The study of migration has implications and possibilities beyond the commonly understood context of persons crossing the territorial borders of a state and the debates, policies and politics that ensue relating to allocation of rights, forms of recognition, scarcity of resources, worries of cultural autonomy, among some of the responses to the arrival and the presence of migrants.

What can we learn from migration studies in dialogue with other fields in inquiry – is that rather than situating the migrant as the figure or primary unit of analysis, a set of broader connections to social issues of care, care-work and caring, of advocacy and attention to the micro-politics of how we live life, and the many manifestations in the daily political economy of contemporary life are required. That is, critical migration studies engage in the entire social milieu, not only on the topics of migrants/newcomers. With such an approach a range of questions arise to reveal what is often hidden. Who does the laboring work that brings fresh vegetables to our tables at affordable costs? Are we aware of the slave-like conditions and pay rates of global labor, working across industries to make our daily lives possible? Moreover, what can we learn from situating migration not as an exception, or a problem, but as normal activities in a continuum of social change and of mobility?

What possibilities open when migration and migrant experience and giving ‘voice’ to marginalised viewpoints and lives is viewed as potential, fluidity, openness? Such alternate views may well be productive forms of knowledge and learning for those with the relative privilege of birthright citizenship in affluent, peaceful parts of the world. That is, what insights do those with relative geographic advantage, with access to clean drinking water, to arable land and natural resources, with less exposure to climate disasters have of the circumstances of those from more precarious parts of the globe. From these research positionalities, migration scholars, in forms of collaboration I will describe later, search for new social forms and problem solving from migrant experience as distinct from the common stigma attached to migrants as a problem and as a crisis to be administered, managed and governed.

In drawing attention to such views, I keep a deliberative eye to the task I have set myself in sketching what is new about migration and bordering – and where I feel we ought to be paying more attention. I would like to share a number of interlinked stories or narratives with you as this talk proceeds. I hope that by the end, the connections between these stories are evident.

I would also like to say at the outset that my view is from the South, with the Asia-Pacific more broadly framing my geographic stance. While Australia is geographically located in this region, its colonial-settler past has traces in the present.

This chapter offers a critical evaluation of the concept and applicationof global carceral archipelagos designed as punitive barriers to refugees.With a focus on policies and practices in Australia for over two decades,the chapter shows how more recently, the European Union (EU) and theUnited Kingdom (UK) are also adopting similar strategies to Australia ina pattern of Western countries turning their backs on their human rightsobligations. The histories of colonial practices of the racialisation of certainminorities within and outside nation-state borders are an importantaspect of understanding contemporary bordering regimes that excluderefugees. The chapter discusses examples of resistance, as well as alternativepolitics emerging from refugees who have suffered from the carceralborder complex, drawing on creative and collaborative work and practices.

This chapter offers critical and original insights into the mistreatment of asylum seekers who arrived (or attempted to arrive) by boat after 19 July 2013, peo-ple who the Australian authorities forcibly sent offshore to regional processing centres on Nauru and Manus Island. Importantly, this chapter reveals the lived experience of asylum seekers and refugees exposed and subjected to the “car-ceral-border archipelago” (which encompasses Australia’s immigration deten-tion centres on the mainland and on Christmas Island, Papua New Guinea (PNG) [Manus Island detention centre has closed with remaining refugees held in Port Moresby], Nauru, and the Australian-funded facilities in Indonesia). At the time of writing some asylum seekers and refugees remain in Nauru and Papua New Guinea, some people have been transferred to Australia on medi-cal grounds,1 and others have been resettled in third countries including the United States, Canada, and Europe.

Asylum, refugee, and immigration movements in Australia represent distinct, as well as overlapping, repertoires of collective action on behalf of others who are often silent, or silenced in public debates. Various categories of newcomers have differential rights as noncitizens, residents, or “illegals,” and these differences are also reflected in the emergence and vigor of social movements in defense of the “rightless.” These movements have formed, engaged in forms of protest, advocacy, and collective action, and subsided in various waves in reaction to public policy that seeks to restrict the rights of migrants. In Australia such restrictions have been manifested in forms of border control, in limiting access to courts and judicial review processes, through detention, and through deportation. Often the most vulnerable groups of migrants have been the targets of such measures, and it is these groups that movement actors have been engaged in defending.

We evaluate the complexity of temporary migration schemes in contrast to the longstanding approach to immigration as a key aspect of nation-building in settler societies. Until the early 1990s, predominantly one-way, permanent immigration schemes were preferred in settler societies such as Australia. In an increasingly fluid global context, temporary migrants are more susceptible to forms of abuse and exploitation in a host society, with fewer forms of redress due to their status as non-citizens and non-permanent residents. Taking a specific focus upon Australia, we contextualize the experiences of temporary migrants both prior to and under the conditions of COVID-19. Our key argument is that temporary migration schemes are organised and structured not only to favour states, as well as employers and businesses, but that the stripping back of rights to those who enter these schemes is a deliberative aspect of the state approach.

The exhibition What We Brought with Us presents the belongings of people with exile backgrounds who have held 'fellowships at Academy in Exile (AiE) in Berlin and Essen. The exhibition represents the complexities faced by those who experience flight from a country of origin, exile elsewhere, and often signiflcant forms of barder violence on their journeys in an era of unprecedented state securitization targeting migrants and refugees.

At the same time, the role of art in society and the role of museums, galleries, and public spaces, accessible ta a broad public, offer important counterpoints in tell­ing alternative stories af lives and futures. The present time af widespread war, violence, and crisis has made artists and other cultural producers all the rnore vital in interpretation and meaning-making. In this complex con­text, Academy in Exile provides an important space for respite, reflection, collaboration, and creation.

Människor är sociala varelser. De upprättar förbindelser och skapar mening genom att leva tillsammans i olika former som vi kallar samhällen, grannskap och gemenskaper. 

Dessa formationer skänker social, kulturell och fysisk trygghet och säkrar reproduktionen av den nya generationen. När dessa system bryts genom våld och krig är återhämtnings- och försoningspro-cessen aldrig smidig och okom-plicerad. Trauman som upplevs individuellt och kollektivt kan fortplanta sig över flera generatio-ner, långt bortom livstiden hos dem som fysiskt upplevde och bevittna-de kriget. Det kan tyckas som om trauman från tidigare våld genom-syrar de framtida generationernas landskap, minnen och till och med tränger in i deras DNA, vare sig de härrör från offer eller förövare. Trauman har ett efterliv som bärs i kroppen.

I dagens Europa ser vi i nyheter-na från Ukraina och andra krig i många delar av världen hur krigets skepnader med tillhörande förödel-se driver miljontals människor på flykt i världen.