Walls on the pendopo: the logic behind Indonesia's cooperation in preventing onward irregular migration to Australia

Abstract

Indonesia is not a signatory to the Refugee Convention and has no obligations to resettle refugees. Nevertheless, Indonesia works with Australia to prevent asylum seekers continuing their journey to Australia by boat. As a result, there are almost 14,000 recorded irregular migrants living in Indonesia, including those seeking asylum and those who have had their status determined and are found to be genuine refugees. This paper, based on interviews with Indonesian officials, asks why Indonesia works with Australia in preventing the movement of these people, resulting in added challenges for Indonesia. I find that Indonesia's behaviour is guided by considerations of both logics of consequences and logics of appropriateness, however, the influence of these two logics varies in weight at different points in time. This is interesting to note, as Australia garners Indonesia's cooperation through incentivised policy transfer, which exclusively exploits the logic of consequence. This article concludes by assessing the influence of prospective developments on cooperation. Show more