Exclusionary Politics and the Question of National Belonging

Australian Ethnicities in ‘Multiscalar’ Focus

Bibliographic Data

ID6255697
AuthorsKay Anderson (0000-0002-7176-2278, Western Sydney University), Affrica Taylor (0000-0002-9222-1278, University of Canberra)
Year2005
Volume5
Issue4
Pages460-485
Publication date2005-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEthnicities (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1468-7968 • E-ISSN: 1741-2706
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1468796805058095
OpenAlexW2077508678
LanguageEN
Citations received46
References cited46

This article builds on recent efforts to cast the understanding of ethnic and racialized tensions less in terms of a coarse logic of racism than within an analytical frame of struggles over national belonging. This theme is developed with respect to intercultural relations in Australia, in all the complexities of its white settler, migrant, and indigenous formations. The article develops a ‘multiscalar’ focus that takes in the global circuits of movement and relationship linked to British colonialism and international migration, through to contests over the meanings, management and stewardship of local places. In so doing, we also highlight some contextually specific versions of ‘whiteness’ whose various mobilizations help to undo a sense of their fixed status as core attributes of Australian nationhood. The article concludes with a case from Jervis Bay, New South Wales, where contested imaginings of, and investments in, appropriate land uses, have given rise to disputes that are productively conceived in terms of a multiscalar politics of national belonging. Although thus grounded in the circumstances of Australian culture, we believe the core argument can be extended (with all the normal caveats) to other ex-British colonial, immigration nations

Argument (complex analysis · Colonialism · Immigration · Indigenous · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Racism · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity · Gender Studies · Law · Migration, Refugees, and Integration

Tools

Open DOISci-HubOpen Access