‘Everyday otherness’ – intercultural refugee encounters and everyday multiculturalism in a South Australian rural town

In this paper, I investigate the lived experience of multiculturalism often referred to as ‘everyday multiculturalism’. I suggest that the concept of ‘everyday otherness’ offers further insight in understanding the intercultural dynamics of diverse communities and explore the ways in which individuals and communities have negotiated intercultural encounters and ‘otherness’ in a regional Australian community. The research is based on ethnographic fieldwork in a South Australian regional town and draws on an analysis of 20 in-depth semi-structured interviews with long-term residents and recent humanitarian migrants – those who are from Afghan Hazara refugees/asylum seeker backgrounds. Following on from Amanda Wise’s (2009 Wise, A. 2009. “Everyday Multiculturalism: Transversal Crossings and Working Class Cosmopolitans.” In Everyday Multiculturalism, edited by A. Wise and S. Velayutham, 21–45. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. doi: 10.1057/9780230244474_2[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) conception of individuals who facilitate bridging difference between diverse groups, ‘transversal enablers’, I identify two types of ‘transversal enablers’ that can be found among both long-term regional residents and new migrants – structural and everyday enablers – and draw out the characteristics and capacities that they exemplify in bridging ‘everyday otherness’ in the community.     

‘If I’m going to teach about the world,I need to know the world’: developing Australian pre-service teachers’ intercultural competence through international trips

Increasingly, there is an imperative to prepare teachers who can address the needs of ethnically and racially diverse learners. One way to do so is to make available to pre-service teachers opportunities for an international experience so that they might learn about the world and develop better understandings of cultural diversity and difference. In this article, I draw on the findings of a qualitative study that aimed to investigate pre-service teachers’ perceptions of the value of an international experience to their development as teachers. I present excerpts of interview data that highlight how fourteen Australian pre-service teachers who went to India to live and teach for a month, made sense of their experiences. Findings raise concerns about how they saw the trip primarily as an opportunity for tourism and how it became a vehicle through which postcolonial and neocolonial views were developed and maintained. I conclude by making recommendations for teacher education as well as for the organisation of the trip.     

Knowing ‘how to go on’: structuration theory as an analytical prism in studies of intercultural engagement

Accelerated rates of global migration over the past 20 years have seen dramatic increases in demographic, cultural and social diversity in the world's most developed countries. Scholars of migration are faced with the challenge of understanding a society that consists of countless socio-cultural frontiers, along which the contrasting and often conflicting practices and values of diverse populations collide. These circumstances require the development of a theoretical framework that elucidates the practices through which these cultural collisions and conflicts are actualised and addressed, illuminating the day to day challenges of living with difference. This article proposes structuration theory as an insightful analytical prism that can afford new in-depth perspectives into intercultural engagements. By exploring the confluence between structural factors and the actions of individual agents, structuration theory illuminates the choices made by members of migrant groups regarding socio-cultural affiliations, as well as highlighting the strategic processes and behaviours through which these choices are actualised. A discussion of empirical research with Muslim youth in the west of Ireland illustrates the analytical clarity that structuration theory can offer to debates on integration and interculturalism.     

In ‘no man’s land’: the im/mobility of Serb NGO workers in Kosovo

ABSTRACT

While the technical dialogue between Pristina and Belgrade proceeds, inter-ethnic tensions in the city of Mitrovica in north Kosovo continue to instil uncertainty and insecurity among its inhabitants. This article delves into the im/mobilities for NGO work that the ethnic and conflict related division of the town poses for local Serb NGO workers. The division of the city into a Serbian north and a Kosovo Albanian south, with separate political systems and influence from the international peacebuilding mission, poses obstacles for inter-ethnic cooperation between north and south NGOs. The article explores the ways in which Serb NGO workers navigate these obstacles in order to create physical, social and economic mobility for themselves. It identifies two interrelated dynamics essential to understanding the impact on NGO workers of the conflict reality: one is between national identity and ethno-political space in the context of the specific community; the other, between the local moral order of being ‘good Serbs’ and internationally formulated aims to engage the locals in peace and reconciliation work. The paper argues that the focus of international peacebuilding missions on inter-ethnic cooperation and policy influencing activities, at least for Serb NGO workers in Mitrovica, impedes the mobility of local NGOs.     

‘And ever give us cause’: Understanding the investments of the ‘Ur-anthem’, ‘God Save the King/Queen’

This paper engages a close analytical reading of the lyrics of ‘God Save the King/Queen’ in order to understand what the functional survival of this song tells us about the rhetorical/affective investments of national devotion in the British sense. This study asks also how the lyrics of ‘God Save the King/Queen’ figure in the general definition of anthem and in the generic classification of anthems worldwide? Because of the song's international spread, and status as ‘Ur-anthem’, much may be gleaned from it as to both the nature of the speech act entailed in the prayer-type of anthem and the nature of ‘anthem quality’ more generally. ‘Anthem quality’, for the purposes of this paper, is defined as that soul stirring effect which certain combinations of music and lyrics achieve, most typically in the service of national affiliation. Theories of nation and nationalism are drawn on to frame affective relations between nation, state and citizenry as implied by, fostered by and utilized in anthems. Parodies and other derivative texts are considered in order to reach a better understanding of the sources and the pragmatic uses of anthem quality in the world today.     

‘What nationality he is doesn't matter a damn!’ International football,mediated identities and conditional cosmopolitanism

Sport, and, in particular, football, has become an important lens for examining processes of globalisation and, increasingly, cosmopolitanism. In this paper, I explore the ways in which competing national and cosmopolitan discourses are articulated by and through the media's reporting of football. Analysing coverage of the appointment of three recent managers of the English national team, two foreign, one English, I show how ideas about (national) self, other and place are being scrutinised and negotiated in the contemporary era. However, rather than rendering national modes of thinking obsolete, these debates point to the periodic emergence of conditional forms of cosmopolitanism.     

The ‘isolated ethnics’ and ‘everyday ethnics’: region,identity, and the second-generation Midwest Asian American experience

While studies have documented the Asian American experience in the past two decades, a dearth of research exists on those who grew up in the Midwest. How do Midwest Asian Americans experience their co-ethnic community, culture and pan-ethnic identity? Drawing from in-depth interviews of second-generation Midwest Asian Americans, an analysis of the data reveals two patterns of experiences, including: isolated ethnics and everyday ethnics. The findings are framed around issue of ‘access points’ to the co-ethnic community, and its influence on ethnic identity formation. This research highlights the importance of geographic community context on acculturation of Midwest Asian Americans.     

Between a ‘student abroad’ and ‘being from Latvia’: inequalities of access,prestige, and foreign-earned cultural capital

ABSTRACT

This paper visualises tertiary-level students who study abroad as simultaneously both international students and members of an emerging diaspora. Coming from a country (Latvia) which is peripheral and relatively poor by European standards, students go abroad for multiple reasons not necessarily directly connected with study (e.g. family reasons, labour migration); yet their evolving diasporic status is instrumentalised by the Latvian government which wants them to return and contribute to the country’s development. Based on 27 in-depth interviews with Latvian students and graduates who have studied abroad, our analysis focuses on three interlinked dimensions of inequality: access to education at home and abroad; the varying prestige of higher education qualifications from different countries and universities; and the inequalities involved in getting recognition of the symbolic and cultural capital that derives from a non-Latvian university. Within a setting of neoliberal globalisation and conflicting messages from the homeland, students and graduates are faced with a challenging dilemma: how to balance their materialistic desire for a decent job and career with their patriotic duty to return to Latvia.     

‘At last the family is together’: reproductive futurism in March of the Penguins

This paper offers a resistant reading of the nature documentary March of the Penguins, interrogating its humanist and anthropocentric assumptions. It focuses on the film's reiteration of a politics of reproductive futurism, the belief that children are the future. The figurative association March of the Penguins creates between penguin chick and human child demonstrates the politics of reproductive futurism in manifold ways, but also creates some remarkable ambiguities that can suggest the limitations of such a politics.     

‘Settling’ the multicultural nation-state: Little Mosque on the Prairie,and the figure of the ‘moderate Muslim’

This paper analyzes Little Mosque on the Prairie, its characters and themes within the context of post-9/11 discourses of nationalism and citizenship. Against the backdrop of the Canadian national narrative, I argue that the sitcom foregrounds a ‘moderate Muslim’ that demarcates the boundaries of the multicultural nation-state, especially when juxtaposed against the racially and sexually coded Muslim ‘other’ on the global landscape. The moderate Muslim is represented as ‘liberal’ and ‘modern’, one who seeks to integrate her faith into the multicultural fabric of society. Such a figure, represented both as a ‘good’ Muslim/immigrant and a ‘good’ Canadian citizen-subject, illuminates the boundaries of ‘acceptability’ within the Canadian national imaginary. The figure of the moderate Muslim reinforces the racial coding embedded in this imaginary, while enabling the state to proclaim its ‘multicultural tolerance’ and benevolence. Building on previous scholarship on race, citizenship, and nation-building, I argue that the moderate Muslim – as exemplified in Little Mosque on the Prairie – serves important ideological functions in (re)defining the internal (and racially coded) borders of the nation. While Little Mosque on the Prairie makes an important contribution to the representation of Muslims, challenging some stereotypes, I argue that it does not deliver on its considerable potential to articulate nuanced representations of Muslims. Through its foregrounding of the figure of the moderate Muslim, the sitcom reaffirms key norms, engages in a politics of authenticity, and reinforces hegemonic messages, both within Muslim communities and in Canadian society. Thus, the moderate Muslim becomes a key player in enabling the state to render invisible its exclusion of the ‘Muslim Other,' while maintaining its non-racist credentials.     

‘They Give Evidence’: Bodies,Borders and the Disappeared

In this essay I explore certain relations between bodies and borders as threshold spaces marking both separation and connection, and functioning as the bearers of political meanings. My title refers to Dadang Christanto's installation ‘They Give Evidence’, a series of standing, naked figures, bearing in their outstretched arms the remnants of burnings, drownings, beatings and other mutilations that leave their subjects stripped of any markers of identity. These nameless bodies, an image of contemporary political violence, invite exploration of the relations between the bodies of the dead and the living, between practices of bearing witness and giving evidence. Beginning with the disappeared of the SIEV X sinking, euphemistically referred to in the recent Senate Inquiry as ‘A Certain Maritime Incident’, this essay examines ways in which nameless bodies of the dead and disappeared are made present in contemporary Australia as evidence, as political bodies.     

Initial teacher training: understanding ‘race,’ diversity and inclusion

There is little research which has explored how students on Initial Teacher Training (ITT) courses understand and conceptualise discourses of ‘race’, diversity and inclusion. This article will focus on student understandings of racialised identities; it will explore the discourses by which students understand what it means to be White and what it means to be Black, within the context of ITT. The article will examine the different facets and themes of identity within the context of belonging and exclusion which exist within higher education in the cultural and social contexts of English universities. The findings indicate that students’ understandings of ‘race’, diversity and inclusion on ITT courses are complex and multifaceted. The article argues that greater training is needed in relation to the practical assistance that student teachers require in terms of increasing their understanding of diversity and dealing with racism in the classroom.     

Refugees,migrants, neither,both: categorical fetishism and the politics of bounding in Europe’s ‘migration crisis’

The use of the categories ‘refugee’ and ‘migrant’ to differentiate between those on the move and the legitimacy, or otherwise, of their claims to international protection has featured strongly during Europe’s ‘migration crisis’ and has been used to justify policies of exclusion and containment. Drawing on interviews with 215 people who crossed the Mediterranean to Greece in 2015, our paper challenges this ‘categorical fetishism’, arguing that the dominant categories fail to capture adequately the complex relationship between political, social and economic drivers of migration or their shifting significance for individuals over time and space. As such it builds upon a substantial body of academic literature demonstrating a disjuncture between conceptual and policy categories and the lived experiences of those on the move. However, the paper is also critical of efforts to foreground or privilege ‘refugees’ over ‘migrants’ arguing that this reinforces rather than challenges the dichotomy’s faulty foundations. Rather those concerned about the use of categories to marginalise and exclude should explicitly engage with the politics of bounding, that is to say, the process by which categories are constructed, the purpose they serve and their consequences, in order to denaturalise their use as a mechanism to distinguish, divide and discriminate.     

‘Gone,leave, go,move, vanish’: race,public space and (in)visibilities

This chapter is a discussion of the various ways Canadian-born young men of colour (aged 17–26) experience (in)visibilities in the public spaces of the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). I begin this chapter by analyzing the different ways ‘visibility’ and ‘invisibility’ have been conceptualized in the scholarly literature, including literatures on homelessness, public space, and race. Invisibilities include ‘invisible homelessness’ as well as material invisibilities in which young men of colour both purposefully and accidentally navigate public spaces in ways that affect whether they are seen or unseen and by whom. This research emphasizes the contingency and indeterminacy of varying (in)visibilities. Despite the various ways they move between visibility and invisibility in public spaces, young men of colour experiencing homelessness maintain an explicit presence in urban street spaces. Understanding their experiences of (in)visibility in urban space helps us understand the geographies of race and racism in the GTA and in North American cities more broadly.     

‘Really really different different’: rurality,regional schools and refugees

Abstract

This article explores the dynamics of difference-making in a regional Australian town. Despite Australia’s high levels of cultural diversity, many rural and regional areas remain predominantly ‘white’ spaces, presided over by people of Anglo-Celtic ancestry but with small populations of indigenous Australians. Over the past decade, however, a growing number of regional centres have become home to refugees from a range of African, Middle Eastern and South-East Asian countries. This study draws on interview, observational and documentary data to shed light on the experiences of people in one such town, focusing on schools as sites of everyday social contact and significant mediators of identity formation and settlement outcomes. A key aim of the article is to illuminate the ways in which constructions of rurality and of difference intersect with local histories and resources to shape relations between the original, ‘old’ and newest settlers.     

‘God,patria and home’: ‘Reproductive politics’ and nationalist (Re)definitions of women in East/Central Europe

Abstract

I argue that through complex processes of social construction of gender, women in East/Central European societies are seen primarily as reproducers of the nation. One effect of such definitions is the enforcement of reproductive policies which amount to the nationalization of female bodies.

After a brief assessment of reproductive policies during the state‐socialist period, an overview of the contemporary debate within the post‐communist universe of discourse, and of the policies enacted by the new East/Central European regimes, I argue that within the framework of the emerging masculinist cultures in East/Central Europe, masculinity becomes increasingly identified with the public domain; in contrast, women are progressively confined within the ‘private’ sphere, identified with holding the primary responsibility for the family. Definitions of femininity along these lines have been influenced by the emergence of a particular form of ‘reproductive politics’ supported by post‐state‐socialist movements stressing the right of the nation to mobilize all of its resources, and thus, to subjugate women for the ‘national good’.     

Genealogy as Theory,Genealogy as Tool: Aspects of Somali ‘Clanship’

Genealogy is both a tool for organizing people on the day to day political level, and an intellectual scheme for understanding human history. This article looks at the conception of genealogy that the Somalis have inherited from their past and examines the ways in which it has been rejected, manipulated and theorized in recent times, especially since the civil war.