Making Migration Law The Foreigner, Sovereignty, and the Case of Australia

The emergence of international human rights law and the end of the White Australia immigration policy were events of great historical moment. Yet, they were not harbingers of a new dawn in migration law. This book argues that this is because migration law in Australia is best understood as part of a longer jurisprudential tradition in which certain political-economic interests have shaped the relationship between the foreigner and the sovereign. Eve Lester explores how this relationship has been wrought by a political-economic desire to regulate race and labour; a desire that has produced the claim that there exists an absolute sovereign right to exclude or condition the entry and stay of foreigners. Lester calls this putative right a discourse of 'absolute sovereignty'. She argues that 'absolute sovereignty' talk continues to be a driver of migration lawmaking, shaping the foreigner-sovereign relation and making thinkable some of the world's harshest asylum policies.

Acknowledgements; List of abbreviations; Prologue: living realities; 1. Introduction; Part I: 2. Early international law and the foreigner; 3. A common law doctrine of sovereignty; 4. A constitutionalisation of sovereignty; Part II: Introduction to Part II: 5. Mandatory detention; 6. Planned destitution; 7. Conclusion; Epilogue: a campaign to 'stop the boats'; Bibliography; Index.

Eve Lester is a public and international lawyer with a background in refugee, migration and human rights law, policy and practice spanning more than twenty-five years. An independent scholar and consultant, her work has taken her to Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia, Europe, and the Pacific in a range of capacities in the non-government sector, with the United Nations, and as an independent adviser to governments. She has taught at the Australian Catholic University, the Australian National University, Canberra, the International Institute for Humanitarian Law, Italy, New York University, and the University of New South Wales.