Politics of Exclusion, Practice of Inclusion. Australia's Response to Refugees and the Case for Community Based Human Rights Work

Abstract

With increasingly exclusionary policies towards refugees and asylum seekers, Australia has experienced major growth in community based refugee support movements. This paper questions whether the nation state remains the best protector of human rights into the future given the increasing movement of people around the globe and the tension between sovereignty rights and the universal nature of human rights. The author proposes that the future hope for human rights protections lay not so much within nation states, but with both global and local actions. The paper uses the example of community based refugee support movements in Australia as a case study.