Abstract
Using civil sphere theory, this chapter investigates the role of Australian doctors in civil repair in relation to asylum seekers. Doctors take professional and personal risks in speaking out over terrible conditions in detention centers and critiquing repressive asylum seeker policies. Analysis of media reporting, websites, and doctors’ testimony at public hearings, reveals that visceral experiences with asylum seekers, and institutional supports like medical associations and broader social networks, motivate and support doctors in their acts of civil repair. Promoting solidarity with asylum seekers through symbolic and material actions, doctors instantiate a cosmopolitan ideal in relation to all who seek refuge in Australia, no matter how they arrive. Even if, in the present, the narratives of care and responsibility promoted by “righteous doctors” within broader networks of solidarity with asylum seekers fail to shift government policy, they provide resources to overcome civil indifference toward the suffering of others.
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Moran, A. (2020). Righteous Doctors: Reacting to the Inhumane Treatment of Asylum Seekers in Australia. In: Tognato, C., Jaworsky, B., Alexander, J. (eds) The Courage for Civil Repair. Cultural Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44590-4_4
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