– Matthew Zagor interviewed by Odette Shenfield
Matthew Zagor is an Associate Professor in Law and a specialist in refugee law. Last semester, I was privileged to study his course in refugee law. As an educator, he incites in his students passion and dedication for refugee rights.
At the end of the semester, I sat down with Matthew to find out about his upcoming research, his background as a refugee advocate, and his thoughts on how students can be effective refugee advocates.
ODETTE: Can you tell me about the research you’re planning to do on borders?
MATTHEW: What I realised over the last few years is that all of my work seems to point in the direction of certain almost theological concepts. I’ve become more interested in political theology. My first degree was in religious studies – I studied Hindu thought and Jewish thought. I seem to keep coming back to religious themes. What I thought I would write about when it comes to the border was a type of what Simon Critchley calls a ‘metamorphosis of sacralisation’ that occurs in contemporary politics. It’s not particularly novel to say that a lot of our political tropes come from religious, Judeo-Christian concepts.
I’m wondering to what extent the way in which we depict the border as a site of power, sovereignty, even as a site where a narrative starts, is informed by similar religious idioms.
Recognition of refugee status itself I see as having quasi-religious components, in particular through the notion of redemption, and that’s something I’ve written a bit about in the past. The idea is that usually a Western country provides its redemptive touch to the barely human, ‘bare life’ of the refugee, in order to provide them with that protection – and this act is depicted as one of grace and generosity. The law doesn’t always work with that because the law imposes an obligation on the state to provide recognition – and an obligation is not consistent with a claim to be acting out of generosity.
What happens at the border? When the refugee arrives? I’m interested in the refugee’s narrative starting at the border. This is, after all, the first time a refugee gets an opportunity to tell their story. I’m interested in the respatialisation of the border as well.
O.S.: Could you elaborate on the theological connections?
M.Z.: When Tony Abbott launched the Border Force, he blessed the troops and called upon God while recognising this new entity he’d created. When Michael Pezzullo talked about the Border Force in a speech to the Institute of Public Affairs late last year, he talked about border protection being part of the ‘trinity’, along with diplomacy and defence. You see this language informing our attitudes towards what the border is. The border is physical and yet it’s metaphysical. It’s abstract and yet it’s personalised, even embodied.
So, in refugee law for example, in migration law, the person who arrives at the border in Australia, this was in 2001, arrives (if they’ve come by boat in certain areas) in an excised area, a place that’s been removed from grace almost. They then became an ‘off-shore excised person.’ And they take that excision with them wherever they are in the country. So they’ve almost incorporated the border into themselves. In other words, you arrive at the border, you can’t apply for a visa because it’s excised, but you get to Melbourne. It doesn’t matter that Melbourne’s in the migration zone, you still can’t apply for a visa because you’ve taken that excision with you. Similarly, Border Force individuals take the border with them. Operation Fortitude, that would have been the Border Force operating right in the middle of one of Melbourne, one of our main cities, far away from our territorial border, and yet the border is now something that these individuals, as part of the Border Force take with them internally.
This is similar in many countries. Recently, I saw that the Border Force in Israel had beaten an Arab man, who was putting out the garbage at the back of a shop in Tel Aviv.
This also brings out the anthropologist in me. When you studied anthropology in the 80s, we were still very influenced by Lévi-Strauss and Mary Douglas, despite the post-structuralist turn that was occurring. Mary Douglas wrote a book called ‘Purity and Danger,’ which looks at ancient categorisations of the natural world and the way in which things that cross boundaries become liminal, and thus dangerous. They become impure because they’ve switched categories. And that idea of needing something to manage those who cross borders – either through ritual or through expulsion or avoidance – is something Douglas says every religion has to address.
Refugees fit classically into this category – they cross borders without going through the adequate ritual, having obtained visas. They’re depicted as dangerous, different and irrational – ‘Who puts their children on leaky vessels?’ That type of characterisation. I’m interested in it from that sort of anthropological perspective, but people have already written about that. As an academic, you’re always trying to see how you can contribute. And as a legal academic, I always have to bring it back to refugee law.
Something that I personally struggle with is that we need to keep coming back to this imperfect instrument – the Refugee Convention and its categories, which work inevitably to exclude. The Convention, after all, is designed to work out who should be in, which also means it’s designed to work out who should be left out. We studied, for instance, how it is gendered. And it works in an international system where, as long we have the nation state and borders, refugees are an inevitable by-product.
Does working within that make you complicit in its continuation? If I feel the whole thing is problematic, should I be more of a Zizek? Someone who’s critiquing the entire system, worldview or ideology? Well…. you get to do little bits of pieces in that in your articles. But as a practitioner, you have to apply the instrument.
This came up when Costas Douzinas, a really interesting writer, came to ANU about ten years ago and delivered a critique human rights law. Someone stood up and said, ‘Costas, what do you do though when a refugee comes and wants to claim asylum, do you just say the whole thing is…?’ He said, ‘No, I go and apply the Refugee Convention, and make an argument they fall within it.’ Here’s someone who has argued that the entire structure of human rights law is part of the problem. Yet, when it comes to facing the individual in need of protection, you work with what you’ve got.
O.S.: It sounds a bit like a point Mari Matsuda makes. She says as an advocate, there are times you need to stand outside the courtroom door protesting, and times you need to stand inside the courtroom making arguments using the law. She says sometimes you might have to do both in the same day.
Before becoming an academic, you worked as a refugee advocate with Amnesty International, and as a refugee lawyer. How did you end up in these fields? Have you felt more or less able to affect change in any of these jobs?
M.Z.: [Laughs] Where should I start? So, I went to the School of Oriental and African Studies, which is part of the University of London, it’s a specialist college, that still uses the word ‘Oriental,’ despite Edward Said. It works on Asian and African studies.
While I was there, I read about Saddam Hussein, which motivated me to go and work for Kurdish refugees. I had a friend who was working with Kurdish Turks (or Turkish Kurds). I worked with her for a year, including at the detention centre near Heathrow. That was my first exposure to these things. After I graduated, I felt committed to the refugee area, even though my work was largely on Indian philosophy. I applied for a job at the India desk of Amnesty International and worked as an assistant researcher there for a few years.
Then I came to Australia and became the refugee and political liaison officer at the office in Sydney, where I would meet a lot of lawyers, working for Legal Aid, doing really good work with the law. I’d never thought of doing law. I’d also be sent to Canberra, to Belconnen as Amnesty’s representative, and would sit with government officials, many of whom were lawyers. I couldn’t speak the same language they could. I found they were running rings around me. So, I went and got a law degree in order to, I thought at the time, learn the ‘language of the enemy’. I had never intended to be a lawyer. I then did work as a lawyer for a while.
So… was I effective? As an advocate, yes. Every now and then there’d be an individual (you never would take credit for it of course), but every now and then you’d see someone whose life was essentially saved, to use that terminology. That’s how they felt: their story was recognised.
I don’t really think that my articles make a blind bit of difference. They’re just my musings, that’s the way I treat them. Maybe I should treat them a bit more seriously. I think teaching is much more important. I think that makes a difference, and remaining involved in the community. One thing that happens to you when you become an academic, especially in the professorial rank, is that people start listening to you outside. When I put out press releases for Amnesty, they may have got to the government, that was powerful, but no one would pay much attention to that because we were seen as the usual suspects.
O.S.: The other side you mentioned is feeling like you make a difference through your teaching? I was going to ask you, possibly a dreaded question for refugee lawyers, but the question of whether you maintain hope? Do you gain hope from the students you’re teaching?
M.Z.: The students give me hope. I see fresh ideas, fresh energy. Not necessarily new approaches in the refugee area, but I see new approaches in advocacy. You see movements as opposed to organisations, which I think is really interesting. You see the convergence of various topics, such as climate change and humanitarianism. The students seem to be across a whole range of important social justice issues, they’re seeing the interconnectedness. I’m intrigued by, sort of, the zeitgeist of your generation that’s out there, putting your bodies on the line, whether that’s in front of excavators or buses coming out of Villawood. It’s old wine in new bottles in some ways, which is fine. But I find it quite inspiring to work with the students. To the extent that I can point them in the direction of thinking about things differently, or learning about some of the fundamental tools of legal advocacy, then I’ve done a good job. I feel like I’ve achieved something.
O.S.: From the law student perspective, I think I see the more hopeless side, where everyone ends up in clerkships, and people say there are no jobs in social justice fields, and if you want to work for Legal Aid you’ll be one applicant amongst thousands.
M.Z.: I don’t think that’s true at all. I think there are loads of opportunities out there. There are resources to be tapped into. It’s a difficult path, it’s not as set up as when you go into firms with a clerkship and it all just kind of flows from there. But there are all sorts of ways to contribute and to make a living doing it, or doing it in your spare time, or forming your own organisation. It’s a shame if students feel those doors are shutting. I don’t think they are.
O.S.: Do you often see the students you’ve taught go on to do those things?
M.Z.: Oh God yes! Doing all sorts of things within various organisations, even within government as well – I don’t rule that out as a legitimate path to influence things. But certainly, within the traditional profession, whether it’s going to the Bar or Legal Aid, or international organisations, like UNHCR, or some of the other large NGOs. We’ve got former students working in Amnesty or Human Rights Watch and IGOs, such as World Bank on rule of law projects. The World Bank may be problematic, but again, working from the inside there are some opportunities. I’ve followed the careers of students working at local NGOs in different countries, setting up their own organisations, volunteering, or giving people a voice in a variety of both innovative and traditional ways.
O.S.: On the point of not ruling out working within government or organisations like the World Bank, I’m wondering whether you consider yourself more a reformist or a revolutionary? Or something in between? Or something else?
M.Z.: they’re both prefixed with ‘re’ – returning to something. I’m not a revolutionary, I don’t think so. I just don’t know where revolution takes us.
O.S.: Maybe revolutionary is the wrong term. It sounds like you’ve gone through various organisations and had experience working within the system as well as outside. There are some interesting contrasts in what you’ve said – you said earlier what you find so inspiring about this generation is putting bodies on the line, and then on the other hand, someone working within the World Bank is a very different way of trying to effect change. It’s interesting, I’m not sure I’ve formed my ideas yet on how much we can change things from within capitalist structures or even within nation states…
M.Z.: Hmm, I like to think that everyone has a potential role to play. I don’t think there’s one correct path to be taken. So, I got contacted by a former student who’s at the World Bank a couple of months ago, who wanted to set up an internship for an ANU student to do a rule of law project that looks really interesting. And I’m as happy to be involved in that as I am in the more radical projects. While recognising, keeping your eyes wide open in terms of the nature of the institution and the problematic structural role it plays in attempting to alleviate poverty at one level, but apparently consolidating it at another. I wouldn’t refuse to be involved for those ideological reasons. I don’t see myself as ideological.
O.S.: What do you mean by that?
M.Z.: I guess I see myself as being more of a Richard Rorty-type American pragmatist about how things can change. The example I’ll give is of a nuclear lobby group who wanted to march at the People’s Climate March in Sydney last year. There was a big debate within the climate movement. I’m not involved in this so just heard about it from the outside. It seemed, now maybe this is something I haven’t thought through, but it seemed short-sighted to me to say that one wouldn’t march in the same march as people who thought nuclear power might be a good way to address short term carbon dioxide abatement. I can see this happening over the last century, where groups start turning in on themselves. We even did this at Amnesty to some extent, twenty five years ago. There was a huge internal struggle about whether we should put our energy into a thematic campaign like Deaths in Custody around the globe or stick with country-based campaigns such as human rights violations in India. People presented this policy decision as a fundamental, life-or-death, ethical dilemma about how to use the organisation’s limited resources. There were furious exchanges and angry accusations that, ‘if you take that approach, people will die … don’t you realise you’re destroying the movement, you’re destroying people’s lives.’ No, that really wasn’t what it was all about. I think there’s a role for lots of different groups, voices and organisations. I think we have to be careful about taking an ideological approach that frames absolutely every aspect of the way we see things.
O.S.: That’s really interesting, because when you were saying earlier, about how one of the things that gives you hope to do with my generation is drawing links between different issues. And one of the ways I see that most, is to do with climate justice framing, and the idea that climate justice is interconnected with Indigenous sovereignty and Indigenous justice. And to me, that’s very much what the argument to not let the nuclear group for climate action march was about. And so much of it now is about asking how non-Indigenous people in the climate movement can be good Indigenous allies rather than perpetuating colonialism.
M.Z.: That’s true, so when I heard the climate debate, I got both lines: ‘We can’t march with people who support nuclear power because it’s bad,’ but when it was put in terms of, ‘this is a group that’s supported the dumping of nuclear waste on Indigenous lands,’ then I appreciated the argument’s validity more. I still think, adopting a pragmatic ethics of solidarity, I would have let them march.
I’m wary about us being distracted by those issues. I think that’s something I’d probably advise to your generation to be careful of because it’s happened time and time again. It’s the classic Monty Python scene in Life of Brian, where, ‘We wouldn’t have anything to do with the People’s Liberation Front of Judea, we’re the Judean People’s Liberation Front!’ It’s the in-fighting that can occur. I think we can be blinded by it.
I think we have to constantly be self-critical of our worldview, where it may have come from and who may have taught us about it. I’m just worried about being blinkered, I suppose. I’ve seen it in myself, so I’m trying to be self-critical. I think we have to constantly question where our opinions came from. If they don’t fit necessarily with a particular worldview, does the worldview need to be challenged as well? It’s like having those arguments with Marxists back in the 1980s about certain things. It was impossible to get beyond the ideological framework, the way in which they saw things. Yet, I was also very influenced by the Marxist critique myself.
O.S.: If you don’t consider yourself ideological, would you still say there are religious principles that inform your views?
M.Z.: Absolutely, I think religion, like anything is a double-edged sword. I’m very wary of it, I’ve also very much been betwixt and between when it comes to belonging to a religious community. I’m inside, but also somewhat outside the Australian Jewish community (certainly on my political views on Israel). But, I think there’s a richness in religious thought, especially on ethical issues, that can inform the way we see things. And as I said, starting the conversation, it’s also important to see the religious roots of a lot of our ethical and political categories today.
