‘A person who, owing to a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside her or his country of nationality and who is unable or unwilling to return’ (UN Protocol 1976). Australia’s refugee programme seeks to provide a humanitarian response and protection to individual refugees; participate responsibly in the international community; honour its Convention obligations; further the interests of the people of Australia; meet high standards of administration; and acknowledge as much as possible changes in refugee populations (King (2001) Int. Mig. 39, 1). ‘Though attempts to de-naturalize the relationship between people and places have been important for how the refugee experience is conceptualized, there has been too much focus on imagination accompanied by a neglect of the local perspective of migrants and displaced people’ (Brun (2001) Geografiska B 83, 1). Ramadan (2013) TIBG 38, 1, 65 has an interesting paper on the refugee camp as a distinctive political space.