The majority of refugees still experience discrimination, prejudice and marginalisation. Despite such apparent tolerance of difference, misconceptions about refugees are widespread.
Both the government and local communities where they live, frequently associate refugees and asylum seekers with problems of security. They are often labelled as potential disease carriers, troublemakers and criminals. The fact that many refugees used to be housed in immigration detention centres, which were originally intended for the detention of suspected immigration law violators, only serves to confirm the negative perceptions local communities have about them.
Over a decade ago, in September , such concerns led the Director General of Immigration to introduce Regulation No. Before the detention regime was abolished in , the government preferred asylum seekers and refugees to be confined in immigration detention centres so they could be more easily controlled and monitored. Prior to the enactment of Presidential Regulation No.
The media has also perpetuated this hostile view. Consequently, such misinformation and misnaming of refugees has stigmatised refugees and adversely affected their assimilation into local communities.
Indonesia is not a signatory to the Refugee Convention, which means that although refugees are under the protection of the UNHCR they still live in fear and their mobility is restricted. A curfew is imposed. We must be inside our accommodation by 9 pm. About half of the refugees in Indonesia live under the support of the International Organisation for Migration IOM , and are accommodated in one of the 85 IOM-run community-housing facilities across Indonesia.
The others have to fend for themselves. Many choose to live in Jakarta and its surrounding areas. Although they did not have the proper papers to pursue legal residence rights, they managed to muddle through, despite facing discrimination.
His parents worked odd jobs and Muhamad and his siblings attended a school for Hazara children fairly regularly. After a few days, Muhamad telephoned his parents for help. Afraid that he might be arrested again on his return, his parents advised him against returning to Iran and suggested that he try to reach Australia. Within a few days his parents had borrowed enough money to help him undertake the journey and had transferred it to him.
He crossed through India and Malaysia, but his journey came to an unexpected end in Indonesia. At the start of his journey, Muhamad had not been aware that the boats between Indonesia and Australia had stopped and were to remain so for many years to come. Moreover, he had no idea of what it would be like to live alone in Indonesia with very little money. Although a sizeable diaspora in comparison to other refugee groups , the Afghan refugees had little or nothing to offer to newly arrived Afghans.
At first he joined some other Hazara boys he had met by chance, but they soon kicked him out of their house, as he was unable to contribute to the shared expenses. After sleeping rough in mosques and on the streets for a while, he sought help from the UNHCR , which was unable to provide accommodation. After staying for some time with an Indonesian host family that had welcomed him into their house, hoping that he could tutor their children in English, a language that Muhamad was himself still trying to pick up, he ended up in an orphanage.
Roaming the streets of Jakarta and always sticking out, Muhamad came into contact with many different people, including a group of African marathon runners. While initially rather unfit, Muhamad started running with them and soon became much better—even running well enough to run in competitions and win some prize money occasionally. Over the next few months, he met a number of Indonesian volunteers and philanthropists, some of whom taught him English and bahasa Indonesia , while others helped him find odd jobs.
Although asylum seekers and refugees are not allowed to work in Indonesia, Muhamad found a few ways to make some money. Amongst many other jobs, he cleaned offices in a church and was given free accommodation, and he attended shops to make some cash.
He was often underpaid and his fear of being detected and arrested led him to change jobs and accommodation frequently.
The more skills he acquired, the better the jobs he could get; for example, he conducted surveys on refugee-related topics for an Australian NGO , which he liked a lot, but none of the jobs gave him any income security.
As he followed the political situation in Australia closely, he saw that his chances of getting on a boat became less and less likely. By the beginning of , he had finally scraped together enough money to rent a tiny place in Tanah Abang, one of the cheaper parts of Jakarta, chiefly because his family in Iran had decided to send his two sisters to Indonesia, as they deemed it too dangerous for them to stay in Tehran.
They arrived late in For many weeks, Muhamad was confused as to whether or not he should register his sisters under his asylum case at the UNHCR. On the one hand, because they had arrived long after June , they could never be resettled in Australia, an option that still existed for Muhamad, at least in theory.
On the other hand, as two young women without family in Indonesia, they stood a better chance of resettlement somewhere else as priority cases, but this could also entail becoming separated from the rest of the family again for many more years. Under the weight of the responsibility of making enough money not only for himself, but also to provide for his sisters, Muhamad grew thin. To make ends meet, his sisters started to contribute to the family income with sewing work.
His older sister also worked at a salon, while the younger one attended a school run by refugees. After the death of his father, his younger brother and mother travelled to Indonesia late in They now live together in a small, two-bedroom apartment in a low-cost area in Jakarta.
When his mother fell ill, an NGO helped them pay the hospital fees. His mother and siblings are registered under a different case number with the UNHCR , but they hope to be resettled in the same country eventually. To make things worse, at the end of , the UNHCR in Indonesia began to inform refugees that their chances of resettlement were extremely low because of a global shortage of resettlement options and competing needs from other transit countries Figure 2.
Unlike other Hazara refugees in Indonesia who have relatives living in Australia or elsewhere, Muhamad has no extended family to turn to for help. Given that there were no longer any official resettlement options from Indonesia to Australia, Muhamad pinned his hope on private-sponsorship programmes for resettlement, operating in Canada and Australia. The option of getting on a boat was still discussed, but not seriously. When I met Muhamad in early , he was busying himself with many new tasks and trying to not lose hope, as many of his friends have done.
Migratory decision-making has been a core interest of social scientists engaged with questions of mobility, movement, and migration. Meta-theories, such as modernization theory, dependence theory, articulation theory, and, later, transnational theories, explained from a macro perspective why and how people sought to overcome unequal macroeconomic exchanges between global regions through permanent or seasonal migration, in order to improve their income and that of their families left behind Brettell —6.
These meta-theories, however, offered little explanation of how individual migrants navigated inequality and how they decided when and where to go. There was a paradigm shift when researchers stopped viewing migrants as passive victims manipulated by the world capitalist system, and took them more seriously as active decision makers, albeit often with limited choices. An abundant body of literature on international migration decision-making reports on studies of the migratory decision-making of individuals and groups for example, Van der Velde and Van Naerssen , but most of the literature is focused on regular or voluntary migration.
It was only from the s onwards that the study of forced migration and the decision-making of forcibly displaced people received more scholarly attention see, for example, Colson and Chatty The questions driving these studies were related less to why people left, and rather more to how they left and where they went.
In fact, many studies still rely too heavily on approaches influenced by rational-choice theory Tabor, Milfont and Ward Forcibly displaced migrants are deemed to be rational beings, who carefully weigh up push and pull factors and rely, as voluntary migrants do, on social networks and chain migration, while also making use of other enabling factors that are assumed to facilitate their mobility, such as cheap and user-friendly communication technology to access up-to-date information during their journeys.
Moreover, it is—almost naively—assumed that refugees have sufficiently detailed and up-to-date knowledge of the migration policies within and between different countries to make informed choices about where to go, and that they bring with them the financial and other resources to achieve these objectives Crawley and Hagen-Zanker However, the ability to select a particular destination may depend on whether the decision to leave is acute or anticipatory.
When fleeing under distress, many people do not have the luxury of preparing for their journey, or of carefully weighing up the pros and cons of where to go, as they do not have enough reliable information to make rational choices. Once in motion, they face additional pressures, such as time pressure and financial limits. Forced migrants have choices, but from a much narrower range of options.
New technologies and social media are definitely of great help for people on the move Zijlstra and van Liempt , but information located through social media becomes very quickly outdated, with negative consequences for migrants and for their ability to make informed choices about their onward migration. Interethnic solidarity amongst migrants and refugees does play a great role but tends to be overestimated by researchers who mistake shared migration aspirations for camaraderie based on shared aims, and thus ignore that refugees and migrants must prioritize their own aspirations while striking a fine balance between helping others and receiving the help of others Bachelet Journeys in search of safety and protection often tend to not only be lengthy but also fragmented Collyer Each segment of the journey brings new challenges and risks and requires the migrants to make new legal, social, and economic adjustments.
Usually previous decisions have to be corrected, adapted, or put aside during the journeys to accommodate new challenges and unanticipated conditions Schapendonk The unpredictability of beginnings and endings of many journeys in search of protection, as well as the interruptions within them, complicate the study of migration and migratory decision-making.
An examination of how many other researchers have studied migratory decision-making reveals that most studies are conducted retrospectively.
Informants re narrate in hindsight and retell their journeys with some distance from the actual events, errors, and confusion. Unsurprisingly, in the retelling much is omitted Mallett and Hagen-Zanker Interviews held after the event tend to offer distorted memories or simplified accounts. It is not to be forgotten that recounting high-risk decisions and traumatic events from which they have not fully recovered can re-traumatize refugees.
Moreover, there is some doubt that anything can be learned about future journeys from studying past journeys; after all, there is currently greater demand for forecasts of expected mass movements to the Global North rather than for post-migration versions of facts or constructed truths.
How many will come to seek asylum in Europe or Australia? How many are likely to stay in their countries of origin or in transit countries along the route, which are increasingly serving as gatekeepers?
Scholars who can offer answers to those questions are in high demand and have little difficulty finding research funding, but delivering such forecasts is complex for a number of conceptual and ethical reasons.
There are two principal ways to study migratory decision-making: either by applying quantitative methods, such as surveys, polls, and computer-based assessments, or by relying on qualitative methods, such as semi-structured or open interviews, participatory observation, and other ethnographic methods.
Both approaches have shortcomings that large, well-funded studies try to overcome by using mixed-method approaches. Quantitative studies tend to rely on large samples and are useful in discerning the key factors that influence decision-making in a specific setting, even co-relating those key factors to determine their interplay Koser and Kuschminder Therefore, they are quite effective as analytical tools for understanding complex processes, not least because they offer opportunities to integrate control questions and subsets of additional questions in direct response to previous answers.
When computer-based methods are used, they are often able to limit the bias of human interviewers and can anonymize data that result, in the best of cases, in greater openness and honesty. Their main limitation is that they only provide a snapshot of decision-making and cannot capture the procedural developments along the journeys.
Qualitative studies rely on much smaller samples, often capturing data over longer periods of time. Researchers try to build rapport and trust in interpersonal relations with the informants—a process that requires time and personal presence. Because of their precarious legal status and the clandestine nature of some forms of onward migration, respondents may feel that it is impossible to speak about their true plans and arrangements.
After all, they need to keep the number of people they confide in to an absolute minimum in order to protect themselves from arrest and deportation. Silence, omission, and deceit are, therefore, survival strategies used to prevent information about their real plans reaching state officials. Publishing details about refugee routes and migration strategies can result in heightened surveillance or the closure of certain passages. The presence of a researcher or a research team may draw unwanted attention to the migrants.
It must not be forgotten that academic researchers increasingly face an obligation to disclose any information they might have collected about potential criminal acts to the responsible state authorities, which may include irregular border crossings and other violations of the migration laws Olsen and Mooney-Somers While qualitative studies are useful to capture changes and adjustments in the process of decision-making, they offer fewer options for triangulation, reproducibility, and comparability with other case studies.
Like many Indonesians, Ilham goes by only one name. He believes the issue is poorly understood, by both local communities and government decision-makers. It can be seen that Australia is just pushing the problem of the refugees to Indonesia, right? But at the end of the day, we are talking about human beings — they are sitting and just watching their lives pass by. In the podcast, Mozhgan unravels the diversity and complexity of the refugee community.
Through a series of unflinchingly raw radio diaries, she draws listeners into the deeply challenging psychological experience of a refugee trapped in transit. In many ways, her Jakarta lifestyle is a world away from the men boxed into dorm rooms in Batam. After you are resettled. Stateless persons Not mentioned. Refugees Not mentioned Yes. Asylum seekers Not mentioned Yes. Number of Days: Recorded Length of Immigration Detention. Detention Facility Management. Directorate of Immigration.
Ministry of Justice and Human Rights. Directorate General of Correction Governmental. Formally Designated Detention Estate? Yes Dedicated immigration detention facilities. Types of Detention Facilities Used in Practice.
Immigration detention centre Administrative Immigration field office Administrative. Information to detainees Yes No. Access to consular assistance Yes.
Access to asylum procedures Yes Yes. Complaints mechanism regarding detention conditions Yes No. Access to free interpretation services No. Compensation for unlawful detention No No. Right to legal counsel Yes No. Independent review of detention No. Right to appeal the lawfulness of detention No No.
Release Yes infrequently. Do NGOs publish reports on immigration detention? EU Ratification Year. Observation Date. Ratio of relevant international treaties ratified. Ratio of Complaints Procedures Accepted.
Relevant Recommendations Issued by Treaty Bodies. Recommendation Year. Committee on the Rights of the Child " Committee on the Rights of the Child. Year of Visit. Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants Report of the Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, Jorge Bustamante.
No Civil law. World Legal Systems.
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