Under the Wire: Detainee Activism in Australian Children’s Literature

Abstract

In this paper, I shall analyse this figure of the activist protesting on behalf of detainees via the notion of cultural citizenship, looking specifically at Gleitzman's 'Girl Underground'. I argue that an ethics of compassion must give way to an ethics of responsibility in representations of this relationship between activist and detainee in order for texts to challenge current detention centre policy and to posit a new version of multiculturalism, which relies on an ethical cultural citizenship.