Documenting a life in limbo

Volume 9 Number 2 February 11 - March 10 2013

UNHCR tents at a site in the forest just a few hundred metres from the Nteko unofficial border crossing with Democratic Republic of the Congo, 2012. Photo: UNHCR / F Noy.
UNHCR tents at a site in the forest just a few hundred metres from the Nteko unofficial border crossing with Democratic Republic of the Congo, 2012. Photo: UNHCR / F Noy.

While we’re bombarded daily with the facts and figures of asylum-seekers and refugees who reach our shores, what is often missing is the context of the people arriving, as David Scott found.

When it comes to the ongoing discussion in Australia right now on refugees, asylum-seekers and other migrants, the focus has become too Australian centric says Antje Missbach, a McKenzie Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Asian Law Centre at the Melbourne Law School. 

“These people have a longer story to tell that exists beyond just a boat trip to the Australian coastline, as the migratory process starts the moment they flee their homeland for whatever reason that may be,” Dr Missbach says. “It’s not a linear journey from point A to point B, it sometimes takes years and can be filled with plenty of setbacks.”

Dr Missbach has spent the past three years travelling back and forth to Indonesia to get a better understanding of just what life is like for asylum-seekers and other migrants waiting for an official decision on their status. She’s compiling their experiences in a book that she hopes will shed greater light on the decision-making strategies of migrants hoping to come to Australia. Not only that, she hopes the book provides Australian readers a better understanding of the social, political and legal conditions for transit migrants in Indonesia.

“Pretty much everyone has a sad story to tell. But it’s not just about telling people’s stories and showing how sad their lives are. There are far too many stories, like the 11-year-old orphan who has just seen both his parents drown in front of him and he’s stuck in Jakarta with no relatives,” she says. While the study will use the daily experiences of asylum-seekers and refugees stuck in Indonesia as a starting point, it will also encompass Indonesian perspectives and the various policy-making pressures that affect transit migrants.

Dr Missbach deliberately chose the term ‘transit migrants’ so as to include a much larger range of people, representative of the fact that the legal status of what a person ‘is’ can change all the time. 

“It speaks of a group of people who have left their country of origin and arrived in a country they don’t consider to be a long-term home or option, and still carry the intention of going somewhere else,” she says.

For Dr Missbach, whose background extends into anthropology and political science, her mission is to contextualise the migration experiences of these people in limbo and show how they fit into a broader global migration movement. “To do this I want to reconstruct a typical journey and show at each stage how the decisions of these migrants interact with all the different areas, from what international organisations such as the UNHCR and the International Organisation of Migration (IOM) are doing, through to the people-smugglers and even Indonesian domestic policy.”

The role of Indonesia in this journey is an important one, according to Dr Missbach, as it’s one of the largest transit countries and has a reputation for providing better conditions for asylum-seekers. And while the issue of immigration and migration prompts division across the Australian political landscape, it has not always been such a big issue for one of our largest Asian neighbours. It wasn’t until the Indonesian government outlawed people-smuggling in 2011 that the landscape for transit migrants changed. 

“Up until this point it wasn’t an issue that mattered much to the Indonesians, but many people now realise a ‘regional solution’ requires greater input than just lip service,” she says. “We’re seeing a lot more trials and convictions now, though for the most part they are punishing only the transporters and boat crews, and only in very few cases the ‘big wigs’ that run what is now a highly professional smuggling industry.”

In the meantime, all levels of the Indonesian government are doing more to promote the new laws, even holding family days and movie viewings in remote areas to try to hammer their message home.

With the change in laws comes a change in public perception as well. During her time in and around Jakarta, Puncak, Kupang and Makassar, Dr Missbach has noticed a trend towards a more xenophobic attitude from locals directed at migrants who are not held in detention centres but are allowed to dwell in the community.

“Up until now their presence has been tolerated and many asylum-seekers and refugees have been living in local communities until they can resolve their migration status and await regular resettlement. However some communities are now actively trying to relocate them for fear of attracting social frictions over cultural misunderstandings. Much of this comes down to money, as those who are allowed to live in the communities don’t have the right to earn money legally to make their own way.”

For Dr Missbach, recent developments emphasise the need to document and better understand the shared human experiences of transit migrants. 

“These stories have to be taken into consideration, because if you don’t understand how a transit country reacts and treats these groups of people, it’s going to be very difficult to come up with strategies to collaborate with those countries.”

The Asian Law Centre is Australia’s first and largest centre devoted to the study of Asian legal systems.

www.law.unimelb.edu.au/alc