Surveillance, belonging and community spaces for young people from refugee backgrounds in Australia

In the current era of increased global movements and what has commonly been referred to as a refugee ‘crisis’, borders have become the centre of both political debate and policy. In an era of increasing spatial connectedness, we argue that belonging is un-done and re-done across multiple borders of body and place. Geographic, cultural, national, linguistic and ‘racial’ borders continue to mark and maintain the differences between ‘us’ and ‘them’. Political and public discourses increasingly construct migrants, refugees and asylum seekers as ‘threatening unassimilable strangers, draining shrinking state resources’ (Yuval-Davis, Anthias & Kofman 2005, p. 516). Furthermore, the fear propagated by the media and political constructions of these so-called ‘threatening strangers’ results in a heightened surveillance of those who supposedly pose a threat. The boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’ are marked and ‘policed’ in particular ways, determining who can belong, where and when.