on Manus Island (PNG)

Art, writing and activism from the prison camp on Manus Island (Papua New Guinea) focuses on the work of journalist, writer and filmmaker Behrouz Boochani, imprisoned on Manus Island for the past six years. The talk considers responses to the presence of refugees in cycles of empathy as well as cycles of hatred. The continued salience of racialised neo-colonial logics that dehumanise through creating a hierarchy of human is considered. In contrast, the ideal of global justice that sketches alternative futures alongside the concepts of haunting and memory are used to understand the systematic abuses and crimes of state power.

CV: Claudia Tazreiter is Associate Professor of sociology at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. Her research focuses on the social and affective impacts of forced and irregular migration; on human rights culture; the role of civil society in social change; and gender in migration. She is the author of numerous books, journal articles and book chapters. Claudia’s recent book, Fluid Security in the Asia Pacific: Transnational Lives and State Control, is a collaboration with Sharon Pickering, Leanne Weber, Marie Segrave and Helen McKernan (Palgrave 2016). She is an associate of the Institute for Human Rights, serves on the Management Committee of the Gilbert and Tobin Centre for Public Law and the Steering Committee of the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law. She is the convenor of the multidisciplinary Forced Migration Research Network.