The question giving shape to this paper is: Can the workplace in today's corporate world ever be constructed, legitimately, as a psychological place? This paper will argue that it is the responsibility of the individual to engage their imaginative processes and learn the art of soul making. The corporation may encourage its members to be creative and imaginative but mostly its activities will militate against these activities. Reference will be made to a research project for a major production site (BP Oil Australia) that evaluated an espoused psychological goal (improved production and improved creativity) as its outcome. The author conducted the evaluation of this leadership development initiative that shed light on the vexed question that is the focus of this paper. The findings of the research indicate that corporate life has evolved into a totally above-world enterprise where transparency of decision making, policy planning, and implementation is the sought-after ideal. This very conscious and heroic-ego world roots out any semblance of under-world (unconscious) forces.

Learners of English as a Second Language (ESL) in Australia appear to suffer from impoverished understandings of first and second language acquisition. In the name of accountability they are also caught up in arguable procedures for assessing literacy in classrooms widely characterised by linguistic, social and cultural diversity. Further, an alleged ‘Literacy Crisis’ exacerbates the facile model of literacy presented in policy. An examination of discourse in language and literacy policies suggests that a focus on ‘teaching the basics’ maintains existing distributions of power and knowledge within society. A regime of testing primarily aimed at accountability ultimately subjects education to market forces. Reporting the results of mass testing inevitably leads to comparison between schools, and hence enacts key doctrines of neo-liberalism: competition and individual choice. Neither of these doctrines serves indigenous Australians or immigrant and refugee families who are in the process of settling and have little voice. In such a context, is it possible to right policy wrongs and to write language rights into Australian policies that can satisfy the needs of all learners?

Refugee and immigrant settlement is situated within a context of government policy and practice, as well as a receiving or ‘host’ community. Traditionally these factors have been isolated, in policy and research, such that much attention has been devoted to the study of refugee and migrant ‘adjustment’ with relatively less attention to how this is influenced by the attitudes and expectations of members of the host community. Moreover, governments’ policies have focused on programs to assist refugees and migrants in their transition to a new community, but have neglected the needs of host community members in the acculturation process. This has served to further marginalise migrant and refugee communities within the Australian context, and has failed to recognise the reciprocal and dynamic nature of intergroup relations. In this paper I discuss these limitations in the context of an interactive acculturation framework, with particular emphasis on research that examines host community perspectives on refugee and immigrant settlement; the discourse of the dominant.

In an environment where the national government creates deliberate policies to create a blockade and a silence around the stories of uninvited refugees coming to its shores, human rights advocates have a tough time creating conditions to make the stories heard by the policy makers and the general public alike. However, the Australian experience shows that ‘breaking through the sound barrier of silence’ is possible, using creative collaborations with reporters, the tactics of subversion, smart strategies aimed at those setting reporting standards, and through an engagement with the wider audience of human rights advocates around the nation. In this article, five government-created barriers are identified and ingeniously countered.

Antonio Guterres (2008), United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) characterized the twenty-first century as one of mass movements of people, within and beyond their borders, escaping conflicts and upheavals. War and human rights violations propel millions of people beyond their borders searching for safety. Climate change, environmental degradation, and economic instability prompt many to search for better life opportunities. Attempts by governments to devise policies to pre-empt, direct, manage, prevent these movements have been erratic. Australia, for example has implemented a series of laws to control movement of asylum seekers, prevent their access to Australia, while choosing a quota driven number of people from refugee camps. Uniquely in the developed world Australia ignores international human rights laws and puts all asylum seekers in mandatory detention. Some countries claim ethnic or religious conflict, national security, or upsetting the population balance due to lack of tolerance among citizens. Politicians appear to believe that being tough on refugees makes their own populations feel more secure. Whatever the reason for nonadmittance, refugees are often denied their internationally recognized human rights forced into desperate lives in refugee camps or in detention centres where they are unable to move, to work, or to enjoy any freedoms.

The increasing emphasis placed on evidence-based policy in government and community organisations presents some interesting challenges and potential opportunities in the area of immigration research. Policy in this area, perhaps more so than any other, has been influenced by various public discourses that to a considerable extent have been devoid of an evidencebase. The area is therefore ripe territory for academics to construct a more critically oriented approach to evidence-based policy that aims for greater transparency and justification grounded in research findings. This paper outlines how evidence-based research an move beyond being research for policies to being research of policies through critically evaluating immigration and resettlement policies in terms of their objectives, relevance and effectiveness through the lens of program evaluation. The case of the Australian government’s cultural integration program for refugee settlers will be examined, with the lessons learned from a program that attempted to link Muslim youth to community sporting clubs being discussed in relation to the critical approach outlined.