We do not Cross Borders; Borders Cross Us
Breakout conference aims to create a space where opposition to Australia’s border protection regime can again transform into a movement; around which anger, hope, solidarity and resistance can be channelled into strategies for dismantling the border.
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We need to break free from Australia’s border protection regime. More than 4500 people are currently imprisoned in Australia detention
centres – the highest number ever. Higher even than during the Howard
era. How is it that after years of fighting against detention and border
protection, we just seem to be going backwards?
Breakout will be a chance to reflect on previous movements against
mandatory detention and borders. We need to learn from this history -
to build on its strengths, and avoid reproducing its failures.
It is not enough to just say ‘free the refugees’. We need to challenge
definitions of ‘refugee v economic migrant’, that exclude and
delegitimise those who cross borders to escape poverty, environmental
destruction or internal displacement. Breakout will talk about the history of whiteness, race and racism in Australian society and globally and the role they play in producing borders that must be ‘policed’ and ‘protected’.
Breakout will look at how race is used to create an idea of the
‘nation’ that includes some people, while excluding others. What are the ways that everyday policing and imprisonment is also geared towards reproducing this same idea of the ‘nation’? Breakout is about trying to
understand the relationship between the different institutions of incarceration – from the border to the gaol – and the relationship between the people that they target.
Breakout will be a space for anyone who is opposed to Australia’s border protection regime to gather, strategise and ignite our collective inspiration
Breakout is organised by the cross-border collective (CBC)
The cross-border collective is a network of people opposed to forced deportation, and the ways in which the border is constructed to the benefit of capital instead of people.