Corporate Ethics and the Architecture of Asylum: Offshore Processing at Manus Island, Papua New Guinea and Nauru (Routledge Research in Architecture)

Corporate Ethics and the Architecture of Asylum engages innovative perspectives to understand our contemporary crisis of forced displacement and detention practices in the Pacific.

Multinational contractors responsible for the construction and maintenance of regional processing centres in Papua New Guinea and Nauru have flourished as powerful historical actors, exerting global dominance over the lives of asylum seekers wishing to come to Australia. Transitioning from the policeman or security guard towards the subject of the asylum seeker, this book contends that entanglements between architecture and law represent important epistemic models to interrogate how asylum can be understood and reconceptualised. Proposing diverse forms of visual and textual evidence, asylum is repositioned as a dynamic, ever-changing countermeasure against xenophobic sentiments around offshore processing. Over six chapters, Corporate Ethics examines how the regional processing centres of Manus Island and Nauru are deeply connected to the intellectual discourses of care, environmental precarity, human rights, and sovereignty. From Rembrandt’s De Nachtwacht or Night Watch (1642) to recent advancements in artificial intelligence and legal testimonies, picturing the future of asylum serves as a critical tool to resist state authoritarianism and the rise of corporate malfeasance in the built environment.

This book will be of interest to researchers and students of humanitarian architecture, architectural history, and Asia Pacific politics.

Recommended reading by the Migration Policy Institute, United States.

Jennifer Ferng is Senior Lecturer and B.DesArch (honours) M.Arch Program Director at the University of Sydney. Her research examines environmental and humanitarian histories across Europe, Asia, and Oceania focusing on climate change, sustainability, forced displacement, and migrations. She has co-edited three books namely Crafting Enlightenment: Artisanal Histories and Transnational Networks (Liverpool/Voltaire Foundation, 2021), Drawing Climate: Visualising Invisible Elements of Architecture (Birkhäuser, 2021), and Land Air Sea: Architecture and Environment in the Early Modern Era (Brill, 2023). Her recent publications and works include a special issue of Future Anterior on the decarbonisation of heritage buildings in the Asia Pacific and a design exhibition titled ‘Monumental Imaginaries: Complexity and Contradiction in the Hunter Region’ (2024) sponsored by the Sydney Environment Institute (SEI) and University of Edinburgh.