‘These people are conning us’: Australia’s Medevac laws and the biopolitical production of the ‘malingering’ refugee

Abstract

This article examines the effect Australia’s ‘Medevac’ legislation had on the way refugees were depicted by the Liberal-National Coalition and Australian Labor Party in their debate about immigration detention and border security. I argue that by enabling medical evacuations for people detained offshore, Medevac shifted debate about refugees and border security into the realm of the biomedical. I maintain this resulted in the biopolitical production of the figure of the malingering refugee, who falsifies illness to cross the border. While both parties produced this pejorative category, what distinguished them was the degree to which they believed malingering applicants could be rendered ‘ known’ via the medical border. For the ALP, Medevac could recruit the purported ‘objectivity’ of biomedicine, such that malingering applicants could be identified, and border security thereby supposedly maintained. Conversely, for the LNP, no such guarantee could be established, meaning for them, Medevac rendered the border and therefore the nation vulnerable to malingering applicants. Despite their differences, I argue both parties articulated the figure of the malingering refugee for similar nationalistic purposes. Namely, to justify the violence of the Australian border protection regime, while nevertheless simultaneously depicting themselves and the nation as fundamentally ‘good’: not in spite of, but because of their harsh border policing practices. In concluding, this article considers the applicability of its analysis both to the contemporary Australian context and abroad, such as the United States and UK, where similar border protection policies and discourses have emerged.