Dr Luke Glanville1
1Australian National University, Australia
Biography:
Luke Glanville is Professor in the Department of International Relations at ANU. His research spans past and present thought and practice regarding refugees, mobility, and borders, rights, responsibilities, and priorities, and colonial conquest, rule, and domination. Recent books include Prioritizing Global Responsibilities (with James Pattison, OUP, 2024) and Sepúlveda on the Spanish Invasion of the Americas: Defending Empire, Debating Las Casas (co-edited and translated with David Lupher and Maya Feile Tomes, OUP, 2023).
Abstract:
Western states often argue that their policies of refugee exclusion are in place for the benefit of refugees. Policies aimed at deterring refugees from travelling to claim asylum, for example, are said to protect refugees from nefarious people smugglers and deaths on dangerous journeys across land and sea. Such “compassionate” justifications for controlling the mobility of vulnerable people have a long history. In the 19th century, for example, forced removals of Indigenous peoples in Australia and elsewhere were said to protect them from unruly settlers, and indeed from their own “uncivilized” selves. This paper is part of a book project that seeks to narrate the disturbing history of what we might call “compassionate domination” of vulnerable people. The book project examines compassionate-sounding arguments deployed to justify controlling the movement of Indigenous people, enslaved people, and freed slaves in the 19th century, and their resonances with arguments that Western states use to exclude refugees today. This paper will focus on past and present arguments pertaining to humanitarian relief camps and local development projects.