Identities, Aspirations and Belonging of Cosmopolitan Youth in Australia (original) (raw)

Integration, Tolerance and Belonging in Multicultural Australia

Young Lives Changing Times, 2012

The lives of young people from refugee backgrounds are surrounded by various binary discourses: as refugees they are perceived as survivors and as victims; as young people they are perceived as both vulnerable and in need of protection, and as dangerous, and in need of correction (Ngo 2010). This paper explores the processes of identity making undertaken by predominantly Sudanese and Karen young people from refugee backgrounds, living in Brisbane, Australia. Based on fieldwork carried out from 2009 to 2010, I explore the cultural and racial identity politics engaged by young people as they construct and perform identities based on hybridized and essentialised representations of self. In particular, I look at the ways young people in this social field chose friends and create spaces for interactions, and the ways which, in doing so, they construct and deconstruct categories of skin colour and creatively represent and engage experiences of racism. These processes of youth identity making are revealing, especially as they relate to globalisation and social change, as young people in particular are “shaping and being shaped by all kinds of structure and meanings” (Wulff 1995: 10). For young people from refugee backgrounds, who are simultaneously constructing local, national and diasporic identities in the context of having undergone forced migration this is particularly evident. The engagement of these young people from refugee backgrounds, whose cultural identities are in constant flux, with race, culture and ethnicity, speaks to these broader issues in Australia today.

Minority Youth and Social Transformation in Australia: Identities, Belonging and Cultural Capital

Social Inclusion, 2014

Increasingly minority youth, especially from Muslim backgrounds, have been seen in Australian public policy and the media as potentially disruptive and transgressive. In some European societies similar young people have been portrayed as living in parallel and disconnected social spaces, self-segregated from interaction with the wider community. Yet Australian ethnic minority youth do not fulfil either of these stereotypes. Rather, despite their often regular experiences of racism or discrimination, they continue to assert a strong identification with and belonging to Australian society, albeit the society that marginalizes and denigrates their cultural capital. In particular it is the neighbourhood and the locality that provides the bridge between their home cultures and the broader world, contributing to a range of positive aspirations and fluid identities.

Multiculturalism at Play: Young People and Citizenship in Australia

This article analyses an Australian theatre program that engaged diverse youth in (re)visioning citizenship and multiculturalism by creating new notions of belonging and altering perceptions of Aboriginal culture and its value in Australia. This kind of work—where young people’s understandings of inclusion and diversity can be unsettled, critiqued, and developed—is crucial because current approaches to Australian multiculturalism tend to rely on Anglo-centric norms and fail to account for indigeneity. Drawing on participant observation and semi-structured interviews, I argue that youth theatre based on reflexive practices and cross-cultural sharing may offer a useful tool for young people’s education for inclusive citizenship in a multicultural, super-diverse context. When practiced thoughtfully, such programs can offer space for rethinking citizenship and belonging in ways that recognize the centrality of Indigenous culture and critically reflect on the limitations of the dominant culture’s reliance on Anglo cultural norms and ideas.

Crossing Boundaries: Acts of Citizenship among Migrant Youth in Melbourne

Social Inclusion, 2014

This paper focuses on how migrant youth in Melbourne with experience of direct or indirect migration negotiate crosscultural engagements and tensions between family, community and the greater society in which they are supposed to participate as political subjects. It examines whether the meaning and interpretation of citizenship in Australia allows migrant youth to act as full and active citizens with all the contradictions and difficulties inherent in acting as "a bridge between two worlds". By voicing the personalised journeys of young people dealing with uneasy questions of displacement, identity and belonging, this paper examines the complex ways through which migrant youth negotiate and in some cases bridge intercultural tensions within a multicultural society.

Migrant Youth and Social Policy in Multicultural Australia: Exploring Cross-Cultural Networking

Cultural, Religious and Political Contestations, 2015

This chapter explores the extent to which the direction of Australia's offi cial multicultural and civic integration policies, refl ects the social attitudes and networking practices of migrant youth. The chapter pays particular attention to the Federal Government's "Anti-Racism Strategy" announced in 2012 as part of its Multicultural Policy. On a theoretical level, direct efforts to mitigate racism have the potential to augment strategies that reaffi rm pluralism and address disadvantage often associated with the migrant experience. On an empirical level, it is important to explore the extent to which such top-level discourses have actual founding in the social lives of migrant youth. Therefore this chapter presents the empirical fi ndings of an empirical longitudinal on "Social Networks, Belonging and Active Citizenship among Migrant Youth" (Australian Research Council Linkage project 2009-2013). Migrant youth in this study pointed to a number of instances of racism, which act as signifi cant barriers to cross-cultural networking. Analysis of the data shows, among other things, that there is a persistent tendency among migrant youth to point to their social distance from the metaphorical "Aussie Aussie" people of Anglo origins who are perceived as symbolising Australia's mainstream. Such manifestations of racial discrimination preclude the emergence of a genuinely inclusive society that supports and nurtures cultural diversity as a signifi cant part of the Australian national identity, as well as the stated objectives of its social policy repertoire.

Tapping the Pulse of Youth in Cosmopolitan South-Western and Western Sydney

2007

A research project funded by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship. As a pilot project, the main purpose of this research was to test the efficacy of conducting surveys of minority young people in Australia as a way of gaining Tapping The Pulse of Youth in Western and South-Western Sydney 2 information that would provide insights into their lives and the ways that they connect to their friends, their family, and their community. The aim was to provide a snapshot of the attitudes and aspirations of young men and women from minority backgrounds living in Western and South-Western Sydney and of the state of inter-ethnic youth relations in the region that has the greatest density of minority youth in all Australia. This was because there were many claims about how Australian multicultural society was or was not working, but little evidence to back these claims. We were also interested to explore aspects of the lives of minority youth related to education, work, identity, people ...

Fields of Play: Refuge(e)s in Youth Multiculturalism on the Fringes of Melbourne

Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, 2022

This paper discusses the meanings and practices of multiculturalism among young people from refugee and migrant backgrounds in one of Australia's most multicultural cities. It is based on a three-year ethnographic study exploring refugee and migrant youth engaged in sports and arts in the suburbs of Melbourne known as "migrant", "ethnic" and "multicultural" areas. The result of the study indicates that multiculturalism from below can happen differently from the "place making" strategy or "ethnic enclave" idea in which ethnic minorities are viewed as creating their own ethnic colonies in isolation from the mainstream society.

Belonging in Australia not Turkey: the sense of belonging for Turkish Australians living in Sydney

Sense of belonging and friendship are important aspects in ethnic identity. As such, the study explored the relationship between the sense of belonging and friendship of young Turkish Australian females in embracing their ethnic identity. Data was obtained from five young Turkish Australian females living in Sydney through two rounds of face to face interviews. The first round was semi-structured interviews while the second, after a month gap, was exploratory type of interviews to yield rich data. The analyses indicated deeper understanding of ethnic identity among the young participants through the sense of belonging and friendships developed. Inevitably other components of ethnic identity were found to be interwoven with the two, contributing significant roles in depicting the participants' ethnic identity.