Making Migration Law: The Foreigner, Sovereignty, and the Case of Australia
Cambridge University Press
Edition: Reprint, 8/8/2019
EAN 9781316625767, ISBN10: 1316625761
Paperback, 387 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2 cm
Language: English
The emergence of international human rights law and the end of the White Australia immigration policy were events of great historical moment. Yet, they were not harbingers of a new dawn in migration law. This book argues that this is because migration law in Australia is best understood as part of a longer jurisprudential tradition in which certain political-economic interests have shaped the relationship between the foreigner and the sovereign. Eve Lester explores how this relationship has been wrought by a political-economic desire to regulate race and labour; a desire that has produced the claim that there exists an absolute sovereign right to exclude or condition the entry and stay of foreigners. Lester calls this putative right a discourse of 'absolute sovereignty'. She argues that 'absolute sovereignty' talk continues to be a driver of migration lawmaking, shaping the foreigner-sovereign relation and making thinkable some of the world's harshest asylum policies.
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
Prologue
living realities
1. Introduction
Part I
2. Early international law and the foreigner
3. A common law doctrine of sovereignty
4. A constitutionalisation of sovereignty
Part II
Introduction to Part II
5. Mandatory detention
6. Planned destitution
7. Conclusion
Epilogue
a campaign to 'stop the boats'
Bibliography
Index.