Vanquishing asylum seekers from Australia's borders : creating visibility for justice

Banishing asylum seeker ‘boat people’ from the nation state has been a cornerstone of Australian politics. This casting asunder is so normalised that the majority of the population barely notices, or hardly cares, with cruel politics, invisibility and apathy combining in a human rights-denying combination. Regrettably, the global increase in the volume of asylum seekers has normalised, removing immigration spaces of incarceration from the archetypal list of exceptionality. In 2016, I wrote for Court of Conscience about resisting the silence that shrouds asylum seeker advocacy.3 This paper takes a new turn by examining the binary of asylum seeker invisibility (desired by the state) and visibility through both imagery and messaging. In doing so, I present examples of how policies and practices are difficult to challenge when hidden from public knowledge and view.