Publications

RAS has published two books to date. To discuss ideas for future publications please contact us.

Values and Vulnerabilities: The Ethics of Research with Refugees and Asylum Seekers

Edited by Karen Block, Elisha Riggs and Nick Haslam

Forced migration is a global issue. About 34 million of the world's inhabitants were identified in 2010 by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees as either refugees, internally displaced persons, asylum seekers or stateless people.

Systematic inquiries are urgently needed to understand and improve the circumstances in which these people live, and to guide national and international policies and programs.However, there are many ethical complications in conducting research with uprooted people, who have often been exposed to persecution and marginalisation in conflict situations, refugee camps, immigration detention settings, and following resettlement.

This book brings together for the first time key scholars across a range of disciplines including anthropology, bioethics, public health, criminology, psychology, socio-linguistics, philosophy, psychiatry, social policy and social work to discuss the ethical dimensions, challenges and tensions of such research.It encompasses the theoretical, conceptual, practical, and applied aspects of research ethics, while integrating different disciplinary perspectives.

It is intended as a resource not only for researchers, students and practitioners but also for those conducting cross-cultural research more broadly. Many of its arguments, examples and concerns are pertinent to research with other vulnerable or marginalised populations.

Purchase Values and Vulnerabilities from Australian Academic Press

Values and Vulnerabilities makes and important contribution to the field of migration studies. Particularly strong is the nuanced discussion of vulnerability and its relationship to ethical research with refugees and asylum seekers. – Christina Clark-Kazak, Journal of Refugee Studies

Yearning to Breathe Free: Seeking Asylum in Australia

Edited by Dean Lusher and Nick Haslam 

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free …” How has Australia risen to Emma Lazarus’ great challenge?

This overview of the historical, social and political contexts that have shaped Australia’s recent treatment of asylum seekers offers a clear-eyed view of the many dimensions of the asylum seeker predicament, including its psychological and humanitarian consequences, and lays out an agenda for change in policy.

Sir Gustav Nossal, the Rt Hon. Malcolm Fraser, Senator Lyn Allison, Phillip Adams, Professor Stuart MacIntyre, and Lindsay Tanner MP introduce the six sections. Julian Burnside QC, Dr Carmen Lawrence, Peter Mares, Pamela Curr, Michael Clyne, Linda Briskman, Derrick Silove, Michael Gordon, Arnold Zable and David Manne are among the contributors to the 20 chapters.

Yearning to Breathe Free is a passionate but informed work that is multi-faceted, thought-provoking, and ultimately hopeful.

All royalties for this book go to the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre.

Purchase Yearning to Breathe Free from The Federation Press

This book brings together a diverse range of people who examine the problems facing refugees and asylum seekers from a variety of perspectives… should be compulsory reading for those assigned the demanding tasks of striking balance between compassion and control in Australia’s political and legal response to the phenomenon of asylum seekers and forced migration. – Australian Year Book of International Law