ABSTRACT
Recent public debates about a migrant’s right to live permanently in Australia have focused on the need to integrate into a particular way of life and adopt a particular set of national values. Although multiculturalism has been reinstated as the policy to secure social cohesion, many government and media discourses still insist that potential ‘good citizens’ must accept officially-defined Australian values and adopt Australia’s ‘unique’ national identity. Yet despite a plethora of public declarations about what migrants must do, think, act, accept and adopt in order to become model Australian citizens, migrant voices are notably absent from this debate.
This paper reports on an ongoing ethnographic study that explores what it means to ‘become’ Australian for recently arrived migrants from non-English speaking backgrounds. In particular, the study explores how migrants and refugees negotiate, contest and interpret these discourses about Australianness, Australian values and an Australian way of life and how these discourses impact on their notions of belonging in their adopted Australian community.
Seminar presented by Maria Chisari on Wednesday 29 April 2009 as part of the UTS Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Research Centre Seminar Series 2009. Seminar 1 – ‘Migration and Cultural Diversity – Exploring different dimensions of migration and cultural diversity in relation to public policy issues’.
Australian Values, Immigration and Identities seminar notes (PDF, 32kb, 6 pages)
Contact
Maria.Chisari@student.uts.edu.au
Maria.Chisari@det.nsw.edu.au
