SYDNEY — Leaning against a bed in the modest home that she shares here with six other family members, Maisara Masudi, 37, a refugee from Congo, tells her Australian guests what drove her to flee her homeland years ago. After militia members killed her father and brother, she said, they raped her sisters, ages 8 and 12, before her eyes. One sister contracted H.I.V.

With the cameras rolling, Raquel Moore wipes back tears and strokes Ms. Masudi on the shoulder. “You’re a lovely lady, and you didn’t deserve what you went through,” she says.

Moments later, however, away from her hosts, Ms. Moore stops to reflect into the camera.

“Yeah, well, I guess they’re nice,” she says. “But that doesn’t mean that every African or refugee is going to be as nice as this family.”

Immigration is, to say the least, a complicated issue in Australia.

A three-part reality television series that debuted this week on the SBS network in Australia is tackling this most heated of topics in a novel way — by sending six native-born Australians with differing views on immigration on punishing journeys that retrace the voyages of asylum seekers seeking safe haven in their country.