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14 J. Refugee Stud. 169 (2001)
Common Sense and Original Deviancy: News Discourses and Asylum Seekers in Australia

handle is hein.journals/jrefst14 and id is 179 raw text is: Journal of Refugee Studies Vol. 14, No. 2 2001 Common Sense and Original Deviancy: News Discourses and Asylum Seekers in Australia SHARON PICKERING School of Social Science and Liberal Studies. Charles Sturt University. Bathurst, New South Wales This article analyses recent media discourses surrounding asylum seekers and refugees in the Australian Press. Two 'quality' broadsheets are investigated over a three year period-the Brisbane Courier Mail and the Sydney Morning Herald. The paper argues that refugees and asylum seekers have been routinely constructed not only as a 'problem' population but as a 'deviant' population in relation to the integrity of the nation state, race and disease. In problematizing this construction the social functions of representations of deviance are considered in relation to the construction of the 'normality' of prevailing social orders and the reproduction of hegemony. Introduction This paper examines recent discourses surrounding refugees and asylum seekers in the Australian print media. Refugees and asylum seekers have received considerable recent national media coverage in Australia and inspired equally considerable social and political debate. Particularly during the war in Kosovo and the killings during East Timor's move towards independence, refugees and asylum seekers were much discussed. Largely these debates have been rooted in the assumption that there is a 'refugee problem' ('refugee' being typically used to cover both asylum seekers and people whose refugee status has been determined). This study suggests that when asylum seekers arrive on Australian shores, however, such 'problem' talk, both implicitly and explicitly, is readily shaped by the dominant theme of deviance. Not only do refugees and asylum seekers represent a significant 'problem', they are a 'deviant' problem. In turn, deviance has been underpinned by the language and politics of exclusion and the dichotomous construction of normality as being whatever refugees and asylum seekers are not. In many ways the deviancy of asylum seekers and refugees has largely come to be regarded as 'common sense'. ©Oxford University Press 2001