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We Break Up, I Publish: Theorising and Emotional Processing like Taylor Swift In 2007 after the rather painful end of my first long-term same-sex relationship I asked myself two questions (and like a good graduate student wrote a paper about it that was subsequently published): (1) what is love; (2) and if love exists, are queer and straight love somehow different. I asked myself the second question because, unlike my previous “straight” breakups (back when I honestly thought I was straight), this one was different, was far more messy, and seemed to have a lot to do with the fact that my then fresh ex-boyfriend and I had dramatically different ideas about how the relationship should look, work, be codified, or if it should or could be codified. It was an eye-opening experience since the truth that these different ideas existed—basically his point of view—really only “came out” in my mind through the act and learning involved in that breakup. Until then, from a Queer Theory perspective, you could have described me as a “man who had sex with men,” called himself homosexual, but was so homonormative that if you’d approached me with even a light version of Michel Foucault’s thoughts on “Friendship as a Way of Life” I’d have looked at you as queerly, and cluelessly, as possible. Mainstream Queer Theory would have put the end of the relationship down to the difference and conflict between what is pejoratively called the “marriage-chasing-Gay-normaliser,” represented by me, and the “radical-Queer(ness)-of-difference” represented by my ex-boyfriend, although like a lot of theory, that misses the personal (which I recall being political...), and a whole host of non-theoretical problems that plagued that relationship. Basically I thought Queer/Homosexual/Lesbian/Transgendered and the rest of the alphabet soup was exactly the same as Straight folks both with respect to a subjective understanding of the self, social relations and formations, and how you acted or enacted yourself in public and private except in the bedroom.. I thought, since Canada had legalised same-sex marriage, all was well and equal (other than the occasional hate-crime which would then be justly punished). Of course I understood that at that point Canada was the exception and not the rule with respect to same-sex rights and same-sex marriage, so it followed in my mind that most of our time collectively should be spent supporting those south of the border or overseas who still faced restrictions on these basic rights, or out-and-out violence, persecution and even state-sanctioned death for just being who they are and/or trying to express it. And now, five years on, stating that Canada is the exception as opposed to the rule with respect to the legalisation of same-sex marriage and the codification of same-sex rights in law has the potential to be outdated as the recent successes of social movements, court rulings and the tenor of political debate and voting has shifted internationally with rapid speed. But it was only because of that breakup that these theoretical and practical issues had come out of my queer closet and for the first time I started to question some necessary link between love and codification (marriage), and how the queer in Queer relationships does or potentially can disrupt this link. And not just for Queers, but for Straight folk too, which is the primary point that should be underlined now and is addressed at the end of this paper. Because, embittered as I was at the time, I still basically agree with the theoretical position that I came to in that paper on love—based on a queering of the terms of Alain Badiou—where I affirmed that love resisted codification, especially in its queer form, because it is fidelity to an act and truth between two or more partners which resists the rigid walls of State-based codification (Potts, Love Hurts; Badiou, Ethics and Saint Paul). But as one of the peer reviewers for this paper rightly pointed out, the above distinctions between my ex and myself implicitly rely upon a State-centric model of rights and freedoms, which I attacked in the first paper, but which I freely admit I am guilty of utilising and arguing in favour of here. But that is because I am interested, here, not in talking about love as an abstract concept towards which we should work in our personal relationships, but as the state of things, and specifically the state of same-sex marriage and the discourse and images which surrounds it, which means that the State does matter. This is specifically so given the lack of meaningful challenges to the State System in Canada and the US. I maintain, following Butler, that it is through power, and our response to the representatives of power “hailing us,” that we become bodies that matter and subjects (Bodies That Matter; The Psychic Life of Power; and Giving An Account of Oneself). While her re-reading of Althusser in these texts argues that we should come to a philosophical and political position which challenges this State-based form of subject creation and power, she also notes that politically and philosophically we have yet to articulate such a position clearly, and I’d say that this is especially the case for what is covered and argued in the mainstream (media) debate on same-sex marriage. So apropos what is arguably Foucault’s most mature analysis of “power,” and while agreeing that my State-based argument for inclusion and rights does indeed strengthen the “biopolitical” (The History of Sexuality 140 and 145) control over, in this case, Queer populations, I argue that this is nonetheless the political reality with which we are working in and analyzing, and that is my concern here. Despite a personal desire that this not be the case, the State or state sanctioned institutions do continue to hold a monopoly of power in conferring subjecthood and rights. To take a page from Jeremy Bentham, I would say that arguing from a position which does not start from or seriously consider the State as the current basis for rights and subjecthood, though potentially less ethically problematic and more in line with my personal politics, is tantamount to talking and arguing about “nonsense on stilts.” “Caught in a Bad Romance?” Comparing Homonationalist Trajectories and the Appeal of Militarist Discourse to LGBT Grassroots Organisations In comparing the discourses and enframings of the debate over same-sex marriage between Canada in the mid 1990s and early 2000s and in the US today, one might presume that how it came to say “I do” in Canada and how it might or might not get “left at the altar” in the US, is the result of very different national cultures. But this would just subscribe to one of a number of “cultural explanations” for perceived differences between Canada and the US that are usually built upon straw-man comparisons which then pillorise the US for something or other. And in doing so it would continue an obscuration that Canada, unlike the US, is unproblematically open and accepting when it comes to multicultural, multiracial and multisexual diversity and inclusion. Which Canada isn’t nor has it ever been. When you look at the current discourse in both countries—by their key political representatives on the international stage—you find the opposite. In the US, you have President Barack Obama, the first sitting President to come out in favour of same-sex marriage, and the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, setting same-sex rights at home and abroad as key policy planks (Gay Rights are Human Rights). Meanwhile, in Canada, you have Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in office since 2006, openly support his Conservative Party’s “traditional marriage” policy which is thankfully made difficult to implement because of the courts, and John Baird, the badly closeted Minister of Foreign Affairs, who doesn’t mention same-sex rights at home or with respect to foreign relations—unless it is used as supplementary evidence to further other foreign policy goals (c.f. Seguin)—only showing off his sexuality outside of the press-gallery to drum up gay-conservative votes or gay-conservative fundraising at LGBTQ community events which his government is then apt to pull funding for (c.f. Bradshaw). Of course my point is not to just reverse the stereotypes, painting an idyllic picture of the US and a grim one of Canada. What I want to problematise is the supposed national cultural distinctions which are naturalised when arguments are made through them as to why same-sex marriage was legalised in Canada, while the Defense of Marriage Act still stands in the US. To follow and extend Jasbir Puar’s argument from Terrorist Assemblages, what we see in both same-sex marriage debates and discourses is really the same phenomenon, but, so far, with different outcomes and having different manifestations. Puar contends that same-sex rights, like most equalising rights for minority groups, are only granted when all three of the following conditions prevail: (1) in a state or narrative of exception, where the nation grants a minority group equal rights because “the nation” feels threatened from without; (2) only on the condition that normalisation (or homonormalisation in the case of the Queer community) occurs, with those who don’t conform pushed further from a place in the national-subject; (3) and that the price of admission into being the “allowed Queer” is an ultra-patriotic identification with the Nation. In Canada, the state or narrative of exception was an “attack” from within which resulted in the third criterion being downplayed (although it is still present). Court challenges in a number of provinces led in each case to a successful ruling in favour of legalising same-sex marriage. Appeals to these rulings made their way to the Supreme Court, who likewise ruled in favour of the legalisation of same-sex marriage. This ruling came with an order to the Canadian Parliament that it had to change the existing marriage laws and definition of marriage to make it inclusive of same-sex marriage. This “attack” was performed by the judiciary who have traditionally (c.f. Makin) been much less partisan in appointment or ruling than their counterparts in the US. When new marriage laws were proposed to take account of the direction made by the courts, the governing Liberal Party and then Prime Minister Paul Martin made it a “free vote” so members of his own party could vote against it if they chose. Although granted with only lacklustre support by the governing party, the Canadian LGBTQ community rejoiced and became less politically active, because we’d won, right? International Queers flocked to Canada—one in four same-sex weddings since legalisation in Canada have been to out of country residents (Postmedia News)—as long as they had the proper socioeconomic profile (which is also a racialised profile) to afford the trip and wedding. This caused a budding same-sex marriage tourism and queer love normalisation industry to be built around the Canada Queer experience because especially at the time of legalisation Canada was still one of the few countries to allow for same-sex marriages. What this all means is that homonationalism in Canada is much less charged. It manifests itself as fitting in and not just keeping up with the Joneses when it comes to things like community engagement and Parent Teacher Association (PTA) meetings, but trying to do them one better (although only by a bit so as not to offend). In essence, the comparatively bland process in the 1990s by which Canada slowly underwent a state of exception by a non-politically charged and non-radical professional judiciary simply interpreting the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms at the provincial and then the federal level is mirrored in the rather bland and non-radical homonationalism which resulted. So unlike the US, the rhetoric of the LGBT community stays subdued unless there’s a hint that the right to same-sex divorce might get hit by Conservative Party guns, in which case all hell breaks loose (c.f. Ha). While the US is subject to the same set of logics for the currently in-progress enactment of legalising same-sex marriage, the state of exception is dramatically different. Puar argues it is the never-ending War on Terror. This also means that the enframings and debate in the US are exceptionally charged and political, leading to a very different type of homonationalism and homonationalist subject than is found in Canada. American homonationalism has not radically changed from Puar’s description, but due to leadership from the top (Obama, Clinton and Lady Gaga) the intensity and thereby structured confinement of what is an acceptable Queer-American subject has become increasingly rigid. What is included and given rights is the hyper-patriotic queer-soldier, the defender of the nation. And what reinforces the rigidity of what amounts to a new “glass closet” for queers is that grassroots organisations have bought into the same rhetoric, logic, and direction as to how to achieve equality as the Homecoming advertisement from the Equal Love Campaign in Britain shows. For the other long-leading nation engaged in the War on Terror narrative, Homecoming provides the imagery of a gay member of the armed services draped in the flag proposing to his partner at the end of duty overseas that ends with the following text: “All men can be heroes. All men can be husbands. End discrimination.” Can’t get more patriotic—and heteronormative with the use of the term “husbands”—than that. Well, unless you’re Lady Gaga. Now Lady Gaga stands out as a public figure whom has taken an explicitly pro-queer and pro-LGBT stance from the outset of her career. And I do not want to diminish the fact that she has been admirably effective in her campaigning and consistent pro-queer and pro-LGBT stance. While above I characterised her input above as leadership from the top, she also, in effect, by standing outside of State Power unlike Obama and Clinton, and being able to be critical of it, is able to push the State in a more progressive direction. This was most obviously evidenced in her very public criticism of the Democratic Party and President Obama for not moving quickly enough to adopt a more pro-queer and pro-LGBT stance after the 2008 election where such promises were made. So Lady Gaga plays a doubled role whereby she also acts as a spokesperson for the grassroots—some would call this co-opting, but that is not the charge made here as she has more accurately given her pre-existing spotlight and Twitter and Facebook presence over to progressive campaigns—and, given her large mainstream media appeal and willingness to use this space to argue for queer and LGBT rights, performs the function of a grassroots organisation by herself as far as the general public is concerned. And in her recent queer activism we see the same sort of discourse and images utilised as in Homecoming. Her work over the first term of Obama’s Presidency—what I’m going to call “The Lady Gaga Offensive”—is indicative: she literally and metaphorically wrapped herself in the American flag, screaming “Obama, ARE YOU LISTENING!!! Repeal ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ and [have the homophobic soldiers] go home, go home, go home!” (Lady Gaga Rallies for Repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell). And presumably to the same home of otherness that is occupied by the terrorist or anything that falls under the blanket of “anti-American” in Puar’s critique of this approach to political activism. This speech was modelled on her highly successful one at the National Equality March in 2009, which she ended with “Bless God and Bless the Gays.” When the highly watched speeches are taken together you literally can’t top them for Americanness, unless it is by a piece of old-fashioned American apple-pie bought at a National Rifle Association (NRA) bake-sale. And is likely why, after Obama’s same-sex “evolution,” the pre-election ads put out by the Democratic Party this year focused so heavily on the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and the queer patriotic soldier or veteran’s obligation to or previous service in bearing arms for the country. Now if the goal is to get formal and legal equality quickly, then as a political strategy, to get people onside with same-sex marriage, and from that place to same-sex rights and equal social recognition and respect, this might be a good idea. Before, that is, moving on to a strategy that actually gets to the roots of social inequality and doesn’t rely on “hate of ‘the other’” which Puar’s analysis points out is both a byproduct of and rooted in the base of any nationalist based appeal for minoritarian rights. And I want to underline that I am here talking about what strategy seems to be appealing to people, as opposed to arguing an ethically unproblematic and PC position on equality that is completely inclusive of all forms of love. Because Lady Gaga’s flag-covered and pro-military scream was answered by Obama with the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and the extension of some benefits to same-sex couples, and has Obama referring to Gaga as “your leader” in the pre-election ads and elsewhere. So it isn’t really surprising to find mainstream LGBT organisations adopting the same discourse and images to get same-sex rights including marriage. One can also take recent poll numbers from Canada as indicative as well. While only 10 percent of Canadians have trust in political parties, and 17 and 16 percent have trust in Parliament and Prime Minister Harper respectively, a whopping 53 percent have trust in the Canadian Forces (Leblanc). One aspect that undergirds Puar’s argument is that especially at a "time of war," more than average levels of affection or trust is shown for those institutions that defend “us,” so that if the face of that institution is reinscribed to the look of the hyper-patriotic queer-soldier (by advertising of the Homecoming sort which is produced not by the State but by grassroots LGBT organisations), then it looks like these groups seem to be banking that support for Gays and Lesbians in general, and same-sex marriage in specific, will further rise if LGBT and Queer become substantively linked in the imagination of the general public with the armed forces. But as 1980s Rockers Heart Asked: “But There’s Something That You Forgot. What about Love?” What these two homonationalist trajectories and rhetorics on same-sex marriage entirely skip over is how exactly you can codify “love.” Because isn’t that the purpose of marriage? Saying you can codify it is like grasping at a perfectly measured and exact cubic foot of air and telling it to stay put in the middle of a hurricane. So to return to how I ended my earlier exploration of love and if it could or should be codified: it means that as I affirm love, and as I remain in fidelity to it, I subject myself in my fundamental weakness constantly to the "not-known;" to constant heartbreak; to affirmations which I cannot betray as it would be a betrayal of the truth process itself. It's as if at the very moment the Beatles say the words 'All you need is love' they were subjected to wrenching heartbreak and still went on: 'All you need is love...' (Love Hurts) Which is really depressing when I look back at it now. But it was a bad breakup, and I can tend to the morose in word choice and cultural references when depressed. But it also remains essentially my position. If you impose “till death or divorce do us part” on to love you’re really only just participating in the chimera of static love and giving second wind to a patriarchal institution which has had a crappy record when it comes to equality. It also has the potential to preserve asymmetrical roles “traditional marriage” contains from when the institution was only extended to straight couples. And isn’t equality the underlying philosophical principle and political position that we’re supposedly fighting for if we’re arguing for an equal right to get married? Again, it’s important to try and codify the same rights for everyone through the State at the present time because I honestly don’t see major changes confronting the nation state system in Canada or the US in the near future. We remain the play-children of a digitally entrenched form of Foucaultian biopower that is State and Capital directed. Because while the Occupy Wall Street movements got a lot of hay in the press, I’ve yet to see any substantive or mainstreamed political change come out of them—if someone can direct me to their substantive contribution to the recent US election I’d be happy to revise my position—which is likely to our long term detriment. So this is a pragmatic analysis, one of locating one node in the matrices of power relations, of seeing how mainstream LGBT political organisations and Lady Gaga are applying the “theoretical tool kits” given to us by Foucault and Puar, and seeing how these organisations and Gaga are applying them, but in this case in a way that is likely counter to authorial intention(s) and personal politics (Power/Knowledge 145, 193; Terrorist Assemblages). So what this means is that we’re likely to continue to see, in mainstream images of same-sex couples put out by grassroots LGBT organisations, a homonationalism and ideological construction that grows more and more out of touch with Queer realities—the “upper-class house-holding PTA Gay”; although on a positive note I should point out that the Democratic Party in the US seems to be at least including both white and non-white faces in their pre-election same-sex marriage ads—and one that most Queers don’t or can’t fit themselves into especially when it comes down to the economic aspect of that picture, which is contradictory and problematic (c.f. Christopher). It also means that in the US the homonationalism on the horizon looks the same as in Canada except with a healthy dose of paranoia of outsiders and “the other” and a flag draped membership in the NRA, that is, for when the queer super-soldier is not in uniform. It’s a straightjacket for a closet that is becoming smaller because it seeks, through the images projected, inclusion for only a smaller and smaller social sub-set of the Lesbian and Gay community and leaves out more and more of the Queer community than it was five years ago when Puar described it. So instead of trying to dunk the queer into the institution of patriarchy, why not, by showing how so many Queers, their relationships, and their loving styles don’t fit into these archetypes help give everyone, including my “marriage-chasing-Gay-normaliser” former self a little “queer eye, for all eyes.” To look at and see modern straight marriage through the lenses and reasons LGBT and Queer communities (by-and-large) fought for years for access to it: as the codification and breakdown of some rights and responsibilities (i.e. taking care of children); as an act which gives you straightforward access to health benefits and hospital visitation rights; as an easy social signifier for others of a commitment to another person that doesn’t use diluted language like “special friend;” and because when it comes down to it that “in sickness and in health” part of the vow—in the language of a queered Badiou, a vow can be read as the affirmation of a universal and disinterested truth (love) and a moment which can’t be erased retrospectively, say, by divorce—seems like a sincere way to value at least one of those you really care for in the world. And hopefully it, as a side-benefit, it acts as a reminder but is not the actuality of that first fuzzy feeling which (hopefully) doesn’t go away. But I learned my lesson the first time and know that the fuzzy feeling might disappear as it often does. It doesn’t matter how far we try and cram it into any variety of homonationalist closets, since it’ll always find a way to not be there, no matter how tight you thought you’d locked the door to keep it in for good if it wants out. Because you can’t keep emotions by contract: so at the end of the day the logical, ethical and theoretically sound position is to argue for the abolition of marriage as an institution. However, Plato and others have been making that argument for thousands of years, and it still doesn’t seem to have gained popular traction. And we also need to realise, contrary to the opinion of my former self and The Beatles, that you really do need more than love as fidelity to an event of you and your partner’s making when you are being denied your partners health benefits just because you are a same-sex couple, especially when those health benefits could be saving your life. And if same-sex marriage codification is a quick fix for that and similar issues for those who can fit into the State sanctioned same-sex marriage walls, which admittedly leaves some members of the Queer community who don’t overlap out, as part of an overall and more inclusive strategy that does include them then I’m in favour of it. That is, till the time comes that Straight and Queer can, over time and with a lot of mutual social learning, explore how to recognise and give equal rights with or without State based codification to the multiple queer and sometimes polyamorous relationship models that already populate the Gay and Straight worlds right now. So in the meantime continue to count me down as a “marriage-chasing-Gay.” But just pragmatically, not to normalise, as one of a diversity of political strategies for equality and just for now. References Badiou, Alain. Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil. New York: Verso, 2001. ———. Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism, Stanford: Stanford UP, 2003. Bradshaw, James. “Pride Toronto Denied Federal Funding.” The Globe and Mail. 7 May. 2012 ‹http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/pride-toronto-denied-federal-funding/article1211065/›. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge,1990. ———. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”. New York: Routledge, 1993. ———. Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. New York: Routledge, 1997. ———. The Psychic Life of Power: Theories of Subjection. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1997. ———. Giving an Account of Oneself. New York: Fordham UP, 2005. Christopher, Nathaniel. “Openly Gay Men Make Less money, Survey Shows.” Xtra! .5 Nov. 2012 ‹http://www.xtra.ca/public/Vancouver/Openly_gay_men_make_less_money_survey_shows-12756.aspx›. Clinton, Hillary. “Gay Rights Are Human Rights, And Human Rights Are Gay Rights.” United Nations General Assembly. 26 Dec. 2011 ‹http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2011/12/06/383003/sec-clinton-to-un-gay-rights-are-human-rights-and-human-rights-are-gay-rights/?mobile=nc›. Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977. Ed. Colin Gordon. Trans. Colin Gordon, Leo Marshall, John Mepham, Kate Soper. New York: Random House,1980. —. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. Toronto: Random House, 1977. —. The History of Sexuality Volume One: An Introduction. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Random House, 1978. Heart. “What About Love.” Heart. Capitol Records, 1985. CD. Ha, Tu Thanh. “Dan Savage: ‘I Had Been Divorced Overnight’.” The Globe and Mail. 12 Jan. 2012 ‹http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/dan-savage-i-had-been-divorced-overnight/article1358211/›. “Homecoming.” Equal Love Campaign. ‹http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a54UBWFXsF4›. Leblanc, Daniel. “Harper Among Least Trusted Leaders, Poll Shows.” The Globe and Mail. 12 Nov. 2012 ‹http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/harper-among-least-trusted-leaders-poll-shows/article5187774/#›. Makin, Kirk. “The Coming Conservative Court: Harper to Reshape Judiciary.” The Globe and Mail. 24 Aug. 2012 ‹http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/the-coming-conservative-court-harper-to-reshape-judiciary/article595398/›. “Lady Gaga Rallies for Repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ in Portland, Maine.” 9 Sep. 2010 ‹http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4rGla6OzGc›. “Lady Gaga Speaks at Gay Rights Rally in Washington DC as Part of the National Equality March.” 11 Oct. 2009 ‹http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jepWXu-Z38›. “Obama’s Stirring New Gay Rights Ad.” Newzar.com. 24 May. 2012 ‹http://newzar.com/obamas-stirring-new-gay-rights-ad/›. Postmedia News. “Same-sex Marriage in Canada will not be Revisited, Harper Says.” 12 Jan. 2012 ‹http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/01/12/same-sex-marriage-in-canada-will-not-be-revisited-harper-says/›. Potts, Graham. “‘Love Hurts’: Hunter S. Thompson, the Marquis de Sade and St. Paul Queer Alain Badiou’s Truth and Fidelity.” CTheory. rt002: 2009 ‹http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=606›. Puar, Jasbir. Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times. London: Duke UP, 2007. Seguin, Rheal. “Baird Calls Out Iran on Human Rights Violations.” The Globe and Mail. 22 Oct. 2012 ‹http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/baird-calls-out-iran-on-human-rights-violations/article4628968/›.

IntroductionBritish initiatives to manage both the number of arrivals of asylum seekers and the experiences of those who arrive have burgeoned in recent years. The budget dedicated to asylum seeker management increased from £357 million in 1998-1999 to £1.71 billion in 2004-2005, making the Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND) the second largest concern of the Home Office behind the Prison Service in 2005 (Back et al). The IND was replaced in April 2007 by the Border and Immigration Agency (BIA), whose expenditure exceeded £2 billion in 2007-2008 (BIA). Perhaps as a consequence the number of asylum seekers applying to the UK has fallen dramatically, illustrating the continuing influence of exclusionary state policies despite the globalisation and transnationalisation of migrant flows (UNHCR; Koser).One of the difficulties with the study of asylum seekers is the persistent risk that, by employing the term ‘asylum seeker’, research conducted into their experiences will contribute towards the exclusion of a marginalised and abject group of people, precisely by employing a term that emphasises the suspended recognition of a community (Nyers). The ‘asylum seeker’ is a figure defined in law in order to facilitate government-level avoidance of humanitarian obligations by emphasising the non-refugeeness of asylum claimants (Tyler). This group is identified as supplicant to the state, positioning the state itself as a legitimate arbiter. It is in this sense that asylum seekers suffer a degree of cruel optimism (Berlant) – wishing to be recognised as a refugee while nevertheless subject to state-defined discourses, whatever the outcome. The term ‘forced migrant’ is little better, conveying a de-humanising and disabling lack of agency (Turton), while the terms ‘undocumented migrant’, ‘irregular migrant’ and ‘illegal migrant’ all imply a failure to conform to respectable, desirable and legitimate forms of migration.Another consequence of these co-opted and politically subjugating forms of language is their production of simple imagined geographies of migration that position the foreigner as strange, unfamiliar and incapable of communication across this divide. Such imaginings precipitate their own responses, most clearly expressed in the blunt, intrusive uses of space and time in migration governance (Lahav and Guiraudon; Cohen; Guild; Gronendijk). Various institutions exist in Britain that function to actually produce the imagined differences between migrants and citizens, from the two huge, airport-like ‘Asylum Screening Units’ in Liverpool and London where asylum seekers can lodge their claims, to the 12 ‘Removal Centres’ within which soon-to-be deported asylum seekers are incarcerated and the 17 ‘Hearing Centres’ at which British judges preside over the precise legal status of asylum applicants.Less attention, however, has been given to the tension between mobility and stillness in asylum contexts. Asylum seeker management is characterised by a complex combination of enforced stillness and enforced mobility of asylum seeking bodies, and resistance can also be understood in these terms. This research draws upon 37 interviews with asylum seekers, asylum activists, and government employees in the UK conducted between 2005 and 2007 (see Gill) and distils three characteristics of stillness. First, an association between stillness and safety is clearly evident, exacerbated by the fear that the state may force asylum seekers to move at any time. Second, stillness of asylum seekers in a physical, literal sense is intimately related to their psychological condition, underscoring the affectual properties of stillness. Third, the desire to be still, and to be safe, precipitates various political strategies that seek to secure stillness, meaning that stillness functions as more than an aspiration, becoming also a key political metric in the struggle between the included and excluded. In these multiple and contradictory ways stillness is a key factor that structures asylum seekers’ experiences of migration. Governing through Mobility The British state utilises both stillness and mobility in the governance of asylum seeking bodies. On the one hand, asylum seekers’ personal freedoms are routinely curtailed both through their incarceration and through the requirements imposed upon them by the state in terms of ‘signing in’ at local police stations, even when they are not incarcerated, throughout the time that they are awaiting a decision on their claim for asylum (Cwerner). This requirement, which consists of attending a police station to confirm the continuing compliance of the asylum seeker, can vary in frequency, from once every month to once every few days.On the other hand, the British state employs a range of strategies of mobility that serve to deprive asylum seeking communities of geographical stillness and, consequently, also often undermines their psychological stability. First, the seizure of asylum seekers and transportation to a Removal Centre can be sudden and traumatic, and incarceration in this manner is becoming increasingly common (Bacon; Home Office). In extreme cases, very little or no warning is given to asylum seekers who are taken into detention, and so-called ‘dawn raids’ have been organised in order to exploit an element of surprise in the introduction of asylum seekers to detention (Burnett). A second source of forced mobility associated with Removal Centres is the transfer of detainees from one Removal Centre to another for a variety of reasons, from the practical constraints imposed by the capacities of various centres, to differences in the conditions of centres themselves, which are used to form a reward and sanction mechanism among the detainee population (Hayter; Granville-Chapman). Intra-detention estate transfers have increased in scope and significance in recent years: in 2004/5, the most recent financial year for which figures are available, the British government spent over £6.5 million simply moving detainees from one secure facility to another within the UK (Hansard, 2005; 2006).Outside incarceration, a third source of spatial disruption of asylum seekers in the UK concerns their relationship with accommodation providers. Housing is provided to asylum seekers as they await a decision on their claim, but this housing is provided on a ‘no-choice’ basis, meaning that asylum seekers who are not prepared to travel to the accommodation that is allocated to them will forfeit their right to accommodation (Schuster). In other words, accommodation is contingent upon asylum seekers’ willingness to be mobile, producing a direct trade-off between the attractions of accommodation and stillness. The rationale for this “dispersal policy”, is to draw asylum seekers away from London, where the majority of asylum seekers chose to reside before 2000. The maintenance of a diverse portfolio of housing across the UK is resource intensive, with the re-negotiation of housing contracts worth over a £1 billion a constant concern (Noble et al). As these contracts are renegotiated, asylum seekers are expected to move in response to the varying affordability of housing around the country. In parallel to the system of deportee movements within the detention estate therefore, a comparable system of movement of asylum seekers around the UK in response to urban and regional housing market conditions also operates. Stillness as SanctuaryIn all three cases, the psychological stress that movement of asylum seekers can cause is significant. Within detention, according to a series of government reports into the conditions of removal centres, one of the recurring difficulties facing incarcerated asylum seekers is incomprehension of their legal status (e.g. HMIP 2002; 2008). This, coupled with very short warning of impending movements, results in widespread anxiety among detained asylum seekers that they may be deported or transferred imminently. Outside detention, the fear of snatch squads of police officers, or alternatively the fear of hate crimes against asylum seekers (Tyler), render movement in the public realm a dangerous practice in the eyes of many marginalised migrants. The degree of uncertainty and the mental and emotional demands of relocation introduced through forced mobility can have a damaging psychological effect upon an already vulnerable population. Expressing his frustration at this particular implication of the movement of detainees, one activist who had provided sanctuary to over 20 asylum seekers in his community outlined some of the consequences of onward movement.The number of times I’ve had to write panic letters saying you know you cannot move this person to the other end of the country because it destabilises them in terms of their mental health and it is abusive. […] Their solicitors are here, they’re in process, in legal process, they’ve got a community, they’ve got friends, they may even have a partner or a child here and they would still move them.The association between governance, mobility and trepidation highlights one characteristic of stillness in the asylum seeking field: in contra-distinction to the risk associated with movement, to be still is very often to be safe. Given the necessity to flee violence in origin countries and the tendency for destination country governments to require constant re-positioning, often backed-up with the threat of force, stillness comes to be viewed as offering a sort of sanctuary. Indeed, the Independent Asylum Commission charity that has conducted a series of reviews of asylum seekers’ treatment in the UK (Hobson et al.), has recently suggested dispensing with the term ‘asylum’ in favour of ‘sanctuary’ precisely because of the positive associations with security and stability that the latter provides. To be in one place for a sustained period allows networks of human trust and reciprocity to develop which can form the basis of supportive community relationships. Another activist who had accompanied many asylum seekers through the legal process spoke passionately about the functions that communities can serve in asylum seekers’ lives.So you actually become substitute family […] I think it’s what helps people in the midst of trauma when the future is uncertain […] to find a community which values them, which accepts them, which listens to them, where they can begin to find a place and touch a creative life again which they may not have had for years: it’s enormously important.There is a danger in romanticising the benefits of community (Joseph). Indeed, much of the racism and xenophobia directed towards asylum seekers has been the result of local community hostilities towards different national and ethnic groups (Boswell). For many asylum seekers, however, the reciprocal relations found in communities are crucially important to their well-being. What is more, the inclusion of asylum seekers into communities is one of the most effective anti-state and anti-deportation strategies available to activists and asylum seekers alike (Tyler), because it arrests the process of anonymising and cordoning asylum seekers as an homogenous group, providing instead a chance for individuals to cast off this label in favour of more ‘humane’ characteristics: families, learning, friendship, love.Strategies for StillnessFor this reason, the pursuit of stillness among asylum seekers is both a human and political response to their situations – stillness becomes a metric in the struggle between abject migrants and the state. Crucial to this political function is the complex relationship between stillness and social visibility: if an asylum seeker can command their own stillness then they can also have greater influence over their public profile, either in order to develop it or to become less conspicuous.Tyler argues that asylum seekers are what she calls a ‘hypervisible’ social group, referring to the high profile association between a fictional, dehumanised asylum seeking figure and a range of defamatory characteristics circulated by the popular printed press. Stillness can be used to strategically reduce this imposed form of hypervisibility, and to raise awareness of real asylum seeker stories and situations. This is achieved by building community coalitions, which require physically and socially settled asylum seeking families and communities. Asylum advocacy groups and local community support networks work together in the UK in order to generate a genuine public profile of asylum seekers by utilising local and national newspapers, staging public demonstrations, delivering speeches, attending rallies and garnering support among local organisations through art exhibitions, performances and debates. Some activist networks specialise explicitly in supporting asylum seekers in these endeavours, and sympathetic networks of journalists, lawyers, doctors and radio producers combine their expertise with varying degrees of success.These sorts of strategies can produce strong loyalties between local communities and the asylum seekers in their midst, precisely because, through their co-presence, asylum seekers cease to be merely asylum seekers, but become active and valued members of communities. One activist who had helped to organise the protection of an asylum seeker in a church described some of the preparations that had been made for the arrival of immigration task forces in her middle class parish.There were all sorts of things we practiced: if they did break through the door what would we do? We set up a telephone tree so that each person would phone two or three people. We had I don’t know how many cars outside. We arranged a safe house, where we would hide her. We practiced getting her out of the room into a car […] We were expecting them to come at any time. We always had people at the back […] guarding, looking at strangers who might be around and [name] was never, ever allowed to be on her own without a whole group of people completely surrounding her so she could feel safe and we would feel safe. Securing stillness here becomes more than simply an operation to secure geographic fixity: it is a symbolic struggle between state and community, crystallising in specific tactics of spatial and temporal arrangement. It reflects the fear of further forced movement, the abiding association between stillness and safety, and the complex relationship between community visibility and an ability to remain still.There are, nevertheless, drawbacks to these tactics that suggest a very different relationship between stillness and visibility. Juries can be alienated by loud tactics of activism, meaning that asylum seekers can damage their chances of a sympathetic legal hearing if they have had too high a profile. Furthermore, many asylum seekers do not have the benefits of such a dedicated community. An alternative way in which stillness becomes political is through its ability to render invisible the abject body. Invisibility is taken to mean the decision to ‘go underground’, miss the appointments at local police stations and attempt to anticipate the movements of immigration removal enforcement teams. Perversely, although this is a strategy for stillness at the national or regional scale, mobile strategies are often employed at finer scales in order to achieve this objective. Asylum seekers sometimes endure extremely precarious and difficult conditions of housing and subsistence moving from house to house regularly or sleeping and living in cars in order to avoid detection by authorities.This strategy is difficult because it involves a high degree of uncertainty, stress and reliance upon the goodwill of others. One police officer outlined the situation facing many ‘invisible’ asylum seekers as one of poverty and desperation:Immigration haven’t got a clue where they are, they just can’t find them because they’re sofa surfing, that’s living in peoples coffee shops … I see them in the coffee shop and they come up and they’re bloody starving! Despite the difficulties associated with this form of invisibility, it is estimated that this strategy is becoming increasingly common in the UK. In 2006 the Red Cross estimated that there were some 36 000 refused and destitute asylum seekers in England, up from 25 000 the previous year, and reported that their organisation was having to provide induction tours of soup kitchens and night shelters in order to alleviate the conditions of many claimants in these situations (Taylor and Muir). Conclusion The case of asylum seekers in the UK illustrates the multiple, contradictory and splintered character of stillness. While some forms of governance impose stillness upon asylum seeking bodies, in the form of incarceration and ‘signing in’ requirements, other forms of governance impose mobility either within detention or outside it. Consequently stillness figures in the responses of asylum seeking communities in various ways. Given the unwelcome within-country movement of asylum seekers, and adding to this the initial fact of their forced migration from their home countries, the condition of stillness becomes desirable, promising to bring with it stability and safety. These promises contrast the psychological disruption that further mobility, and even the threat of further mobility, can bring about. This illustrates the affectual qualities both of movement and of stillness in the asylum-seeking context. Literal stillness is associated with social and emotional stability that complicates the distinction between real and emotional spaces. While this is certainly not the case uniformly – incarceration and inhibited personal liberties have opposite consequences – the promises of stillness in terms of stability and sanctuary are clearly significant because this desirability leads asylum advocates and asylum seekers to execute a range of political strategies that seek to ensure stillness, either through enhanced or reduced forms of social visibility.The association of mobility with freedom that typifies much of the literature surrounding mobility needs closer inspection. At least in some situations, asylum seekers pursue geographical stillness for the political and psychological benefits it can offer, while mobility is both employed as a subjugating strategy by states and is itself actively resisted by those who constitute its targets.ReferencesBack, Les, Bernadette Farrell and Erin Vandermaas. A Humane Service for Global Citizens. London: South London Citizens, 2005.Bacon, Christine. The Evolution of Immigration Detention in the UK: The Involvement of Private Prison Companies. Oxford: Refugee Studies Centre, 2005.Berlant, Lauren. “Cruel Optimism.” differences : A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 17.3 (2006): 20—36.Border and Immigration Agency. Business Plan for Transition Year April 2007 – March 2008: Fair, Effective, Transparent and Trusted. London: Home Office, 2007.Boswell, Christina. “Burden-Sharing in the European Union: Lessons from the German and UK Experience.” Journal of Refugee Studies 16.3 (2003): 316—35.Burnett, Jon. Dawn Raids. PAFRAS Briefing Paper Number 4. Leeds: Positive Action for Refugees and Asylum Seekers, 2008. ‹http://www.statewatch.org/news/2008/apr/uk-patras-briefing-paper-4-%2Ddawn-raids.pdf›.Cohen, Steve. “The Local State of Immigration Controls.” Critical Social Policy 22 (2002): 518—43.Cwerner, Saulo. “Faster, Faster and Faster: The Time Politics of Asylum in the UK.” Time and Society 13 (2004): 71—88.Gill, Nick. "Presentational State Power: Temporal and Spatial Influences over Asylum Sector." Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 2009 (forthcoming).Granville-Chapman, Charlotte, Ellie Smith, and Neil Moloney. Harm on Removal: Excessive Force Against Failed Asylum Seekers. London: Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, 2004.Groenendijk, Kees. “New Borders behind Old Ones: Post-Schengen Controls behind the Internal Borders and inside the Netherlands and Germany”. In Search of Europe's Borders. Eds. Kees Groenendijk, Elspeth Guild and Paul Minderhoud. The Hague: Kluwer International Law, 2003. 131—46.Guild, Elspeth. “The Europeanisation of Europe's Asylum Policy.” International Journal of Refugee Law 18 (2006): 630—51.Guiraudon, Virginie. “Before the EU Border: Remote Control of the 'Huddled Masses'.” In Search of Europe's Borders. Eds. Kees Groenendijk, Elspeth Guild and Paul Minderhoud. The Hague: Kluwer International Law, 2003. 191—214.Hansard, House of Commons. Vol. 440 Col. 972W. 5 Dec. 2005. 6 Mar. 2009 ‹http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmhansrd/vo051205/text/51205w18.htm›.———. Vol. 441 Col. 374W. 9 Jan. 2006. 6 Mar. 2009 ‹http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmhansrd/vo060109/text/60109w95.htm›.Hayter, Theresa. Open Borders: The Case against Immigration Controls. London: Pluto P, 2000.HM Inspectorate of Prisons. An Inspection of Campsfield House Immigration Removal Centre. London: HM Inspectorate of Prisons, 2002.———. Report on an Unannounced Full Follow-up Inspection of Campsfield House Immigration Removal Centre. London: HM Inspectorate of Prisons, 2008. Hobson, Chris, Jonathan Cox, and Nicholas Sagovsky. Saving Sanctuary: The Independent Asylum Commission’s First Report of Conclusions and Recommendations. London: Independent Asylum Commission, 2008.Home Office. “Record High on Removals of Failed Asylum Seekers.” Press Office Release, 27 Feb. 2007. London: Home Office, 2007. 6 Mar. 2009 ‹http://press.homeoffice.gov.uk/press-releases/asylum-removals-figures›. Joseph, Miranda. Against the Romance of Community. Minnesota: U of Minnesota P, 2002.Koser, Khalid. “Refugees, Trans-Nationalism and the State.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 33 (2007): 233—54.Lahav, Gallya, and Virginie Guiraudon. “Comparative Perspectives on Border Control: Away from the Border and outside the State”. Wall around the West: State Borders and Immigration Controls in North America and Europe. Eds. Gallya Lahav and Virginie Guiraudon. The Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000. 55—77.Noble, Gill, Alan Barnish, Ernie Finch, and Digby Griffith. A Review of the Operation of the National Asylum Support Service. London: Home Office, 2004. Nyers, Peter. "Abject Cosmopolitanism: The Politics of Protection in the Anti-Deportation Movement." Third World Quarterly 24.6 (2003): 1069—93.Schuster, Lisa. "A Sledgehammer to Crack a Nut: Deportation, Detention and Dispersal in Europe." Social Policy & Administration 39.6 (2005): 606—21.Taylor, Diane, and Hugh Muir. “Red Cross Aids Failed Asylum Seekers” UK News. The Guardian 9 Jan. 2006. 6 Mar. 2009 ‹http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2006/jan/09/immigrationasylumandrefugees.uknews›.Turton, David. Conceptualising Forced Migration. University of Oxford Refugee Studies Centre Working Paper 12 (2003). 6 Mar. 2009 ‹http://www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/PDFs/workingpaper12.pdf›.Tyler, Imogen. “'Welcome to Britain': The Cultural Politics of Asylum.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 9.2 (2006): 185—202.United Nations High Commission for Refugees. Refugees by Numbers 2006 Edition. Geneva: UNHCR, 2006.

Introduction In 2017, 250 Indigenous delegates from across the country convened at the National Constitution Convention at Uluru to discuss a strategy towards the implementation of constitutional reform and recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples (Referendum Council). Informed by community consultations arising out of 12 regional dialogues conducted by the government appointed Referendum Council, the resulting Uluru Statement from the Heart was unlike any constitutional reform previously proposed (Appleby & Synot). Within the Statement, the delegation outlined that to build a more equitable and reconciled nation, an enshrined Voice to Parliament was needed. Such a voice would embed Indigenous participation in parliamentary dialogues and debates while facilitating further discussion pertaining to truth telling and negotiating a Treaty between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. The reforms proposed are based on the collective input of Indigenous communities that were expressed in good faith during the consultation process. Arising out of a government appointed and funded initiative that directly sought Indigenous perspectives on constitutional reform, the trust and good faith invested by Indigenous people was quickly shut down when the Prime Minster, Malcolm Turnbull, rejected the reforms without parliamentary debate or taking them to the people via a referendum (Wahlquist Indigenous Voice Proposal; Appleby and McKinnon). In this article, we argue that through its dismissal the government treated the Uluru Statement from the Heart as a passing phase or mere “thought bubble” that was envisioned to disappear as quickly as it emerged. The Uluru Statement is a gift to the nation. One that genuinely offers new ways of envisioning and enacting reconciliation through equitable relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations. Indigenous voices lie at the heart of reconciliation but require constitutional enshrinement to ensure that Indigenous peoples and cultures are represented across all levels of government. Filter Bubbles of Distortion Constitutional change is often spoken of by politicians, its critics, and within the media as something unachievable. For example, in 2017, before even reading the accompanying report, MP Barnaby Joyce (in Fergus) publicly denounced the Uluru Statement as “unwinnable” and not “saleable”. He stated that “if you overreach in politics and ask for something that will not be supported by the Australian people such as another chamber in politics or something that sort of sits above or beside the Senate, that idea just won't fly”. Criticisms such as these are laced with paternalistic rhetoric that suggests its potential defeat at a referendum would be counterproductive and “self-defeating”, meaning that the proposed changes should be rejected for a more digestible version, ultimately saving the movement from itself. While efforts to communicate the necessity of the proposed reforms continues, presumptions that it does not have public support is simply unfounded. The Centre for Governance and Public Policy shows that 71 per cent of the public support constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians. Furthermore, an online survey conducted by Cox Inall Ridgeway found that the majority of those surveyed supported constitutional reform to curb racism; remove section 25 and references to race; establish an Indigenous Voice to Parliament; and formally recognise Indigenous peoples through a statement of acknowledgment (Referendum Council). In fact, public support for constitutional reform is growing, with Reconciliation Australia’s reconciliation barometer survey showing an increase from 77 per cent in 2018 to 88 per cent in 2020 (Reconciliation Australia). Media – whether news, social, databases, or search engines – undoubtedly shape the lens through which people come to encounter and understand the world. The information a person receives can be the result of what Eli Pariser has described as “filter bubbles”, in which digital algorithms determine what perspectives, outlooks, and sources of information are considered important, and those that are readily accessible. Misinformation towards constitutional reform, such as that commonly circulated within mainstream and social media and propelled by high profile voices, further creates what neuroscientist Don Vaughn calls “reinforcement bubbles” (Rose Gould). This propagates particular views and stunts informed debate. Despite public support, the reforms proposed in the Uluru Statement continue to be distorted within public and political discourses, with the media used as a means to spread misinformation that equates an Indigenous Voice to Parliament to the establishment of a new “third chamber” (Wahlquist ‘Barnaby’; Karp). In a 2018 interview, PM Scott Morrison suggested that advocates and commentators in favour of constitutional reform were engaging in spin by claiming that a Voice did not function as a third chamber (Prime Minister of Australia). Morrison claimed, “people can dress it up any way they like but I think two chambers is enough”. After a decade of consultative work, eight government reports and inquiries, and countless publications and commentaries, the Uluru Statement continues to be played down as if it were a mere thought bubble, a convoluted work in progress that is in need of refinement. In the same interview, Morrison went on to say that the proposal as it stands now is “unworkable”. Throughout the ongoing movement towards constitutional reform, extensive effort has been invested into ensuring that the reforms proposed are achievable and practical. The Uluru Statement from the Heart represents the culmination of decades of work and proposes clear, concise, and relatively minimal constitutional changes that would translate to potentially significant outcomes for Indigenous Australians (Fredericks & Bradfield). International examples demonstrate how such reforms can translate into parliamentary and governing structures. The Treaty of Waitangi (Palmer) for example seeks to inform Māori and Pākehā (non-Maori) relationships in New Zealand/Aotearoa, whilst designated “Māori Seats” ensure Indigenous representation in parliament (Webster & Cheyne). More recently, 17 of 155 seats were reserved for Indigenous delegates as Chile re-writes its own constitution (Bartlett; Reuters). Indigenous communities and its leaders are more than aware of the necessity of working within the realms of possibility and the need to exhibit caution when presenting such reforms to the public. An expert panel on constitutional reform (Dodson 73), before the conception of the Uluru Statement, acknowledged this, stating “any proposal relating to constitutional recognition of the sovereign status of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples would be highly contested by many Australians, and likely to jeopardise broad public support for the Panel’s recommendations”. As outlined in the Joint Select Committee’s final report on Constitutional Recognition relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples (Referendum Council), the Voice to parliament would have no veto powers over parliamentary votes or decisions. It operates as a non-binding advisory body that remains external to parliamentary processes. Peak organisations such as the Law Council of Australia (Dolar) reiterate the fact that the proposed reforms are for a voice to Parliament rather than a voice in Parliament. Although not binding, the Voice should not be dismissed as symbolic or something that may be easily circumvented. Its effectiveness lies in its ability to place parliament in a position where they are forced to confront and address Indigenous questions, concerns, opinions, and suggestions within debates before decisions are made. Bursting the ‘Self-Referential Bubble’ Indigenous affairs continue to be one of the few areas where a rhetoric of bipartisan agreement is continuously referenced by both major parties. Disagreement, debate, and conflict is often avoided as governments seek to portray an image of unity, and in doing so, circumvent accusations of turning Indigenous peoples into the subjects of political point scoring. Within parliamentary debates, there is an understandable reservation and discomfort associated with discussions about what is often seen as an Indigenous “other” (Moreton-Robinson) and the policies that a predominantly white government enact over their lives. Yet, it is through rigorous, open, and informed debate that policies may be developed, challenged, and reformed. Although bipartisanship can portray an image of a united front in addressing a so-called “Indigenous problem”, it also stunts the conception of effective and culturally responsive policy. In other words, it often overlooks Indigenous voices. Whilst education and cultural competency plays a significant role within the reconciliation process, the most pressing obstacle is not necessarily non-Indigenous people’s inability to fully comprehend Indigenous lives and socio-cultural understandings. Even within an ideal world where non-Indigenous peoples attain a thorough understanding of Indigenous cultures, they will never truly comprehend what it means to be Indigenous (Fanon; de Sousa Santos). For non-Indigenous peoples, accepting one’s own limitations in fully comprehending Indigenous ontologies – and avoiding filling such gaps with one’s own interpretations and preconceptions – is a necessary component of decolonisation and the movement towards reconciliation (Grosfoguel; Mignolo). As parliament continues to be dominated by non-Indigenous representatives, structural changes are necessary to ensure that Indigenous voices are adequality represented. The structural reforms not only empower Indigenous voices through their inclusion within the parliamentary process but alleviates some of the pressures that arise out of non-Indigenous people having to make decisions in attempts to solve so-called Indigenous “problems”. Government response to constitutional reform, however, is ridden with symbolic piecemeal offerings that equate recognition to a form of acknowledgment without the structural changes necessary to protect and enshrine Indigenous Voices and parliamentary participation. Davis and her colleagues (Davis et al. “The Uluru Statement”) note how the Referendum Council’s recommendations were rejected by the then minister of Indigenous affairs Nigel Scullion on account that it privileged Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices. They note that, until the Referendum Council's report, the nation had no real assessment of what communities wanted. Yet by all accounts, the government had spent too much time talking to elites who have regular access to them and purport to speak on the mob's behalf. If he [Scullion] got the sense constitutional symbolism and minimalism was going to fly, then it says a lot about the self-referential bubble in which the Canberra elites live. The Uluru Statement from the Heart stands as testament to Indigenous people’s refusal to be the passive recipients of the decisions of the non-Indigenous political elite. As suggested, “symbolism and minimalism was not going to fly”. Ken Wyatt, Scullion’s replacement, reiterated the importance of co-design, the limitations of government bureaucracy, and the necessity of moving beyond the “Canberra bubble”. Wyatt stated that the Voice is saying clearly that government and the bureaucracy does not know best. It can not be a Canberra-designed approach in the bubble of Canberra. We have to co-design with Aboriginal communities in the same way that we do with state and territory governments and the corporate sector. The Voice would be the mechanism through which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander interests and perspectives may be strategically placed within parliamentary dialogues. Despite accusations of it operating as a “third chamber”, Indigenous representatives have no interest in functioning in a similar manner to a political party. The language associated with our current parliamentary system demonstrates the constrictive nature of political debate. Ministers are expected to “toe the party line”, “crossing the floor” is presented as an act of defiance, and members must be granted permission to enter a “conscience vote”. An Indigenous Voice to Parliament would be an advisory body that works alongside, but remains external to political ideologies. Their priority is to seek and implement the best outcome for their communities. Negotiations would be fluid, with no floor to cross, whilst a conscience vote would be reflected in every perspective gifted to the parliament. In the 2020 Australia and the World Annual Lecture, Pat Turner described the Voice’s co-design process as convoluted and a continuing example of the government’s neglect to hear and respond to Indigenous peoples’ interests. In the address, Turner points to the Coalition of the Peaks as an exemplar of how co-design negotiations may be facilitated by and through organisations entirely formed and run by Indigenous peoples. The Coalition of the Peaks comprises of fifty Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community-controlled peak organisations and was established to address concerns relating to closing the gap targets. As Indigenous peak organisations are accountable to their membership and reliant on government funding, some have questioned whether they are appropriate representative bodies; cautioning that they could potentially compromise the Voice as a community-centric body free from political interference. While there is some debate over which Indigenous representatives should facilitate the co-design of a treaty and Makarrata (truth-telling), there remains a unanimous call for a constitutionally enshrined Voice to Parliament that may lead negotiations and secure its place within decision-making processes. Makarrata, Garma, and the Bubbling of New Possibilities An Indigenous Voice to Parliament can be seen as the bubbling spring that provides the source for greater growth and further reform. The Uluru Statement from the Heart calls for a three-staged approach comprising of establishing an Indigenous Voice, followed by Treaty, and then Truth-Telling. This sequence has been criticised by some who prioritise Truth and Treaty as the foundation for reform and reconciliation. Their argument is based on the notion that Indigenous Sovereignty must first be acknowledged in Parliament through an agreement-making process and signing of a Treaty. While the Uluru Statement has never lost sight of treaty, the agreement-making process must begin with the acknowledgment of Indigenous people’s inherent right to participate in the conversation. This very basic and foundational right is yet to be acknowledged within Australia’s constitution. The Uluru Statement sets the Voice as its first priority as the Voice establishes the structural foundation on which the conversation pertaining to treaty may take place. It is through the Voice that a Makarrata Commission can be formed and Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples may “come together after a struggle” – the translation of the word’s Yolngu origins (Gaykamangu; Pearson). Only then may we engage in truth telling and forge new paths towards agreement-making and treaty. This however raises the question as to how a Voice to Parliament may look and what outcomes it aims to achieve. As discussed in the previous section, it is a question that is often distorted by disinformation and conjecture within public, political, and news-media discourses. In order to unpack what a Voice to Parliament may entail, we turn to another Yolngu word, Garma. Garma refers to an epistemic and ontological positioning in which knowledge is attained from a point where differences converge and new insights arise. For Yolngu people, Garma is the place where salt and fresh water intersect within the sea. Fresh and Salt water are the embodiments of two Yolngu clans, the Dhuwa and Yirritja, with Garma referring to the point where the knowledge and laws of each clan come into contact, seeking harmonious balance. When the ebb and flow of the tides are in balance, it causes the water to foam and bubble taking on new form and representing innovative ideas and possibilities. Yolngu embrace this phenomenon as an epistemology that teaches responsibility and obligations towards the care of Country. It acknowledges the autonomy of others and finds a space where all may mutually benefit. When the properties of either water type, or the knowledge belonging a single clan dominates, ecological, social, political, and cosmological balance is overthrown. Raymattja Marika-Munungguritj (5) describes Garma as a dynamic interaction of knowledge traditions. Fresh water from the land, bubbling up in fresh water springs to make waterholes, and salt water from the sea are interacting with each other with the energy of the tide and the energy of the bubbling spring. When the tide is high the water rises to its full. When the tide goes out the water reduces its capacity. In the same way Milngurr ebbs and flows. In this way the Dhuwa and Yirritja sides of Yolngu life work together. And in this way Balanda and Yolngu traditions can work together. There must be balance, if not either one will be stronger and will harm the other. The Ganma Theory is Yirritja, the Milngurr Theory is Dhuwa. Like the current push for constitutional change and its rejection of symbolic reforms, Indigenous peoples have demanded real-action and “not just talk” (Synott “The Uluru statement”). In doing so, they implored that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples be involved in all decision-making processes, for they are most knowledgeable of their community’s needs and the most effective methods of service delivery and policy. Indigenous peoples have repeatedly expressed this mandate, which is also legislated under international law through the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Coming together after a struggle does not mean that conflict and disagreement between and amongst Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities will cease. In fact, in alignment with political theories such as agonism and pluralism, coming together within a democratic system necessitates a constructive and responsive embrace of different, competing, and in some cases incommensurable views. A Voice to Parliament will operate in a manner where Indigenous perspectives and truths, as well as disagreements, may be included within negotiations and debates (Larkin & Galloway). Governments and non-Indigenous representatives will no longer speak for or on behalf of Indigenous peoples, for an Indigenous body will enact its own autonomous voice. Indigenous input therefore will not be reduced to reactionary responses and calls for reforms after the damage of mismanagement and policy failure has been caused. Indigenous voices will be permanently documented within parliamentary records and governments forced to respond to the agendas that Indigenous peoples set. Collectively, this amounts to greater participation within the democratic process and facilitates a space where “salt water” and the “bubbling springs” of fresh water may meet, mitigating the risk of harm, and bringing forth new possibilities. Conclusion When salt and fresh water combine during Garma, it begins to take on new form, eventually materialising as foam. Appearing as a singular solid object from afar, foam is but a cluster of interlocking bubbles that gain increased stability and equilibrium through sticking together. When a bubble stands alone, or a person remains within a figurative bubble that is isolated from its surroundings and other ways of knowing, doing, and being, its vulnerabilities and insecurities are exposed. Similarly, when one bubble bursts the collective cluster becomes weaker and unstable. The Uluru Statement from the Heart is a vision conceived and presented by Indigenous peoples in good faith. It offers a path forward for not only Indigenous peoples and their future generations but the entire nation (Synott “Constitutional Reform”). It is a gift and an invitation “to walk with us in a movement of the Australian people for a better future”. Through calling for the establishment of an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, a Makarrata Commission, and seeking Truth, Indigenous advocates for constitutional reform are looking to secure their own foothold and self-determination. The Uluru Statement from the Heart is more than a “thought bubble”, for it is the culmination of Indigenous people’s diverse lived experiences, outlooks, perspectives, and priorities. When the delegates met at Uluru in 2017, the thoughts, experiences, memories, and hopes of Indigenous peoples converged in a manner that created a unified front and collectively called for Voice, Treaty, and Truth. Indigenous people will never cease to pursue self-determination and the best outcomes for their peoples and all Australians. As an offering and gift, the Uluru Statement from the Heart provides the structural foundations needed to achieve this. It just requires governments and the wider public to move beyond their own bubbles and avail themselves of different outlooks and new possibilities. References Anderson, Pat, Megan Davis, and Noel Pearson. “Don’t Silence Our Voice, Minister: Uluru Leaders Condemn Backward Step.” Sydney Morning Herald 20 Oct. 2017. <https://www.smh.com.au/national/don-t-silence-our-voice-minister-uluru-leaders-condemn-backward-step-20191020-p532h0.html>. Appleby, Gabrielle, and Megan Davis. “The Uluru Statement and the Promises of Truth.” Australian Historical Studies 49.4 (2018): 501–9. Appleby, Gabrielle, and Gemma Mckinnon. “Indigenous Recognition: The Uluru Statement.” LSJ: Law Society of NSW Journal 37.36 (2017): 36-39. Appleby, Gabrielle, and Eddie Synot. “A First Nations Voice: Institutionalising Political Listening. Federal Law Review 48.4 (2020): 529-542. Bailes, Morry. “Why the Law Council Backs an Indigenous Voice to Parliament.” InDaily 31 July 2018. <https://indaily.com.au/opinion/2018/07/31/why-the-law-council-backs-an-indigenous-voice-to-parliament/>. Bartlett, John. "Chile’s Largest Indigenous Group Sees Opportunity in a New Constitution." New York Times, 16 Sep. 2020. 19 Nov. 2020 <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/16/world/americas/chile-mapuche-constitution.html>. Brennan, Bridget. “Indigenous Leaders Enraged as Advisory Board Referendum is Rejected by Malcolm Turnbull.” ABC News 27 Oct. 2017. <https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-27/indigenous-leaders-enraged-by-pms-referendum-rejection/9090762>. Centre for Governance and Public Policy. OmniPoll Australian Constitutional Values Survey 2017. Griffith University: Centre for Governance and Public Policy, 30 Oct. 2017. <https://news.griffith.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Griffith-University-UNSW-Australian-Constitutional-Values-Survey-Sept-2017-Results-2.pdf>. Davidson, Helen, and Katherine Murphy. “Referendum Council Endorses Uluru Call for Indigenous Voice to Parliament.” The Guardian 17 July 2017. <https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jul/17/referendum-council-endorses-uluru-call-indigenous-voice-parliament>. Davis, Megan. “Some Say a Voice to Parliament Is Toothless. But Together Our Voices Are Powerful.” The Guardian 13 Aug. 2020. <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/13/some-say-a-voice-to-parliament-is-toothless-but-together-our-voices-are-powerful>. ———. “No Time for the Meek.” The Monthly Oct. 2019. <https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2019/october/1569370776/megan-davis/no-time-meek>. ———. “Moment of Truth.” Quarterly Essay 69 (2019). <https://www.quarterlyessay.com.au/content/correspondence-megan-davis>. ———. “The Long Road to Uluru – Truth before Justice.” Griffith Review 2018. <https://www.griffithreview.com/articles/long-road-uluru-walking-together-truth-before-justice-megan-davis/>. ———. “The Status Quo Ain’t Working: The Uluru Statement from the Heart Is the Blueprint for an Australian Republic.” The Monthly 7 June 2018. <https://www.themonthly.com.au/blog/megan-davis/2018/07/2018/1528335353/status-quo-ain-t-working>. Davis, Megan, Rosalind Dixon, Gabrielle Appleby, and Noel Pearson. “The Uluru Statement.” Bar News: The Journal of the NSW Bar Association Autumn (2018): 41–48. <https://search-informit-com.au.ezproxy.library.uq.edu.au/fullText;dn=20180726000224;res=AGISPT>. Davis, Megan, Cheryl Saunders, Mark McKenna, Shireen Morris, Christopher Mayes, and Maria Giannacopoulos. “The Uluru Statement from Heart, One Year On: Can a First Nations Voice Yet Be Heard?” ABC Religion and Ethics 26 May 2018. <https://www.abc.net.au/religion/the-uluru-statement-from-heart-one-year-on-can-a-first-nations-v/10094678>. De Sousa Santos, Boaventura. Epistemologies of the South: Justice against Epistemicide. Routledge, 2015. Dodson, P. 2012. Recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in the Constitution: Report of the Expert Panel. <http://australianpolitics.com/downloads/issues/indigenous/12-01-16_indigenous-recognition-expert-panel-report.pdf>. Dolar, Sol. “Law Council Explains Government’s Key Misunderstanding of the Uluru Statement.” Australasian Lawyer 5 Nov. 2019. <https://www.thelawyermag.com/au/news/general/law-council-explains-governments-key-misunderstanding-of-the-uluru-statement/208247?m=1>. Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Macgibbon & Kee, 1965. Fredericks, Bronwyn, and Abraham Bradfield. “We Don’t Want to Go Back to ‘Normal’, When ‘Normal’ Wasn’t Good for Everyone.” Axon: Creative Explorations 10.2 (2020). <https://www.axonjournal.com.au/issue-vol-10-no-2-dec-2020/we-don-t-want-go-back-normal-when-normal-wasn-t-good-everyone>. Ford, Mazoe, and Clare Blumer. “Vote Compass: Most Australians Back Constitutional Recognition for Indigenous Australians.” ABC News 20 May 2016. <https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-20/vote-compass-indigenous-recognition/7428030?nw=0>. Gaykamangu, James, and Danial Terence Kelly. “Ngarra Law: Aboriginal Customary Law from Arnhem Land.” Northern Territory Law Journal 2.4 (2012): 236-248. Grant, Stan. “Three Years on From Uluru, We Must Lift the Blindfolds of Liberalism to Make Progress.” The Conversation 25 May 2020. <https://theconversation.com/three-years-on-from-uluru-we-must-lift-the-blindfolds-of-liberalism-to-make-progress-138930>. Grosfoguel, Ramón. "Decolonizing Post-Colonial Studies and Paradigms of Political Economy: Transmodernity, Decolonial Thinking, and Global Coloniality." Transmodernity 1.1 (2011): 1-36. Hunter, Fergus. “'It's Not Going to Happen': Barnaby Joyce Rejects Push for Aboriginal Body in Constitution.” Sydney Morning Herald 29 May 2017. <https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/its-not-going-to-happen-barnaby-joyce-rejects-push-for-aboriginal-body-in-constitution-20170529-gwf5ld.html>. Karp, Paul. “Scott Morrison Claims Indigenous Voice to Parliament Would Be a Third Chamber.” The Guardian, 26 Sep. 2018. <https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/sep/26/scott-morrison-claims-indigenous-voice-to-parliament-would-be-a-third-chamber>. Koziol, Michael. “Joyce Admits He Was Wrong to Call Indigenous Voice a 'Third Chamber’.” Sydney Morning Herald 18 July 2019. <https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/barnaby-joyce-admits-he-was-wrong-to-call-indigenous-voice-a-third-chamber-20190718-p528ki.html>. Larkin, Dani, and Kate Galloway. “Uluru Statement from the Heart: Australian Public Law Pluralism.” Bond Law Review 30.2 (2018): 335–345. Law Council of Australia. “Nothing ‘Un-Australian’ about Human Rights, the Constitution and the Rule of Law.” 14 Aug. 2017. <https://www.lawcouncil.asn.au/media/media-releases/nothing-unaustralian-about-human-rights-the-constitution-and-the-rule-of-law>. Law Council of Australia. “Law Council Supports Calls for Voice to Parliament.” 15 June 2018. <https://www.lawcouncil.asn.au/media/media-releases/law-council-supports-calls-for-voice-to-parliament>. Marika-Munugurritj, Raymattja. Workshops as Teaching Learning Environments. Paper presented to Yirrkala Action Group, 1992. Martin, Wayne AC. Constitutional Law Dinner 2018 Address by Wayne Martin AC Chief Justice of Western Australia. Sydney: Parliament House, 23 Feb. 2018. Mignolo, Walter. Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking. Princeton University Press, 2012. Moreton-Robinson, Aileen. The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty. U of Minnesota P, 2015. Norman, Heidi. “From Recognition to Reform: The Uluru Statement from the Heart.” Does the Media Fail Aboriginal Political Aspirations? Eds. Amy Thomas, Andrew Jakubowicz, and Heidi Norman. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2019. 216–231. Pearson, Luke. “What Is a Makarrata? The Yolngu Word Is More than a Synonym for Treaty.” ABC Radio National 10 Aug. 2017. <https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-10/makarrata-explainer-yolngu-word-more-than-synonym-for-treaty/8790452>. Praiser, Eli. The Filter Bubble: How the New Personalized Web Is Changing What We Read and How We Think. Penguin, 2012. Prime Minister, Attorney General, and Minister for Indigenous Affairs. Response to Referendum Council's Report on Constitutional Recognition. 26 Oct. 2017. <https://www.malcolmturnbull.com.au/media/response-to-referendum-councils-report-on-constitutional-recognition>. Prime Minister of Australia. Radio interview with Fran Kelly. ABC Radio National 26 Sep 2018. <https://www.pm.gov.au/media/radio-interview-fran-kelly-abc-rn>. Reconciliation Australia. 2020 Australian Reconciliation Barometer, 2020. <https://www.reconciliation.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/australian_reconciliation_barometer_2020_-full-report_web.pdf>. Referendum Council. Referendum Council Final Report, 2017. <https://www.referendumcouncil.org.au/sites/default/files/report_attachments/Referendum_Council_Final_Report.pdf>. Reuters. "Chile Reserves Seats for Indigenous as It Prepares to Rewrite Constitution." Reuters, 16 Dec. 2020. 19 Nov. 2020 <https://www.reuters.com/article/chile-constitution-indigenous-idUSKBN28Q05J>. Rose Gould, Wendy. “Are You in a Social Media Bubble? Here's How to Tell.” NBC News 22 Oct. 2019. <https://www.nbcnews.com/better/lifestyle/problem-social-media-reinforcement-bubbles-what-you-can-do-about-ncna1063896>. Rubenstein, Kim. “Power, Control and Citizenship: The Uluru Statement from the Heart as Active Citizenship.” Bond Law Review 30.1 (2018): 19-29. Synott, Eddie. “The Uluru Statement Showed How to Give First Nations People a Real Voice – Now It’s the Time for Action.” The Conversation 5 Mar. 2019. <https://theconversation.com/the-uluru statement-showed-how-to-give-first-nations-people-a-real-voice-now-its-time-for-action-110707>. ———. “Constitutional Reform Made Easy: How to Achieve the Uluru Statement and a Voice.” The Conversation 7 May 2019. <https://theconversation.com/constitutional-reform-made-easy-how-to-achieve-the-uluru-statement-and-a-first-nations-voice-116141>. Turner, Pat. “The Long Cry of Indigenous Peoples to Be Heard – a Defining Moment in Australia.” The 'Australia and the World' 2020 Annual Lecture. National Press Club of Australia, 30 Sep. 2020. <https://ausi.anu.edu.au/events/australia-and-world-2020-annual-lecture-pat-turner-am>. Wahlquist, Calla. “A Year On, the Key Goal of Uluru Statement Remains Elusive.” The Guardian 26 May 2018. <https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/may/26/a-year-on-the-key-goal-of-uluru-statement-remains-elusive>. ———. “Barnaby Joyce Criticised for Misinterpreting Proposed Indigenous Voice to Parliament.” The Guardian 29 May 2017. <https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/may/29/barnaby-joyce-criticised-for-misinterpreting-proposed-indigenous-voice-to-parliament>. ———. “Indigenous Voice Proposal ‘Not Desirable’, Says Turnbull.” The Guardian 26 Oct. 2017. <https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/oct/26/indigenous-voice-proposal-not-desirable-says-turnbull>. ———. “Turnbull’s Uluru Statement Rejection Is ‘Mean-Spirited Bastardry’ – Legal Expert.” The Guardian 26 Oct. 2017. <https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/oct/26/turnbulls-uluru-statement-rejection-mean-spirited-bastardry-legal-expert>. Wyatt, Ken. “Indigenous Australia: A New Way of Working.” 15 Sep. 2020. <https://ministers.pmc.gov.au/wyatt/2020/indigenous-australia-new-way-working>. Yunupingu, Galarrwuy. “Rom Watangu: An Indigenous Leader Reflects on a Lifetime Following the Law of the Land.” The Monthly (2016). Zillman, Stephanie. “Indigenous Advisory Body Would Be Supported by Australians, Survey Finds.” ABC News 30 Oct. 2017. <https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-30/australians-would-support-referendum-indigenous-voice-parliament/9101106>.

The 2000s have been a lively decade for cities. The Worldwatch Institute estimated that 2007 was the first year in human history that more people worldwide lived in cities than the countryside. Globalisation and new digital media technologies have generated the seemingly paradoxical outcome that spatial location came to be more rather than less important, as combinations of firms, industries, cultural activities and creative talents have increasingly clustered around a select node of what have been termed “creative cities,” that are in turn highly networked into global circuits of economic capital, political power and entertainment media. Intellectually, the period has seen what the UCLA geographer Ed Soja refers to as the spatial turn in social theory, where “whatever your interests may be, they can be significantly advanced by adopting a critical spatial perspective” (2). This is related to the dynamic properties of socially constructed space itself, or what Soja terms “the powerful forces that arise from socially produced spaces such as urban agglomerations and cohesive regional economies,” with the result that “what can be called the stimulus of socio-spatial agglomeration is today being assertively described as the primary cause of economic development, technological innovation, and cultural creativity” (14). The demand for social justice in cities has, in recent years, taken the form of “Right to the City” movements. The “Right to the City” movement draws upon the long tradition of radical urbanism in which the Paris Commune of 1871 features prominently, and which has both its Marxist and anarchist variants, as well as the geographer Henri Lefebvre’s (1991) arguments that capitalism was fundamentally driven by the production of space, and that the citizens of a city possessed fundamental rights by virtue of being in a city, meaning that political struggle in capitalist societies would take an increasingly urban form. Manifestations of contemporary “Right to the City” movements have been seen in the development of a World Charter for the Right to the City, Right to the City alliances among progressive urban planners as well as urban activists, forums that bring together artists, architects, activists and urban geographers, and a variety of essays on the subject by radical geographers including David Harvey, whose work I wish to focus upon here. In his 2008 essay "The Right to the City," Harvey presents a manifesto for 21st century radical politics that asserts that the struggle for collective control over cities marks the nodal point of anti-capitalist movements today. It draws together a range of strands of arguments recognizable to those familiar with Harvey’s work, including Marxist political economy, the critique of neoliberalism, the growth of social inequality in the U.S. in particular, and concerns about the rise of speculative finance capital and its broader socio-economic consequences. My interest in Harvey’s manifesto here arises not so much from his prognosis for urban radicalism, but from how he understands the suburban in relation to this urban class struggle. It is an important point to consider because, in many parts of the world, growing urbanisation is in fact growing suburbanisation. This is the case for U.S. cities (Cox), and it is also apparent in Australian cities, with the rise in particular of outer suburban Master Planned Communities as a feature of the “New Prosperity” Australia has been experiencing since the mid 1990s (Flew; Infrastructure Australia). What we find in Harvey’s essay is that the suburban is clearly sub-urban, or an inferior form of city living. Suburbs are variously identified by Harvey as being:Sites for the expenditure of surplus capital, as a safety valve for overheated finance capitalism (Harvey 27);Places where working class militancy is pacified through the promotion of mortgage debt, which turns suburbanites into political conservatives primarily concerned with maintaining their property values;Places where “the neoliberal ethic of intense possessive individualism, and its cognate of political withdrawal from collective forms of action” are actively promoted through the proliferation of shopping malls, multiplexes, franchise stores and fast-food outlets, leading to “pacification by cappuccino” (32);Places where women are actively oppressed, so that “leading feminists … [would] proclaim the suburb as the locus of all their primary discontents” (28);A source of anti-capitalist struggle, as “the soulless qualities of suburban living … played a critical role in the dramatic events of 1968 in the US [as] discontented white middle-class students went into a phase of revolt, sought alliances with marginalized groups claiming civil rights and rallied against American imperialism” (28).Given these negative associations, one could hardly imagine citizens demanding the right to the suburb, in the same way as Harvey projects the right to the city as a rallying cry for a more democratic social order. Instead, from an Australian perspective, one is reminded of the critiques of suburbia that have been a staple of radical theory from the turn of the 20th century to the present day (Collis et. al.). Demanding the “right to the suburb” would appear here as an inherently contradictory demand, that could only be desired by those who the Australian radical psychoanalytic theorist Douglas Kirsner described as living an alienated existence where:Watching television, cleaning the car, unnecessary housework and spectator sports are instances of general life-patterns in our society: by adopting these patterns the individual submits to a uniform life fashioned from outside, a pseudo-life in which the question of individual self-realisation does not even figure. People live conditioned, unconscious lives, reproducing the values of the system as a whole (Kirsner 23). The problem with this tradition of radical critique, which is perhaps reflective of the estrangement of a section of the Australian critical intelligentsia more generally, is that most Australians live in suburbs, and indeed seem (not surprisingly!) to like living in them. Indeed, each successive wave of migration to Australia has been marked by families seeking a home in the suburbs, regardless of the housing conditions of the place they came from: the demand among Singaporeans for large houses in Perth, or what has been termed “Singaperth,” is one of many manifestations of this desire (Lee). Australian suburban development has therefore been characterized by a recurring tension between the desire of large sections of the population to own their own home (the fabled quarter-acre block) in the suburbs, and the condemnation of suburban life from an assortment of intellectuals, political radicals and cultural critics. This was the point succinctly made by the economist and urban planner Hugh Stretton in his 1970 book Ideas for Australian Cities, where he observed that “Most Australians choose to live in suburbs, in reach of city centres and also of beaches or countryside. Many writers condemn this choice, and with especial anger or gloom they condemn the suburbs” (Stretton 7). Sue Turnbull has observed that “suburbia has come to constitute a cultural fault-line in Australia over the last 100 years” (19), while Ian Craven has described suburbia as “a term of contention and a focus for fundamentally conflicting beliefs” in the Australian national imaginary “whose connotations continue to oscillate between dream and suburban nightmare” (48). The tensions between celebration and critique of suburban life play themselves out routinely in the Australian media, from the sun-lit suburbanism of Australia’s longest running television serial dramas, Neighbours and Home and Away, to the pointed observational critiques found in Australian comedy from Barry Humphries to Kath and Kim, to the dark visions of films such as The Boys and Animal Kingdom (Craven; Turnbull). Much as we may feel that the diagnosis of suburban life as a kind of neurotic condition had gone the way of the concept album or the tie-dye shirt, newspaper feature writers such as Catherine Deveny, writing in The Age, have offered the following as a description of the Chadstone shopping centre in Melbourne’s eastern suburbChadstone is a metastasised tumour of offensive proportions that's easy to find. You simply follow the line of dead-eyed wage slaves attracted to this cynical, hermetically sealed weatherless biosphere by the promise a new phone will fix their punctured soul and homewares and jumbo caramel mugachinos will fill their gaping cavern of disappointment … No one looks happy. Everyone looks anaesthetised. A day spent at Chadstone made me understand why they call these shopping centres complexes. Complex as in a psychological problem that's difficult to analyse, understand or solve. (Deveny) Suburbanism has been actively promoted throughout Australia’s history since European settlement. Graeme Davison has observed that “Australia’s founders anticipated a sprawl of homes and gardens rather than a clumping of terraces and alleys,” and quotes Governor Arthur Phillip’s instructions to the first urban developers of the Sydney Cove colony in 1790 that streets shall be “laid out in such a manner as to afford free circulation of air, and where the houses are built … the land will be granted with a clause that will prevent more than one house being built on the allotment” (Davison 43). Louise Johnson (2006) argued that the main features of 20th century Australian suburbanisation were very much in place by the 1920s, particularly land-based capitalism and the bucolic ideal of home as a retreat from the dirt, dangers and density of the city. At the same time, anti-suburbanism has been a significant influence in Australian public thought. Alan Gilbert (1988) drew attention to the argument that Australia’s suburbs combined the worst elements of the city and country, with the absence of both the grounded community associated with small towns, and the mental stimuli and personal freedom associated with the city. Australian suburbs have been associated with spiritual emptiness, the promotion of an ersatz, one-dimensional consumer culture, the embourgeoisment of the working-class, and more generally criticised for being “too pleasant, too trivial, too domestic and far too insulated from … ‘real’ life” (Gilbert 41). There is also an extensive feminist literature critiquing suburbanization, seeing it as promoting the alienation of women and the unequal sexual division of labour (Game and Pringle). More recently, critiques of suburbanization have focused on the large outer-suburban homes developed on new housing estates—colloquially known as McMansions—that are seen as being environmentally unsustainable and emblematic of middle-class over-consumption. Clive Hamilton and Richard Denniss’s Affluenza (2005) is a locus classicus of this type of argument, and organizations such as the Australia Institute—which Hamilton and Denniss have both headed—have regularly published papers making such arguments. Can the Suburbs Make You Creative?In such a context, championing the Australian suburb can feel somewhat like being an advocate for Dan Brown novels, David Williamson plays, Will Ferrell comedies, or TV shows such as Two and a Half Men. While it may put you on the side of majority opinion, you can certainly hear the critical axe grinding and possibly aimed at your head, not least because of the association of such cultural forms with mass popular culture, or the pseudo-life of an alienated existence. The art of a program such as Kath and Kim is that, as Sue Turnbull so astutely notes, it walks both sides of the street, both laughing with and laughing at Australian suburban culture, with its celebrity gossip magazines, gourmet butcher shops, McManisons and sales at Officeworks. Gina Riley and Jane Turner’s inspirations for the show can be seen with the presence of such suburban icons as Shane Warne, Kylie Minogue and Barry Humphries as guests on the program. Others are less nuanced in their satire. The website Things Bogans Like relentlessly pillories those who live in McMansions, wear Ed Hardy t-shirts and watch early evening current affairs television, making much of the lack of self-awareness of those who would simultaneously acquire Buddhist statues for their homes and take budget holidays in Bali and Phuket while denouncing immigration and multiculturalism. It also jokes about the propensity of “bogans” to loudly proclaim that those who question their views on such matters are demonstrating “political correctness gone mad,” appealing to the intellectual and moral authority of writers such as the Melbourne Herald-Sun columnist Andrew Bolt. There is also the “company you keep” question. Critics of over-consuming middle-class suburbia such as Clive Hamilton are strongly associated with the Greens, whose political stocks have been soaring in Australia’s inner cities, where the majority of Australia’s cultural and intellectual critics live and work. By contrast, the Liberal party under John Howard and now Tony Abbott has taken strongly to what could be termed suburban realism over the 1990s and 2000s. Examples of suburban realism during the Howard years included the former Member for Lindsay Jackie Kelly proclaiming that the voters of her electorate were not concerned with funding for their local university (University of Western Sydney) as the electorate was “pram city” and “no one in my electorate goes to uni” (Gibson and Brennan-Horley), and the former Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Garry Hardgrave, holding citizenship ceremonies at Bunnings hardware stores, so that allegiance to the Australian nation could co-exist with a sausage sizzle (Gleeson). Academically, a focus on the suburbs is at odds with Richard Florida’s highly influential creative class thesis, which stresses inner urban cultural amenity and “buzz” as the drivers of a creative economy. Unfortunately, it is also at odds with many of Florida’s critics, who champion inner city activism as the antidote to the ersatz culture of “hipsterisation” that they associate with Florida (Peck; Slater). A championing of suburban life and culture is associated with writers such as Joel Kotkin and the New Geography group, who also tend to be suspicious of claims made about the creative industries and the creative economy. It is worth noting, however, that there has been a rich vein of work on Australian suburbs among cultural geographers, that has got past urban/suburban binaries and considered the extent to which critiques of suburban Australia are filtered through pre-existing discursive categories rather than empirical research findings (Dowling and Mee; McGuirk and Dowling; Davies (this volume). I have been part of a team engaged in a three-year study of creative industries workers in outer suburban areas, known as the Creative Suburbia project.[i] The project sought to understand how those working in creative industries who lived and worked in the outer suburbs maintained networks, interacted with clients and their peers, and made a success of their creative occupations: it focused on six suburbs in the cities of Brisbane (Redcliffe, Springfield, Forest Lake) and Melbourne (Frankston, Dandenong, Caroline Springs). It was premised upon what has been an inescapable empirical fact: however much talk there is about the “return to the city,” the fastest rates of population growth are in the outer suburbs of Australia’s major cities (Infrastructure Australia), and this is as true for those working in creative industries occupations as it is for those in virtually all other industry and occupational sectors (Flew; Gibson and Brennan-Horley; Davies). While there is a much rehearsed imagined geography of the creative industries that points to creative talents clustering in dense, highly agglomerated inner city precincts, incubating their unique networks of trust and sociality through random encounters in the city, it is actually at odds with the reality of where people in these sectors choose to live and work, which is as often as not in the suburbs, where the citizenry are as likely to meet in their cars at traffic intersections than walking in city boulevards.There is of course a “yes, but” response that one could have to such empirical findings, which is to accept that the creative workforce is more suburbanised than is commonly acknowledged, but to attribute this to people being driven out of the inner city by high house prices and rents, which may or may not be by-products of a Richard Florida-style strategy to attract the creative class. In other words, people live in the outer suburbs because they are driven out of the inner city. From our interviews with 130 people across these six suburban locations, the unequivocal finding was that this was not the case. While a fair number of our respondents had indeed moved from the inner city, just as many would—if given the choice—move even further away from the city towards a more rural setting as they would move closer to it. While there are clearly differences between suburbs, with creative people in Redcliffe being generally happier than those in Springfield, for example, it was quite clear that for many of these people a suburban location helped them in their creative practice, in ways that included: the aesthetic qualities of the location; the availability of “headspace” arising from having more time to devote to creative work rather than other activities such as travelling and meeting people; less pressure to conform to a stereotyped image of how one should look and act; financial savings from having access to lower-cost locations; and time saved by less commuting between locations.These creative workers generally did not see having access to the “buzz” associated with the inner city as being essential for pursuing work in their creative field, and they were just as likely to establish hardware stores and shopping centres as networking hubs as they were cafes and bars. While being located in the suburbs was disadvantageous in terms of access to markets and clients, but this was often seen in terms of a trade-off for better quality of life. Indeed, contrary to the presumptions of those such as Clive Hamilton and Catherine Deveny, they could draw creative inspiration from creative locations themselves, without feeling subjected to “pacification by cappuccino.” The bigger problem was that so many of the professional associations they dealt with would hold events in the inner city in the late afternoon or early evening, presuming people living close by and/or not having domestic or family responsibilities at such times. The role played by suburban locales such as hardware stores as sites for professional networking and as elements of creative industries value chains has also been documented in studies undertaken of Darwin as a creative city in Australia’s tropical north (Brennan-Horley and Gibson; Brennan-Horley et al.). Such a revised sequence in the cultural geography of the creative industries has potentially great implications for how urban cultural policy is being approached. The assumption that the creative industries are best developed in cities by investing heavily in inner urban cultural amenity runs the risk of simply bypassing those areas where the bulk of the nation’s artists, musicians, filmmakers and other cultural workers actually are, which is in the suburbs. Moreover, by further concentrating resources among already culturally rich sections of the urban population, such policies run the risk of further accentuating spatial inequalities in the cultural realm, and achieving the opposite of what is sought by those seeking spatial justice or the right to the city. An interest in broadband infrastructure or suburban university campuses is certainly far more prosaic than a battle for control of the nation’s cultural institutions or guerilla actions to reclaim the city’s streets. Indeed, it may suggest aspirations no higher than those displayed by Kath and Kim or by the characters of Barry Humphries’ satirical comedy. But however modest or utilitarian a focus on developing cultural resources in Australian suburbs may seem, it is in fact the most effective way of enabling the forms of spatial justice in the cultural sphere that many progressive people seek. ReferencesBrennan-Horley, Chris, and Chris Gibson. “Where Is Creativity in the City? Integrating Qualitative and GIS Methods.” Environment and Planning A 41.11 (2009): 2595–614. Brennan-Horley, Chris, Susan Luckman, Chris Gibson, and J. 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