Victims, Villains and Saviours

Abstract

This chapter examines how the governments of Australia, the UK and the United States have co-opted discourses of compassion for ‘deserving’ immigrants and refugees to justify the enactment of violent and punitive policies. In particular, it explores the emergence of the figure of the people smuggler as a racialised and gendered villain in contemporary border enforcement narratives and as a target for outrage driven by ‘compassion’. It first considers how violent humanitarianism has been justified through three archetype and neocolonial characters developed through the border-enforcement narrative: the ‘suffering refugee’, the villainous ‘people smuggler’ and ‘migrant queue jumper’, and the saviour government. It then discusses the ways in which a discourse of compassion for ‘genuine’ victims has been employed to direct disapproval and outrage against smugglers and migrant ‘queue jumpers’. It also describes the criminalisation of solidarity and humanitarianism as part of the war on people smugglers.