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Meetings aim to inform migration policies in Asia-Pacific

November 15, 2006

AKaur.thumb.JPGAn international workshop at The University of New England on “Migration Challenges in the Asia-Pacific in the 21st Century” will conclude with a public lecture on the work of the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) in the region.

The two-day, UNESCO-funded workshop will bring together influential researchers and policy analysts from Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, India and Australia to discuss approaches to the ever-increasing flow of people across international borders in the region.

“This large-scale cross-border movement of people is one of the biggest challenges facing the Asia-Pacific region in the 21st century,” said one of the conveners of the meeting, Professor Amarjit Kaur. “Key issues include international labour migration, migration flows provoked by political instability and natural disasters, other refugee flows, human trafficking, and people smuggling.”

The workshop, organised under the auspices of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, will be at UNE on 28 and 29 November. Father David Holdcroft of JRS, whose visit to Armidale is being sponsored by UNE’s Asia Centre, will be participating in the workshop as well as presenting the public lecture. The lecture will be in UNE’s Arts Building (Arts Lecture Theatre 2) at 7.30 pm on Wednesday 29 November.

Father Holdcroft will outline the work of JRS with refugees in the region over the past 25 years. “Our work has grown in size, complexity and diversity over the past 25 years,” he says, “reflecting the increasing complexity of need in the region. We commonly provide humanitarian aid, informal and formal education, post-trauma and other counselling, vocational training, income generation, and legal and policy advocacy.

“In Australia, JRS finds similar complexity in its work, with community-based asylum seekers presently emerging as the most needy group. At the same time we question our nation’s response of radical intolerance of people attempting to cross our border and the huge expense incurred in order to retain the fiction of a controlled frontier.”

Professor Kaur (pictured here), from UNE’s School of Economics, said the workshop would examine both the governance of migration and the human rights of migrants. “The governance of migration is evolving,” she explained, “with increased emphasis on both border security and international cooperation.”

She said she hoped information presented at the workshop would help in the development of future policies and regional collaboration. “Here in Australia, the Government needs to know about the policies of other countries,” she added. “We’re updating them.”

Immediately after the workshop, UNE will host the 14th Colloquium of the Malaysia and Singapore Society of Australia. The Colloquium, on Thursday 30 November and Friday 1 December, will continue the theme of migration, and will include contributions from some of the workshop participants. Titled “Boundaries and Shifting Sovereignties: Migration, Security Issues and Regional Cooperation”, the Colloquium has attracted speakers from India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore, as well as from around Australia. It will include a special postgraduate workshop with presentations by students from six Australian universities, including UNE.

Included in the colloquium program will be an illustrated public lecture, titled “Caves and Cave Temples of Peninsular Malaysia”, by UNE’s Professor Ian Metcalfe (who is a co-convener of both meetings). “The caves contain spectacular dripstone and flowstone formations, have yielded important archaeological and palaeoanthropological finds, and contain significant cave art,” Professor Metcalfe says. “The use of caves for religious purposes in Peninsular Malaysia will be discussed and illustrated, including the spectacular Thaipusam Hindu festival held each year at Batu Caves near Kuala Lumpur.”

The lecture will be in UNE’s Arts Building (Arts Lecture Theatre 2) at 7.45 pm on Thursday 30 November.

For details of the meetings, see:
http://www.une.edu.au/asiacenter/MigWshp.html
http://www.une.edu.au/malaysiasoc/14thColl.html

Posted by Jim Scanlan at November 15, 2006 05:31 PM