Citizenship, Sovereignty and Migration: Australia's Exclusive Approach to Membership of the Community

This article analyses the Tampa incident from the perspective of three concepts: citizenship, sovereignty and migration. The author argues that these concepts are fundamentally interlinked and integrated. The article defines the use of the word "citizenship" and distinguished the formal, legal notion from the normative, jurisprudential notion, arguing that Tampa had an impact upon both aspects of citizenship. Moreover, the author develops an argument derived from Professor James Nafziger in critiquing the use of sovereignty to justify the exclusion of the Tampa asylum seekers. The Federal Court, in the cases surrounding the Tampa, and the Parliament, in amending the Migration Act 1958 (CTH) following Tampa, have relied upon notions of sovereignty that, in the author's view, are not justified. This leads to a highly exclusive notion of membership of the Australian community which demeans current Australian citizens.