Place, Race and Politics

How is it that South Sudanese migrants, an overwhelming law-abiding group, have come to be criminalised in Australia? Using the 2016 Moomba ‘riot’, Place, Race and Politics charts the creation of a racialised law and order crisis in Melbourne. This terrific new book provides a detailed analysis of how social and political processes came to associate South Sudanese blackness with violent crime and what the consequences of this criminalisation were on the community. I strongly recommend it.

Following in the tradition of Hall et al’s classic Policing the Crisis Place, Race and Politics: The Anatomy of a Law and Order Crisis analyses the racialisation and politicisation of crime during the 2018 Victorian election in Australia. Drawn from a number of discrete research projects undertaken by each of the authors, the book is broken down in chapters that largely reflect these different projects. As a result, the authors are able to focus on different elements of the ‘law and order crisis’ from the demonisation and dangerisation of asylum seekers and immigrant groups, to the media’s reportage and amplification of events, the populist political discourse, and indeed interviews with those at the coalface of events.  It makes for a sobering read as it teases out the long-standing Australian twin political strategies of vilification and law and order auctioneering.  As the book shows there are no real winners to come out of such strategies and, ultimately, they serve to undermine the legitimacy even of the political winners – in this case the Victorian Labor party beholden to a tough on crime approach for the foreseeable future. The authors wisely eschew a straight ‘moral panic’ approach to the topic (while not rejecting it all-together) and offer something more sophisticated. Race and Politics: The Anatomy of a Law and Order Crisis makes a significant contribution to critical scholarship on law and order in Australia, but in doing so also explores the tentacles of racism, xenophobia, and insecurity that constantly threaten to erode the successful foundations of multi-cultural Australia.