‘I came to Australia with very big hope, big wishes, big goals’: Applying ‘mobility work’ and ‘resettlement work’ to explore the emotional labour and subaltern masculinities of refugee-background men

Despite COVID-related movement restrictions, the total number of people forcibly displaced worldwide in 2020 grew to over 82 million, more than doubling the number of people who were forcibly displaced a decade ago. While there is an emerging body of academic literature focused on men in forced migration contexts, there is a gap in knowledge about the emotional dimensions of mobility and resettlement among refugee and asylum seeker men. Drawing upon qualitative data from two studies focusing on refugee and migrant resettlement in Australia, this chapter uses the conceptual lenses of ‘mobility work’ and ‘resettlement work’ to explore refugee-background men’s emotional labour and subaltern masculinities. The men’s voices provide insights into how their mobility work and resettlement work, and the emotional labour connected to this work, is shaped through common occurrences of clandestine migration, detention, family separation and negotiating visa requirements. This chapter proposes that current immigration policies and practices disempower and cause distress for these men which, in turn, brings about more emotive, albeit subaltern, expressions of manhood.