The ‘unwanteds’ and ‘non-compliants’: ‘unsupported mothers’ as ‘failures’ and agents in Australia’s migrant Holding Centres*

Abstract

Ideas of assimilated citizenship are inherently gendered and during Australia’s post-World War Two migration boom they were deeply and explicitly invested in marriage, children and domesticity. In this period of social conservatism and economic boom, assimilation rhetoric functioned as a reassuring mirror for the host population, promoting the dream of prosperous family life as the ultimate aspiration for refugees and migrants. The role of immigration Holding Centres within this vision was to provide a context in which migrants and refugees could take their first steps towards accomplishing this dream. These Centres of necessary temporary residence were designed as sites of transition towards autonomous, assimilated family life. However, those families headed by single mothers, often referred to in government records as ‘unsupported mothers’, had limited opportunities to live up to such images of assimilation, or even to comply with the economic imperatives of the migration scheme that had brought them to Australia. Based mainly on Department of Immigration records, this article demonstrates that despite recognising the long-term economic and social prospects their children represented, government agencies viewed many unsupported mothers as system failures. They attempted to remedy the situation by turning these women into live-in domestic workers, at times placing pressure on them to institutionalise their children in order to facilitate this, thereby prioritising their compliance with economic imperatives over support for their parenting. Within the limited scope of their agency, unsupported mothers responded by attempting to negotiate the terms of their compliance or simply refusing to comply. For the latter group, Holding Centres became a more permanent home. This permanence is read here as a gendered form of resistance to a system that struggled to foster their economic self-reliance without compromising their capacity to be mothers.     

‘Are the ‘others’ coming?’: Evidence on ‘alien conspiracy’ from three illegal markets in Greece

In the early 1990s Greece accepted a large number of immigrants from a variety of contexts. Since then ‘organised criminality’ has become an important aspect of the immigration nexus in the country, and ethnicity has been viewed as an extremely important-if not the primary–explanatory variable. Simultaneously, there has been very little empirical research on ‘organised crime’ in Greece in general and ‘organised crime’ and ethnicity in particular. The purpose of this article, which is based on previous research that the author has conducted on three illegal markets in Greece (a. migrant smuggling business, b. the cigarette black market, and c. the market of stolen cars and car parts), is to show the extent to which these illegal markets are controlled by foreign nationals, and establish whether there is such thing as an ‘alien conspiracy’ in the particular country.     

The ‘good’, the ‘bad’ and the ‘Charlie’: the business of cocaine smuggling in Greece

This article examines the social organisation of cocaine smuggling in Greece. Emphasis is placed on the involvement of professionals from the shipping industry and actors from the ‘upper society echelons’ who play a pivotal role in the transportation and importation of cocaine to Western Europe and Greece. After considering empirical evidence from a variety of sources, our findings indicate that the cocaine market in Greece is ‘organised’ by a system of collaborative relationships between state, business and civil society actors. It is suggested that to better understand the nature of this illegal market, further research is required to take a closer look into the economic, socio-cultural and political incentives of these actors.     

Policing Outlawed Desire: ‘Homocriminality’ in Beat Spaces in Australia

Drawing on interview data of gay men who have had their behavior in public spaces scrutinised by agents of the law for signs deviance, this article explores the historical characteristics of police animosity towards such conduct in Australia. This entails examining encounters between police and gay men who pursue desire in ‘beat’ (or ‘cottage’ to the use the UK term) spaces. Exploring why these outlaw gay male subjects are so abject and troubling to the law, the discussion documents how law’s desire to regulate gay men plays out in the masquerade of ‘plain-clothes’ agent provocateur operations where police entrap gay men by mimicking gay bodily appearances, gestures and mannerisms. This article also examines how police regulation of gay desire functions as a form of violence that delimits expressions of same sex desire in public spaces. A key theme that underpins the analyses in this paper is that the policing of desire in ‘beat’ spaces helps produce qualities of illicitness and dangerousness and that this, in turn, fuels the circuit of desire at play between gay men and agents of the law.

Law and Violence in Richard Wright's ‘Native Son’

This paper seeks to intervene in the continuing debate around violence as a function of law and violence as a condition of justice. It examines a key literary work of the American civil rights movement as an instance of the establishment of an ethical community anchored by the literary text, and argues that, within such a community, the literary text is the counter-violence to which the law can yield. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The Moral Economy of Heroin in ‘Austerity Britain’

This article presents the findings of an ethnographic exploration of heroin use in a disadvantaged area of the United Kingdom. Drawing on developments in continental philosophy as well as debates around the nature of social exclusion in the late-modern west, the core claim made here is that the cultural systems of exchange and mutual support which have come to underpin heroin use in this locale—that, taken together, form a ‘moral economy of heroin’—need to be understood as an exercise in reconstituting a meaningful social realm by, and specifically for, this highly marginalised group. The implications of this claim are discussed as they pertain to the fields of drug policy, addiction treatment, and critical criminological understandings of disenfranchised groups.     

‘Punishment’ in Non-custodial Sentences: A Critical Analysis

This paper reviews various uses of the concept of ‘punishment’ in relation to non-custodial sentences, including the frequently-made comparison between ‘punishment’ and ‘rehabilitation’. It concludes that ‘punishment’ has no stable meaning in respect of such sentences and, when utilised, often results in non-custodial penalties being found wanting by comparison with imprisonment. It is suggested that all sentences should be regarded as ‘punishments’, and that the creative development of community penalties will best be achieved by working with a threefold conceptualisation of reparation, rehabilitation and incapacitation, set within appropriate boundaries of proportionality.     

Making sense of ‘consent’ in a constrained environment

BackgroundThis project investigates patients' and practitioners' experiences and understandings of the consent process, as it is governed by the Mental Health Act in Great Britain.AimsWe aim to illuminate our respondents' experiences of the consent process, and to explore their attempts to make sense of that process.MethodSemi-structured interviews with 5 Responsible Medical Officers, and 7 of their consenting adult patients, were conducted at a medium-secure psychiatric hospital. We approached the analysis from the perspective of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis.ResultsOur analysis begins with an account of some of the common phenomenological consequences of the consent process as our participants understand them, but then moves on to discuss some of the contextual constraints which are evident from their negotiation of these understandings.ConclusionsWe conclude by outlining a number of emergent issues relevant to the current development of new Mental Health legislation. These include: mechanisms to allow collaboration with user groups; a more consultative role for users in their own treatment decisions; formal training and support for those conducting competency assessments; and more flexible and transparent legislative frameworks.     

The NHS Information Revolution: ‘Choice of Control’ to ‘Choice’ and ‘Control’

This paper provides a novel and critical analysis of the necessary and important balance between ‘individual privacy’ and ‘collective transparency’. We suggest that the onset of the Information Revolution has created a dilemma for the National Health Service (NHS) in terms of how it addresses its obligation to use information to improve best practice in healthcare for society (‘collective transparency’) whilst also keeping sensitive personal information confidential (‘individual privacy’). There is clearly a need to consider both whether the NHS is balancing this critically important informational relationship and whether its approach is fit for purpose. We argue that the NHS's ‘proxy-individual’ information guardian role could inadvertently mask individuals' intended roles, effectively circumventing autonomy-based laws by limiting the power of individuals to be autonomous. In this article we have identified three issues – first the prevailing ‘Mindset’ (the ‘M’) of ‘privacy’, which is viewed as individualistic, resulting in an overpowering concept of confidentiality; second, the quality and control of Information (the first ‘I’); and third, the concept of innovation (the second ‘i’), which is being used as a ‘solution’ rather than a vehicle for transparency. Indeed, transparency is our target of ‘best practice,’ and we suggest that individual privacy and collective transparency are best embedded within a complementary privacy framework that offers a better fit than the current split of control between the roles of the NHS and the roles of the individual. It is suggested that when facilitated by transparency, ‘control’ and ‘privacy’ form a continuum, aligning through the desire for choice. Therefore, the choice of control could facilitate control and choice. Together, they could replace the concept of privacy by empowering ‘informed patients’ to support the NHS's ‘No decision about me, without me’ pledge.     

Between the ‘Home’ and ‘Institutional’ Worlds: Tensions and Contradictions in the Practice of House Arrest

In this paper we argue that the theoretical work of Goffman (1961) on “total institutions,” Foucault’s (1977) insights into the workings of disciplinary power, and an account of contemporary forms of punishment and social control in postmodern society (Staples 2000) help us better understand the experiences of those individuals sentenced to house arrest. Based on face-to-face interviews with twenty-three people being electronically monitored in a Midwestern metropolitan area, our analysis identifies three themes that illustrate the ways in which electronic monitoring is experienced as a complex amalgam of what Goffman (1961, p. 13) saw as the distinct “home world” and the “institutional world”. These themes include (1) “Home is Where the Machine Is,” (2) “Producing Docile Bodies,” and (3) “Threat of Sanctions”. We reassert our claim (Staples 1994, 2000) that contemporary forms of social control such as electronic monitoring reflect an ongoing struggle to deal with problems and issues set in motion with the birth of modernity.     

The ‘make or buy’ decision in private environmental transactions

A theoretical framework combining the two branches of TCE, i.e., the governance branch (Williamson 2005) and the measurement branch (Barzel 2005) may explain the choice of the governance structure for private environmental transactions. Four case studies, i.e., the market for pure air in polluted cities, the contractual arrangement between La Esperanza and the Monteverde Conservation League, the case of the French mineral water bottler Vittel and the case of land ownership by land trusts are briefly developed in order to support the theoretical framework. Special attention is devoted to the presence (or not) of a 3-D (defined, defended and divestible) property rights system in interaction with the juridical system (civil law vs. common law) and its influence on the way environmental property rights are likely (or not) to be re-arranged. Lessons and policy implications are drawn in order to foster research on these challenging issues.

‘The biggest gang in Oakland’: re-thinking police legitimacy

Literature defining ‘police legitimacy’ lacks qualitative research on those populations most often targeted by law enforcement agencies, including people of color in urban areas. This same literature defines police legitimacy as something unquestionable and automatic. Exploration of this concept is limited to strategies to increase public ‘trust’ in police, and public compliance to their authority. We address these limitations in the available scholarship through an analysis of interviews with a diverse sample of Oakland (CA) residents on their experiences with the Oakland Police Department (OPD). Their narratives are presented in the historical context of controversy, budget problems, federal investigations, and racialized violence that help to define the relationship between OPD and Oakland communities. Those interviewed, universally observed OPD’s failure to address the most common crime problems in the city, while others, particularly people of color, found them to be a personal or public threat to safety. Their narratives fly in the face of the manifest functions of municipal police forces, are fully supported by the contemporary empirical history of the OPD, and suggest the illegitimate authority – including the monopoly on the use of force – of organizations like OPD in a democratic society.     

‘Unhomely moments’: Civilising domestic worlds in colonial Australia

This article explores the multiple connections between the colonisation of Australia in the nineteenth century and the formation of domestic worlds as the site for ‘civilising’ children. The affective bonds of family were often regarded as an indispensable element in the nurture and training of children, but where the bonds of ‘natural affection’ seemed to pose an obstacle to the civilising project, they were ruthlessly severed.     

‘Rioting in goatish embraces’: Marriage and improvement in early British Jamaica

Marriages were relatively infrequent among the white population of early British Jamaica. This article examines the ideological implications of the failure of whites to marry with sufficient regularity to ensure that white population increase would allow Jamaica to become a settler society on the British North American model. It looks, in particular, at the tendency of whites to live in irregular unions, either with other whites or with black or brown concubines, and the effect that such arrangements had on perceptions of white Jamaicans as especially immoral. It connects these views with other discourses on settler societies in which improvement and frequent marriage were linked.     

Operation ‘Cerberus Action’ and the ‘Four Corners’ Prosecution

There is a generally accepted belief that a well publicised prosecution, which results in the conviction of the offenders will deter crime by sending out a ‘clear message’ to those intending to offend. Those who seek to enforce the legal protection of antiquities and archaeological sites will often decry the number of prosecutions brought, and urge a more aggressive prosecution policy against looters and traffickers in antiquities. However a prosecution may not always produce the anticipated outcome of deterrence. In this article a lawyer examines a recent high profile operation undertaken by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Land Management against looters and traffickers in the south west of the United States for breaches of the Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979 and its outcome. It will begin with a short consideration of the context in which the prosecutions were brought: the scale of looting in the area; the difficulties facing those who have to enforce the law; the legal and historical background, and the belief of many in the area that they have a right to dig for artefacts and to collect or sell them. It will then consider ‘Operation Cerberus Action’ and its consequences in some detail, drawing on contemporaneous newspaper accounts and blog comments to illustrate that a prosecution, even where it results in conviction of all the defendants, may be counterproductive, serving only to entrench existing attitudes rather than encouraging behavioural change in intending looters and traffickers.     

“‘打虎’‘拍蝇’都是为咱老百姓”

乡镇纪检力量统一使用、交叉查办,让"以前那些老关系都不灵了";群众轻松一点手机客户端,举报就出去了。基层纪委深化"三转"带来了群众满意的结果——今年春节,我和妻子到江西省宁都县岳父家过年。大年初二,在去外婆家拜年的路上,我和开车的表姐夫聊了起来。"这两年在外面做生意好多了,赶上逢年过节再也不用去‘表示’了,这可省下了不少钱呢。关键是心里舒坦,不用再看别人脸色了。"表姐夫在外地开了一家西式快餐店,他告诉     

‘Becoming a waste land where nothing can survive’: resisting state-corporate environmental crime in a ‘forgotten’ place

Environmental justice advocates have made visible the practice of disproportionately siting hazardous waste facilities in low-income communities of color throughout the USA. Typically, state-corporate actors decide where to place these environmentally undesirable projects, with an eye toward the bottom line rather than the health and safety of particular community members. Through an analysis of secondary data and archival materials, ranging from public hearings to court documents and newspaper accounts, a case study of state-corporate environmental crime and how one rural, historically African American town in Arizona organized to resist the siting of a fourth landfill in their community is explored. Theoretical concepts advanced by Ruth Wilson Gilmore, such as ‘forgotten places’, are put into conversation with the literature on state-corporate crime. An examination of the relationship between environmental inequality, state-corporate crime, and people’s capacity for resistance is presented.     

‘C’ is for commercial collaboration: enterprise and structure in the ‘middle market’ of counterfeit alcohol distribution

This article utilising the work of Pearson and Hobbs [1] defines the middle market in counterfeit alcohol. Drugs markets have a resemblance to counterfeit alcohol markets in as much that they share the illicit nature of the product and the need to distribute the product at the ‘street’ level. Drawing on two case studies taken from a European regulator the article details the dynamics of the market, the enterprise actions of the actors and how law enforcement responses can, in certain circumstances, make the task of the distributors easier. The traditional notions of organised crime are challenged and organisation of counterfeit alcohol markets is viewed as being reliant upon those who have legitimate access to the market and are able to develop networks of commercial collaborators who by their position in the legitimate market are able to conceal their illicit actions.