It has recently become clear that the brutal Australian treatment of people who seek protection is part of an international punitive policy. Manus Island and Nauru must be set alongside the refusal of Italy to receive refugees from an NGO boat that had rescued them at sea, the separation of children from parents of Latin American refugees in the United States, and the rising popularity of xenophobic politics everywhere.
These events are sometimes attributed to a failure of political leadership. But they may also reflect a deeper cultural change in the Western attitude to strangers. Its manifestations are seen not only in migrant and refugee policy but also in penal policy, international relations and the scope of the rule of law.
To understand the change we should recall the more generous attitude to strangers that followed the Second World War. European leaders, appalled by the two great wars, sought to base international relations on cooperation and the sharing of burdens. They recognised the disastrous consequences of xenophobic nationalism, the role that inequality had in breeding it, and the need for a just and cooperative international order that was rule based and attended to the needs of the disadvantaged.
This vision found expression in international institutions like the United Nations, the European Union and trade bodies, and also in the expanded role of government in shaping a more compassionate society. Most strikingly it was embodied in the United Nations Refugee Convention. This reflected a need for international cooperation in responding to the vast number of people displaced in Europe by the war.
Many of the European leaders shared an explicitly Christian acceptance of responsibility to the poor and the stranger. This vision, which had also been a strand in Socialist movements, found its earlier expression in the Roman Empire at a time of population movements. In contrast to imperial institutions, Christian churches provided relief to strangers and not simply to townsfolk.
The post-war vision of a better world order enshrined a hospitality to strangers that saw in them possibility instead of threat, included rather than excluded them, and allowed relationships to grow instead of codifying and limiting them.
It also inspired penal policies that emphasised rehabilitation over punishment, and refugee and immigration policies that were inclusive and not exclusive. It emphasised a process of inclusion within society, not of assimilation. There was general acceptance that in practice there would be some anomalies and failures.
"This competitive, excluding and micromanaging spirit is apparent in many areas of public life in the West. It owes much to neoliberal economic ideology. Strangers are seen as rivals and so to be excluded."
This vision has faded. International organisations like the United Nations and its associated bodies concerned with human rights and refugees are increasingly judged purely by whether they support the national interests of the participant nations. International relations are fragmented into conflicting national interests, and any transnational bodies like the European Union are under increasing pressure.
These institutional changes reflect a broader suspicion of strangers who are seen as rivals and competitors, as offering threat and not possibility, and demanding control and exclusion, not space for growth. To deal with strangers requires fool-proof systems and exceptionless rules. Suspicion breeds fear; fear generates hostility; hostility feeds further suspicion.
This competitive, excluding and micromanaging spirit is apparent in many areas of public life in the West. It owes much to neoliberal economic ideology. Strangers are seen as rivals and so to be excluded.
Immigrants and refugees are treated increasingly severely, so suspicion and fear of them grow, and controls to exclude them are tightened. In Australia even the manifestly absurd claim that Australian borders and population will be at risk if we accept into Australia a thousand or so people from Nauru and Manus Island is given credence.
The same spirit leads governments to exclude people suspected of criminal behaviour. They limit bail, impose mandatory sentences, and lessen access to programs designed to rehabilitate them. People are defined by wrongful acts and are seen as irremediably hostile. Stricter laws increase anxiety and fear, which in turn generate harsher punishments. A single car theft by a young person or a crime committed by someone given bail becomes evidence that the rule of law has broken down and that the community to which they belong is evil.
The legislative and policy hardening in the attitude to strangers will not be quickly reversed. But people at some stage will recognise that they damage and impoverish society. Whether, in a world where the Christian tradition on which an earlier generation drew is unavailable, politicians will be receptive to a more generous vision of society built on just and hospitable relationships, is an open question.
Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street.
Main image: The Geneva Refugee Convention was adopted on 28 July 1951 and opened for signature. ©UNHCR/UN Archives/ARNI