Michelle
Peterie, University
of Sydney; Laura
Vidal, University
of Wollongong, and Suzette
Jackson, Auckland
University of Technology
Emma* was
just a baby when her dad was deported following the
cancellation of his Australian visa. Now aged seven, she
sometimes still sleeps with his photograph. She can’t
understand why he doesn’t visit her, or why he can’t
pick her up from school.
Oliver’s* dad is
currently in immigration detention, fighting to stay in
Australia. Oliver visits the detention centre each week with
his mum and little sister, but worries his family is falling
apart.
Ruby* was 17 when her mum was deported to
New Zealand. She had planned to start uni the following
year, but that had to wait. She has grown up quickly, but
still feels like a kid who needs her mum.
Stories
like these are rarely heard in public debates about visa
cancellation. Yet children and young people are profoundly
impacted when a parent or caregiver is detained or
deported.
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Our new report, A
Ripple Effect of Suffering, shines a light on these
impacts. We interviewed over 100 children, young people and
members of their families and support networks, and
documented the harm children and young people are
experiencing in the shadow of Australia’s immigration
detention and deportation systems.
Who are the
families caught up in this system?
Australia’s
Migration Act requires the detention of any non-citizen who
is in the country without a valid visa. This applies to
people who arrive at the border without authorisation. It
also applies to people whose visas have expired or been
cancelled for reasons
such as failing the character test, breaching their visa
conditions or presenting a risk to the safety, health or
good order of the community.
Around 61%
of the detention population is people who’ve had their
visa cancelled. Many have been part of Australian society
for years or even decades and have families in Australia.
Often their children are Australian citizens.
When
detention culminates in deportation, these families may face
permanent separation.
Making ends
meet
When a parent is detained or deported, it
affects their whole family.
Food poverty, bill
stress and housing insecurity are common, especially when
the parent in question was the family’s main
breadwinner.
Older children and young people often
take on adult responsibilities to help their families. Some
of our interviewees had worked nearly full-time during high
school to help cover their families’ costs. One
said:
I got a job […] and was
kind of working, like, crazy hours, during school to kind of
pay off those debts and, like, support, my mum and us and
put food on the table.
Others had
become quasi-parents to younger siblings or sick relatives.
One told us:
I’ve kind of had
this caring role, I guess you could say, for a very, very
long time, and yeah, a bulk of that has been because my
[detained] dad has not been here to
help.
Social and emotional
harm
This can come at great personal cost to the
children of detained or deported people.
Missing
their parent, struggling financially, and unsure what the
future will hold, children of detained or deported parents
often feel their world has been shattered. Many withdraw
from family, friends, and school. One told
us:
[My schoolwork] went downhill
straight away. I was so upset and I didn’t know how to
express that. […] I was barely passing, and not even that,
I wasn’t interested in going to school. I was always
ditching and just getting into
trouble.
Without robust support,
and help finding healthy ways to cope, they are at risk of
mental health problems. One young person told us:
[It’s] just been really hard
seeing him, you know, once a week [in detention], and having
this potential of him being removed […] that’s causing
me a lot of anxiety, to be honest. Currently, I’ve been
experiencing, I think, a few panic
attacks.
Children and young people’s
requests
The participants in this research were
clear on what would help them most.
They called
for children and young people’s well-being to be given
greater weight in visa cancellation, detention and
deportation decisions.
They asked for practical
support, both for themselves and for their families. And
they asked for pathways back to Australia for parents who
had been deported.
It was important, participants
told us, for parents whose visas had been cancelled on
character grounds to “do the right thing” and prove that
they deserved a second chance. But they asked that Australia
recognise the possibility of rehabilitation rather than
imposing a permanent punishment on the whole family.
As one young person, whose mother had been
deported, put it:
It would mean the
world if she could eventually come back, and she obviously
would be able to show that she’s chosen a straight and
narrow path […] it would just mean so much if she could
actually be able to come back to Australia and be in our
lives again.
Names have
been changed to protect participants’ identities. This
research was undertaken in collaboration with the Australian
Human Rights Commission
Michelle
Peterie, Senior Research Fellow, Sydney Centre for
Healthy Societies, University
of Sydney; Laura
Vidal, Lecturer in Criminology, University
of Wollongong, and Suzette
Jackson, Lecturer Mental Health and Addictions, Auckland
University of Technology
This
article is republished from The Conversation
under a Creative Commons license. Read the original
article.
