Becoming through the mundane: Asylum seekers and the making of selves in port moresby, papua new guinea

Abstract

In “We Refugees,” Hannah Arendt argued that refugees want to be seen as, and to feel like, anything other than refugees; they are seeking new kinds of selves to be in the wake of their suffering, and they wish to become those selves through practices that are not tied to either their suffering or their status as refugees (2007). In this essay, based on six years of ongoing ethnographic work with people connected to the Regional Resettlement Arrangement (RRA) between Australia and Papua New Guinea (PNG),¹ I take up the question of what kinds of places and practices afford some of the asylum seekers affected by the RRA the space to make selves that are not configured-by either themselves or others-through their legal status, their detention, or their suffering.