Associate Professor Susan Kneebone

Associate Professor Susan Kneebone
(Monash University)

Trafficking, Crime and Migration: A Proportionate Response? - Australia, Canada and the UK Compared

Abstract:

The ‘criminalisation’ of forced migration is a global phenomenon and a manifestation of state policy to ‘manage’ the issue, as current European responses in the Mediterranean demonstrate. In fact, evidence suggests that the underlying problem is one of inequality, which has serious implications for global security. In practice, forced migrant flows are made up of ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’ immigrants, but states respond primarily to the ‘illegals’.

The conflation of the categories of smuggling and trafficking is one example of how forced migration is perceived as involving ‘illegal’ persons. Because both smuggling and trafficking are perceived as an aspect of transnational organised crime associated with ‘irregular’ international migration, states tend to respond to their victims with anti-immigration policies. Although the practice of smuggling is illegal, victims of smugglers may be ‘legal’ forced migrants entitled to international refugee protection. However victims of trafficking need to prove exploitation to receive protection. Because in practice, the distinction between smuggling and trafficking is blurred, trafficked victims may not be given the protection to which they are entitled.

In this paper I focus upon trafficking and site the discussion in the context of global forced migration. I demonstrate through a comparison of state policy responses and the stories from three jurisdictions, namely Australia, Canada and the UK (including some discussion of European policy), that an anti-migration response has the inverse effect of increasing the opportunities for corruption and criminality activities. I argue that state policies need to focus on the victims of trafficking to combat corruption.

Biographical note:

Susan Kneebone is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, Monash University, where she teaches Forced Migration and Human Rights, International Refugee Law and Practice, and Citizenship and Migration Law. She is the author of several articles on forced migration and refugee issues. She has organised several international workshops on refugee issues, which have led to edited collections including The Refugees Convention 50 Years On: Globalisation and International Law (Ashgate, 2003) and New Regionalism and Asylum Seekers: Challenges Ahead (Berghahn, 2006, forthcoming). The forthcoming issue of the International Journal of Refugee Law (18/3) will be devoted to publication of papers from a workshop that she organised in Prato, Italy in September 2005, which involved leading international scholars and the UNHCR.

Susan is the holder of an ARC Discovery Grant for a project entitled ‘The Asylum Seeker in the Legal System’. Together with 2 colleagues, she is working on a Linkage Grant entitled ‘Australia’s Response to Trafficking in Women: Towards a Model for the Regulation of Forced Migration in the Asia-Pacific Region’. A/Prof. Kneebone is currently on study leave as a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the Refugee Studies Centre, Oxford University, after a period spent at the Université de Montréal.
Further information about her publications can be obtained from: http://www.law.monash.edu.au/staff/skneebone.html

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