Search

Governments around the world acted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic through lockdowns and border closures that had specific impacts on temporary residents (migrants, asylum seekers and refugees). In Australia, there were differential responses across states and territories, and a critical distinction made at Federal government level between permanent residents and citizens as compared to temporary migrants. The result has been the continued Othering of certain groups of Australians of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds as well as migrants and refugees on the basis of racial characteristics and visa status. This paper will consider the period where arguably multicultural policies were 'on hold' by investigating the timeline leading up to major policy decisions and the immediate and longer-term after-effects during the COVID-19 pandemic. Arguably the way in which multicultural communities were treated has shown the superficial nature of multicultural policies in Australia and the lack of more solid foundations in support of what now demographically constitutes a majority of the country's population. Drawing on secondary data analysis, the paper will outline the distance these actions have put between political leaders and multicultural communities, and queries the implications for a sustained commitment to multicultural policies in an era of temporary migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multicultural theorisations have presumed principles adopted from liberalism, and multiculturalists have explicated their theorisations within liberal democratic contexts. This article problematises both these conflations by focusing on an avowedly non-liberal polity, Singapore. Rather than focussing on developing and identifying normative justifications for multiculturalism, it advocates a practice-based approach which examines multiculturalism as an ethos of accepting cultural difference and actions that uphold such an ethos. This approach allows this paper to do three things: First, it demonstrates that Singapore's approach to engaging with its internal ethnic diversity is indeed a form of multiculturalism. Second, it highlights the pragmatic basis for the country's adoption of multiculturalism to manage diversity. Third, by identifying commonalities in multicultural practice in liberal and non-liberal settings, this article calls for a more critical examination of the slippage between theory and practice that is often overlooked by scholars on multiculturalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advancing recent literature that critically examines multicultural efforts to generate socio-economic inclusion, this article studies how, in a small yet affluent Pennsylvania town, multicultural festivals are part of a social milieu in which Latinx immigrants face continuing erasure and exploitation – manifested in precarious health and housing conditions. Utilizing ethnographic and qualitative methods, I show that, although the town's multicultural festivals aim to give a voice and recognize minority communities, they have in some cases contributed to an environment in which Latinx peoples have for decades been silenced and overlooked, resulting in heightened rates of health issues related to dangerous housing. From a semiotic theoretical approach, the disconnect between increasing performative-visibility and ongoing marginalization of Latinx immigrants can be explained by multicultural festivals relying upon floating signifiers, as well as issues of structural power. My findings shed light on the nuanced cultural ways that the structural social and material suffering of minoritized, immigrant populations is overlooked through the invocation of purportedly emancipatory acts, as well as the lingering effects of the structural force of White Supremacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary discourses of diversity and multiculturalism are contentious spaces in Western democracies. Symbolically, they have come to serve as a forum for governments to articulate their larger nation-building, citizenship and political agendas. In this sense, multiculturalism, whatever else it is, is a model of political belonging: a form of political symbolism directed at minorities and majorities to establish the conditions of belonging to the political community. This article examines the model(s) of belonging to political community in the Harper Conservative (2004–2015) and Trudeau Liberal (2015–2019) governments, presenting textual data derived from a broad discourse analysis. It illustrates that both use multiculturalism as a form of minority and majority acknowledgment that highlights the terms of belonging to the Canadian multicultural political community. Further, it reveals a difference in rhetorical strategy. while Conservative multiculturalism prioritizes a practice of specific minority acknowledgment that casts integration to the existing national identity as the responsibility of ethno-cultural communities, Liberal multiculturalism prioritizes the general acknowledgment of difference in order to broaden the national identity, and turn it outward to global relevance. Importantly, this illustrates the surprising variability and tenacity of multicultural symbolism in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within transnational contexts, ethnic minority Coorg festivals are conducted via the prominence of festival foodwork by Kodavathee immigrant mothers. In the absence of geographical proximity to the homeland of rural Kodagu due to (im)migration, festival food becomes a means to enculturate 'good' Coorg diasporic children with appropriate affiliative culinary identification to this 'vanishing' community. (Intra)domestic efforts to create emotional emplacement for transnational Coorg children are strategically positioned viz-a-viz other pan-'Hindu', Brahmanical religious festivals. Qualitative interviews with 43 Kodavathee (im)migrant mothers from urban, multicultural Sydney (Australia), multiracial Singapore and multi-ethnic Mysore (India), yielded how festival food took on a significant role in firstly: vicarious performances of emplacing Kodagu within the (im)migrant Coorg family context; and secondly in nesting children within an insider food culture which is celebrated in-group yet underplayed in more pan-Hindu contexts. While more publicly lauded performances of enacting 'appropriate Hinduness' for pan-Hindu (Diwali) celebrations was conducted, there was an umbilical sustenance sought in Coorg festival foods where in-group intimacies were privately nurtured through the culinary distancing from other non-Coorg Hindus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multicultural Youth Australia is a national 'census' of migrant youth in Australia aimed at tracking their social, cultural and economic status. The findings from this study highlight strong feelings of national belonging among migrant young people, despite significant experiences of racism. This article unpacks this paradox. It asks what migrant youth mean when they say they belong in the face of persistent racialised exclusion. In Hage's account of liberal multiculturalism, these feelings of belonging despite national rejection are explained as an acquiescence to the structures of white nationhood. This article develops an alternative analysis by drawing on place-based, reflexive accounts of youth belonging and scholarship on everyday multiculturalism. It extends these approaches by proposing a pragmatic analytics of belonging, foregrounding the practical and political contexts in which migrant young people's statements of belonging are put to work. It understands these belonging claims as practices of provisional citizenship, and aligns these claims with Arendt's notion of 'action' to highlight their potential as open-ended, critical engagements with the nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how the consideration of sensory embodied practice offers a route to unraveling subtle and nuanced placemaking practices of multicultural communities, revealing the physical, cultural and social interplay of everyday interactions. While a sensorial epistemological approach has been a relatively recent development in the humanities and social sciences, the 'body' has been theorised extensively. Even so, this has been of a generic body that is typically white, male and middle class. The embodied practices I present here affirm that bodies are social, sensorial and multiplicitous. Drawing from fieldwork in the multicultural Melbourne suburb of Footscray, I discuss the socio-sensory, through two types of sociality encountered on site; firstly, around economic activities, and the other around small groups of individuals, appearing unplanned and leisurely. I discuss the significance of these embodied acts in defining identity and validating presence in the urban landscape, demonstrating the sensescapes they create, informed by culturally specific sensory orders carry the potential to challenge – permeating and confronting, implicitly providing a means of expression and dissonance. I argue, consideration of the socio-sensory dimension provides an alternative framework of analysis that expands vocabulary and recalibrates sensibilities, providing insight into other ways of making and occupying space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australian multiculturalism emerged as national policy in the 1970s following contentious immigration policies designed to limit the entry of non-white immigrants. Multiculturalism frames articulations of national belonging in terms of broad moral implications and the immigration policy from which such implications stem. Paradoxically, discourses central to the multicultural ideal, such as integration and tolerance, can act to limit people's experience of social belonging by providing scope for demonstrations of Anglo-Celtic heritage as a form of symbolic capital. I explore the ways non-white young people with refugee backgrounds interpret whiteness in relation to multiculturalism and negotiate their sense of belonging in Brisbane, Australia. I discuss the link between whiteness and multiculturalism from the perspectives of these young people and demonstrate the various ways in which they interpret Australian national belonging as intrinsically linked to skin color. By alternately highlighting and evading their own racialized sense of themselves, young people exhibit a multiplicity of possibilities for belonging and respond to the political context of their own lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the findings of the first systematic literature review (SLR) of studies on the intercultural approach as captured by two inter-connected articulations: interculturalism (IC) and intercultural dialogue (ICD). Initially, 16,582 available peer-reviewed articles and book chapters published over the period 2000–2017, were identified. After removing duplicates, 11,712 unique studies provided the basis for this SLR. The contents of the publications that met specified inclusion criteria and explicitly discussed the conceptual underpinnings of IC and its related ICD concept (N = 351) were analysed. Despite a more salient position in recent diversity governance discussions, IC and ICD have remained largely constrained by a lack of conceptual clarity and theoretical precision. This SLR, therefore, examines how IC and ICD have been accounted for, defined, and conceptualised across a broad-ranging literature spaning multiple disciplines. The findings indicate that the key conceptual and philosophical foundations of the intercultural idea are framed around interaction, dialogue, exchange and transformation. The SLR articulates four dimensions as the key constituents of the overall intercultural framework and no significant divergence between them was found between various definitions of IC and ICD. IC provides the conceptual foundations that enable an ICD articulation around intercultural exchange and dialogue across differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on cosmopolitan practices and non-white refugee and migrant populations in Western nations often concentrates on how the mainstream 'host' culture practise openness and hospitality towards 'new' and minority populations. Reflecting the relationality at the heart of cosmopolitanism's conceptual promise, this research reverses the gaze back by exploring how minority populations who are 'locals' in ethnic hubs or enclaves practise openness towards 'non-locals' who constitute a dominant group. Our article focuses on the black African Australian (BAA) community in the suburb of Moorooka, known as a 'little Africa'. Moorooka's main strip is lined with various BAA-owned shops and restaurants, and with BAAs going about their everyday lives. The suburb attracts negative news stories and is stereotyped as an undesirable ethnic enclave marred by crime, social problems and unemployment. Yet, Moorooka is also becoming a cosmopolitan destination for visitors to shop, explore and dine. We thematically analyse qualitative interviews with BAAs to understand their experience of interactions with non-BAAs. Our research sheds new light on the forms of openness and hospitality we call 'minority cosmopolitanism' that arises from the BAA's experience. Accordingly, we also highlight forms of cosmopolitan encounters that assist with further understanding of the African diaspora. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While existing research shows low levels of negative sentiment towards Buddhists in Australia, little is known about their lived experiences of belonging, and what they do to facilitate social cohesion. This article addresses this gap by exploring experiences of belonging and intercultural engagement among twenty-two young adult Buddhists from a range of backgrounds living in Australia. It finds that while multiculturalism and positive portrayals of Buddhism facilitated the belonging of these young Buddhists, anti-religious sentiment and processes of racialisation contributed to experiences of exclusion. The article contends that these contradictory forces create an ambiguous context for the negotiation of religious belonging and intercultural engagement, which study participants addressed through processes of contextualisation, accommodation and reflexive community-building. It further suggests that Bryan Turner's concept of cosmopolitan irony provides a useful lens through which to unpack these complexities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how multiculturalism is enacted and negotiated among Brazilian and Portuguese migrants at a football (soccer) club in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The authors use the lens of everyday multiculturalism to analyse the tension between public expectations about intercultural 'mixing' and actual intercultural engagement in practice. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, we discuss how club members negotiate the national discourse that recognises cultural differences yet prescribes intercultural mixing in the public sphere. The findings show that meeting co-ethnics is one of the club members' primary motivations for participating in the football club, whereas interacting with people with culturally diverse backgrounds is not a leitmotif. Everyday group-making practices among Portuguese and Brazilian players reinforce group boundaries and constrain intercultural interaction, thereby challenging normative multiculturalism that prescribes ethnic mixing. The paper concludes that members' multicultural presentation of their club provides a socially accepted environment for ethnically concentrated sport participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on the case of Taiwan, one of the major destinations for marriage migrants in Asia, this article examines how the host state utilizes shifting discursive frames for Southeast Asian immigrants and their children to establish the regime of marital citizenship and achieve the project of nation building. I characterise the earlier regime as 'reproductive assimilation', which aimed to manage the potential risk that immigrant motherhood brings to 'population quality' through assimilation-oriented projects of monitoring childbirth and childrearing. The recent turn toward the 'New Southbound Policy' shifts the cultural frame toward 'neoliberal multiculturalism' by reframing the ethnic difference of the 'new second generation' as a market asset for globalised national development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores movements for social transformation in precarious times of austerity, dispossessed commons and narrow nationalism; movements counterpoised to an exhausted neoliberalism on the one hand, and a neoconservative xenophobic populism on the other. Applying ‘rainbow coalition’ as generic concept it points at contours of a globally extended countermovement for social transformation, traversing ‘race’, class and gender, driven by reimaginings of the commons and indicating how they could be repossessed and democratically ruled; that is ‘reimagineered’). A multisited enquiry explores how actors express their claims as activist citizens under varying conditions and constellations, and if/how discourses and practices from different locations and at different scales inform each other. It interrogates whether there may be an actual equivalence of outlook, objective and strategy of ostensibly homologous contending movements which develop under varying local, national and regional circumstances in contemporary communities riveted by schisms of class, ‘race’/ethnicity and gender, occupied by the ‘migration’ issue and challenged by popular demands for social sustainability. The paper contributes to social theory by linking questions posed by critics of ‘post-politics’ concerning contingences of pluralist democracy and revitalised politics of civil society, to precarity studies focused on globalisation and the changing conditions of citizenship, labour and livelihoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author suggests that Stephen Castles’ contributions to migration studies are threefold: an analytical investigation of the nexus between migration and citizenship, a global approach to migration with a particular emphasis on new migration regions and finally a sustained critical perspective towards refugee and migration policies that are implemented in Western countries. Applying Stephen Castles’ ideas to the French case, the author argues that the French model of migrant incorporation would benefit from an acknowledgment of the ‘multicultural reality’ in France, a balance between the will to control immigration and the demand for immigrant workers and finally a critical assessment of the immigration laws and their outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have questioned whether experiences in indigenous university education in Latin America are institutional arrangements for emphasizing diversity within a neoliberal multiculturalist fashion or if they are innovative pathways to transform colonial relations of power and knowledge systems. One might think that as happened with primary and secondary education, the growth of institutional experiences in indigenous university education in Latin America and the Caribbean simply served the purpose of consolidating a homogenous citizenry in liberal states. This paper offers three different cases on Indigenous education in Colombia to examine this question. The outcomes are significant because regardless of the type of university, the main difference lies in whether indigenous education (universities or programs) were planned and established with and from indigenous peoples and not simply for Indigenous people. The participation of Indigenous organizations was decisive in the scope and objectives of each case analyzed. The data were collected during several periods of field work in 2014 and 2015. The research process involved an extensive literature review, conversations with Indigenous scholars and leaders of two Indigenous experiences on university education, and an analysis of the PAES initiative at the National University of Colombia. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper analyses the meanings and values attached to ‘cultural diversity’ as a descriptive and interpretative category in the field of education in Spain, including its application to define different groups in elementary and primary schools there. It reports from a comparative study that considers the discursive production of ‘cultural diversity’ in Spanish academia together with the discourse of teaching staff from three schools with specific programmes aimed at cultural diversity. Results attest to three different uses of ‘cultural diversity’: individualisation, difference and inequalities, as well as two different assessments: enrichment and problem. It also analyses how the discourse of teachers is more complex than those of the academy, because, among other reasons, they link diversity with situations produced by social inequality, by the fact that many students are migrants, and by a different ethnic condition. In general, the academic discourse tends to present a more institutionalised, idealised and blind vision of social inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article is part of a project onParadoxical Spaces: Encountering the Other in public spacewhich explores how cultural difference is experienced, practiced and negotiated in public space. Specifically, it explores the ‘multicultural’ festivalKulturhavntaking place yearly along the harbour of Copenhagen. Multicultural festivals are seen as places for on-going identity negotiations, where individuals and groups define meaningful concepts of identity along with notions of exclusion. In the paper, we adopt a performative approach abandoning the distinction between bodies and space and embracing ideas of ‘embodiment’ and ‘rhythm’. We explore participant engagement emphasizing bodily practices as well as sensuous experiences, but also differential processes and orientalist images produced in, and through, encounters. Among the range of activities at the festival, we focus on three: food; dance; and taekwondo. The methods are participant observation and different kinds of interviews. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on Sneja Gunew's book "The World at Home: Post-multicultural Writers as Neo-cosmopolitan Mediators" discussed at a symposium.

The article presents information a roundtable discussion about the book "Post-multicultural Writers as Neo-cosmopolitan Mediators" by Sneja Gunew. Topics include identity politics, cultural traditions in Australia, and canonization.

There is limited scholarship about Paul Fenech’s television comedy series and films. What there is tends to focus on Pizza (2000–2007) and place it, and its spin-off film, Fat Pizza (2003), within what has been called the wogsploitation cycle that includes most prominently The Wog Boy (2000). In this article I discuss two of Fenech’s television series, Pizza and Housos (2011–2013), in the context of representations of the underclass. I argue that the discourse of the underclass has evolved as the Other of neoliberalism in a similar way that the dangerous class, what Karl Marx called the lumpenproletariat, was constructed as the Other of industrial capitalism. The characters in Pizza, with their pitiful below-minimum-wage earnings, exist on the borderline of the underclass, while the characters in Housos are immersed in the underclass existence. The film Housos v Authority (2012) is a populist exploration of Australian underclass life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I explore particular public spaces in a country town, the local hotel and public square, and investigate how these sites produce intercultural encounters between long-term regional residents and newer refugee-background migrant communities. These encounters, occurring in spatial contexts, are (re-)subjectivized by long-term residents and new migrants, and where differences and acceptance are contested and (re)constructed. In this paper I argue that the encounters that take place in these spaces, and the affective (dis)connections that are experienced, foster either a sense of belonging or non-belonging, inclusion or exclusion. I further argue that public spaces, as relational spaces, are not simply built environments that facilitate the flow of people and material objects but also spaces that reflect personal, local and national belonging and identities. This paper is based on ethnographic research investigating the experiences and interactions of Afghan Hazara migrants and long-term regional residents in a South Australian country town between 2014 and 2016. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (GLBTIQ) people from culturally diverse and religious backgrounds may sometimes feel that we must choose between keeping connected to our religious/ethnic communities while denying our gender-identities/expressions and sexuality, or connecting to a broader Australian GLBTIQ-community that is White/Anglo-dominant and normatively hostile to overt expressions of faith, religiosity and spiritual longing. In this paper, I explore working definitions of the terms ‘spirituality’, ‘religion’ and queer corollaries of spiritual community, paying particular attention to non-religious secular manifestations. I will argue that gender, sexual and political liberation within a multicultural society can and must accommodate both pluralist and integrative approaches to seemingly paradoxical ideas around secularism and religiosity. I will discuss my experiences as a cisgender gay Buddhist Malaysian-Chinese Australian man and my relationships with a group of Asian gay men from religiously diverse backgrounds as case examples, to explore possible frameworks for how these may be manifested and enacted. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article, I use a case study analysis of two white nationalist movements online, in the Australian context, to consider whether the prevalence and everyday uses of social media by white nationalist groups today has impacted on race relations and multiculturalism in Australia 12 years after the Cronulla riots. Social media affordances present a set of conditions that were absent during the 2005 riot, and yet, are today mobilising distinct variants of white nationalism online. Rather than these expressions being locally situated, social media allows these performances to be connected up virtually, extending the white nationalists’ capacity to occupy and terrorise a range of networked public and intimate spaces and influence mainstream political culture. Nonetheless social media affordances, which situate these movements in a virtual ‘ecology of subcultures’ also contributes to their instability and ambivalence, with the uncivil ‘trolling’ practices of online movements undermining broader social goals and contributing to even more extreme and unstable expressions online. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

More than a decade since the Cronulla Riots, it could be argued that we are none the wiser about what they meant. Frequently evoked in public discourse, ‘Cronulla’ has become a benchmark for the worst of Australian society (whether that is seen as racism or multiculturalism). This paper reflects upon the representation of the Riots to explore three key ideas. First, we need to think about Cronulla through an exploration of the situated processes of social memory. There is no single ‘meaning’ of the Riots. In fact, the symbolic place of ‘Cronulla’ in public discourse is a contested space in which competing interests, processes and perspectives are at stake. Second, social memory is a complex and dispersed architecture of remembering and forgetting, but analysis typically focuses on the institutional and collective dimensions of social memory at the expense of other domains. Third, and drawing on some of the theoretical literature, we explore a different kind of memory that is forgotten in political and media representations of Cronulla – the embodied memory resulting from the injuries of racism experienced by those of Middle Eastern background. We see Cronulla entailing a violent and existential threat which detaches them from full belonging in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

1Sydney’s 2005 Cronulla Riots marked a watershed moment in race relations between White and Arabic-speaking Australians. In this essay, I reflect on how the riots now sit in the public imagination and explore how certain narratives on the riots have produced a series of problematic silences, disownings, and forgettings. I elaborate six modes of denial and disavowal – modes of sidestepping and disowning the racism that underpinned the riot and more contemporary attitudes towards Muslim Australians. The paper is framed around six ‘modes’ of silence: (1) Always Elsewheres, Always Someone Else; (2) The Spectacular; (3) The Narrative of ‘Past-ness’; (4) Twisted Tolerance; (5) Slippery Humour; (6) Interpolation of Non-Arab Subjects into the White Project. Some claim that the Cronulla Riots were an aberration and many in the ‘Shire’ wish that attention would move on. After all, the riots were a decade ago and the ‘kids’ who participated have all grown up. There has been no trouble on the beach since. I suggest, however, that the riots have a much longer reach – culturally, geographically, and temporally – than is generally understood. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article reconsiders the 2005 Cronulla riots after ten years. We begin by examining three examples of events misread ten years ago, to illustrate some key changes that have since shaped Australian racism. The first two, concern the rallying call to ‘Leb and wog bashing day’ at Cronulla in December 2005, and the attack there on two Bangladeshi students. These are shown to be indicative in a shift in the focus of racist Othering in Australia, from the ‘Arab Other’ to the ‘Muslim Other’, as Islamophobia becomes increasingly mainstreamed in Australian culture following the trend throughout the global West. Second, the incongruous chivalry-cum-feminism of the beachgoers who participated in the riot and were interviewed in the 2006 Four Corners television documentary, Riot and Revenge, illustrates some key features of Islamophobia as it has developed and become entrenched: such as accusing Muslims of hyperpatriarchy, and purporting to ‘rescue’ Muslim women while targeting them for racist vilification. We trace these and related ideological elements of Islamophobia inherent in the Cronulla riots, and show how these have unfolded in the Australian mainstream in the ten years since, becoming further enfolded into the commonsense as part of the ‘new normal’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper considers how the Cronulla riots have shaped some popular directions in theory and practice regarding young people’s intercultural relations that are primarily focused on social cohesion, harmony and cultural understanding. Drawing on research we have undertaken post-Cronulla with young people in some of Australia’s most diverse (and disadvantaged) neighbourhoods, we suggest that this approach to improving youth interculturality does not adequately account for the complex forms of sociality that exist in multicultural youth cultures. We illustrate how routine and intimate intercultural engagements are interwoven with forms of discord, some of it racialised and racist, but not always destructive of simultaneous positive fellow-feeling. We argue for greater attention to the multiple lines along which youth affiliate, connect and also differentiate themselves that inform their practices of inclusion and exclusion beyond lack of cultural understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An introduction is presented in which the guest editor discusses Terrorist attacks, riots and multiculturalism.

Malaysian food cultures originate from various sources representing different regional types of gastronomy. They can be depicted as a type of local multiculturalism to exemplify a national smorgasbord composing heritage dishes unique to the country. Food choices are often made in line with ethnic, cultural and religious considerations. There are sometimes rules that instil strict observations of food choices, as in the case of Muslims following the norms of halal. But non-Muslims are not inadvertently excluded from participating in the markets of halal food. These complexities in food choice and gastronomic relations are, however, not a deterrent to large segments of the population ‘eating together-in-difference’. This form of commensality underscores the ideal of unity in diversity but lacks the portrayal of perceived differences in multicultural eating. It may be more appropriate to address the multiculturalism in Malaysian food cultures as a case of ‘eating apart together’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through the Delphi method, we draw on experts in the field of interculturalism – and on our own previous Critical Discourse Analysis-based research – to critically examine media accounts of intercultural communication in Spain. We argue that understanding how the media portray intercultural communication from the point of view of experts is a vital research task, since the media and experts are key social actors who reproduce existing cultural meanings and who can also transform discourses and beliefs. We present a typology of media representations –conflictive interculturalism,possible interculturalismandunresolved interculturalism– and demonstrate how experts’ responses can be contextualised within this typology. Our findings also suggest, first, that multiculturalism does not necessarily translate into greater intercultural communication, and second, that television constructs intercultural interaction from a stance of lack of equality in diversity, resulting in an impossible encounter marked by violence or the ‘carnivalesque’. Finally we propose some measures to foster intercultural exchange in multicultural societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically examines football (soccer) fandom as an important yet under-explored site for the production of new understandings of multiculturalism and cultural hybridisation. Building on the analytical framework of everyday multiculturalism, we report on ethnographic research undertaken with football fans in Western Sydney, Australia, to analyse the interactions and conflicts between football fans and authorities that surrounded the 2014 Harmony Day celebrations. This paper argues that across the fabric of professional football in Australia, multiculturalism is lived in conflicting ways. It is shown that despite attempts by stakeholders of the game to promote a mainstream ‘family-friendly’ form of fandom, Western Sydney football fans create new forms of cross-cultural conviviality through their fandom practices that not only reshape their own identities but also challenge the country’s official, governmental discourse of multiculturalism and its attendant policies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article analyses minority rights discourse in statements of the populist radical right party called the True Finns, which has become a major political force in Finland in the 2010s. A framework for the analysis is provided by research about the development of political approaches to multiculturalism in Western democracies. Kymlicka (2010) argues that a backlash against multicultural policies has mainly occurred in relation to the acceptance of ethnic-cultural diversity among immigrant groups. Support for a backlash is found in the minority rights statements of the party. However, the political rhetoric of the party is not mainly about policies relating to immigrants, but basic principles of group-specific rights for minorities are also disputed. The article argues that the populist rhetoric has to be understood as related to fundamental discourses about majority and minority rights in developed welfare states. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents insights on conviviality in relation to intercultural studies. Topics discussed include conviviality as a key concern of sociocultural theory, the conceptual and methodological challenges of conviviality, and the productive conversations being conducted on the place of critical race traditions in thinking everyday multiculture and superdiversity.

Humorous joking, teasing, and banter are fundamental forms of social intercourse. This paper is about the role and effect of ‘humour’ in multiethnic blue-collar workplaces. Humour delineates boundaries of group membership, establishes insiders and outsiders, and offers a ritual solution to ambiguity and liminality, tension and social unease. Humour is Janus faced though. Historically, it has been a central tool of the racist; a way of expressing disgust and hatred with an exit strategy: ‘just joking’. This paper draws on these themes to consider findings from a large comparative study of ‘Everyday Multiculturalism at Work’ which compares workplaces in Singapore and Australia. The essay focuses on blue-collar male-dominated Australian workplaces and explores the role and function of interactional humour in mediating, reinforcing, and overcoming boundaries of racial and ethnic difference in a context of forced ‘encounter’. I consider both the positive, ludic qualities of humour as well as its negative dimensions and further situate the discussion in terms of certain forms of Australian working class masculinity. I offer the concept of‘convivial labour’ to describe the work that goes into negotiating interactional humour frames in multi-ethnic settings of forced encounter. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article argues that the idea of multicultural tools is the best way to approach the understanding of conviviality. This argument is made through two discrete steps. The first offers a critical review of how issues of urban life and diversity have been theorised focusing on recent debates about ‘culture loss’ and ‘super-diversity’. The discussion, we suggest, elides historical and present racism, in the making of urban diversity in cities like London. The second step develops the notion of conviviality by identifying the ways in which young adult migrants living in London make convivial worlds emphasising the idea of tools, returning to Ivan Illich’s early formulation, and the capability to make multiculture. The article’s conclusion is that understanding urban multiculture requires equal weight being given to the paradoxical co-existence of both racism and conviviality in city life. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In Australia, artists of ethnic minority backgrounds are generally offered marginal spaces in which they can express themselves. They tend to be called upon by the state to act as cultural brokers or offer representations of their supposedly neatly bounded communities in the name of social inclusion [Werbner 1997. Introduction: the dialectics of cultural hybridity. In: P. Werbner and T. Modood, eds.Debating cultural hybridity: multi-cultural identities and the politics of anti-racism. London: Zed Books, 1–28]. The aim of this paper is to highlight how processes of racialisation and multiculturalist discourses produce specific vocational identities, namely that of the ethnic minority, community artist who uses their creative forms of expression to redress social inequalities. Drawing on the findings of an in-depth, qualitative study with young, male, Arab-Australian creative workers during 2011–2014, I suggest that this particular vocational trajectory is indicative of the classed, exclusionary and hierarchical nature of the creative industries. The paper pays close attention to the ways they use creativity strategically to deal with broader issues of race-relations and experiences of discrimination to suggest that these ethnic minority creative workers potentially become what Brubaker calls ‘ethnopolitical entrepreneurs’ [2002. Ethnicity without groups.European journal of sociology, 43 (2), 163–189, p. 166] who live off as well as for their cultural difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers contradictions and complexities around mediated and intercultural relationships between local children, primarily of Anglo-Australian descent, and ‘refugees’, in a regional Australian primary school community. It examines two different spaces in which local children engage with asylum seekers on a daily basis – the prolific ’speech communities‘ around refugees which circulate in public culture, and lived practices of ’everyday multiculturalism‘. Young people are shown to draw on negative tropes around ‘refugees’ to anchor themselves in a local cultural order. These speech communities, however, differ significantly from the forms of everyday multiculturalism which take place between local children and asylum-seeker youth. This raises questions about how narratives around refugees, privilege and morality become embedded in local cultural identities, and what this might mean for children’s attempts to belong within such contexts. These practices are discussed here through long-term ethnographic fieldwork, the importance of which is highlighted for making sense of young people’s prejudices and racism towards refugees in economically insecure communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores public reactions to an event dubbed the ‘Sydney siege’, through an analysis of its media coverage. The event, where a Muslim man held 18 hostages in a Sydney café, was closely followed during its 22 hour duration and triggered an avalanche of public commentary. We analyse media articles, political leaders’ media statements and transcripts of press conferences published within the week of the siege. Using NVivo software, we code the key themes arising from the data and employ in-depth textual and discourse analyses of the most prominent themes: multiculturalism, Islam/Muslims and ‘community/solidarity’. Using the theoretical framework of the nation as an imagined community which needs its ‘Others’, we find that the ‘Sydney siege’ lead to emphasising hegemonic ideas of the Australian national identity and values that mark the boundaries of nationhood, community belonging and solidarity. Such ideas placed Muslims precariously at the national margin, applying a simplistic binary of the ‘good ones’ worthy of inclusion into the ‘good nation’ and the ‘bad ones’ to be excluded. We conclude that the public discourse following the Sydney siege affirmed Australian multiculturalism in a broad sense but also strongly implied the Otherness of Muslims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Malaysian Australian writer Hsu-Ming Teo’s novelBehind the Moondepicts how conventional racism in multicultural Australia is re-enacted as a kind of cultural racism via the differentiation between a normative white culture and essentialised ethnic cultures. In particular, the novel portrays class as a cultural component mobilised to privilege middle-class and cosmo-multicultural culture over working-class and suburban culture. Such discursive shifts highlight the dynamic definition of minority status while, at the same time, reveal the limits of the imagined nation presumed as white. In my close reading of Teo’s narrative, ethnic subjects are captivated in a dialectic of protestation-abjection whereby old and new forms of cultural myths reproduce stereotyped difference and disarticulate ethnic self-delineation. The ideal of cosmo-multiculturalism, with its premise on a consumerist logic, immobilises difference as a fetishised object to be hailed, performed, savoured, but ultimately spat out undigested. Elaborating on contradictions within an ideology of liberal multiculturalism, I illustrate how the novel constitutes a re-signifying project that presents difference and abjection as transformative sources of national legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Fernando Ortiz acknowledged the pain of colonisation and the uprooting of slaves from Africa from the sixteenth century onwards. Later, people from diverse backgrounds such as Jews, Anglo-Saxons and Chinese migrated to the New World. Ortiz observed that initially migrants were faced with the problem of disadjustment and readjustment, of acculturation, deculturation and neoculturation – in a word, of transculturation. Ortiz’s concept of transculturation provides a useful framework for examining the cross-cultural adaptation and hybridisation that usually takes place when two or more cultures meet. Against the transcultural conceptual framework offered by Ortiz, this paper examines the life stories of three American Muslim girls of Bangladeshi heritage, and evaluates their experiences as reflecting transcultural processes. It examines how their transculturality or hybridity through the ‘contact zone’, and global and local interactions, helped them to assert their identity and sense of belonging. It recognises the tensions and the positive outcomes of their transculturation. In particular, this paper mobilises Pratt’s, Kraidy’s and Pereira-Ares’s interpretation of transculturation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the relationship between Christianity and claims about Australian culture. In modernity Christianity was reconstructed as fundamentally European and white. This article argues that English middle-class values, which historically have been deeply imbricated with the values expressed by the Church of England, have been taken up in Australia as the foundation of Australian culture. In official multiculturalism non-Anglican Christian denominations have been with ethnics. This includes Catholicism which, in spite of the numbers of Italians, Maltese, and other Catholics now present in Australia, is still associated with the Irish. This article argues that the Howard government was a watershed in the political use of Christianity to claim a hegemonic Australian morality and this has been established in opposition to other religious groups in Australia, most obviously Muslims. At the same time, this Christian morality is implicitly white and the members of other religions are assumed to be non-white. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australian universities are sites of growing cultural diversity, with large numbers of international students joining domestic students, many of whom come from migrant backgrounds. The literature indicates that the opportunities this creates for cross-cultural mixing and intercultural learning are often not embraced. This paper reports results of a study of orientations to cross-cultural interaction and learning among first year students, focussing on the relationship between such orientations and cultural self-identification. The findings indicate some ambivalence among the students, including a widespread general positivity towards the idea of cross-cultural interaction, but reticence to make personal efforts to take up these opportunities. Cultural self-identification was related to students’ openness to diversity. Students who identified as Australian tended to be less interested in engaging across cultures, whereas those with culturally different (migrant), and more complex ‘Australian + other’ identifications, appeared more open. Implications for studies of cross-cultural mixing, and for higher education institutions, are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]