Kate Coddington is an assistant professor in UAlbany's Department of Geography and Planning in the College of Arts and Sciences. Her research focuses on human migration patterns in the Asia-Pacific, with particular attention at how public policy affects processes of bordering and citizenship.
Kate Coddington is an assistant professor in UAlbany's Department of Geography and Planning in the College of Arts and Sciences. Her research focuses on human migration patterns in the Asia-Pacific, with particular attention at how public policy affects processes of bordering and citizenship.
The UAlbany News Podcast is hosted and produced by Sarah O'Carroll, a Communications Specialist at the University at Albany, State University of New York, with production assistance by Patrick Dodson and Scott Freedman.
Have a comment or question about one of our episodes? You can email us at mediarelations@albany.edu, and you can find us on Twitter @UAlbanyNews. This show is available on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Radio Public, Spotify, iHeart Radio and TuneIn.
Sarah O'Carroll:
Welcome to the UAlbany News Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah O'Carroll. With me today is Kate Coddington, an assistant professor in UAlbany's Department of Geography and Planning. Her research focuses on human migration patterns in the Asia Pacific, with particular attention at how public policy affects processes of bordering and citizenship.
Speaker 2:
Doctors Without Borders says refugees on the Pacific Island of Nauru are in a mental health crisis. About 900 asylum seekers are being held in detention on the island under Australia's immigration policy, including more than 100 children.
Speaker 3:
These people that we are talking about, these refugees and asylum seekers in Nauru, have now been there for five years. They still don't know their future, which is resulting in these levels of hopelessness and despair.
Sarah O'Carroll:
Well, Kate, the Northeast of the US is undoubtedly quite different from the Northeast of England, but welcome to the University of Albany, and I hope your first year is going well.
Kate Coddington:
Oh, thank you. It's been great. I love the classes I'm teaching, I love my students, my colleagues are great. So yeah, I'm really excited.
Sarah O'Carroll:
I'm glad to hear that. Now, your work at Durham University in the UK and now here at UAlbany deals with asylum seekers in Thailand and in Australia. So why these two countries?
Kate Coddington:
That's a really good question. So I first started doing work on Australia back in like 2009, 2010 was the first time I visited Australia. And so, my interest in refugees and asylum seekers really started there. And primarily it was because Australia is like a really big puzzle. There was so much political attention on what was, at that point, a very, very, very small number of asylum seekers who were trying to get to Australia by boat. And this was the number one, number two issue in national elections.
Kate Coddington:
This was kind of a crazy amount of attention for what was then between 5,000 and 10,000 people, and Australia of course has a population of nearly 25 million. So not very many people. And yet, this was this really outsized political attention, and then also kind of outsized humanitarian issue. Because what was happening is people were, if they were coming by boat to Australia, they were being put in indefinite mandatory detention, which is like prison essentially for asylum seekers, until their cases were processed and they were either deported or they were allowed refugee status and they could stay in Australia.
Kate Coddington:
So the fact that 5,000 people were in these kind of detention centers in the middle of nowhere, very remote places in Australia, and then even beyond Australia, on islands in the Pacific Ocean, that was really kind of crazy to me, like why was this happening? What was going on in Australia that created the conditions for this to happen? And so, I initially got started because of that kind of disproportionate reaction. And I was just, I was very puzzled by that.
Kate Coddington:
And as I began to work in Australia and study this issue in Australia, I began to realize that, for Australia, border enforcement is not just a matter of who enters the Australian continent, but the entire Asia Pacific region is, in Australia, kind of political decision making. It is part of the Australian border.
Kate Coddington:
And that's something we talk about in geography is the idea of the border actually moving. Border enforcement might happen on the actual line dividing countries, but it might also happen way beyond that line. It may happen in the airport before you even get on the plane to where you get to a new country. It might happen in a boat in the middle of nowhere as people are trying to sail to a country. It may happen all those places. And so it was happening in the region, and that's why, and ended up going to Thailand.
Sarah O'Carroll:
Okay. Can you talk specifically to why refugees headed for Australia are waylaid into Thailand, and if not permanently, at least in a longterm sense?
Kate Coddington:
Yeah, so that was my kind of initial guess. I started doing research in Thailand in 2015, so this is a more recent project. And what I was really interested in was Australia had these incredibly harsh border enforcement practices. And essentially what it was doing was causing people to make different decisions about where they were going to try to seek asylum.
Kate Coddington:
The reason people were coming to Australia is because it's the only country besides New Zealand in the Asia Pacific region that actually has signed the refugee convention. So everywhere else in the Asia Pacific region, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, all these countries are places where refugees go, but they don't have access to permanent legal protection. And so that's the motivation is, where can we be safe forever? And that's why people come from so far away. They come from Iraq, and Iran, and Afghanistan, and Sri Lanka, a lot of places where they have to travel very long distances to get to Australia.
Kate Coddington:
And so people were ending up waylaid along that journey in some cases. And I thought perhaps Thailand was a place where that was happening. It is happening to some extent, but what I discovered when I started doing research in Thailand is that there are refugees in Thailand. Some of them have tried to travel to other places, but some of them were actually headed for Thailand in the first place, primarily Pakistani Christians and Ahmadi Muslims from Pakistan, as well as Africans from kind of the Horn of Africa, Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea. And these were populations that weren't necessarily trying to go to other places, but they ended up in Bangkok, and they ended up in urban places in Thailand facing a situation where they did not have any permanent protection, but this was still better than where they had come from.
Sarah O'Carroll:
Now, talking about where they're coming from, and you mentioned a lot of different countries, but can you talk about who is persecuting them? Or what is the disaster that they're fleeing from?
Kate Coddington:
Yeah, that's a great question. So I can tell you about a couple of people that I met at different points in my research if you'd like. So a lot of people I've met were Hazara people from Afghanistan. And the Hazara are a minority group in Afghanistan that have been persecuted by Pashtun, the majority kind of Muslim ethnicity for a long time, since before 2001, in the 90s and 2000s. And the thing about the Hazara is they generally, it's very obvious from their physical appearance, they look different from Pashtun Afghans. And so when you have that kind of obvious physical difference, you're very, very vulnerable.
Kate Coddington:
And so I met, for instance, one of the asylum seekers I met as I did research in Northern Australia, he was coming from Afghanistan, and he had initially been apprehended by the Australian government, detained on Christmas Island, which is a small island in the Indian Ocean owned by Australia, and then eventually moved to a mainland detention center in Darwin, Australia. At the time that I met him, he had been in detention for three years, and it was unclear when, if ever, he was going to get out.
Kate Coddington:
Another group of people that heads for Australia are people from Sri Lanka. In particular, there was longstanding war there. And one of the people I met on Christmas Island when I did research there was a refugee who had been a journalist in Sri Lanka, really well-educated, really did amazing writing and reporting, but that put him at grave danger. And so he eventually had to flee. And he-
Sarah O'Carroll:
Because of the government's antagonistic attitudes towards journalists?
Kate Coddington:
Yes, yes. And so he ended up fleeing and ended up on Christmas Island. And I was actually there visiting him. At the time, he had been detained about two years, and I was actually there the literal day that he got the news that he was going to be released, which was a really exciting moment, and one of the few kind of positive moments that I experienced when I talked to people in detention.
Sarah O'Carroll:
And it sounds like you've been to Australia and Thailand quite a bit. Is there a point where you really emotionally connected to this research of what you're doing, and seeing, a lot of time, suffering I'm guessing, or just times of waiting and not knowing?
Kate Coddington:
Oh, absolutely. It's super heartbreaking, because as a researcher, there's not a lot you can do for people. If I had a law degree, I could be filing legal motions or participating in the the law aspects of the cases. And as a geographer, I can't do that. But what I can do is be someone who can come and listen to stories and continue to support people while they're in a really difficult situation.
Kate Coddington:
That person that I mentioned who I had met on Christmas Island, so I met him and talked to him for a number of weeks before his release. We actually flew out on the same airplane off of Christmas Island. He went one way with his refugee visa and I went another into a different customs line. And then I actually met him during a later trip to Australia. He was then living in Melbourne. He had settled in a neighborhood with other Sri Lankans. He was working three different jobs. He was talking about going back to school. He was doing really, really well.
Kate Coddington:
And after that point, he didn't want to talk to me anymore, which I think is because, when I work with people in detention, they're kind of at one of the lowest points of their life. And once they sort of get settled and start living life the way they want to, they don't want to go back to those kind of memories of that. So that's hard in a sense because you do form emotional connections with people and then you have to let that go.
Sarah O'Carroll:
Now, do you have plans on returning anytime soon, in this semester or the next?
Kate Coddington:
I would love to. So the last time I was in Asia, the last two times I went to Thailand. So in 2015 and 2017, I went to Thailand to do research. I haven't been back to Australia in a while. I do have a funding application in at the moment. So if that comes through, I'll be back there in 2020, probably not this coming year though. It's a long flight.
Sarah O'Carroll:
Well, going to policymakers, how can these governments in Thailand and Australia more humanely treat refugees from these countries? Do you have any guidance into this?
Kate Coddington:
Yeah. I mean, it's a global problem, right? These last few years have been the highest level of displacement ever recorded, even beyond the level of displacement in World War II. So you have lots of asylum seekers going to lots of places. You see a lot of media attention in the US, but also in Europe as primarily Syrians and North Africans and Sub-Saharan Africans are trying to get to Europe.
Kate Coddington:
And so this is not just an issue about any one country. But it is, in my mind, it's an issue about the kind of inadequacies of the legal system that we have right now. The Refugee Convention that guides how people should be treated in all these different countries that signed onto it was created after World War II to address a very particular European refugee crisis right after World War II. And it was never intended to be a global mechanism for dealing with displacement.
Kate Coddington:
And it doesn't work very well. So I mean, one thing is, just on a very broad level, we don't have adequate frameworks for dealing with this kind of displacement that we have right now. But I mean, very basic things, because these countries, Australia, US, European countries have signed onto the Refugee Convention, they do agree to treat asylum seekers and refugees with particular kinds of rights that don't always get ... that get followed in places like Australia or the US for that matter.
Kate Coddington:
I mean, one thing that is really necessary is to kind of broaden the level of protection that is offered to people, and the number of countries that offer protection. So if the only place in the Asia Pacific that refugees can go is Australia or New Zealand, that creates particular kinds of dynamics that put people at risk. They get on these crazy boats that leave Indonesia and they have these very risky journeys. If other countries in the region had options for permanent protection, that would lessen the kinds of risky journeys that people are taking.
Kate Coddington:
Another thing that countries can do is have better legal processes for dealing with refugees, fair legal processes. And for instance, one of the countries that I've been to and done a little work in, Indonesia, is doing a really great job at training lawyers to understand better what refugees are, what asylum seekers are, what rights do they have, and how might we process those cases? And so you see that level of initiative happening in some places, but not so much in others.
Kate Coddington:
And then finally something that's been very well-researched and well-documented is there are lots and lots of alternatives to putting people in detention. It's been a big issue in the news recently in the US with the kind of expansion of detention primarily for unaccompanied minors and migrants. And there are lots and lots of alternatives. People safely live in the community. People are able to report back to immigration authorities if they change their address. And there are some good organizations like International Detention Coalition that have a lot of kind of policy guides for alternatives to detention. It's cheaper, it's safer, it's more humanitarian, and people have a real incentive to stay in communities and stay in touch with local authorities. They don't want to go anywhere because they want the protection of the government, that's why they come in the first place. So there's some progress to be made there.
Sarah O'Carroll:
And I was going to ask, what are some generalizable lessons or truths that might make a difference in the US, and it sounds like these options you've given, they're not just the ideal, but that they could be feasible options for us that would encourage people to do stay connected and to then lead healthier lives.
Kate Coddington:
Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think that what you see kind of across the board in places like Thailand and in places like Australia or the US is clamping down and becoming more and more restrictive towards asylum seekers, even as the conflicts that propel people to leave and seek asylum are growing. And there's more and more of them around the world. And so what you have is the need for new options and the need for rethinking, what does it mean to be a good neighbor, be a good example, be a good responsible government?
Kate Coddington:
And I think what you see also is that people that don't have permanent protection, they're taken advantage in a lot of ways. They're very vulnerable to exploitation, to abuse, to trafficking, to sex trafficking, to harassment by employers, to being harassed by landlords. And when you have people living in those circumstances, they don't do well, their kids don't do well. And that is not good for the future of a country to have kids in detention when they could be going to school, to have families separated when they could be together and caring for each other. There's a lot of kind of a social reasons and human rights reasons, but also very straightforward economic reasons to improve immigration systems.
Sarah O'Carroll:
Now, I'm not sure if this would fall precisely in your area of research, but is there a country that you look to as a model? You mentioned there are some countries doing better than others, so is there one that does have some good working policies in place to treat refugees humanely?
Kate Coddington:
Yeah. I mean, there's no perfect country, but generally people used to say that the US was a model actually. They don't say that anymore, but that used to be the case is the US was an example of a country that had a fair legal process and treated refugees well, and didn't kind of turn to detention as the first response to to asylum seekers. That's changed recently.
Kate Coddington:
A country that generally does really well is Canada. Canada has great policies towards refugees and asylum seekers for the most part. Again, not perfect, but it's a good example. Scandinavian countries, they've dealt with the challenges of Syrian refugees in particular these last few years, and they've had some issues with that, but in general those systems are pretty robust and they're pretty fair. So you do see examples of countries that are doing pretty well.
Sarah O'Carroll:
Well, very meaningful work indeed. Thank you so much for your time.
Kate Coddington:
Oh yeah, no problem.
Sarah O'Carroll:
Thank you for listening to the UAlbany News Podcast. I'm your host Sarah O'Carroll, and that was Kate Coddington, an assistant professor of geography and planning in the university's College of Arts and Sciences. You can let us know what you thought of the episode by emailing us at mediarelations@albany.edu, or you can find us on Twitter at UAlbany News.