“Go back to where you came from.”
An all-too-familiar response I read under any news stories where a migrant or a person of colour speaks out about maltreatment or injustice.
The logic seems to go like this: Well, she made the decision herself to come to Australia after all. At least we are so much better than her original country. She had the nerve to complain. If it is really so bad, why doesn’t she just go back?
The underlying message I hear is that “we tolerate your existence, but we expect you to be grateful and never complain”. While this response shields many from confronting any feeling of discomfort, “migrant silencing” casts a long shadow.
The following paragraphs touch on the topic of sexual violence and racism
I regularly work in the space of international students’ and women’s causes. Readers of this news site would be familiar with the epidemic that is violence against women. In 2017, a survey report of ~30,000 students released by the Australian Human Rights Commission found that only 5 per cent of international students who experienced sexual assault made a formal report or complaint, nearly half of the proportion of domestic students that did so (9 per cent). To be clear, both are heartbreakingly low numbers.
The significant underreporting of sexual violence in the migrant community is a manifestation of “migrant silencing”. I only need to look around me to know that to be true. One of the reasons that we hesitate to report is that we’ve been told explicitly and implicitly, over and over again, not to make noise or cause trouble. We ought to be grateful – if we don’t like it here, we can go.
Several years ago, when I was younger, my boyfriend at the time threatened me verbally with violence, and said that if I don’t follow his order, he will get me deported. I didn’t know how or if he could do that, I was young and terrified. Moreover, I know, from the long visa conditions and social discourse, that my existence comes with a lot of red tape – I wasn’t going to risk my future.
On a micro level, that is the behaviour of an individual. On a macro level, this reflects an entire system.
As an international student advocate, I frequently gave interviews in the media about the experience of hundreds of thousands of international students throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. I distinctly remember in March 2020, the Prime Minister of Australia Scott Morrison answered a journalist’s question who suggested that many international students and temporary residents will also need financial assistance (note: we were not included in the commonwealth government JobKeeper support package). He said: “Well, it is time to go home.”
Sounds familiar? It was triggering to say the least.
I ran two surveys from March to July 2021 to collect the concerns and sentiments of international students. In the latest one, the majority of respondents observed a rise in racism, only a handful of victims made formal reports. While some time has passed, multiple submissions still referenced the PM’s message from more than a year ago.
“Migrant silencing” comes from the top, and it casts a long shadow.
The effect lingers after the legal restrictions are long gone. Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi has opened up about the overt racism she received, even after giving up her birthright to Pakistani citizenship to serve the people in NSW for eight years.
In her book, she recounted the messages she receives on a daily basis:
You weren’t born here. What right do you have to tell us what to do?
Your country is shit. Why are you bringing that filth here to our country?
You don’t belong here. You should be deported. Go back.
A stream of vitriol and hatred directed to any person of colour who dares to speak up. A mechanism to silence an entire community. I can’t help but think of the real humans I know, who are stuck in cycles of exploitation, violence and injustice, who kept quiet because they’ve been told they shouldn’t “cause trouble”. I wonder, how complicit is a government that successfully rebranded cruelty into protecting the welfare of Australians?