"Economic Refugees": A Legal Misnomer

Bob Carr should stop referring to “economic refugees”. The term is a legal misnomer. Under the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, there is no recognition of so-called “economic refugees”. The Foreign Minister's use of the term is therefore disingenuous, because it is inconceivable that he is ignorant of what the Convention defines as a refugee.

During Question Time in the Senate last Thursday, the Foreign Minister said, in reference to asylum seekers from Iran arriving in Australia by boat, that increasingly, the “evidence before us is they are economic refugees, not people fleeing persecution, and are being brought here by people-smugglers”. The Foreign Minister also referred to these asylum seekers as “overwhelmingly middle-class … who belong to the majority religious and ethnic group in that country and are coming to these shores as economic migrants...”

First, under Article 1 of the Refugee Convention, a “refugee” is someone who, owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to available himself of the protection of that country.

These five grounds are the only grounds on which a claim for asylum may be made. Claims based on economic hardship or the want of a 'better' life will not be recognised under the Refugee Convention. If this is the basis of an asylum claim, that claim will fail. For this reason, it is simply wrong to speak of “economic refugees”. They cannot exist by definition. It is also misleading for the Foreign Minister to suggest that people who are “middle-class” or belong to the majority cannot be genuine refugees. Nowhere in the definition of a refugee is there any requirement to demonstrate poverty or membership of a minority religion or ethnic group. It is wrong of the Foreign Minister to play on misguided preconceptions and prejudices held against asylum seekers.

If a person satisfies the definition of a “refugee” then he or she is given refugee status under the Convention. This means that people arriving in Australia, seeking asylum have a right to make a claim for protection. It is wrong to speak of them as “illegal arrivals”. The Convention does not say anything about the means of arrival. Therefore, politicians may demonise boat arrivals as they like but it has no basis in law. An asylum seeker is free to chose their mode of arrival. When we consider the requirement that a person seeking asylum must demonstrate a well-founded fear of being persecuted, accusations of “queue jumping” and the absence of proper travel documentation are absurds notions. If a person is a genuine refugee, then they will have fled their country for fear of persecution, meaning threat to life or freedom and serious violation of one's human rights. Indeed, the Convention actually requires a refugee to have left their country owing to their fear of that persecution.

The Foreign Minister's deployment of the term “economic refugees” is scaremongering and demonising; it appeals to those of us who might think there are refugees who do not deserve to be here, who have come for a better life, when there is not enough of the pie to go around, as it is. Each time the term “economic refugee” is used, those of us who know better or should know better (including the media) have an obligation to challenge and resist that use, because it is the right thing to do, morally and legally.

The Trivialisation of Domestic Violence

In the past two days, much has been written about the public attack of Nigella Lawson by her husband, Charles Saatchi. Photos now circulating media outlets capture the celebrity cook in a moment of unmistakable fear and distress. It is perhaps emblematic of the culture and times we live in, that it takes something like this to happen to a celebrity to capture the world's attention on what is in fact, one of our most profound social problems. On another level, the colliding of fame, wealth, beauty and success with the ugly face of abuse exposes the prejudices and judgements we harbour about what domestic violence looks like. According to women's support organisation, Wire (www.wire.org.au) one in five women will be affected by family violence at some time during their life. According to a 2005 survey undertaken by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, incredibly, more than one million women had experienced physical or sexual assault by their male current or ex-partner since the age of 15 and 64% of women who experienced physical assault and 81.1% of women who experienced sexual assault did not make a police report.

I read today that Saatchi has received a warning from police over the incident. Saatchi has been reported as describing the incident as "playful tiff", over a heated discussion about the couple's children. Saatchi has reportedly said that he held Lawson's neck repeatedly to emphasis his point. We should remember that for most of the Western world (including Australia), it was not so long ago that marital rape was a contested notion, and a husband was considered entitled to engage in a bit of harmless horseplay in exercising his right to conjugal relations with his wife. Legal and social opinion has moved a long way from archaic notions of woman as property, but this episode shows that these attitudes are not dead and buried. Indeed, it is in our attitudes towards defining what constitutes abuse that we find the many silences that persist.

It is trite to say that there was nothing playful or benign about the exchange between Saatchi and Lawson. We bore witness to something that should not only shock us, but anger us. We should be angered by what Saatchi purports to do through his casual and dismissive language in describing the incident as playful tiff. Saatchi showed himself not only willing to inflict fear upon the person with whom he shares a home and a life, but also an utter lack of disrespect towards her. He did so flagrantly, and in his subsequent trivialisation of his conduct, he has sought to dismiss and silence, not only his critics but also his victim.

On Sexism and the Politics of Gender

It was a big week in gender politics last week to say the least. On Tuesday, Julia Gillard reignited the so-called 'gender wars', warning, at the launch of 'Women for Gillard', that an Abbott government would threaten women's political participation and abortion rights. Perhaps not surprisingly, this play was viewed by many as a somewhat desperate and disingenuous attempt by the Prime Minister to use gender to divert attention from the polling woes of the Labor government. The next day, details were leaked of an LNP fundraiser for Liberal candidate Mal Brough, listing as a menu item, ‘‘Julia Gillard Kentucky Fried Quail’’ described as ‘‘small breasts, huge thighs & a big red box’’. Sexist, distasteful and downright nasty. On Thursday, shocking revelations of an internet sex ring within the Australian Defence Force, men filming women engaged in sexually explicit acts, the Chief of Army confronting the exploitation, humiliation and degradation of women by those within the armed forces.

To cap the week off, radio host Howard Sattler, saw fit to question the Prime Minister on the sexuality of her partner, Tim Mathieson. Sattler has been roundly condemned, and I believe, quite rightly, sacked from 6PR. I watched the footage published by The Age of the interview segment. Whether you are a 'feminist' or not; the way in which Sattler carried out his questioning of the Prime Minister on her partner's sexuality based on supposed rumour was a pure performance in sexism and misogyny. It was a deeply personal attack; with no real point to the whole thing, other than Sattler's desire to humiliate the Prime Minister. And what a crude way to humiliate and embarrass, through the suggestion of homosexuality, which for Sattler, serves as a smear on both their sexualities, a profoundly private matter. In the exchange of body language between the Prime Minister and Sattler, there was also a telling story. Sattler performs his role as macho shock jock to perfection; knowing and savouring that he has caught the Prime Minister in a trap; her embarrassment is palpable. Yet still, I saw the Prime Minister of Australia, by all accounts a strong and capable women, trying to placate an offensive and vitriolic man; the peace-maker, seeking to 'smooth things over'. Julia Gillard might have rightly been criticised for gender opportunism, and her motives for reigniting the gender war questioned; but the Sattler episode shows us that sexism and misogyny is well and alive and the Prime Minister should not be criticised for making gender a topic of public discourse.

Certiorari

Certiorari was established in 2013 as a place to express, share and promote the exchange of exciting and provoking ideas and conversations.  Comments are most welcome at: certiorari.blogspot@gmail.com

A review of Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo

In Poor Economics, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo put forward an alternative way of thinking about the fight against global poverty. They posit that global poverty will not be solved by debating the big ideological questions around world poverty; questions such as, what is the cause of poverty? does aid really work? should we put our faith in free markets? As a consequence, they reject emphatically, any notion that the development project of lifting the poor out of poverty can be furthered by engaging with the orthodox contest between aid versus market solutions or supply versus demand (as exemplified by Jeffrey Sachs and William Easterly). Indeed, Banerjee and Duflo reject the notion that ideology can lead us down the path to the 'right' answers.

Banerjee and Duflo's approach seems seductively simple. Their re-thinking is essentially two fold. First, dealing with the ideological question, they say it is necessary to break down the big questions about global poverty into smaller questions; that is, to think of concrete problems with specific answers. The task is then to gather empirical evidence to find answers to those problems, identifying the best way of solving these problems. To do this, Banerjee and Duflo have advocated the use of randomised controlled trials or 'RCTs'; large scale experiments first used in the medical field to test the effectiveness of new drugs. In an RCT, individuals or communities are randomly assigned different treatments or different versions of the same treatment, to test the effectiveness of the treatment or perhaps, the method of delivery of the treatment. Since the individuals or communities chosen are exactly comparable, any differentiation in results can be attributed to the treatment itself. Although Banerjee and Duflo say there are no 'magic bullet' solutions to fighting poverty, they say that RCTs are one way in which the effectiveness of social policy can be tested. Banerjee and Duflo believe that by placing policies and programmes under rigorous scrutiny, we can begin to avoid making social policy based on guess work and faith in an ideology. Banerjee and Duflo are not however, mere advocates of RCTs; they have for over a decade, championed its use as the new way of 'doing' developmental economics. Together, Banerjee and Duflo founded the Poverty Action Lab or J-PAL at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2003 and by 2010, J-PAL had completed or engaged in over 240 experiments in forty countries.

Poor Economics documents Banerjee and Duflo's admirable dedication to tackling global poverty through a patient and meticulous process of evidence gathering, one experiment at a time. It is also a testament to Banerjee and Duflo's commitment to seeking to understand real problems faced by the poor and how the poor make decisions about their daily lives. In short, they are passionate and they evince good intentions. Poor Economics is a detailed, but very engaging account of the work Banerjee and Duflo have done through J-PAL and in an eighteen country data set, to systematically and methodically test (and therefore challenge) particular applications of the big 'projects' within the global poverty and development. Thus, the book dedicates one chapter to each of these projects, namely, food, health, education, population and family planning, insurance, credit, savings, entrepreneurship and institutional and political reform. Banerjee and Duflo's ultimate message is that there are no miracle solutions to eradicate global poverty, but by studiously examining the lives of the poor and the poverty traps which effect them, it is possible to create change slowly, by implementing small, well planned and well tested steps; or in their words, 'nudges' in the right direction.

It is easy to be somewhat taken in by the combination of the ease of Banerjee and Duflo's narrative style, the seeming accessibility of economics and statistics as explained in Poor Economics and Banerjee and Duflo's commitment to a “grassroots” approach to doing development. One is also persuaded (naturally) by the eminent sensibility of demanding evidence for policies and programmes; 'proof' as it were, that something works before a wholesale dedication to the idea based on faith of ideology. But underneath or perhaps beyond this, there are some interesting and perhaps, uncomfortable themes in operation.

The accessible tone of Banerjee and Duflo's narrative style seems to invoke a sense of inclusion. But inclusion of whom? The 'we' and the 'our' in Banerjee and Duflo's narrative is decidedly they themselves (the authors) and us (the readership). Problematically, the poor, remain always, the subject of study and examination; they are never active participants in this narrative, despite the myriad of stories and rich insights into the lives of the poor portrayed in Poor Economics. In this interpretation of Banerjee and Duflo's narrative, RCTs are devised, implemented and concluded from above and outside. As such, one might see the poor, represented in Poor Economics always as the inactive, depoliticised Other.

There is thus a silent paternalism in Poor Economics which raises important notions concerning consent. Poor Economics appears to imply consent of participants in the RCTs about which Banerjee and Duflo write. This invites the question of the nature of consent. Whilst it might readily be accepted that participants gave their formal consent to experiments, the issue is not quite so clear when we turn to the question of the true nature of consent. There is a presumption that there is consent to the presence of we/us (the development workers, the economists and even the readership). On closer examination, behind the narrative of Poor Economics, is a very active and intrusive process of interference; we are intruding as it were, into the lives of the poor, dissecting, examining, observing and moreover, measuring and judging, using our terms, our measures and our values. On a more basic level, there is the question of true consent to experimentation itself. Paternalism is in fact raised by Banerjee and Duflo in their chapter on health care, and arguably, rather unsatisfactorily dealt with. Rather than engage with the problem of paternalism, Banerjee and Duflo appear to merely accept that there is paternalism in the development enterprise and say, it is easy to sermonise about paternalism from the comfort of our couches, but that we of the rich world are beneficiaries of embedded paternalism and its resultant virtues. That seems somewhat a reductive and circular argument.

Operating at an overarching level is an ascendant economic narrative. It is perfectly reasonable for a book written by development economists, about development economics and what it has to say about world poverty to be decidedly economics-centric. But it raises the interesting consideration, to what degree does such focus then exclude other discourses which might have something to say about the lives of the poor? It is noted that particularly in this context, this notion of 'the poor' is itself hugely problematic, notably but not in the least, for its implication of (false) hegemony and universality. In Banerjee and Duflo's narrative, people and communities unavoidably become ultimately absorbed within a large social experiment. They are consequently collated; into data, outcomes and then finally, bodies of statistics for further examination and judgment. This is not to say that Banerjee and Duflo do not engage with the social and the cultural; indeed, Poor Economics evidences quite the opposite. Banerjee and Duflo report, time and again on the impact that cultural practices and beliefs have on economic decisions made by the poor. The point is, that there is something discomforting in Banerjee and Duflo eschewing big philosophies on the one hand, and arguably embracing another philosophy of economic determinism on the other.

Finally, the question of ethics, connected to the notion of the absence of participation and true consent. Randomised controlled trials in this context necessarily entails the taking of real human subjects and experimenting with aspects of their lives. In the case of RCTs described in Poor Economics, those conducting the experiments seemingly devise and carry out the experiments. There are deeply problematic ethical issues surrounding the giving of one group a 'beneficial' treatment and depriving another of the same and indeed, experimentation with real lives, for observational purposes, justified on the assumption that ultimately, 'we' (the development industry) want what is best for the poor. Banerjee and Duflo do not address the ethical question, and consequently, there is seemingly (and regrettably) a sense that the evident vulnerability of the poor we meet in Poor Economics vis-a-vis the authors and the bigger development enterprise is ignored. Put another way, there is an apparent failure on the part of Banerjee and Duflo to acknowledge (or perhaps, recognise) the power structures which underlie their very narrative. There is no reflection upon the very fact of power which the development enterprise holds over the supposed beneficiaries of the project. From this perspective, there is a hidden process within Poor Economics which operates and disempowers its subject.

Poor Economics is not short of achievements. Banerjee and Duflo succeed in their objective, to show how fighting global poverty could be done differently and they certainly provide passionate and rich insights into the lives of the poor. Poor Economics invites us into the lives of the poor and therefore, the development enterprise. Therefore, we, the critical reader should, in accepting this invitation, examine and acknowledge the more difficult issues within and around Poor Economics.