Study title

This collection contains anonymised and redacted interview transcripts from interviews with government and government service representatives. Those interviews where consent for recording and deposit are included. Interviews include one with a representative from the Canadian Navy, and two with interviews from representatives of the Spanish and Canadian federal governments. Interviews focused on established government policies for refugee reception, eligibility and support, and also Search and Rescue practices and procedures.This project interrogates changing patterns of irregular, or undocumented, migration in maritime space. It asks how the experiences and practices of irregular migrants are impacted by changing policies in border security and asylum, and also how these patterns of migration are themselves driving policy change. The project has a particular focus on how security efforts that attempt to respond to human trafficking and people smuggling (and that often conflate the two) are impacting the vulnerabilities of migrants, particularly asylum seekers, as they cross maritime borders. In pursuing these questions, this research prioritises the experiences and perspectives of migrants themselves by using innovative qualitative methods that enable migrants to tell their own stories, in their own ways. The objectives of this project are to place the migrant experience at the centre of our understanding of irregular maritime migration, to bring local case studies together to reveal global patterns of policy change, and to understand how the maritime space offers opportunities to rethink how we understand the international realm. The project is built around two case studies: the Pacific Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. In both cases, two migration routes will be studied. For the Pacific, the journey that transits through Indonesia to Australia, and that which transits through Thailand to Canada are the focus; in the Mediterranean, the journeys examined are...