Online refugee advocacy campaigns in Australia : approaches to care and an affective human rights pedagogy

This chapter explores the kind of taking of responsibility being proposed by three Australia-based non-governmental organisations, Refugees, Survivors and Ex-detainees (RISE), Refugee Action Coalition (RAC), and GetUp!. Through a textual analysis of their Manus and Nauru detention centre closure campaigns in 2017–2018, the chapter argues that these organisations are attempting new strategies for human rights pedagogy and the mobilisation of people and resources on asylum seeker issues in the midst of a political stalemate. The chapter pays close attention to the modality and framing of these mechanisms, and asks whether they constitute the kind of ethics of care that can lead to political action. The definition of political action being employed here is premised on tactical community building, collective acts of consciousness raising and lobbying decision-makers and legislators, and the chapter discusses whether these can arise from an affective pedagogy of human rights or if critical human rights education still has a role. What is effectively proposed is another kind of “proper distance”, that is, a human rights pedagogy that is simultaneously critical and affective, and thereby facilitates the ethics of care necessary for widespread change on the issue.