Beyond the Demands of Integration: African Refugee Resettlement in Contemporary Multicultural Australia

Abstract

This paper uses the example of negatively racialised refugees from the African continent to reiterate the racialised nature of migrant and refugee experiences in Australia. This is a context that remains deeply influenced by a violent history of British colonisation and racist migration laws, including the restrictive White Australia Policy (1901–1973). Drawing on the authors’ research and personal experiences of working with, and navigating, the Australian resettlement system this article examines the racialised violences inherent in expectations of ‘integration’ for (former) African refugees in a settler colonial country. This paper proffers a principle level re-imagining of refugee resettlement in Australia that challenges patriarchal white sovereignty. It proposes a meaningful consideration of resettlement practices that are community-led, localised, relational and that recognise the agency of refugees who settle in Australia. This paper disrupts dominant tropes of refugees as perpetually vulnerable and deficit, by centering the agency, needs and expectations of a good life as it is lived in community, rather than dictated by the state.

1. Introduction

This paper re-imagines current refugee resettlement practices in Australia. It outlines an alternative framework that is decentralized, and embedded in agency and self-determination. We argue that this framework will better assist refugees to achieve what they deem to be a good life, rather than one that serves the colonial-settler state. This article begins with the acknowledgement that the nation state of contemporary Australia exists out of colonial dispossession and acts of genocide against First Nations Peoples by British colonialists. The enduring effects of colonisation, which are still felt by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples to this day, are necessarily interconnected to the decisions of successive governments to permit entry to refugees, many of whom are themselves forcibly displaced due to the enduring effects of colonisation in their own countries. It is notable that efforts to curate a white nation was one of the driving factors towards the federation of Australia in 1901 (Galligan et al. 2014). This informed the assimilation policies directed at First Nations Peoples and the Immigration Restriction Act (often referred to as the ‘White Australia Policy’) that followed. Currently Australia is a country celebrated internationally as a multicultural ‘success’ story, but this narrative is silent on the reality that the land on which Australia is built remain stolen. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples never ceded their Countries and continue to live under occupation (Moreton-Robinson 2015). Moreover, its white colonial inception remains palpable in its migration and resettlement policies, as well as in the everyday lives of negatively racialised people who live here (Hage 1998, 2002). This article uses the example of refugee resettlement from countries on the continent of Africa to reiterate that the Australian refugee re-settlement system is embedded in racialised coloniality (Colic-Peisker 2005, 2009; Colic-Peisker and Tilbury 2008), and that it brings further violence to the lives of those seeking refuge. Without seeking to conflate what are separate and distinct experiences, this article shows the potential that would emerge from greater attention to the intersections between racism, coloniality and settlement (in all senses of the word) in Australia across what Neumann asserts are the two key themes of Australian history—Indigenous dispossession and immigration (2015: 4 cited in Robinson 2020). In doing this, it follows the work of others who call attention to ways in which dominant narratives of resettlement can be disrupted and lived experience given greater spaces of inclusion (see for instance Triandafyllidou 2022).

2. Methods

This article employs a secondary data analysis approach and draws on the authors’ extensive multi-dimensional experiences of resettlement processes in Australia. A desk-based review of policy documents from government agencies and key non-government organisations was conducted alongside a literature review focused on key themes of African refugee resettlement, lived experience and settlement. Openshaw has spent a decade researching the experiences of African heritage refugees and migrants, and other negatively racialised people, through the lens of their religiosity in Ireland and Australia (e.g., Openshaw 2014, 2021). Openshaw has also worked on an Australian Research Council Grant researching the African heritage diasporas, migration/resettlement and Christianity in Australia (Rocha et al. 2021; Rocha and Openshaw 2024). Atem has a refugee-lived experience and arrived in Australia as a humanitarian entrant over 20 years ago. Atem has over a decade of experience supporting refugee resettlement in Australia including through taking roles in local government, in settlement support services and in voluntary grass-roots refugee-led organisations. In addition, Atem has done research exploring refugee resettlement in Australia from a refugee-lived experience perspective (Atem 2019, 2021; Atem et al. 2022). Phillips has previously worked in the settlement services sector and internationally with refugees in host countries and countries of asylum. She is a migration pracademic (Phillips 2021; Phillips and Olliff 2022; Phillips and Gottardo 2023), and has also been involved as a governance member of organisations supporting refugees and policy work for peak refugee organisations.

3. Background

For the purposes of this article, settlement refers to the violent dispossession of Indigenous Lands,1 while resettlement is a term used ‘in both policy discourse and migration scholarship [that] refers to social, economic and cultural adjustments migrants undergo in a destination country. Governmental and practitioner-oriented conceptions of [re]settlement are often framed as phases or stages’ (Boese et al. 2020, p. 3277). Boese et al. go on to note that resettlement, which is also referred to as settlement, can be understood temporally, relationally, and politically, incorporating practices of spatial mobility and immobility (Boese et al. 2020). We assert that both (re)settlement systems are configured to serve the maintenance of patriarchal white sovereignty (Moreton-Robinson 2015). As scholar and Goenpul woman Aileen Moreton-Robinson (2015, p. 138) posits, patriarchal white sovereignty in former British colonies such as Australia, is a regime of power derived from the illegal possession of land. Patriarchal white sovereignty operates ideologically, materially and discursively to reproduce and maintain the nation as a white possession (Moreton-Robinson 2015, p. 139).

What follows, is an overview of this article’s theoretical groundings in Moreton-Robinson (2015) and Hage’s (1998, 2002) work, in relation to refugee resettlement in Australia. Next, we explain why we have considered refugees from Africa as a case study to discuss the racialised nature of resettlement in Australia. We go on to contextualise this case study within Australia’s humanitarian programme, ‘Operation Sovereign borders’ and federally constructed, commercial-in-confidence resettlement services. We then proffer a re-imagining of re-settlement in Australia that disrupts patriarchal white sovereignty, proposing a framework that is community-led, localised, relational and that recognises the agency of refugees who resettle in Australia. This framework responds to calls from grass roots organisations to be properly resourced for their work.

Ghassan Hage’s work has been germinal in discussions about Australia as a ‘white nation’ (Hage 1998) afflicted by ‘white paranoia’ (Hage 2002). As noted earlier, although the racialised violence experienced by Australia’s First Nations Peoples cannot be conflated with that of negatively racialised migrants and refugees, it is indicative of how race is instrumental in the assertion and assumption of patriarchal white sovereignty, and how it marked the formation of the Australian nation-state and the development of (contemporary) national identity (Moreton-Robinson 2015). Indeed, we echo Moreton-Robinson (2015, p. xi) that in Australia race and state work in tandem to condition each other. Australia must thus respond to threats to its patriarchal white sovereignty, from inside because of First Nations’ unceded sovereignty, and externally via migration regimes and refugee resettlement obligations (Moreton-Robinson 2015). Aligned with Moreton-Robinson (2015), we argue Australia does so by securing national and cultural borders through racial and ethnic exclusion in its immigration processes and hostile policies towards asylum seekers (Phillips and Gottardo 2023). This paper addresses this wider theme through a case study approach focusing on the resettlement of refugees from countries in Africa. Its emphasis is on the role of lived experience in the broader refugee resettlement landscape, and responds to Triandafyllidou’s (2022) call for a radical de-centring of understandings of migration that draw on actors who can disrupt dominant narratives which we posit includes refugees themselves and advocacy groups.

Refugee Resettlement in the Australian Context

As part of its planned immigration intake, the Australian government sets an annual quota for refugees who will be resettled in the country primarily on the basis of UNHCR referrals, along with some cases of family reunion, private sponsorship and labour mobility schemes (Robinson 2020). A similar process occurs in countries such as the United States of America and Canada, that also have large resettlement quotas (Simich 2003; Brown and Scribner 2014). Data from the Australian Department of Home Affairs (hereafter Home Affairs) indicates that between 2021 and 2022, the Migration Program and Humanitarian Program delivered 156,863 permanent places, and there were additionally approximately 2.3 million temporary visas issued for individuals coming to the country as visitors, students and working holiday makers (Department of Home Affairs 2023a, p. 3). Federal and state governments fund services to assist newly arrived refugees to resettle in their first 5 years after arrival. At a state level, in NSW for example, the government Settlement Strategy provides support to humanitarian entrants up to 10 years after arrival).

Settlement services operate as commercial enterprises, rolling out ever shifting federal mandates that has time-bound funding awarded through competitive tendering processes (Robinson and Lamaro Haintz 2021). The settlement industrial complex is therefore necessarily focused on timely contracted deliverables, with little concern for the lifelong and generational nature of the resettlement process. It demands more of accountability between service providers and government, than between service providers and refugees. There is also little transparency with clients, who are beholden on these services and may feel powerless to raise complaints given their recent arrival to the country and their status as permanent visa holders who are not yet eligible to apply for citizenship. Indeed, within this settlement industrial complex the agency and power of refugees is diminished, closing off the possibilities for two-way integration between newcomers and host groups (Fisher et al. 2023). The impacts this has on refugees and refugee-led organisations, that may not be able to compete for funding on an equal footing with larger organisations, is the focus of this paper. Moreover, a wider question remains as to the value of resettlement policies if they do not include all members of a community (Atem 2023).

4. Discussion

4.1. Patriarchal White Sovereignty and White Paranoia

Following Moreton-Robinson (2015) and Hage (1998, 2002), we argue that the racialised nature of resettlement and expectations of integration is a legacy of Australia’s violent dispossession of Indigenous Lands, and that resettlement processes are weaponised to protect patriarchal white sovereignty. For Moreton-Robinson (2015) patriarchal white sovereignty exists because of the theft of Indigenous Lands and the death of Indigenous Peoples. Thus, Indigenous sovereignty that has never been ceded is a threat to patriarchal white sovereignty. The existence of Indigenous sovereignty is refused by the state but is also a cause of great anxiety because of the threat of white dispossession of Indigenous Lands. In addition, Moreton-Robinson (2015, p. xii) refers to what she calls ‘possessive logics’. That is, rationalisations that underpins the reproduction and reaffirmation of the (white) nation-state’s ownership, control and domination. Thus, the right to possess stolen Indigenous Lands now known as Australia is rationalised through the nation being understood as a white possession. White people continue to benefit from colonial theft, and although to varying degrees, have access to resources and power not made available to those coded as not white. Moreover, Moreton-Robinson (2015, p. 21) highlights how the fear of being invaded by migrants (specifically those coded as other than white) and of land ‘dispossession’ by Indigenous Peoples, work to recentre the white possession of Australia. For instance, there has been considerable investment in efforts to ‘close the gap’ in outcomes for Indigenous Peoples in Australia. However, this has not realised meaningful improvements with concern being raised about the nature of public administration to deliver services to Indigenous communities, funding models and the need for genuine community engagement (see for instance Hunt 2007; Marsh 2015; Sorensen et al. 2010). There are similar themes raised in this paper about the ways in which support is delivered to refugee communities.

We argue that Australia, has its foundation in stolen Indigenous Lands and continue to exercise the firm maintenance of white possession to this day by acting upon those who remain outside of the national imaginings of settler-colonial Australia. This may manifest differently for different peoples who call these Lands home, but as Moreton-Robinson (2015) points out, racialisation ‘is the process by which whiteness operates possessively to define and construct itself as the pinnacle of its own racial hierarchy’. We argue that in the case of African heritage refugees, this presents in racially discriminatory and violent migration, and social and governmental practices, that continue the coloniality of Australia. Such coloniality has similar roots to the colonial forces that have left their legacy on the African continent. Moreton-Robinson (2015) argued in relation to the former Howard government (and we would argue also subsequent governments) that the deployment of the discourse of national security is inextricably linked to the nation-state’s anxiety about the dispossession of the stolen Lands it possesses, and is shaped by the state’s denial of Indigenous sovereignty which is directly linked to white supremacy.

Ghassan Hage (2002) writes about a simmering white colonial paranoia that permeates Australia’s national fabric. This is a paranoia tethered to colonial class-based anxiety of living up to the expectations of a civilized European whiteness, that was historically largely reserved for the elite (Hage 2002, p. 420). Hage (2002, p. 421) argues that in Australia, this paranoia is fuelled by Australia’s large geographic distance from the metropole and being surrounded by the hostile and uncivilised otherness of the Asia-Pacific; its untameable natural environment not amenable to domestication; and the haunting of the genocidal practices colonial settlers enacted upon the Traditional Owners of the Indigenous Countries they stole. Hage (2002) posits that from the mid-80s (and we consider this to remain the case in contemporary Australia), after the dismantling of the White Australia policies and as multicultural Australia was coming into its own, white Australia found itself once again wracked with anxiety over the decline of whiteness, and thus the dissolution of ‘Australian’ (read white Anglo/Celtic/British based) values. This white paranoia, and the quest to maintain white patriarchal sovereignty, manifests in the need to protect and restore these eroded values through the ‘protecting’ of national borders from racially undesirable others. The most acute articulation of this is the former Liberal Coalition government’s militaristic ‘Operation Sovereign Borders’ initiative under Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

The resettlement of refugees from Africa in Australia, can be understood through a racialised ‘hierarchy of deservingness’ amongst asylum seekers and refugees in the welfare state (Kyriakidou 2021; van Kooy and Hirsch 2022). Kyriakidou (2021) drawing predominantly on discussions of the European refugee crisis in the Greek context, and through the metaphor of hospitality towards strangers, argues that there is a hierarchy of deservingness. This is embedded in national sociohistorical contexts and identity and underlined by stereotypes about the ‘other’. In an Australian context, van Kooy and Hirsch (2022) point to the distinction between those deserving of the state’s hospitality (legitimate migrants) and those who are not—most often characterized as those who arrive by boat. We focus on those resettling from Africa in this article, as they are arguably the most visibly racialized.

Moreover, contemporary Australia, as with other settler-colonies, is imbedded in racial capitalism, and the extractive nature of this system makes potential labour market participants of refugees. As Boese et al. (2021) argue the emphasis on ‘workfare’ consistent with emergent global narratives of ‘enhancing refugee self-reliance’ erodes the primary protective purpose of Australia’s humanitarian migration programme. Indeed, paradoxically the fears and anxiety of white Australia cannot be disentangled from neoliberal reforms that have created socioeconomic vulnerabilities for segments of the population. Racism is perpetuated when governments actively utilise these anxieties for political ends. For example, through scapegoating refugees and asylum seekers as the source of these vulnerabilities and engaging in ’performances of political closure’ designed to assuage those made vulnerable (see McNevin 2008).

4.2. A Civilised Nation and the ‘Wrong’ Kind of Refugee

People of African heritage are not a new phenomenon in Australia. In fact, Africans were present as convicts, servants and settlers from the beginning of British colonisation (Pybus 2006, p. 40). However, with the birth of the Commonwealth of Australia and the passing of the Immigration Restriction Act, immigration became highly racialised. This legislation was underpinned by the conviction that ‘culturally different groups would pollute the society and never assimilate into an Australian way of life’, (Udah and Singh 2018, p. 21)—which was at the time understood to be Anglo-Celtic, Christian and white. For the duration of these immigration policies, white men tightly controlled who could gain entry and benefit from Australia, thereby maintaining white possession of Indigenous lands. In 1975, the Whitlam government formally denounced the racist White Australia Policy for that of the Multicultural Australia Policy. Whilst very small numbers of people from the African continent migrated to Australia in the years after the dissolution of the White Australia Policy, violent conflicts (particularly in the Horn of Africa) from the 1980s onwards saw an increase in people being resettled under Australia’s Refugee and Humanitarian Program. Resettlement from Sub-Saharan Africa to Australia peaked in the mid-1990s and early 2000s, when displaced peoples and refugees fled worsening and widespread unrest across large regions. Indeed, violence and genocide such as that in Rwandan and (South) Sudan during this time saw many seek safety in Australia.

We have chosen to focus on refugees from Africa for the following reasons: (a) Australia has been receiving notable numbers of refugees from African countries for the past 30 years, and so there is much literature on their experiences (and those of their children) of resettlement in Australia; (b) their physical characteristics are negatively racialised and coded as ‘Other’ to the national imagery of Australian appearance (that is, white and of European heritage); (c) conservative media and politicians regularly homogenise, scapegoat and demonise this cohort of refugees (and more broadly migrants from the continent); (d) the authors have extensive experience of working with this cohort as resettlement support practitioners and scholars, with one author having lived experience of the refugee resettlement process in Australia. In using the term African refugees, we are cognisant of the diversity of cultures, linguistic and religious differences this label encompasses and attend to criticisms of the use of the term ‘African’ (see for example Phillips 2011).

Although, refugees from Africa are diverse in terms of demographic indicators, they tend to share experiences of displacement, violence and trauma. Even in a country where the most recent census (2021) records that almost half of residents have at least one parent born overseas (48.2%), a quarter (24.8%) speak a language other than English at home, and over a quarter (27.6%) report being born overseas (Khorana 2022), white skin remains racialised as the social norm. That is, for most African refugees their darker skin codes them as ‘black’, a signifier that they occupy an inferior position in society and are problematic (Mapedzahama and Kwansah-Aidoo 2017; Udah and Singh 2018). Regardless of the socially constructed nature of race (Berger and Luckmann 1963), it has very real and serious implications for how people are received and for their homemaking in Australia. In fact, in the first report on Australia by the United Nation’s Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent (UN WGEPAD 2023), the working group noted how they saw evidence of the weaponization of refugee and migrant status, placing affected cohorts in a state of deep precarity.

An example of how refugees are negatively racialised in Australia, is when in 2018 Peter Dutton, now current leader of the opposition party and then minister for Home Affairs, argued that a ‘civilised’ country such as Australia should fast-track the humanitarian visas of ‘persecuted’ white South African farmers. Dutton noted that the (white) South African community already in Australia, were ‘the sorts of people that we want to bring into our country’, as they work hard and integrate (Taylor 2018). This call to expediate humanitarian visas for white South African farmers was also supported by former Prime Minister Tony Abbott (Karp 2018b). As Piccini (2018) points out, Dutton’s sympathy for white South Africans has historical roots in the two countries shared anti-black racism. Earlier that same year, Dutton incited moral panic when he stated that people in the state of Victoria were too afraid to go to restaurants because of ‘African gang violence’—violence committed by those who he portrays as not prepared to integrate, disproportionately commit criminal offences and thus do not belong in Australia (Karp 2018a). This narrative was mostly concentrated on South Sudanese youth in the state of Victoria (whose parents or themselves, arrived as refugees). But given the propensity in Australia to homogenise all Africans regardless of country of birth or migration pathway, many people of African heritage felt the backlash of this populist vitriol across the country. This fueling of the ‘African gang’ narrative further contributed to the ubiquitous association of African refugees with criminality and other negative anti-Black tropes (Majavu 2020). Moreover, as Molla (2021) argues the racialisation of youth violence inflicts much damage on refugee-background young Africans, and if left unaddressed can disrupt the settlement outcomes of African youth.

There is no doubt that resettlement for African refugees can be a very challenging process. Many are navigating complex and compounding issues such as: personal and collective trauma resulting from their experiences of violence and displacement (Hancock 2009, p. 10); language barriers (for examples see Abur and Mphande 2020; Hebbani and Preece 2015); engaging services; supporting school going children (King and Owens 2019); finding meaningful and well-paid work as negatively racialised people (Abur and Spaaij 2016; Udah et al. 2019; Kalemba 2021). This is all within the context of social and structural discrimination, including at the hands of service providers (UN WGEPAD 2023, p. 8). However, as Moreton-Robinson (2015, p. 172) points out in relation to Indigenous peoples, pathology is a powerful weapon that patriarchal white sovereignty deploys to gain support from white citizens. She further explains that the deployment of Indigenous pathology bolsters the claims of patriarchal white sovereignty, because if Indigenous peoples are characterised as deficient and unable to behave themselves, then they would not find themselves in poor living situations (Moreton-Robinson 2015, p. 172). Such harmful narratives are echoed in Ramsay’s (2017a) research findings with Central African refugee women in Australia, where resettlement in Australia is underpinned by its colonial legacy. That is, refugees may be bestowed civic inclusion and humanitarian assistance, but this does not equate with being treated with social worth. Moreover, influenced by ‘colonially informed racisms of disgust’ (Ramsay 2017a, p. 184), resettlement is entangled with a civilising imperative. This we suggest, places expectations on African refugees, and more broadly other negatively racialised refugees, to forever hold the position of subordinate, grateful Other.

4.3. A Useful Threat

It is indeed true that Australia has a ‘tiered and highly discretionary visa regime’ (Rego and Gottardo 2020, p. 309) that favours certain cohorts of applicants over others, with some negatively racialised groups being framed as undesirable future residents, even citizens, of Australia by white sovereignty. Moreover, like other negatively racialized migrants, Black African refugees are positioned by populist media outlets and politicians as a threat to patriarchal white sovereignty. However, we suggest that the presence of refugees from the African continent can also serve the Australian government in three main ways. None of which are of benefit to the resettlement of these refugees. First, Australia is a signatory to the UN Refugee Convention and its associated protocol (Spinks and McCluskey n.d.). Therefore, the admission of African refugees is the very visible signifier on Australian streets that it is meeting its international humanitarian obligations. The hypervisibility of Black Africans within the racialised Australian social landscape sees them experiencing every day and structural racism (see Colic-Peisker 2009).

Second, the admission of African refugees feeds the international narrative, promoted by Home Affairs and glossy tourist promotional material alike, that Australia is a multicultural success story. And yet, the legacy of the White Australia racial ethnocracy persists). Alongside Australia’s acceptance of African refugees, it also engages in violent border security policies to stop (mostly negatively racialised) asylum seekers arriving by boat, providing assurances that those who make it to Australia will never receive humanitarian protection (see Section 4). In recent years there have been a series of legal actions against indefinite immigration detention which has been followed by even harsher legislation to detain, monitor and deport stateless people deemed to be of poor characters, oftentimes convicted of a serious crime, and other non-citizens without a valid visa. These rushed laws did not go unchallenged.

In one response, the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre filed a case with the High Court disputing the legality of these new laws on behalf of a Sudanese man referred to as RVJB who, aged 13 years old, arrived in Australia on a permanent refugee visa (ARSC 2023a). As a young man, he notes that he did not receive adequate supports to help him adjust to life in Australia whilst recovering from the traumas of the conflict in his homeland and committed offences that were dealt with via the court system. RVJB was then subjected to seven years of immigration detention, including on Christmas Island, where he suffered further trauma due to his detention conditions. Actively engaged in rehabilitating his life, and not having committed any serious offence since he was 18 years old, RVJB was released from detention into the community by ministerial order before the High Court’s ruling on indefinite detention (Doran 2024). Under the new legislation RVJB was forced to wear an ankle bracelet and comply with curfews, despite illustrating his rehabilitation over eight years and living in the community for one year (ARSC 2023b). This, RVJB argued, interfered with ‘liberty, bodily integrity, privacy and dignity, and show the law to be punitive and disproportionate’ (see ARSC 2023a). Before this case came before the High Court the Minister granted RVJB a fresh visa that removed the ankle monitor and curfew condition and agreed to cover his legal costs (ARSC 2023b). RVJB remains subject to over 20 strict visa requirements and could be subject to a minimum of 1 year in jail should he breach these conditions (ARSC 2023b). RVJB’s case illustrates the compounding trauma of the Australian immigration system, one which is highly racialised. According to Karp (2023) the most common countries of citizenship of these former detainees and thus affected by the new draconian legislation were Afghanistan, Iran, Sudan, Iraq, South Sudan, Eritrea, Sri Lanka—all people who are negatively racialised in the Australian national imagination.

Thirdly, in Australian public discourse, asylum seekers that attempt to reach Australian shores by boat have been described as queue jumpers, insinuating that the humanitarian programme has a queue (Ozolins 2004; Phillips 2015). Moreover, in media, political and public discourse, we see asylum seekers arriving by boat labelled ‘illegal’ and viewed with suspicion and distain. Punishment for ‘jumping this queue’ is to be turned back or detained offshore. Moreover, the narrative goes that if they were ‘real refugees’, they would wait in refugee camps like other refugees. African refugees mostly by the serendipity of geography do tend to wait in refugee camps across Africa. Therefore, the arrival of African refugees through the Australian humanitarian programme legitimizes the claim of a queue. This appeals to Australian sensibilities regarding ‘a fair going for all’, and the continued enforcement of ‘Operation Sovereign Borders’.

4.4. Being Socialised into the Possessive Logic

In this article we argue that one of the aims of resettlement and integration policy in Australia is to socialise newly arrived migrants, particularly those who are negatively racialized, into the possessive logic of patriarchal white sovereignty (Moreton-Robinson 2015). Settlement and integration policy is a top-down affair and developed within the wider Australian welfare system (Jakubowicz 1989). The welfare system that the nation-state has the capacity to influence, legitimise, manipulate and demonise welfare recipients in ways that serve the white Australia national imaginary. It is through centralised welfare policies, including that of resettlement and integration, that the Federal government signals who is an acceptable Australian. Settlement and integration policies have been used to not only reassert mainstream values but also socialise negatively racialized African, and other, refugees, into the possessive logic of patriarchal white sovereignty. When minorities and welfare recipients exert agency or challenge the welfare structures, the Federal government has historically responded with the tightening of social service provisions with over policing measures, and harmful (many times racialised) deficit narratives that includes restricting visa conditions and policies (Jakubowicz 1989; see also McAdam 2013).

African diasporic communities’ express feelings of being under constant surveillance and viewed with suspicion (Australian Human Rights Commission 2010; Baak et al. 2019). This is particularly stark in the social welfare system. The welfare system can dominate the everyday life of African refugees, often in violent ways. For example, the way in which authorities (mis)judge and interfere in African refugee families (Losoncz 2015). Literature has documented the multifaceted challenges of changing family dynamics (Kuyini and Kivunja 2020) and parenting for Black African heritage migrants making their way in Australia (Gatwiri and Anderson 2021; Mugadza et al. 2019). State mechanisms such as the over policing of parenting practices and child removal, can lead to raptured personhood and fractured families (Ramsay 2017b).

As Ramsay (2016) argues in relation to refugee women originating from African countries, the child welfare system operates to protect children but also as a mechanism of socialisation into what it means to be an ideal Australian citizen. Mothers who do not comply with white neoliberal motherhood ideals, are vulnerable to state intervention and forced childlessness. Following Ramsay’s (2016) consideration of the child welfare system as an instrument of governmentality, we consider the family is a contested site where patriarchal white sovereignty can be resisted in the pursuit of living a life of agency that does not conform to white Australia’s expectations. Thus, finding ways to undermine family cohesion and creating a vulnerability that more easily ‘civilises’ African refugees as they become subjects of patriarchal white sovereignty. Negatively racialized African refugee children at school are encouraged to report their parents for poor parenting practices, resulting in weakened family cohesion and familial tension (Lewig et al. 2009, p. 72). Social security agencies notify children under the age of 15 to let them know that they can receive their share of social security funds directly (Atem 2021, p. 257). Often children are not well equipped to manage money. The tension that arises in the family due to these changes in the distribution of income, can open the door for child protection and the police to intervene.

When children are removed from families it is done so with little family or community consultation, nor cultural consideration of parenting practices (Doney et al. 2009; Losoncz 2015; African Alliance NSW 2023). The removal of children from black families is not a new phenomenon in Australia. Indeed, Indigenous peoples were the first to have their children removed from them in an act of cultural genocide (Mays 2020). Today, Indigenous children continue to be overrepresented in child protection services (SNAICC 2023), with scholars such as Krakouer (2023) arguing in relation to Indigenous children this overrepresentation demonstrates that systemic racism is an ongoing feature of Australian child protection. This is true for Indigenous and African heritage children. Settlement and integration as a centralised Federal process emphasises and produces a one-size-fits all support system. Three themes emerge from the resettlement experiences of African refugees in Australia that suggest that the current settlement and integration policy and support has not produced the desired outcome for them.

Firstly, Atem (2021), in his work with South Sudanese former refugees, suggests that the current settlement and integration policy fails to enable former African refugees to achieve their aspirations, expectations and hope for the good life. The good life was what these former refugees expected to find in Australia including a sense of belonging to community and place, economic independence, active civic participation and their children thriving and achieving in all areas of life. Therefore, from the perspective of former South Sudanese refugees, successful resettlement is about to what extend the settlement and integration policy and support enable them to achieve the good life. Settlement and integration as a process of socialisation into the possessive logic of patriarchal white sovereignty, has not allowed most South Sudanese former refugees to achieve what they assert as successful resettlement (Kaphle et al. 2024; Abur and Mphande 2020; Abur and Spaaij 2016). For example, most South Sudanese have not been able to establish local social connections that would make them feel a sense of belonging to the local community (Gatwiri and James 2024; Maher et al. 2018). By reproducing the possessive logic of patriarchal white sovereignty through resettlement expectations, the government frames the ‘good life’ as that led by a refugee well socialised into the possessive logic.

The second theme is that negatively racialized African refugees experience barriers in all domains of resettlement. The new Refugee and Humanitarian Entrant Settlement and Integration Outcome Framework, recently released by the Department of Home Affairs (2023b) to guide settlement support services, identifies the following settlement domains: language, health and wellbeing, economic participation, housing and transport, education, social connections, community welcome, access to institutions, belonging, and safety/security. Fozdar (2023) warns about making generalisation about the resettlement outcomes for African migrants. However, she found, from reviewing the literature, that resettlement outcomes for African refugees are overwhelmingly negative. Similarly, the African Alliance NSW highlighted the role of locally-led organisations in building trust and acting as a bridge to mainstream services that is often over-looked and can support resettlement if organisations are funded appropriately (2023).

The third theme is belonging. According to Woldeye (2018), the desire to belong to a new place and community of people is a major dream for African refugees. Woldeye (2018) suggests that the sense of belonging for African refugees is grounded in community relationships and nature. The experience of uprooting from their natural environment (place) and community due to war amounts to loss of connectedness and a sense of belonging. The significance of belonging as connectedness and interdependence was confirmed by the Australian Survey Research in 2011 (Australian Survey Research Group 2011). The Australian Survey Research was commissioned by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship to study the notion of successful settlement. The Australian Survey Research found that while the government emphasised economic wellbeing as an indicator of successful resettlement, refugees understood successful resettlement in terms of connectedness to community, interdependence, and personal wellbeing. The Australian Survey Research found that the Australian government defines successful resettlement in terms of system outcomes (social participation, economic wellbeing, level of independence, and personal wellbeing). Whereas for refugees and humanitarian entrants including African refugees, successful settlement is perceived in terms of life outcomes (personal happiness and community connectedness). This lack of achieving both systemic and life outcomes in settlement calls for change.

4.5. A Framework for Unsettling the Possessive Logic

We propose a principle led challenge to current resettlement practices, an alternative way of doing settlement policy that is decentralised. One that is embedded in agency and self-determination and serves refugees to achieve what they deem to be a good life, rather than one that serves the colonial-settler state. We argue that what is needed is a framework of resettlement policy that is based on recognition that resettlement is a complex process which plays out locally. There are many actors beyond the federal government who must have a say in settlement and integration policy decision making. This calls for an approach that ensures that settlement policy decision making power and authority is shared among government agencies, community groups, civil society and business/corporate actors who make up the local community which will also require different governance arrangement. We propose here a multilevel governance approach to resettlement policy where multiple independent actors work together in a coordinated way to address policy problems (Hooghe and Marks 2003). In this approach, authorities, civil society, service providers and the community share the policy decision making power and responsibility. Policy decisions are arrived at through intensive negotiation. The framework we are proposing places those who are settling at the centre of the policy decision making process. The Federal Government had experimented with this kind of multilevel governance (also known as type II) in the early 2000s to improve outcomes for Indigenous Peoples in Australia (Jarvie and Stewart 2017).

In this proposed framework, refugee and migrant community organisations in a local government area (LGA), or a defined region, form platforms where their members could come together regularly to discuss resettlement needs, which inform policy. Similarly, civil society organisations representing the wider community establish their own platform where they would identify resettlement needs from the perspective of the wider community. Representatives from these two bodies come together with government representatives from local, state, and federal government to negotiate and agree on policy priority areas and how resources, including funding, could be mobilized to address the agreed upon priority areas. The implementation of resettlement policy is negotiated between refugee and migrant led organizations, settlement service providers, local community service providers such as neighbourhood centres, local businesses, and government agencies. In the process of engaging, actors build trust and a common identity, better understand each other and appreciate the complexity of the policy environment they are embedded in. In such an arrangement, it would be the responsibility of the Federal government to provide the necessary resources for coordination, effective participation in decision making and capacity building among those being resettled and the wider community. Successful resettlement must be a whole of community process, whereby local social and economic infrastructures are strengthened for all.

This means that settlement policy, and in particular as it pertains to refugees, becomes the responsibility of local regions and areas that receive large numbers of refugees including support through local organisations. Shergold et al. (2019, p. 39), in a review of humanitarian resettlement, reported that between 2009 and 2017 seventy per cent (70%) of refugees in Australia settled in 25 local government areas and more than half settle in 8 local government areas (Fairfield, Hume, Liverpool, Brisbane, Greater Dandenong, Logan, Casey and Salisbury). In the proposed framework there are several key principles: (1) priorities for action are locally led; (2) resettlement is a two-way process that values and recognises cultural diversity; (3) funding for resettlement is not driven by competitive tendering alone but includes funds for local organisations including refugee-led organisations who cannot compete on a level playing field with larger nation-wide groups. Such a bottom-up approach would see resettlement policies evolve from local and regional priorities for both newly arrived refugees and the host local community. Here, the federal possessive logic of patriarchal white sovereignty can be moderated by local and regional realities rather than performance indicators set by the Commonwealth government for the purposes of contract management.

For example, in some regions such as Western Sydney, where the population is superdiverse (Vertovec 2007) the possessive logic, although still dominant, is weakened by an everyday that exists outside of white Australia. A cultural diversity logic unsettles the possessive logic of patriarchal white sovereignty. The cultural diversity logic is the antithesis of the possessive logic. We define cultural diversity logic as the rationalisation that affirms that the Australian nation-state is built on the back of diverse Indigenous Nations who occupied and cared for Country for millennia before the arrival of white people. And that each wave of migration has contributed in significant ways, including white people, to making Australia the modern state it is now. The cultural diversity logic does not recognise any one dominant culture but facilitate cross cultural dialogue that emphasises equality, social justice and inclusion. At the heart of this rationalisation is human agency, centrality of lived-experience and self-determination driven from the local or bottom up.

Settlement policy that is produced locally and based on the cultural diversity logic emphasises how best newly arrived refugee can contribute to the cultural diversity of their community and facilitate newly arrived refugees in their life aspirations, all through local delivery plans that operate on timeframes that go beyond narrow election cycles. This approach to resettlement would also emphasise the needs of the wider local community for settlement support by way of consensus. Transitional consensus means that dialogue and negotiation on resettlement is an ongoing process given that in the future more migrant waves would engage in dialogue. This means that the identity of the local community is continuously renegotiated with local groups identified as honest brokers to lead this process. The cumulative impact is that the Australian nation-state is an evolving project that does not reproduce and affirm the supremacy of anyone cultural group but reflects the various local and regional transitional consensus within place and across cultures. The cultural diversity logic demands that governments at all levels invest in the local community to create the necessary conditions that promote dialogue in shifting and dynamic local contexts. It would require the strengthening of local social, cultural, political and economic infrastructure that would enhance dialogue. Such investment could be in the form of sufficiently funding the local non-profit sector, the local economy, accessible local infrastructure (roads, libraries, hospitals, community facilities).

A similar principle for bottom-up action has been articulated by The Edmund Rice Centre for Justice and Community Education which produced several reports (Edmund Rice Centre 2019, 2022) exploring settlement of humanitarian entrants from a local government area perspective. Their Settlement Cities report focused on the resettlement of humanitarian entrants in 7 local government areas over the last decade. The reports highlight the critical role more settled culturally diverse communities play at the local level in welcoming newly arrived refugees and called on the Federal government to invest more in those locally based community organisations who play a key role in meeting the needs of newly arrived refugees such as social support, belonging, and navigating the service system. In 2016, in response to the unprecedented influx of refugees to Fairfield Local Government Area (LGA), local service providers and local government agencies developed a place-based response which became known as The Fairfield City Settlement Action Plan (FCSAP). The FCSAP was the first significant place-based response to the resettlement needs of newly arrived refugees. The FCSAP provides a possibility for how settlement can be done locally. Local service providers who participated in the FCSAP worked together and with Fairfield City Council to address gaps in settlement support independent of Federal Government settlement policy. Shergold et al. (2019) endorsed this approach in their review of settlement policy recommending that the Federal government invests in locally based initiatives to enhance settlement outcomes. Groups such as Welcoming Cities support local efforts in Australia towards cultural diversity and inclusion but without predictable funding. Internationally there are examples such as the New Scots Refugee Integration Strategy that are predicated on human rights principles and decency, humanity and fairness (Fisher et al. 2014–2022).

What the above discussion suggests is that settlement policy as a process aimed at socialising refugees into the possessive logic of patriarchal white sovereignty complicates the resettlement of negatively racialized African refugees. The centralised nature of the current settlement policy creates challenges for negatively racialized refugees including creating support barriers, difficulties achieving aspirations, and the difficulty of finding a sense of belonging. This approach also creates conflict and tension among community groups and between service providers as competition for limited funding is ferocious. Therefore, there is little space in the current settlement framework for dialogue. Conflict and tension within and among communities at the local level ensures that possessive logic of patriarchal white sovereignty is working as intended, i.e., dominance and control of white people over territory and nation-state is not only affirmed but reproduced at the local level. The alternative would be to make resettlement a local and place-based process where policy and its implementation is the responsibility of local governments and their communities. The focus of responsive resettlement, not socialising refugees into the possessive logic, would be addressing local challenges that hinder resettlement at the local level including the resettlement needs of the host local community. The appropriate resourcing of refugee-led organisations, their networks and services that support them is key in this local and place-based approach. Such an approach would create the necessary conditions at the local level for dialogue to begin to happen within and between communities that would ultimately allow for cultural diversity logic to take hold, and the eventual arrival to transitional consensus that would be reflected nationally about who we are as Australians.

5. Conclusions

This article begins by grounding its discussion in the acknowledgement that the current resettlement regime in Australia is highly racialised—it is embedded in Australia’s endemic white paranoia (Hage 2002) and reenforces settler-colonial patriarchal white sovereignty (Moreton-Robinson 2015). This paper does so by considering the example of negatively racialised refugees from the African continent. We contend that this cohort of people fall along the lower rungs of the ‘hierarchy of deservingness’ amongst refugees in the welfare state (Kyriakidou 2021; van Kooy and Hirsch 2022), and so their experiences and resettlement outcomes are useful to commence a rethinking of resettlement in Australia. With this in mind, we suggest a community led framework of resettlement that unsettles the possessive logic of patriarchal white sovereignty (Moreton-Robinson 2015). This broad philosophical framework aims to challenge colonial and deservingness hierarchies entrenched in the governance of resettlement. We argue for resettlement to be refashioned as a-whole-of-community endeavour. Refugees, their communities and organisations, together with civil society at the local level determine resettlement priorities through negotiation. Those priorities are then picked up by applicable government departments. The implementation of policy decision is negotiated with refugee communities, civil society organisations, settlement service providers, and the various government levels engaged in this process. And so, resettlement processes are adaptive to changing contexts and needs, and look different in different regions/LGAs as local condition determines what makes up local priorities. Government departments will continue funding policy implementation, but refugees and civil society around them are determining the specific policy decisions and implementation at the local and regional level, thereby being better placed to tailor policy and its implementation to meet local resettlement needs rather than a top down out of kilter government agenda. This article aims to provoke further considerations for how re-settlement in Australia can responds to refugees’ everyday life circumstances within community rather than enforcing racialised federal mandates. There is much scope for research that interrogates the practical operationalising of this recommendation that advocates for the localised resourcing of resettlement supports.