Becoming political: Asylum seeker activism through community theatre

In this paper, I reflect upon a community theatre project, Journey of Asylum¿Waiting, performed in Melbourne in 2010 by nineteen asylum seekers. I interpret the project as a political intervention into administrative and humanitarian practices that engage asylum seekers as either disingenuous or damaged people. According to either formulation, asylum seekers lack the legitimacy to speak for themselves and therefore to engage in political contestation over the borders and citizenship norms they confront. By producing counter-narratives of refugee experience in Journey of Asylum¿Waiting, asylum seekers participated in a broader process of political subject-formation. Through this process, I contend, asylum seekers position themselves as makers and shapers of the common civic sphere through which we shape political relations and obligations to each other. They become, in effect, new kinds of activist-citizens and reinvigorate the practice of citizenship.