The Dublin Regulation determines the Member State responsible for accepting and making a decision on asylum claims lodged in the European Union (‘EU’), Norway and Iceland. It aims to ensure that each asylum claim is examined by one and only one Member State, to put an end to the practice of ‘asylum shopping’ and to prevent repeated applications, both of which have been costly for the receiving Member States and caused severe inefficiencies in the determination processes in the EU in the past. With the first Member State of entry being the major determinant for the allocation of asylum responsibility under the Dublin Regulation, there has been growing discontent among Member States at the external borders of the EU, particularly the southern Member States in the Mediterranean, over what they see as a system that has unjustly placed disproportionate burdens on them regarding the admission of seaborne asylum seekers and the costs associated with it. As a result of changes in migration rules and consequent adjustments in the entry strategy employed by irregular migrants and people smugglers, the Member States at the EU’s ‘southern frontline’ have unwillingly played the role of reluctant hosts to boatloads of unwelcome asylum seekers. This thesis aims to examine how the EU has attempted to tackle the challenging situation of the unauthorised migration of asylum seekers into its territory by sea, and in particular, how it has responded to demands from affected Member States for a more equitable system of asylum responsibility allocation in spite of and outside the Dublin framework. It would argue that the ‘small’ EU Member States in the Mediterranean themselves have, over the last five years at least, become the unexpected drivers of the EU’s declared commitment to the principles of ‘solidarity’, ‘fair sharing of responsibility’ and ‘effective multilateralism’. ‘ Small’ as they may be in terms of resources, size or influence vis-à-vis the larger Member States, the former have been able to create their own mark in a global regime that has traditionally been resistant to the idea of burden-sharing. The measures taken by the EU’s ‘southern frontline’ have collectively changed the landscape of a global protection regime where not only is asylum ‘burden sharing’ highly elusive – its terms and conditions are also dictated by the more powerful sovereign states. While the theoretical point of departure in this study is the influence wielded by the ‘small’ EU Member States in the burden-sharing debate, the degree or level of ‘influence’ small Mediterranean Member States can exercise in pushing for cooperative arrangements is itself determined by a system that is biased towards large states, increasingly securitised, and is therefore limited in both nature and scope. Nevertheless, the experience of ‘burden-sharing’ in the EU between 2005 and 2010 demonstrates that the Member States at the periphery have proactively taken the responsibility for the operationalisation of the founding values and principles of the EU, and through active norm advocacy and related strategies, have been able to achieve what has eluded the global protection regime so far – a refugee burden sharing scheme.

Through an analysis of the Danish Immigration Law and asylum system, this research illustrates how the Danish state through state practices and policies permeates and produces the everyday space of humanitarian migrants. Furthermore, it examines how humanitarian migrants experience their everyday life in the Danish asylum system. An examination of state practices in conjunction with humanitarian migrants’ narratives of space and everyday practices, offers an opportunity to explore what kind of politics and political subjectivities that can emerge in the space of humanitarian migrants. This research contribute to our understanding of first, how the securitization of migration has direct impact on the everyday life of humanitarian migrants, second, second, how the state through practices and space governs and de-politicizes humanitarian migrants, and third, humanitarian migrants are able to act politically. Furthermore, this research problematizes the categorization of humanitarian migrants as “asylum seeker” in order to illustrate how the group of humanitarian migrants is a very diverse group of people from different places with various skills and education-, social-, and economic backgrounds. Even though “asylum seekers” are often portrayed as a homogenous group of vulnerable people we cannot assume that these people understand themselves as vulnerable docile “asylum seekers”.

This thesis interrogates immigration detention as a space of intricate ambivalence - one which seeks to exclude, but which is also entreated to protect. The focus is so-called ‘unauthorised’ asylum seekers detained both within Australia and offshore on the Pacific island of Nauru between 1999 and 2003 - when the numbers of detained asylum seekers reached its maximum and the government introduced offshore processing centres. Australia’s immigration detention regime sits awkwardly with the discourse of universal human rights and brings into sharp conflict two robust political values: the right of endangered people to seek refuge and the right of the nation to determine who will enter. Focusing on the experiences of detainees reveals immigration detention as a complex regime through which the state’s dominating power targets the stateless, non-white, male body. This targeting is intentional, serving to secure sovereign borders and to rearticulate the naturalised ties between the national population and the modern state. Immigration detention holds the seeker in a limbo that sets parameters for the seeker’s experience of ongoing and intensifying insecurity. It specifically and intentionally fractures the identity of detainees: masochistic actions and collective protests, from hunger strikes to breakouts, reflect the common currency of anxiety and violence. The creation of offshore camps was, in part, a response to ongoing protests within onshore detention and the failure of onshore detention to stop boat arrivals. My chief focus here is the largest Pacific camp, ‘Topside’, on the island of Nauru. Unlike the onshore detention centres where publicised protests and breakouts screamed of continuing detention of asylum seekers, those on Nauru were effectively silenced. The thesis explores purpose as inscribed within the body of the exile. To give up hope for asylum is to face the possibility of endless wandering and death. Mechanisms of resistance, whether explicit protest or more passive waiting, are parts of the continuing struggle by the detained against mechanisms of exclusion and exception. The detained carve out small openings to contest their exclusion and to reassert an identity as survivors. There is a complex and fluid interplay between such resistance and government policies aiming to silence protest and limit identity – and ultimately to deter all unauthorised boat arrivals.

Thesis (M. Med.)--University of Melbourne, 1996. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Melbourne, Dept. of History, 1999. / Author's name on cover: C. Day. Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 409-418).

Thesis (doctoral)--Université de Genève. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 306-324).

Thesis (LL. M.)--University of Toronto, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.) - Carleton University, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 120-132). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (M.A.)--York University, 2006. Graduate Programme in Psychology. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 147-169). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:MR29547

Thesis--Bonn. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 264-269) and index.