Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation
Faculty of Arts and Education
KPN 001 - Emeritus Professor Riaz Hassan - Australian Muslims: Indicators of Social Inclusion
KPN 002 - Professor Michael Humphrey -‘The Domestication and Securitisation of Muslims and Islam as a National Security Project’
KPN 003 - Professor Stephen Castles - Migration, Citizenship and Precarious Labour: Global and Regional Perspectives in Times of Crisis
KPN 004 - Professor Ruth Fincher - ‘Transnationalism and social inclusion in the city’
MPN 001 - Monika Biłas-Henne - Interpersonal Space of Erasmus Programme Students. The evidence for Multicultural Buffer
MPN 002 - Azam Othman - Myths and Realities of Intercultural Communication in Vision Schools: Towards 'One Malaysia'?
MPN 003 - Godwin Onu -
The Nigeria state and crisis of identity: Efforts made in crafting political unity in a deeply divided society.
MPN 004 -
Necmettin Gokkir - Reading the Qur'an in Diaspora : Society and Politics in European Muslim Immigrants
MPN 005 - Yaghoob Foroutan -
Socio-cultural Inclusion and Exclusion arising from Religious and Ethnic Diversity: Multicultural Analysis
MPN 006 - Anna Dimitriou - From aphasia to a celebration in language: Diasporic writers opening up dialogue between and within cultures
MPN 007 -
Melville Miranda - Multiculturism, Identity and Citizenship
MPN 008 - Leanne Cause - Fostering inclusive and ethical intercultural relations: The International Baccalaureate, international mindedness and the IB learner profile
MPN 009 - Andrzej Antoszek - Cultural (Mis)-Representations: African American Culture and its Local, (East-Central) European Appropriations
MPN 011 - Shah M. Nister J. Kabir - The representation of French Muslim minorities in a New Zealand newspaper
MPN 012 - Archana Parashar - Muslims in Australia and Family laws
MPN 013 - Neeti Trivedi - Building Identity: Architecture and Sustainability
MPN 014 - Farida Fozdar - The importance of Christianity in Australian national identity construction
MPN
015 - Davinia Thornley - Māori Identity by way of New Zealand Film or
Why “I don’t have to be a particular skin colour to feel beige”
MPN 016 -
On-Kwok Lai - The Emerging Nomadic Social (Sub-)Citizenship for Filial Piety in a Globalizing Asia? The Enigma of Transnational Home Help in Hyper-Modernizing Ageing Societies
MPN 017 - Yihua Hong - Korean Chinese Migrants in their Multiculturalising Ethnic Homeland-South Korea:
Challenges, Responses and Identity Questions
MPN 018 - Ruth Arber - Encounters with International Students: Reflections on Inclusive Pedagogy: Inflections of Language, Culture and Identity
MPN019 - Michelle Ann Miller - Migrants and Immigrants in Asia and the West: Challenges to Inclusionary Citizenship
MPN020 - Shikha Gupta - "New Media and Global Culture: A Case study of India"
MPN023 - Akeem Ayofe Akinwale - The Relevance of Indigenous Knowledge and Identities of Black Africans in Britain
MPN026 - Paul James O’Connor - Learning to be Muslim in Hong Kong: Youth and Everyday Multiculturalism beyond the West
MPN028 - Phiona Stanley - Performing foreigners: Attributed and appropriated roles and identities of Westerners teaching English in Shanghai
MPN029 - Yin Paradies - Building on our strengths: A framework to reduce race-based discrimination and support diversity in Victoria
MPN030 - Fethi Mansouri, Louise Jenkins & Lucas Walsh - Racism and its impact on the health and wellbeing of Australian youth: empirical and theoretical insights
MPN031 - Mohd. Shuhaimi Bin Haji Ishak - Cultural and Religious Tolerance: The Malaysian Experience
MPN032 - Ali Yousofi and Mozhgan Azimi Hashemi - Inter-ethnic relationship and its effect on universalism in Iran
MPN033 - Mozhgan Azimi Hashemi and Ali Yousofi - Intercultural communication and its effect on social distance in Iran
MPN034 - Brad Ruting - Migration, transnationalism and diasporic travel
MPN035 - Anne McNevin - Undocumented Citizens? Undocumented Migrants and Contestations of Citizenship in Los Angeles
MPN036 - Val Colic-Peisker - Immigration, social mobility and transformation of Australian multiculturalism
MPN037 - Rumel Halder - Bangladeshi Immigrant Diversity in Toronto: Exploring ‘Canadian Multiculturalism’ through ‘Bengali Culture’ Lenses
MPN038 - Samantha Balaton-Chrimes - Counting as Citizens: The case of the Nubians in the 2009 Kenyan census
MPN039 - Balambigai Balakrishnan - When there is no place like home:An exploration of transnational ties, connections and aspirations of Indonesian permanent migrants in Malaysia
MPN040 - Amartya Bag - Migration, Racism and Conflict: An Analysis from the Perspective of Globalisation
MPN041 - Michele Langfield - Jews in Melbourne: a post-migration community?
MPN042 -
Ela Ogru - Citizenship, Identity Politics and Social Inclusion/Exclusion: The Experiences of Youth from the Horn of Africa in Australia
MPN043 - Giancarlo Chiro - The Future of multiculturalism in Australia: Dabbling with gramsci’s Toolbox
MPN044 -
Camille Amanda La Brooy - (Mis)recognition, Moral Panics and Muslim Movements: Deconstructing Muslim youth identities in Britain.
MPN047 - Badru Ronald Olufemi - The Epistemology and the Logics of Ethnic Conflict within the Modern African State, and the Concept of Alajobi in Yoruba Cosmology
MPN048 -
Pamela Leach - ‘Commodified Citizenship in the Age of Security.’
MPN049 - Lejla Voloder - Exploring parameters of multicultural belonging with Bosnian migrants in Australia
MPN050 - Hadi Sohrabi and Karen Farquharso - Discourse and Policy: Muslims in Australia
MPN051 - Tanja Glusac - Shadows of the past: the role of architecture, place and memory in re-constructing the sense of self in a new built environment
MPN052 - Krista Lee-Jones - Globalised Transformations and Intersections: a human rights lens through which to view culture, identity and peace-building
MPN053 - Conrad Gershevitch - Localised Transformations and Intersections:
a novel human rights approach that respects culture and identity, and supports peace-building
MPN054 - Mercedeh Makoui -Identity Construction of Muslim Mothers in Two Australian Picture Books: A Discursive Study
MPN055 - Scott Downman - The Forgotten Family: Labour Migration and the Collapse of Traditional Values in Thailand's Tribal Communities
MPN056 - Mico Poonoosamy - Language Policies in South-Korea: Talk Anglo-Korean Epic resistance in the hub of globalization
MPN057 - Atsushi Takeda - Intergenerational Transnationalism: Japanese/Australian families as transnational actors
MPN058- Wolfgang Aschauer - Comparing perceptions of immigrants and of the host society. Intercultural views and relations in Salzburg, Austria
MPN059 - Xu Jingnan - Transnational Chinese Diasporic Network in NZ: www.skykiwi.co.nz
MPN060 - Neil Small - Infant mortality and migrant health in a Pakistani Muslim community in the UK
MPN061 - Nabila Jaber - Undoing the 'Ethnic', Normalising Identity
MPN062 - Selen Ayirtman Ercan - The deliberative politics of cultural diversity: Beyond interest and identity politics?
MPN063 - Di M. Tognetti Bordogna and Annalisa Ornaghi - “The 'badanti' (informal caregiver) phenomenon in Italy: characteristics and peculiarities of the access to the health care system”
MPN064 - Tae-Jun Kim - Citizenship, Multiculturalism in Korea
MPN065 - Kelly Parker - Transnational Migration Experiences of Australia's Diaspora in the United States
MPN066 - Kristina(Tina) Murphy- Enhancing cooperation with the police: An empirical study of ethnic minority groups in Australia
MPN067 - Katie Vasey - Boundaries of Belonging: Iraqi Refugees in Australia
MPN068 - Paul Obi-Ani - Scaling Protected Western Fence: The Fate of Nigerian Immigrants to Europe
MPN069 - Rachel Stevens - Mismanaging Multiculturalism: The Official English Movement in the United States.
MPN070 - Wan Munira Binti Wan Jaafar - Online Communities as a Medium for Social Integration and Social Capital: The Case of Malaysia
MPN071 - Amy Nethery - Meeting ‘community expectations’: populism and the deportation of long-term permanent residents from Australia
MPN072 - Katie Hepworth - Displaced borders: Discovering the nation within the city
MPN073 - Vittoria Grossi - Navigating Australian workplaces: perceived barriers by migrants and ‘locals’.
MPN074 - Mostofa Tarequl Ahsan - Migrated Bihari people of Syodpur in Bangladesh: Socio-cultural Aspect
MPN075 - Ali Yousofi - The impact of pilgrimage on social relationships and inter-cultural ties of the Shiite communities
MPN076 - Taghreed Jamal Al-deen - Islamophobia: Some Implications for Female Muslim Teachers.
MPN077 - Elena Ostanel - Practice of citizenship: the Mozambican immigration within the City of Johannesburg
MPN079 - Jalil Azizi and Mojtaba Hemayatkhah - An investigation about the ties of Afghan immigrants to the National Identity of Islamic Republic of Iran: teenagers and young generation residents in Jahrom, Iran
MPN080 - Joel Windle - Institutional responses to racism: the public pedagogy of immigration museums
MPN081 - Sarah Jameson - Fractured Portraits: Mapping the Faultlines
MPN082 - George Vasilev - Mending Wounded Relations: The Role of In-Group Dialogue in Divided Societies
MPN084 - Niranjala (Nina) Weerakkody - Discourses about ‘others’: An exploratory study of how international students’‘frame’ their opinions of Australians and other international students at an Australian university.
MPN085 - Tuba Boz - Social protection in Turkish communities in Germany and Australia
MPN086 - Rebecca Cameron - Pluralism, allegiance and transnational citizenship: the re-location of social and political identities.
MPN087 - Dvir Abramovich - Intercultural relations between the Jewish and Muslim Communities in Victoria
MPN088 - Lisa Elford - Development in the context of Borders: the Politics of Difference in Nkomazi, Mpumalanga
MPN089 - Angeline Ferdinand & Deborah Warr - Building Bridges for social inclusion in multi-cultural societies
MPN090 - Claire Loughnan - ‘Rethinking borderlines: Immigration Law and the capture of the refugee other’
MPN091 - Kayoko Ishii - Non-returnable stateless migrant in Japan
MPN092 - Teuku Zulfikar - Religious Identity of Indonesian-Australian Muslim Youth: Family, schooling and community
MPN093 - Mohammad Reza Pak - The role of the Prophet Mohammad in the establishment of citizenship rights in the Middle Ages
MPN094 - Laura Griffin - ‘It’s very hard over there; I am used to life in here’- Circular migration and the transnational lives of Basotho domestic workers in South Africa
MPN095 - Dennis Zuev - Ethnic relations in a multi-ethnic context: combining two scales of observation
MPN096 - Luara Ferracioli - Women’s Agency and a Burka Ban in Australia
MPN097 - Ho Thi Thanh Nga - The formation of Viet Nam Migrants’ socio- cultural space in Taiwan - Case study of Tainan city
MPN098 - Ms Rachel Woodlock - Muslim Identities in Australia:An analysis of Muslim perceptions of religious, ethnic and national identities.
MPN099 - Nayano Taylor-Neumann - Both sides of the story: Integration as a process of change in refugees and the community
MPN100 - Mr Adebola Ezekiel Akinsanya - Diaspora, Cyberspace and the Search for Democracy in Nigeria
MPN101 - Juliet Pietsch - Marriage Networks across the Islands: Filipino Migration from Cebu to Tasmania
MPN102 - Anita Harris - Youth, Multicultural Living and the Limits of Social Cohesion
MPN103 - D. L. Vasintha Veeran - Youth Migration: "To be or not to be"
MPN104 - Fanny Lauby - The Intrusion of Immigration Law in American Public Universities
MPN105 - Sabine Krajewski - Cultural transition and identity
MPN106 - Tannis Atkinson- Neoliberalism and neo-colonialism in adult basic education
MPN108 - Cunzhen Yang - A Weekend Chinese School in Melbourne: Students' identities, culture and education
MPN109 - Anthonella Muanza - Conflicts and internal migrations in the Eastern Congo: Roles of States and nonprofit organizations, issues and perspectives for the regional sustainable development
MPN110 - Hao Duan - Peak oil and temporary migration: developing a model to predict possible impacts of energy stress
MPN111 - Penelope Goward -Phir bhi dil hain Hindustani – Bollywood in Indian Households
MPN112 - Iris Acejo - Transnational Crews and their Ways of Belongingness
MPN113 - Alice Le Clézio - Path to citizenship: Acquisition of citizenship and inclusion of immigrants through military enlistment in the U.S.
MPN114 - Christina Ho & Barbara Bloch -The Politics of Recognition & Intercultural Relations in Australia
MPN117 - Bruno Mascitelli & Simone Battiston - Towards a common model of expatriate voting rights? The case of Italian, Irish and Greek nationals abroad
MPN118 - Karen Block - Conducting socially inclusive research: reflections on working with refugee youth
MPN119 - Kakan Barua -A cross-cultural evaluation of critical incidents: Intercultural Effectiveness Training
MPN120 - Faorligh Hunter & Atem Atem - From the Transnational to the Local: factors shaping the lives of young people who have had a refugee experience
MPN121 - Steve Riley -Immigrant Multiculturalism and Indigenous Rights; exploring some normative tensions within liberal democratic theory
MPN122 - Shizuka Abe & On-Kwok Lai - Positioning Cultural Idiosyncrasy and Identity in Multicultural Cyberspaces: Interfacing Languages and Cross-Cultural Virtual Encounters in a Globalizing World
MPN123 - Les Morgan - Paki on-a-bike
MPN124 - Moeko Minagawa - Cosmopolitan vision of expatriates :a case of Japanese employees working in China
MPN125 - Mahama Tawat - Why different ? a study of Danish and Swedish Integration policies since the mid-1960s.
MPN126 - Hirohisa Takenoshita - Segmented assimilation, transnationalism and educational attainment among children of Brazilian migrants in Japan
MPN127 - Gloria Arlini - Silence and Strategies: (Re)articulation of femininities in an Indonesian Chinese family
MPN128 - Akina Mikami - Realpolitiking cosmopolitan ethics: media practices of communication practitioners in international humanitarian agencies
MPN129 - Helen McKernan & Louise Dunn - Getting the message across: Intercultural knowledge for environmental health officers
MPN130 - Kalpana Goel & Rupesh Goel - Perceptions of temporary and permanent transnational migrants settling in regional South Australia
MPN131 - Laavanya Kathiravelu - Informal care networks in Dubai
MPN132 - Fethi Mansouri & Michele Lobo - “Sometimes we have to start first, otherwise the bridge will never be built”: Muslims and the Australian way of life
MPN133 - Vince Marotta - Multicultural places and the idea of home
MPN134 - Nicole Oke - Transnational Politics? The politics of temporary migration in Australia
MPN 135 - Steve Francis - Bureaucracy and Multiculturalism: New Settlers, Social Inclusion and the Ethno-Politics of Successful Community Advocacy
Ms Monika Biłas-Henne
Warsaw School of Social Psychology, Poland
Abstract:
Multicultural buffer is the main concept in our study. It refers to a group/community of sojourners who shield themselves from external reality of the host culture and cope with it through mechanisms of internal support. We believe that through the buffer stress may be dimished but it inhibits acquisition of the host culture competences. Three projects, aimed to explore social networks and social support of international students, participants of Erasmus exchange programme will be reported.
Participants were representatives of most European nations, more than 2000 respondents. The survey was conducted in EU member and candidate countries using the online methodology. The consequences of being a part of a multicultural group (so called multicultural buffer) for socio-cultural and psychological adaptation to the host culture were investigated. The data bring strong evidence for the existence of multicultural buffer, which inhibits contacts with the local culture but reinforce the transnationalism of international students.
Bio - Ms Monika Bilas-Henne
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Dr. Azam Othman
Institute of Education, IIUM, Malaysia
Abstract:
This paper reports preliminary findings of the qualitative data of a larger study of the assessments of intercultural communication in selected Vision schools across Malaysia. The main question is to what extent does Vision Schools foster racial interaction among students of different ethnic groups? Vision school refers to the primary school complex that places a Chinese, an Indian and a National School at one compound. The three schools share common facilities. Nevertheless the recent data shows that only Vision school in Subang Jaya meet the requirement original concept of vision school. The rest witnessed only National School (Sekolah Kebangsaan) and Indian-type National School (Sekolah jenis Kebangsaan India) answered the call to establish Vision school. It is imperative given this observation that the main philosophy behind the establishment of Vision schools is revisited and evaluated by investigating whether the school becomes a platform for pupils and teachers of different ethnic groups to engage in effective intercultural communication. The mission of Vision schools is seen as on par with the current national agenda of ‘ONE Malaysia’ coined by The Prime Minister of Malaysia which calls for the three major races in Malaysia to be unified and project themselves as being one, rather than being different. In that respect, the establishment of the Vision schools remains significant and fits with the current national agenda which is to further enhance national integration, in the hope to reach the state of ‘ONE Malaysia’ in various aspects of life, including in the educational system.
Key words: national integration, intercultural communication, multicultural education, national education policy.
Bio - Dr. Azam Othman
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Professor Godwin Onu
Department of Political Science Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria.
Abstract:
One dominant character of Nigerian state is the prevalence of ethnic and religious divisions and their attendant conflicts. The acknowledgement of these factors has largely shaped the content and structure of the Nigerian constitution. The fallout of the constitutional engineering designed to mitigate the adverse consequences of identity and ethnic xenophobia in Nigeria’s political space largely influences interpersonal and group relations, economic development, political outcomes, and the average Nigerian’s perception of greater other and realities. However, the major gruesome dimension is their attendant conflicts, mutual suspicion, bureaucratic tradition, and service delivery. It has also affected character of migration and urban behaviour as well as the whole issue of citizenship. Some fundamental questions that could arise from these problematic are: How has the problems of ethnicity and identity affected the nature of Nigerian politics?; What are the impacts on group relations and issues of citizenship and human rights?; In what ways have these characterizations affected urbanization, urbanism and migration?; What strategies of compromise and accommodation are put in place by the state to mitigate the adverse effects of these divisions? How have issues of identity and ethnicity affect the concept of trust and confidence building within the Nigerian political space? etc
This paper shall attempt to answer the above questions raised and critically examine the Nigerian State its dominant character encapsulated in issues of ethnicity, identity and citizenship as problematicized above and assess how they have shaped Nigerian Politics, bureaucracy, issues of trust and economic development. It shall also look at the consequences of character of identity and ethnicity on urbanization and citizenship. Finally, we shall examine formal and informal measures by the Nigerian State in mitigating the adverse consequences of identity and ethnic behaviour on the state, politics and bureaucracy, build trust and accommodation in the urban space and proffer solutions.
Bio - Professor Godwin Onu
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Assistant Professor Necmettin Gokkir
Istanbul Univesity,
Theology Faculty,
Department of Qur’anic Studies, Turkey
Abstract:
Muslim societies have today become part of the West as the result of complex nature of migration process. Muslims mostly came to the West as immigrants to gain employment, raise family and live quality in the new host countries during the last half of the century. But, today Muslims are no longer primarily immigrant communities but rather second and third generations participating in civil societies and professional economic life, in spite of the fact that they continue to be identified as religious and ethnic minorities. They increasingly want to strip off immigrant minority position and integrate themselves into Europe. With citizenship, they enable to carry out their religious duties on one hand, and on the other, they are demanded a high degree of social responsibility to the host society. In order to successfully integrate them into Western society, they have undergone a kind of religious reformation which reconstructs the systems of society and politics.
In the paper, I argue that the Qur’an has been persistently affected in diasporic society and culturally interwoven with European values. I persistently underline how exegetical writings are linked to, or generated by, various discourses and debates in particular within European values (democracy, liberalism, individualism, equality etc.). Cultural ethics emanating from secular, liberal even multicultural Europe create internal transformations within European face of Islam; reshape the lenses for reading the Qur’an.
Bio - Assistant Professor Necmettin Gokkir
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Dr Yaghoob Foroutan
University of Mazandaran, Iran
Abstract:
This paper explains inclusion and exclusion arising from religious and ethnic diversity from sociological perspective. It focuses on employment status, which accounts for a key determinant of immigrants' settlement (Bouma 1994; VandenHeuvel & Wooden 1996). This is also a research area which was paid very little attention in the existing literature on the Australian Muslim immigrants who are the target group of this study. Despite the fact that this group of immigrants are substantially divers by ethnic origin, they are considered in the literature either as a single group resulting in an incomplete and misleading knowledge or only few particular ethnic communities of them are paid attention leading to a strong emphasis on discrimination. Accordingly, this study considers all major ethnic groups in order to provide more careful investigation and comprehensive knowledge and to shed further light on the existing literature. The multicultural context of this study receiving Muslims throughout the world also provides a unique human and social laboratory to survey the association between the religion of Islam and social change, and to distinguish appropriately the role of religion per se from that of diverse socio-cultural settings. This is particularly the case about the association between gender and Islam, which is observed as a dilemma in the existing literature (Foroutan 2009). The paper also considers the second generation status providing further evidence to explain inclusion and exclusion arising from religious and ethnic diversity. Using special tabulations of the 2001 census, this paper benefits the use of logistic regression analysis.
Bio - Dr Yaghoob Foroutan
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Ms Anna Dimitriou
PhD candidate, Deakin University, Australia
MPN 006 - Read Full paper
Abstract:
Abstract: Contemporary Greek Australian literature presents a movement beyond a poetics of nostalgia. It is complex and dynamic and analysing the various layers within certain texts by Antigone Kefala, Dean Kalimnios and Styllianos Charkianakis I hope to show the experience of acculturation that occurs after two generations of migration. In this way we can see evidence through literature that the migrant experience is a positive one, despite the difficulties encountered in the initial phase of migration. The silenced voices are now speaking in their own tongue as well as in the language of their host nation. The literature that is emerging in Australia presents an opportunity for cross cultural dialogue which can enhance understanding between cultures on the global scale.
Bio - Ms Anna Dimitriou
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Mr Melville Miranda
PhD candidate, Charles Stuart University, Australia
Abstract:
As nations develop their understanding of different cultures, they must be able to be open to the idea of global citizenship. The way that individuals learn and interact with those from other cultures can have an enormous impact on the development of this global community, and on the fostering of multicultural understanding. With the economic state of the world, and the ever-changing socio-political structure, there has never been a more important time to understand what citizenship is, and what it has the potential to overcome. True citizens can see beyond petty cultural differences and create an environment of social dialogue that crosses beyond boundaries of country and region. When this is achieved it becomes clear that multiculturalism is important for achieving global security and understanding (Baylis, 2008 ). This cultural attitude towards acceptance of other countries opens the door towards cultural diplomacy. Cultural diplomacy, as opposed to traditional forms of arbitration, can come from individuals with a strong sense of social responsibility (Spiro, 2008 ). In this context, the paper is creative and will analyse Multiculturism, Identity and Citizenship.
Bio - Mr Melville Miranda
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Ms Leanne Cause
PhD candidate, Deakin University, Australia
MPN 008 - Read Full paper
Abstract:
The introduction of the International Baccalaureate Organisation (IBO) has instigated interest in the term ‘international mindedness’ and represents a significant change in the function of education around the world. This paper contextualises student’s exposure to international mindedness in IB schools. Firstly, I will review the IB learner profile, which is a set of outcomes expressed as ten attributes that are believed to offer teachers and students in any IB school an explicit and common definition of an internationally minded person – the IB defining an internationally minded person as someone who is tolerant, accepting, open-minded and someone who values all citizens regardless of race, ethnicity, gender or ability. Then I will explore the effects of exposure to international mindedness in IB schools and the importance of teachers being open-minded when developing international mindedness to avoid indoctrinating students into ‘Western’ ways of being internationally minded.The main argument is that the ten attributes of the IB learner profile can be interpreted as the ‘one set way’ of being internationally minded and as such, the IB learner profile can limit each student’s own expression of international mindedness, causing migrant and minority groups to experience a sense of exclusion. Given that the majority of IB schools exist in the Western world, the teaching of international mindedness has the potential to exclude students from minority groups from finding their own expression of international mindedness. If teachers acknowledge that there are different ways of expressing international mindedness, then the teaching of international mindedness in IB schools can play a vital role in ensuring that students of today develop values and attributes that embrace ethical, inclusive intercultural relations.
Bio - Ms Leanne Cause
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Dr Andrzej Antoszek
Catholic University of Lublin, Poland
MPN 009 - Read Full paper
Abstract:
In the times when American culture and its various representations seem to have acquired almost a global and universal status, one may wonder whether various local reflections of the culture are considerably different from what may called the original. However, once appropriated by other, local cultures, American culture undergoes changes and transmutations, many of which lead to the emergence of hybrid and often somewhat unpremeditated new forms, where the relationship between the signified and the signifier begins to blur. The goal of the multimedia presentation would be then to show and discuss many of the new hybrids, using the examples of African-American culture and its “trans-nations” in, mainly, countries of East-Central Europe. The presentation would also some ground for discussion about such notions as the signified vs. the signifier, copy vs. the original, the local vs. the global etc.
Bio - Dr Andrzej Antoszek |
Mr Shah M. Nister J. Kabir
PhD Candidate, Department of Media, Film and Communication, University of Otago, New Zealand
MPN 011 - Read Full paper
Abstract:
This paper aims to examine the representation of the October 27 to November 15, 2005 suburban riots in France in a New Zealand newspaper, namely the Press. The riots shook the French society and had sparked debates on issues such as multiculturalism, assimilation, ethnicity, Islamic fundamentalism and racial relations. The relationships between race, religion and poverty created a dangerous equation in France, and their destabilizing effects are visible in the current French society. On the one hand, there are discourses that present French and Maghrebi/Muslim identities as dichotomous. Some political parties (for example, France’s National Front) use anti-Islamic slogans and oppose immigration of Muslims purportedly to defend their French identity. The separate existence of the Muslims in the "suburbs of Islam” and their isolation from the mainstream deprives them of claims to national identity. On the other hand, some argue that religious or ethnic identities are not in conflict with the national feeling of belonging. Others argue that “global culture flows” create difference and “an intensified sense of criticism or attachment to home politics in displaced population” and consequently, migrant communities are assaulted by the desires and fantasies depicted by the mass media. Against this backdrop this paper will examine how a New Zealand national newspaper, The Press, a part of social institution of a secular and tolerant society, represented the sub-urban riots involving Muslims in France in 2005 and what implications this representation suggests for issues of race, ethnicity, religion and national identity in France.
Bio - Mr Shah M. Nister J. Kabir
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Associate Professor Archana Parashar
Division of Law, Macquarie University
Abstract:
The unitary Family Law in Australia is designed to accommodate plurality. The very Act that proclaims a universal and exclusive law for everyone also facilitates huge diversity in the actual arrangements people make under it. The fact that it denies or at least downplays the actual plurality raises the central issue for this paper: the role of legal ideology of universal legal rights in maintaining the hegemony of the dominant social order.
This idea deserves closer scrutiny: the family law in Australia claims to be egalitarian, progressive and just. This characterization of family law, among other things, allows for constructing the mythical Australian identity and the political claim that those who choose to come to Australia should agree to live by its values including its family law. In this way no scope is left for arguing that some of us should be allowed to be governed by our ‘religious’ laws. Anyone wishing to depart from these high principles of uniform family law thus can be easily labeled unpatriotic, not progressive and an ungrateful outsider. The ideology of a unitary family law thus serves to maintain the hegemony of state laws, of the dominant conceptions of social cohesion and the desirability of a national identity. The discourse of the recognition of religious personal laws, and in particular the Sharia law has to be understood in this context of the wider function of Family law as an ideology for maintaining the hegemony of a world view.
Bio - Associate Professor Archana Parashar |
Ms Neeti Trivedi
Master of Philosophy of Architecture, Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Australia
MPN 013 - Read Full paper
Abstract:
The paper aims to explore the issues related to identity elevation of the migrants by reinforcing their socio-cultural dimensions through their built form. Identity is the crest in the development of both people and place. Herein the study attempts to create a dialogue between identity and built environment and questions whether identity for the migrants can be re-created and re-invented by a new approach to the design of built form and would it resolve the issues for migrants, who are looked upon as deficient, different and abnormal. Questions of ‘who we are’ are often intimately related to questions of ‘where we are’ (Dixon, Durrheim, 2000, p: 27). Herein the interrelated dimensional structures of Self-Identity and Place-Identity are systems of defining and expressing the personal identity of the individual in relation to the physical environment (Proshansky, 1978). However, the study intends to overcome the alienation over migrants by bringing in a new approach of design of built form for the development of the migrants. The new approach is to reconcile social and physical sustainability by creating a livable space for the migrants and give them a sense of ownership leading to social empowerment. All this is connected to the notion of “identity”, the belonging of individuals to groups and ideas, linked with the place. Finally, the paper will not only contribute to the philosophical discourses on identity and built form, but will also add up to the social sustainability issues of growing inequality and the degradation of human living conditions.
Key words: Identity, built environment, architecture, sustainability, empowerment
Bio - Ms Neeti Trivedi
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Dr Farida Fozdar
Senior Lecturer, Sociology and Community Development, Murdoch University
Abstract:
This paper considers the construction of Australian national identity in relation to religious identity. After considering the place of religion in the modern secular nation state, it explores several data sources (observation, interviews, surveys, political speeches, the Australian citizenship test booklet) to identify both overt and covert examples of the conflation of national and religious identities. The findings appear to support Mickelthwait and Wooldridge’s recent argument that ‘God is Back’, though in subtler, and more insidious, forms than they suggest. The paper considers possible implications for minority religions, such as Islam, and for issues of social cohesion/inclusion.
Bio - Dr Farida Fozdar
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Dr Davinia Thornley
Senior Lecturer,
Department of Media, Film, and Communication,
University of Otago
MPN 015 - Read Full paper
Abstract
This paper examines the specifically indigenous/Māori worldview that certain participants brought to a series of focus groups I held with expatriate New Zealanders in London mid-2006. The participants were questioned about their experiences of watching New Zealand films, now that they were living overseas, in order to understand their perspectives on national identity. While my findings regarding the responses of the majority of the participants have been published (Thornley, 2009), I remained convinced that additional work was needed to adequately represent the unique perspectives of the final group, four women who self-identified as being involved with Ngāti Ranana (a London-based Māori culture club). Their focus group became both a quantitatively (in terms of responses) and qualitatively (in terms of interaction) different undertaking for me from those I had already completed.
This presentation addresses the following themes that arose: 1) the constitution of Ngāti Ranana and the women’s connection to the club; and 2) their ongoing, problematic issues of identity vis-à-vis white and minority Londoners who tend to lump the participants into one catchall category of antipodean ‘colonial subjects.’ Given these preoccupations, New Zealand films function as simply one way to kick-start a much larger conversation that spans issues of identity, race, class, privilege (or the lack thereof), cross-cultural connection, and belonging—in all their myriad forms.
Bio - Dr Davinia Thornley
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Professor On-Kwok Lai
Graduate School of Policy Studies, Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan
Abstract:
Due to (female) labour shortage and the preferred caring for the elderly at home in most ageing societies, the import of guest nursing/domestic helpers becomes an attractive policy options. The flexible labour regime in East Asia enables foreign home helpers (FHH) to take care of the elderly. Over 230,000 FHH are working in Kong Kong, whilst Taiwan employs around 150,000 FHH to serve the frail aged; Japan experiments it too. FHH serve the aged 24-hour as they live-in, paralleling the 24-hour global production regime under globalization!
Socio-culturally, the “outsourcing” and “sub-contracting” of the traditional custom, filial piety (FP, respect and taking care of the seniors), confirms the change of home care regime in 21st Century. FHH are the main carriers for the (withering) cultural virtue of FP, yet they are at best a nomadic sub-class in terms of social citizenship following T.H.Marshall’s evolutionary conceptualization on the social citizenship from the political and civil ones. But the demand for guest workers’ FP-compatible job performance is contradictory to their nomadic social (sub-) citizenship (enabling minimal social inclusion) – FHH are both outsiders and insiders of the socio-cultural norms making!
Examining the implications of a flexible labour regime for caring the ageing population and the emergence of new, nomadic, sub-classes of social citizenship and temporal residency, in a globalizing world, this paper provides illustrations from fieldwork in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan to highlight the new labour process of home helping; ending with critical remarks on non-governmental organizations’ transnational advocacies for FHH’s socio-economic rights.
Bio - Professor On-Kwok Lai |
Ms Yihua Hong
PhD candidate,
School of Asian Studies,
University of Auckland,
New Zealand
Abstract:
South Korea’s official policy has recently changed from that of a 'homogeneous' nation to one promoting multiculturalism. Korea’s multiculturalism is a sudden development for Korean Chinese and it comes as a great challenge for them. This is because Korean Chinese have long considered Korea as their ethnic homeland, and their massive return migration to Korea in the last two decades was very much based on such a notion. For Korean Chinese, Korea's multicultural policy is a two-edged sword. First of all, it is a welcome development as they have been discriminated in Korea due to their low socio-economic status as migrant workers as well as their being perceived as 'overly Sinicized'. On the other hand, Korea’s multiculturalism is considered as a betrayal of the nation’s traditional ethnic homogeneity and nationalism, and Korean Chinese would lose their privileges as ethnic Koreans in Korea. Considering these changes in Korea, this study will investigate the impacts of Korea's multiculturalim on Korean Chinese, the ways in which Korean Chinese perceive Korea’s multiculturalism on the basis of their traditional understanding of ‘nation’ and ‘ethnicity’, and the ways in which Korean Chinese are coping with the new challenge.
MA thesis: “Identity transformations of Korean Chinese migrant brides in their ethnic homeland-South Korea”
Bio - Ms Yihua Hong
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Dr Ruth Arber
Senior Lecturer, School of Education,
Faculty of Arts and Education,
Deakin University
MPN 018 - Read Full paper
Abstract:
I am interested in the multiple ways culture is understood and practised in demographically diverse and internationally networked classrooms; the relationship between these practices and the categorization of identities; and the implications of these understandings for the development of inclusive curriculum. My focus in this paper is the ways that teachers understand culture when they discuss their teaching practice for fee-paying international students, the relationship between these understandings and the identification of their students and the consequences of their thinking for the ways in which students are included within the school curriculum. Contemporary curriculum initiatives call for pedagogies which provide all students (including international students) with access to thinking, interrogative and international life skills Modern notions, exemplified within multicultural curricula, envision culture as reified and unchanging and as linked to common behaviours and understandings exhibited by cohesive, and essentially homogenous, ethnic groups The normative terms and systemic conditions of local organisational culture and pedagogies mediate these understandings and intersect with others about belonging, commodification and postcolonialism to frame ways that teachers approach their pedagogy. It is this move to curriculum change, as it is framed by teachers understanding of student culture and identity and mediated by the institutional culture conditions of a Melbourne school, which is being interrogated here.
Bio - Dr Ruth Arber
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Dr Michelle Ann Miller
Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia
Abstract:
Ethnic and religious tensions are on the upsurge as states around the world struggle to manage assertions of diversity and difference from increasing migrant and immigrant minority populations. Yet despite facing a common challenge, countries in Asia and the West have often tackled migrant and immigrant minority issues using starkly divergent techniques. Since the mid-twentieth century, Western countries have generally strived towards more egalitarian and inclusive forms of national membership after a period of massive reversals in citizenship. Over the same period the policies of countries in Asia have varied more dramatically, ranging from violent military repression on the one hand to democratically accommodating migrant and immigrant minorities through the conferral of full and equal citizenship on the other hand.
This paper explores some of the key challenges to inclusionary citizenship for migrants and immigrants in Asia and the West. It considers the points of correspondence and departure between the geographies and historical trajectories of citizenship in the two regions. In this, the paper questions common assumptions about the universal applicability and relevance of Western dominated citizenship theory to Asian experiences of migration and immigration. The aim is not to simply present a model of ‘Asian citizenship’ as an equally myopic response to the universalising claims of Western citizenship theory, but rather, to consider the potential of Asia as an empirically rich laboratory for theorising about the nexus between migration, immigration and citizenship, both in an intra-Asia context as well as in terms of the region’s contribution to the ever-growing body of citizenship theory more broadly.
Bio - Dr Michelle Ann Miller |
Ms Shikha Gupta
Jagannth International Management School, affiliated to Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, New Delhi.
Abstract:
Samuel P. Huntington forecasted in “The clash of civilizations” that ‘conflict between civilizations will be the latest phase in the evolution of conflict in the modern world’. And that ‘the great division among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural’. But the globalization in general and global culture in particular has challenged this theory. As Malcon Waters puts it, ‘we can expect the economy and polity to be globalized to the extent that they are culturalised’. The information revolution has allowed a global culture in positive sense that national boundaries and differences have blurred. Global culture, although has faced pejoratives, but have brought common concerns to embrace. McDonalds are proud to take up the cudgels of the peace campaign across the globe in the age of nuclear warfare through an attempt of promoting global culture. Furthermore, Digitalisation and the ICTs have resulted in realization of what Marshal McLuhan has termed as “global village”. This paper attempts to elucidate the emergence of global culture in the process of ‘globalization’ and the role of the media and communication in binding people together and converge on the pattern of their believes inspite of diverge local and national patterns. It pulls together various media and communication processes and plot a ‘way forward’ for the positive role of new media in promoting global culture for common human concerns in general and India in particular. In a culturally diverse society like India new media has played major a role in crossing these intercultural impediment.
Bio - Ms Shikha Gupta
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Mr Akeem Ayofe Akinwale
Department of Sociology, University of Ibadan, Nigeria
Abstract:
Africans remains relevant in the West despite their condemnation in Western paradigms. Yet, Africans’ development efforts suffer setbacks. This paper examines the relevance of indigenous knowledge and identities of Black Africans in Britain. Dependency and Structuration Theories are employed in explaining African domination or subordination in Britain. Using 12 Focus Group Discussions and 24 In-depth Interviews, data were collected from 120 Black Africans (Kenyans, Nigerians, and South Africans), who were purposively selected in different cities across Britain. An ethnographic technique was used for data analysis. Findings principally show a general agreement on the difficulties in adapting African indigenous knowledge with the British culture. Different strategies for overcoming Africans’ experience of culture shocks and subordination in Britain were discussed. While there was a consensus on the contributions of Africans to development in Britain, dissenting views were expressed concerning the relevance of Africans’ presence in Britain to situations at homes in Africa. The majority of the participants attributed Africans’ contributions to the development in Britain to African indigenous knowledge system comprising culture of hard work, frugality, investment, social capital, marriage, and prayer. Africans values have been blended with the British socio-cultural identities. However, concerns were raised over an emerging ‘double disaster’, a situation in which some Africans in Britain are perceived as strangers at home and abroad. It is concluded that regardless of the living standards in Britain Africans there would actively participate in African development. Therefore, Africans’ contributions to cross-cultural developments could be utilised in boosting the image of Africa.
Bio - Mr Akeem Ayofe Akinwale Akeem Ayofe Akinwale is a lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Faculty of the Social Sciences, University of Ibadan Nigeria. He obtained his Master Degree in Sociology in 2004 and has completed his doctoral thesis. He teaches Cultures and African Social Institutions, among other courses. His areas of research and interest include industrial sociology and development studies. He is an erudite scholar with considerable experience as a teacher, researcher and supervisor of undergraduate and postgraduate research projects. He is a prolific and versatile writer, with several papers to his credit in learned journals within and outside Africa. He is an active member of the International Sociological Association (ISA) and Global Development Network (GDN); a Laureate of the Council for the Development of Social Sciences Research in Africa (CODESRIA) and a Fellow of Africa Regional Sexuality Resource Centre (Ford Foundation project). He has participated actively in several international conferences across Africa and in the United Kingdom and parts of Latin America. He is also an active member of various professional associations. |
Dr Paul James O’Connor
Doctoral Graduate from University of Queensland, Australia
Abstract:
This paper reorients the debate on Muslim minorities in the West by discussing a multicultural group of young Muslims growing up in Hong Kong. The different ways in which youth learn to be Muslim provides an insight towards Islam in Hong Kong and the challenges that Muslims face. It highlights how information from parents, friends, and secular and religious Institutions is combined in the understandings and decisions that Muslims make regarding their daily lives. Their everyday anecdotes highlight how culture mutates through migration, and provides an account of the different ways in which young Muslims balance the Multicultural demands upon them. Crucially the Hong Kong focus provides a unique contrast to work on Muslim youth in the West by highlighting how Islam is not a volatile issue in the territory. Young Muslims in Hong Kong by distinction enjoy a sense of freedom and safety unalike that of their peers in the West despite rarely being as socially free. I argue that the accounts of the youth in the study challenge understandings of Islam that exist in the West and highlight how the cultural heritage of a region impinges greatly on that society’s perception of its minorities, and in turn its type of multiculturalism. The paper concludes by calling for a greater focus on multiculturalism throughout the globe, broadening debate that has tended to be dominated by accounts of multiculturalism in the West.
Bio - Dr Paul James O’Connor
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Ms Phiona Stanley
PhD Student, Monash University
Abstract:
This paper examines professional roles and personal identities attributed to Western transnationals teaching English in Shanghai. It focuses on mismatches between appropriated and attributed roles and identities, examining ways in which socially constructed expectations about Western foreigners as a category may influence the lived realities and intercultural experiences both of individual transnational people and of the local people with whom they interact. Occidentalism, the mirror image of Said’s (1979) Orientalism frames the study, and Butler’s (1990) work on performativity informs the discussion of identities as performances. Blumer’s (1969) symbolic interactionism frames the intercultural interpretation of performances as symbols. The context is teachers at a university in Shanghai, and the study found a constructed notion among students, perhaps created by images of Westerners in the Chinese media, that ‘foreigners are fun’. This was found to put pressure on the teachers to entertain students in lieu of teaching them, perhaps by performing as ‘funny, foreign monkeys’, as one participant perceived the identity attributed to Western teachers. Such performances may serve to perpetuate constructed identity myths, and the study found negative Othering on both sides, with the students regarded as immature by the teachers, and the teachers regarded as incompetent by the students. This may have important consequences beyond the classroom door; for many of the participants this was the first extensive encounter with foreign Others, and the pressure on teachers to perform attributed roles may serve to create and entrench reductionist views of foreign Others more generally.
Bio - Ms Phiona Stanley |
Dr Yin Paradies
Research Fellow, School of Population Health, The University of Melbourne
Yin Paradies*, Natascha Klocker** and Kim Webster***
* Research Fellow, School of Population Health, The University of Melbourne
**VicHealth Research Leader, VicHealth and the Centre for Health Policy, Programs and Economics, The University of Melbourne
***Senior Program Advisor, Participation and Equity for Health Unit, VicHealth
Abstract:
Building on our strengths: A framework to reduce race-based discrimination and support diversity in Victoria aims is a report developed through a partnership between the McCaughey Centre and the Onemda Koori Health Unit at the University of Melbourne and VicHealth. The framework is a response to the continued prevalence of race-based discrimination in Victoria. This report has its origins in a concern about the health impacts of discrimination and the health benefits of supporting diversity. It is based on a wide ranging international review of literature and practice. While recognising the need for continuing social and economic reform to reduce race-based discrimination, the framework provides guidance for practitioners by identifying themes and strategies to reduce discrimination and support diversity at the individual, organisational and community levels. Themes for action include: increasing empathy, raising people’s awareness of their own beliefs, providing accurate information, assisting people to recognise incompatible beliefs, increasing personal accountability, breaking down barriers between groups, increasing organisational accountability and promoting positive social norms. The Framework outlines a number of strategies for applying these themes, including: organisational development, communications and social marketing, legislative and policy reform, direct participation programs, community strengthening activities and advocacy. Key settings for action are also identified along with the implications for future policy and planning to reduce discrimination and support diversity in Victoria.
Bio - Dr Yin Paradies
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Dr Louise Jenkins, Research Fellow, Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Faculty of Arts and Education, Deakin University
Professor Fethi Mansouri, Director, Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Faculty of Arts and Education, Deakin University
Dr Lucas Walsh, Foundation for Young Australians
Abstract:
This paper will discuss the theoretical underpinnings and the empirical aspects of a recently completed national study on the impact of racism on the health and wellbeing of young Australians. This study was undertaken by Deakin University’s Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation in partnership with the Foundation for Young Australians.
The research employed a mixed methodology approach which included a cross-tabulated survey and individual interviews designed to elicit data on experiences of racism and its impact on social health and wellbeing. The paper will include a discussion of methodological challenges and will provide a succinct summary of key findings and their implications for managing race relations and racism in secondary schools.
Bio - Dr Louise Jenkins, Prof. Fethi Mansouri & Dr Lucas Walsh
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Dr. Mohd. Shuhaimi Bin Haji Ishak
International Islamic University, Malaysia
MPN 031 - Read Full paper
Abstract:
Malaysia, a multiethnic and multi-religious society in Southeast Asia, has a population of 27.7 million comprising three major ethnicities, consisting of 67% Malays/Bumiputras, 24.7% Chinese, and 7.4% Indians, along with many smaller minority groups. The population is unevenly distributed, with some 20 million citizens residing in the Malay Peninsula, while East Malaysia is relatively less populated. By constitutional definition, Malays are Muslims who practice Malay norms and culture. The Malay language is the official language. The Chinese population in Malaysia is mostly Buddhist or Taoist. The Chinese in Malaysia speak a variety of dialects including Mandarin, Hokkien, Cantonese, Hakka and Teochew. The Indians in Malaysia are mainly Hindu Tamils and thus their native language is Tamil. The constitution declares Islam as the official religion, but guarantees religious freedom. Malaysian observes a number of festivals according to the religious faith of its people. The Malays celebrate their Muslim festivals such as Aidil Fitri and Aidil Adha. The Chinese in Malaysia celebrate festivals like Chinese New Year and Chap Goh Mei where cultural celebrations such as the lion dances and Chingay procession take place. For the Indians, apart from the Deepavali celebration, the festival of light, the Thaipusam is a celebration where more than one million people flock to Batu Caves. Thus, with its ethnic diversity, Malaysia is unique as it accommodates the differences in culture and religious belief.
Bio - Dr. Mohd. Shuhaimi Bin Haji Ishak
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Dr Ali Yousofi,
Assistant professor of political sociology, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad
Ms Mozhgan Azimi Hashemi,
PhD student of economic sociology and development, Ferdowsi University & ACECR branch Mashhad
Abstract:
Social relationship encompasses an integrated collection of meaningful human actions in a certain context. A major form of social relationship is cultural relationship in which ideas is exchanged .This paper argues that cultural relationship and the exchange of ideas and values among various ethnic groups gradually leads to the formation of universal values and norms and the broadening of an intellectual viewpoint. These universal values go beyond the particularistic values of any specific culture and assume a universalistic character. In such a condition, an intellectual context exists for the members of ethnic groups to engage in the collective and convergent actions. This paper is based on the results of a comparative study conducted during 2000-2001 of eight ethnic groups in Iran (Persian, Turkish, Baluch, Turkman, Talesh, Arab, Kurd and Lour) and illustrates that cultural relationship between ethnic groups promotes universalism amongst different ethnic minorities. The research examined the cross-cultural relationship and the exchange of ideas amongst ethnic minorities on the basis of three characteristics: symmetry, intensity and generality. Correlation analysis of two variables of ethnic cultural relationship and universalism amongst ethnic groups indicates that cross-cultural relationship fosters universalism. Therefore, we can conclude that universal values are encouraged by stronger cross-cultural relations and this becomes the prerequisite for social integration within a multiethnic society like Iran.
Bio - Ms Mozhgan Azimi Hashemi & Dr Ali Yousofi
Dr. Ali Yousofi is assistant professor of Sociology in Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran. His studies and researches are concentrated on the political sociology and the sociology of religion. He has done or directed some of national survey studies in the recent decade in Iran including : " The national and ethnical identity(2000)" ," The values and attitudes(2003)" and " The societal integration(2005) ". In addition, he has written some articles and policy papers in Persian including : " The political legitimation of state(2004) " , The voting behavior(2005) "," The sense of citizenship (2009)" and " the ethnocentrism and between-group relationships" (2009) in Iran. He currently teaches some courses in Ferdowsi University of Mashhad including "the sociology of social inequalities" , " the social change and development " and " the social policy". Recently, his studies are focused on the sociology of religious rituals in Iran. |
Dr Ali Yousofi,
Assistant professor of political sociology, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad
Ms Mozhgan Azimi Hashemi,
PhD student of economic sociology and development, Ferdowsi University & ACECR branch Mashhad
Abstract:
Culture encompasses codes and symbols that we learn and regulates our social relationship accordingly. These cultural symbols are learned, transferred and maintained through communication. Communication itself is a form of interaction through which symbols are encoded and decoded on the basis of culture. Therefore, we can say that culture and communication are inseparable. In other words, intercultural communication means that people from different cultures exchange cultural messages and these messages have an impact on those cultures involved in cross-cultural communication. In multiethnic societies intercultural relationships and mutual familiarity between ethnic groups undermines intolerance and prejudice and hence reduces social distance. Drawing on the results of a comparative study of eight ethnic groups in Iran (Persian, Turkish, Baluch, Turkman,Talesh, Arab,Kurd and Lour, 2000-1), the paper illustrates that intercultural communication and ethnic acquaintance encourages a decrease ethnic social distance. This research found that ethnic intercultural relationships are based on the familiarity of different cultural customs that are typically obtained through personal experience and the mass media. The idea of ethnic social distance refers to mental inclination between culturally different groups for getting involved in social relationships such as marriage, friendships and association. The variables of intercultural communication and social distance were examined according to three dimensions: generality, intensity and symmetry. Correlation analysis shows considerable effect of intercultural communication amongst the ethnic groups in Iran on decreased social distance. So we can certainly conclude that the possibility for ethnic coexistence and convergence increases with cross-cultural communication facilitated in multiethnic societies like Iran.
Bio - Ms Mozhgan Azimi Hashemi & Dr Ali Yousofi
Dr. Ali Yousofi is assistant professor of Sociology in Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran. His studies and researches are concentrated on the political sociology and the sociology of religion. He has done or directed some of national survey studies in the recent decade in Iran including : " The national and ethnical identity(2000)" ," The values and attitudes(2003)" and " The societal integration(2005) ". In addition, he has written some articles and policy papers in Persian including : " The political legitimation of state(2004) " , The voting behavior(2005) "," The sense of citizenship (2009)" and " the ethnocentrism and between-group relationships" (2009) in Iran. He currently teaches some courses in Ferdowsi University of Mashhad including "the sociology of social inequalities" , " the social change and development " and " the social policy". Recently, his studies are focused on the sociology of religious rituals in Iran. |
Dr Brad Ruting
School of Geosciences, The University of Sydney
Abstract:
In recent decades there has been much research on the experiences and representations of migration, transnationalism and diasporas. There has also been extensive study of the motivations and experiences of travel and tourism. However, the intersections between these physical and cultural mobilities have attracted remarkably little attention. Experiences of migrancy and a diasporic consciousness are significant drivers of short-term travel decisions for many people; for example, migrants and their children visiting the homeland. Such travel may also be entwined with the social and economic dynamics of transnationalism. This paper analyses diasporic travel, an emerging field of research that studies individuals or families travelling to sites of ancestral, ethnic or cultural significance. There are complex, multidimensional reasons for travelling to the homeland, and the experiences of doing so often have particular social, economic and political characteristics. The paper briefly reviews existing research then focuses on a case study of Estonian-Australians travelling to their homeland. This is done to show that whilst certain experiences are somewhat ‘universal,’ many are highly contingent on the cultural, historical and economic features of particular places.
Bio - Dr Brad RutingBrad Ruting is a geography graduate of the School of Geosciences at the University of Sydney. His honours research focused on the motivations, experiences and implications of migrants and their descendants making trips to their homeland, using Estonian-Australians as a case study. His research interests include migration, tourism, diasporas, urban change, festivals, labour economics and economic policy. Brad has presented his research at numerous national and international conferences, and is a councillor of the Geographical Society of NSW. He is currently tutoring for the Discipline of Economics at the University of Sydney and is a regular contributor to the website On Line Opinion. |
Dr Anne McNevin
Research Fellow, Globalization and Culture Program, Global Cities Research Institute, RMIT University
Abstract:
In this paper, I investigate contestations of citizenship made by undocumented migrants in Los Angeles. Drawing on recent field-work and interviews with undocumented workers and students involved in campaigns for labor rights and access to higher education, I make two claims about contemporary dynamics of citizenship: (1) that the city (as opposed to the nation-state) is the locus of new kinds of citizenship struggles and (2) that struggles far less ambitious than those asserting an unconditional claim to citizenship may nevertheless destabilize citizenship boundaries in subtle but significant ways. In making these claims, I deploy a concept of citizenship as a dynamic and embodied practice, rather than a formal status. This opens up the concept to spatial and temporal variation within (or beyond) territorial borders and, in particular, to the possibility of specific urban forms in the context of globalization. In this way, I build a dialogue between citizenship studies and new developments in critical geography and urban studies.
Bio - Dr Anne McNevin
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Dr Val Colic-Peisker
RMIT University
Abstract:
This paper analyses the development of Australian multiculturalism since the late 1970s when the idea was introduced into the public discourse and policy, focusing on the period since the mid-1990s when the idea of multiculturalism started being purged from the public discourse and multicultural policies reduced or ‘mainstreamed’. The paper argues that the ideology and reality of multiculturalism were at first convergent and since the mid-1990s starting diverging: while the ideological and political emphasis on multiculturalism in the Australian society has diminished, a ‘de facto multiculturalism’—the ethno-cultural diversity of the Australian society— has actually increased. Australian multiculturalism may be entering a new stage: first introduced in the 1970s as a political response to a large post-war non-English-speaking-background (NESB) and predominantly working-class immigration, since the 1980s multiculturalism has increasingly assumed a middle-class image. This is due to the creation of a substantial ‘multicultural middle class’ (MMC) that has been created from two sources: Australia’s large intake of highly skilled immigrants since the late 1970s and the upwardly mobile second generation of ‘ethnics’ that arrived after the war. Since the 1980s, the bilingual (or multilingual) and bicultural MMC has a more prominent social presence than the working-class cohort of their parents had in the post-war decades. The rise of MMC may result in different scenarios: it may trigger a backlash from the Anglo-Australian establishment and further calls for assimilation and preservation of the Anglo-Australian basis of the national identity; it may bring about further power-sharing and creative merging of elements of Anglo-Australian and other cultures to the advantage of Australia in the globalising world, making Australia more cosmopolitan; or MMC may be a temporary phenomenon which will be extinguished by a full assimilation of further immigrant generations into the globally dominant Western English-speaking culture.
Bio - Dr Val Colic-Peiske
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Mr Rumel Halder
Department of Anthropology, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada
Abstract:
Envisioning and defining culture and ethnic community within a policy of multiculturalism demands critical examination. Based on my Ph.D. field research among Bangladeshi immigrants in Toronto, the primary objective of this paper is to understand how Bengali culture interprets the Canadian multiculturalism policy. Generally, multiculturalism is seen as a policy that defines culture as an organic whole, with shared meaning rooted in ‘soil’, and practiced by a particular ethnic community or a homogeneous group. However, in the immigrant social setting in Toronto, transnational Bengali culture and Bangladeshi ‘community’ is disjointed, fragmented, and politicized according to nationalist politics, social factions, and/or religious and class identity practiced in Bangladesh. Therefore, this transnational form of Bengali culture questions the traditional meaning of culture as an ‘integrated whole’ as well as the common understanding of culture under this multiculturalism policy. Thus, the key question of the paper is to understand how these fragmented and divided forms of Bengali culture and ethnic community can fit into multicultural societies in Canada.
Bio - Mr Rumel Halder
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Ms Samantha Balaton-Chrimes
PhD Candidate, School of Political and Social Inquiry, Monash University
Abstract:
A national census can play a significant role not only in measuring but also defining a nation and its citizens. The questions asked and the enumeration methodology can have a positive or negative impact on social divisions in multi-cultural societies. This impact is determined not only by the census’ status as official record, but also by the emotions aroused, both positive and negative, by participating in a national activity and thereby acting as a citizen. This paper examines the effect of the August 2009 Kenyan national census on the citizenship experience of members of a marginalized, minority tribe: the Nubians. Using data obtained during a six month qualitative study conducted before, during and after the census period, this paper evaluates the response of some members of the Nubian community to their participation in the census, focusing on the (flawed) methodology of the census, and on its most controversial question: What tribe are you? In doing so, this paper draws conclusions about the effect of the census in building a sense of belonging and inclusive citizenship for this marginalized group.
Nb: As the census is to be conducted on August 24th-25th 2009, strict conclusions cannot be included in the abstract at this stage.
Bio - Ms Samantha Balaton-Chrimes
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Ms Balambigai Balakrishnan
PhD Candidate, Department of Geographical and Environmental Studies, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA
Abstract:
While Indonesian migration to Malaysia has been around for centuries, it surged in the 1980s as the demand for low/semi skilled labour migrants increased with Malaysia’s growing industrialisation and foreign direct investment. During this decade, despite Malaysia maintaining very stringent regulations against accepting foreign permanent residents, a significant numbers of low/semi skilled Indonesian labour migrants were given permanent residency. To date, the impact of this policy has been an under-researched area in Malaysia. This study aims to fill the void by exploring the transnational ties, connections and future aspirations of Indonesian permanent migrants for both their home and host countries. A survey was conducted with 198 Indonesian migrants. Results showed that 20.7 percent of spouses and 41.9 percent of children live in Indonesia, 92.4 percent have relatives in Indonesia, 26.3 percent voted in the 2009 Indonesian election, 43.9 percent follow politics in Indonesia closely, 85.9 remit to home country, 43.4 percent have plans to return to Indonesia for good and only 26.3 percent intend to stay in Malaysia in the future. The results support the notion that transnational migrants maintain their familial, cultural, political and economical ties to their homelands. There is also an element of truth in the argument that permanent migrants are not actually permanent as they aspire to return home as they age. Results also reveal the emergence of a new type of ‘facilitator migrants’. What is gained and what is lost in this transition are also explored by the study.
Bio - Ms Balambigai Balakrishnan
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Mr Amartya Bag
KIIT Law School, KIIT University, Bhubaneswar , Orissa, India
MPN 040 - Read Full paper
Abstract:
The central purpose of the paper is to explain the unleashing of racial discrimination and onslaught of racial violence on the migrated people in the context of Globalisation. Globalisation essentially means unification of the whole world economically, politically and socially; thus converting it into a global village where people living in two different poles become neighbours. The culture conflict among the migrated people has given a new meaning to the racism. The first part of the article gives a historical overview of the worldwide migration of people from the underdeveloped and developing nations to the developed nations in search of better living or to avoid conflicts in their homeland. The second part of the article tries to explain reason behind the rise of xenophobic structural racism in relation to migration and explain the racial discriminations in the light of “Structural racism” and “private discriminations” specially in the context of the 9/11 incident in America. The third part of the article tries to analyse the case of recent racial attacks on Indians in Australia from the perspective of globalisation. The article concludes that the globalisation process and associated migration has proved to be an essential tool in promoting racism in this 21st century rather than creating a friendly, multicultural society which is tolerant towards people from various cultures, races and religions.
Bio - Mr Amartya Bag
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Associate Professor Michele Langfield, Deakin University, Australia
Dr Pam Maclean, Deakin University, Australia
Abstract:
In his controversial book The Holocaust in American Life (1999) Peter Novick argues that in the 1970s Holocaust consciousness became a central tenet of American-Jewish community identity – a sense of shared victimhood replaced aspirations for assimilation as the predominant theme shaping communal self-identification. Similarly, the establishment by Holocaust survivors of the Jewish Holocaust Museum and Research Centre (JHMRC) in Melbourne in 1984 might be viewed as a manifestation on a global level of the transformative power of Holocaust consciousness on Jewish communities. These survivors, mainly migrants who reached Australia in the immediate post-Second World War period, sought (among other objectives) to raise awareness in an Australian-Jewish community that had previously seemed neglectful of the tragic events of the Holocaust. This paper asks whether the JHMRC was successful in reshaping an Australian-Jewish communal identity strongly influenced by the earlier waves of migration from Britain and Germany. Twenty-five years after its establishment, with Holocaust education now an integral part not only of the Jewish day school system, but also widely disseminated in the broader non-Jewish community, the JHMRC finds itself reconceptualising its role. Among the challenges it faces are demographic changes within the Melbourne-Jewish community as it moves from a predominantly migration to a post-migration community. We ask have tensions emerged between the need to maintain connections with the pre-migration world and links with non-migrant members of the community. What has been the relative contribution of the Holocaust vis-a-vis Zionism towards shaping post-migration Jewish identity in Melbourne?
Bio - Associate Professor Michele Langfield
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Ms Ela Ogru
Global Terrorism Research Centre,
School of Political and Social Inquiry,
Monash University
Abstract:
Young people from Africa are one of the largest components of the Australian federal government’s Humanitarian program. In 2005, 64 per cent of Australia’s Humanitarian arrivals were under the age of 25, 31 percent of whom were young people aged between 12 and 24. Youth from the Horn of Africa including Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea and Sudan account for a substantial number of entrants under the program. Young people from Sudan alone account for half of these youth entrants to Victoria. Youths from these regions have generally come from situations of conflict and crisis, including civil wars and extreme poverty. In Sudan, young men of fighting age irrespective of their ethnic origins are considered in categories of high risk, such as arbitrary detention and interrogation by security forces.
As various sources note, these youths are experiencing social integration problems since migration to Victoria and Australia. This includes problems such as that of racism, combined with anti-Muslim sentiment in the case of Somalis and Eritreans, and dealing with moral panics revolving around criminality. Concerns have been raised from within their communities and generally about problems of integration, acceptance, and cultural harmony.
Looking at some of the key literature, this paper attempts to identify some of the problems, anomalies, and inadequacies that these youth are attempting to transcend and to acknowledge the actions they are taking to address these problems. Key questions that will be raised include:
Bio - Ms Ela Ogru
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Dr Giancarlo Chiro
School of International Studies, University of South Australia
Abstract:
The paper draws on a Gramscian understanding of the development and functioning of nation-states to discuss the proposition that the multicultural policies which emerged during the latter decades of the twentieth century in Australia failed to alter the negative attitudes of the Anglo-Australian historical bloc toward immigrant and Indigenous Others. The paper develops this argument through a brief examination of the history of the national–popular ascendancy in Australia and its implication for immigration and social integration policies. Attention is then paid to the multicultural turn in Australia with its many subsequent revisions analysed against the prevailing political and ideological orientations of the day. The emergence of a social cohesion discourse at after 9/11 and the increasing concerns over national security in light of subsequent terrorist activities involving Australian citizens may be seen in direct correlation to the reassertion of a consensus view of the historical bloc for a greater emphasis on Australian values in defining immigration and citizenship policies. The article also examines the mixed messages associated with the first two years of the Rudd administration and assesses whether the reversion to an assimilationist ideology is sustainable in light of increasing levels of transnational mobility.
Bio - Dr Giancarlo Chiro
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Ms Camille Amanda La Brooy
PhD Candidate, School of Social and Political Sciences, The University of Melbourne
Abstract:
Since the London bombings of July 2005, there has been a heightened sense of suspicion surrounding the Muslim community – particularly concerning the youth – as observers were left perplexed, incredulous and angry as to how “cricket-playing native sons of Yorkshire” could involve themselves in terror-attacks against their own countrymen. The British government and media respectively responded to the growing widespread fear engulfing the community with intensified anti-terror legislation and precautionary measures as well as demonizing reports of a growing trend of widespread Muslim resistance, revivalism and fundamentalism. While the majority of British Muslims condemned the acts of terror, the community’s reaction left them feeling uncertain about their place in British society and forced them to question what it meant to be both Muslim and British. As such, this paper explores how contemporary Muslim youth social movements and organisations are attempting to reconfigure and reconstruct bounded notions of British and Muslim identity. 20 interviews were conducted in 2008 with Muslim student activists in order to ascertain firstly how Muslim groups are attempting to construct specific versions of ‘British Muslim’ identity for these individuals; and secondly, how these individuals perceived their own identities.
Bio - Ms Camille Amanda La Brooy
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Mr Badru Ronald Olufemi
Department of Philosophy,University of Ibadan,Ibadan, Nigeria
Abstract
Essentially, the conduct of human relations in the contemporary world is a conscious attempt to forge a common society that transcends divisive forces of human interaction. However, ethnic conflicts constitute a formidable challenge to this. Thus, this paper examines and interrogates the phenomenon of ethnic conflict within the modern African state in order to understand and explain its underlying philosophy. The paper makes two claims. First, there is a claim that ethnic conflict results from the interaction of two logics: the logic of ‘I’ superiority and the logic of self- affirmation The first reasoning arises from the largely unfounded belief that the ethnic group of the self is superior to that of the other. Thus, the former should dominate the latter. This thinking engenders the second reasoning that, in another sense, might also complement the former. As a response to the former logic, the latter logic informs the other to affirm his right to social recognition by resisting any imposition by all means. As a complement to the former logic, the latter logic impels the self into acting in such a way that would affirm his largely unfounded superiority over the other. The second claim is that the two logics deduce from epistemological ethnocentrism, the thinking that no knowledge can be learnt from the ethnic group of the other that is not already inherent in the ethnic group of the self, and that could make the self attribute equal dignity to the other. Therefore, this epistemology justifies the conflict of domination among different ethnic groups in Africa. However, the paper finds a solution to this problem in the concept of alajobi, a Yoruba cosmological view of common descent of humankind. When peoples of different ethnic groups imbibe this cosmology, then they would naturally co-habit peacefully and engage in cooperative interaction.
Key words: African state, Alajobi, Epistemology, Ethnic conflict, Logics, Modern
Bio - Mr Badru Ronald Olufemi*Mr. Badru is in the final stages of his doctoral studies in the Department of Philosophy University of Ibadan, Nigeria. His area of doctoral research is social and political philosophy, and the focus is philosophy of international relations. He has published in some international journals. He is a Lecturer-in-Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, Saints Peter & Paul Major Seminary, New Bodija, Ibadan, Nigeria.
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Dr Pamela Leach
Assistant Professor, Political Studies, Canadian Mennonite University, Winnipeg, Canada
MPN 048 - Read Full paper
Abstract:
Liberal democratic states are seeking new self-justification in a globalized era where their old stand-bys, territorial security and market control, no longer hold. Citizenship as an institution is being reconfigured to this end. Formerly self-described purveyors of rights, states now raise the spectre of rights-scarcity. The privileged citizen-under-siege must submit to the state, and its policies, for ‘security’. The ensuing commodification of citizenship is fraying cultural and racial relations, and aggravating economic and political stratification. The ‘new citizenship’ requires definition: recent immigrants, racial minorities, and aboriginal people shape the margins as subcitizens whose rights are elusive. They are aspiring but ‘inadequate’ consumers of the liberal democratic manna. Noncitizens, such as undocumented residents and refugee claimants, are within the territory but outside the polity. Their imputed lack of civic understanding suggests malevolent intent: to erode the rights of citizens. The ‘age of security’ provides new rationales for tightening the noose of citizenship with consequent suffocation of the social fabric and ethos. Ultimately there can be no winners in this trajectory.
Canada and Australia, multicultural states with parallel citizenship policy climates, are similarly entrapped by this globalization-informed logic. Both face crises of legitimacy and governance posed by global economic integration, the power of the United States, and fraught foreign and domestic policy. The political mobilization of First Peoples presents a moment of encompassing challenge and opportunity. How can commodified citizenship be resisted, and how might an inclusive societal vision and ethos replace it? By what creative processes might belonging be refigured?
Bio - Dr Pamela Leach
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Ms Lejla Voloder
PhD Candidate, Monash University
Abstract:
Life in Australia, particularly in the urban centres, is marked by the multicultural experience. Through everyday encounters, on the streets, in shopping centres, on public transport, people of various cultures and backgrounds interact; with such encounters becoming an important frame of reference for migrants seeking to establish themselves and their lives in Australia. This everyday multiculturalism, to borrow Stratton's phrase (1998:15), in addition to dominant representations and discourses of multiculturalism inform migrant understandings of belonging in and to Australia. Discourses of multiculturalism play a significant role in influencing conceptualisations of national belonging, as the character of the receiving society's integration system shapes the type, pattern and variety of social interactions and the mode of integration experienced by migrants. My intention here is to discuss how knowledge of, and interaction with, multicultural discourse shapes the national identification of individuals and groups.
In this paper, I introduce Bosnian migrant engagement with dominant discourses and individual experiences of multicultural belonging. I do so in order to explore how interpretations and reflections on personal experiences and dominant discourses impact on both individual and collective understandings of the possibilities for belonging in and to Australia. I will outline how Bosnian migrants read and interpret discourses of multiculturalism and how this impacts on variable experiences of belonging - from those in which ethnic belonging presents opportunities for national participation, to those in which ethnic identification is interpreted as a marker of national exclusion.
Bio - Ms Lejla Voloder
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Mr Hadi Sohrabi, Swinburne University
Dr Karen FarquharsonDr Karen Farquharson, Swinburne University
Abstract:
Discourses on Islam are produced in a global context and reproduced at the national level, with similarities existing between global and local discourses regarding Muslims. These discourses often portray Muslims negatively: as fundamentalist, intolerant, and other (Dunn 2001; Brasted 2001; Dunn 2004; Kabir 2006a). Despite these negative images, in Australia we have policies that promote multiculturalism and religious tolerance (HREOC 2007), which go against these discourses. In this paper we investigate the relationship between multiculturalism and othering discourses around Islam, arguing that popular discourses around Islam are counter to our Australian values regarding multiculturalism.
Bio - Mr Hadi Sohrabi and Dr Karen FarquharsonM. Hadi Sohrabi Haghighat is a PhD student in Sociology at Swinburne University of Technology. His PhD looks at second generation Australian Muslims’ sense of belonging. Karen Farquharson is Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Academic Head of Social and Policy Studies at Swinburne University of Technology. Her research examines media discourses of race and ethnicity. |
Ms Tanja Glusac
PhD Candidate,School of Built Environment, Curtin University of Technology
Abstract:
Whilst migration and continuous movements of individuals and groups are well-documented phenomena, it is the intensity of these that has in recent times generated increased curiosity and to some extent controversy too. The issues of migrant settlement, fitting in, belonging and identity have been approached from many perspectives and have drawn the attention of many disciplines from politics and economics, to social sciences and human geography. However, it is only recently that interest in migration from an architectural perspective and that of the built environment has emerged. Arguably, architecture, together with built environment, provides a framework, a stage on which our daily activities evolve, a stage on which experiences are encountered and memories of these constructed. And it is these frameworks of place, architecture and memory, which migrants unintentionally carry with them to any new environment that are potentially hindering or assisting the process of settling in.
Taking into account that a significant number of people living in Australia today were born and lived in conditions and built environments that are very different to those found here, it is not entirely superfluous to ask ourselves what role place, architecture and memories play in the process of constructing and re-constructing new identities in diaspora. To date, not much attention has been paid to the specific relationships that exist between identity, memory, migrants and architecture. Respectively, this paper looks more closely at these relationships and the way they are played out in the construction of the sense of self in a new built environment.
Keywords: architecture, place, built environment, memory, migration, identity
Bio - Ms Tanja Glusac |
Ms Krista Lee-Jones
Project Manager,Education and Partnerships, Race Discrimination Unit, Australian Human Rights Commission
Abstract:
This is one of two papers being presented by the Australian Human Rights Commission. The first paper provides a broad context so that the program logic described in the second paper, which is one of human rights and human development, is more coherent for the audience. Each paper, however, can be heard independently of the other. The claim that exponential change is a fact of contemporary life is now a platitude. Post-war globalisation forged by new technologies and telecommunications, capital markets, demographic shifts, consumer preference, ideology and the host of other drivers of change has led the world into an environment where the primary challenge of the new century is how to understand and navigate current realities. This reality is, on the one hand, exhilarating and exuberant – never before has there been so much exchange of human knowledge, such rapid human development, and so much constructive engagement. On the other hand, it is an environment that is intensely confusing, confronting, and with potentially catastrophic effects – effects on civil societies, cultural maintenance, the physical environment, local and global security. At this international level organisations such as UNDP and UNESCO have, over recent years, developed a strong treaty and reporting regime that explains and provides solutions for many of these threats and intersections. Effectively, this represents a human rights and human development framework for global community survival, progress and peace-building.
Where does Australia sit, and how is it responding? Processes of globalisation have opened our markets to many other countries, not just our regional neighbours. Additionally, our migration program has shifted focus. Together, this has resulted in a multicultural Australia with a wide mix of cultures, traditions, languages, religions and values. This both makes for a productive social, cultural and economic environment, but also brings with it different public policy challenges. If this shift in Australia's demography and the resulting confluence of cultures is not well managed, it may lead to intolerance and ethnocentrism. Indeed, the consequences of this evolving cultural spectrum are already visible through acts of what can be broadly described as ‘racial’ violence, for example, towards the Australian Muslim or international student communities. Such events have a multiplier effect and are a significant contributor to social exclusion. This paper examines, within the context of global transformations, how Australia is responding to cultural diversity and social exclusion. It argues that cultural liberty as a human right is fundamental to human development and social inclusion on the basis that having the freedom to choose a personal identity without losing the respect of others, or being excluded from other choices, is fundamental in leading a life in dignity.
Bio - Ms Krista Lee-JonesKrista Lee-Jones is a project manager in the Education and Partnerships Section of the Race Discrimination Unit at the Australian Human Rights Commission. She is responsible for the development, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of a number of projects funded under the Commission’s Community Partnerships for Human Rights (CPHR). These projects together aim to increase social inclusion and to counter discrimination and intolerance towards Muslim Australian communities.
A lawyer by background, Krista has experience in international human rights law and refugee law. She has also been involved in community engagement and development programs working with local and migrant communities both in Australia and overseas.
Krista has tertiary qualifications awarded by the University of Tasmania and Utrecht University in The Netherlands. |
Mr Conrad Gershevitch
Director, Education and Partnerships - Race Discrimination Unit, Australian Human Rights Commission
Abstract:
This is the second of two papers being presented by the Australian Human Rights Commission. The first paper provides a broad context, setting it within a human rights and human development framework. The second paper describes the program objectives, methodology, structure and outputs of a practical, human rights-based approach to the reality-context described in the first paper. Each paper can be heard independently of the other. The second part of this paper examines one of the Australian Human Rights Commission's approaches to addressing social inclusion in light of these global and local transformations. The example drawn on addresses the complexities of social inclusion through the adoption of a health promotion model that the Commission has applied to a different social policy setting. The Commission has, since 2007 been implementing a range of programs under a general ‘soft security’ initiative of the Howard Government. This initiative, the National Action Plan to Build on Social Cohesion, Harmony and Security (NAP) was envisaged as a counter-radicalisation program particularly focused on a single community (Australian Muslims) and the Commission’s responsibility was to provide human rights responses under it.
The Commission’s resulting Community Partnerships for Human Rights Program has adopted a health promotion approach which is based on the foundation principles outlined in the World Health Organisation's Ottawa Charter. This model explicitly recognises that promoting and protecting health and respecting, protecting and fulfilling human rights are inextricably linked. "Health (which could be replaced with ‘human rights’) promotion is the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve, their health (which could be replaced with ‘lives’). To reach a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, an individual or group must be able to identify and to realize aspirations, to satisfy needs, and to change or cope with the environment." (Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion). Population health-like strategies, that are designed to assist with both personal and collective life change, provide the framework for action and the rationale for outcomes under this Commission initiative. The Commission's response to social inclusion under its NAP responsibilities has been a multi-dimensional, whole-of-community, partnership approach which aims to increase knowledge, influence behaviours and change attitudes in order to avoid social exclusion and its associated impacts. Central to this approach is the concept of multiculturalism and cultural liberty: the freedom for culturally, linguistically and religiously diverse groups to realise their human and social development as fundamental human rights. Human rights therefore set the ethical and legal framework for the protection of groups in society who may otherwise be, or feel, marginalised or excluded. They are also critical factors for maintaining civil societies as well as peace-building both locally and globally.
Bio - Mr Conrad GershevitchConrad Gershevitch is the Director, Education and Partnerships Section of the Race Discrimination Unit at the Australian Human Rights Commission – Australia’s national, independent, human rights statutory authority. During his career Conrad has worked in a variety of different sectors although there has been a consistent theme of his supporting community empowerment. He worked for a long time in community radio, which led to employment for over 5 years with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in several different roles. He then worked in policy and national project management with the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing, for much of this time managing partnerships with non-government or not-for-profit agencies, particularly those dealing with mental health, multicultural and refugee health. He also worked for a short time in a senior position within a NSW area health service. He was Director of the peak body, the Federation of Ethnic Communities’ Councils of Australia (FECCA) for almost four years and for some of this time he was also a visiting fellow at the Australian National University (ANU) convening the Inclusive Cultural Leadership program for the Graduate Studies in Sustainable Heritage Development program.In his current Commission role Conrad is managing a section that administers programs working to promote participation, inclusion and respect for Muslim Australians within a whole-of-community framework. Over the years he has either chaired or sat on various editorial, steering, program and policy advisory committees and has represented his organisations at conferences and fora both in Australia and overseas. Conrad has tertiary qualifications awarded by both the University of Sydney and the ANU. Currently, he is writing a PhD through the University of Queensland on inter-disciplinary approaches to diversity. |
Ms Mercedeh Makoui
Ph D Student, Deakin University
Abstract:
This paper analyses representations of Muslim mothers in Mustara and Ziba Came on a Boat, two Australian picture books, in regard to their sexual and social identity. While Mustara represents the national identity of Afghan mothers set in Australian deserts, Ziba exposes the possibilities of the transformation of this national identity for a refugee Afghan mother who arrives in Australia. This study argues that these two discourses – that is, the myth of national identity and the discourse of refugees – position readers in particular ways to construct Muslim mothers as passive and second sex in their homeland and as an agent (i.e. a character capable of assertion and action; in other words, a citizen) in Australia. To discuss the process by which Islamic motherhood is constructed in this way, I draw on Althusser’s theories of identity and interpellation at a discursive level. The term discourse, in Foucauldian terminology, is critical to this study as it locates these picture books within the dominant values and norms of the broader adult culture. Accordingly, the theoretical approach in this study is positioned at the disciplinary intersection of identity, gender and cultural studies. In particular, it employs Foucault’s theory of representation given picture books are contingent on the socio-political climate in which such books are produced and consumed.
Bio - Ms Mercedeh Makoui
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Dr Scott Downman
School of Humanities,
Griffith University, Australia
Abstract :
Rural communities in northern Thailand have been decimated in recent years as a direct consequence of labour migration. This migration has placed unprecedented pressure on the traditional social and cultural values within tribal communities in Thailand’s north. These changes have meant the most vulnerable members of these communities – children and the elderly – are facing dilemmas and challenges unimaginable a decade ago. Among the issues to emerge as a result of labour migration are: homelessness among the elderly, changes to traditional forms of aged care, and grandparent and extended family guardianship of children. Increasing numbers of child-headed households in villages (because parents have moved to cities in search of work) have resulted in an escalation of youth-based violence and has local authorities seeking urgent solutions to address the social and cultural vacuum created by labour migration. This research focuses on the impacts work migration has on ‘sending communities’ by providing case studies from three villages in Thailand’s Nan Province. The paper will argue temporary work migration either within nations, or internationally, has destructive repercussions for sending communities. It will be argued that this type of migration in Thailand is instrumental in eroding ethnic pride and a loss of indigenous culture and language literacy. The research was collected during fieldwork in Thailand during the past three years, two of which were spent as a full-time community development worker in an Ausaid-funded project aimed at building the capacity of tribal youth leaders.
Bio - Dr Scott Downman
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Mr Mico Poonoosamy
PhD Student, Faculty of Education,
Monash University
Abstract:
South Korea’s history and culture, like those of many non-Western countries, faces the challenges of globalization. The impacts on local knowledges and culture are considered from a language-identity perspective in this paper. Resistance to global flows is necessary for the preservation of culture and history. Yet the benefits of globalization are there to reap and, in the 1990s, the South-Korean government has reformed its language policies in the educational arena to cope efficiently with the trends and demands of a global world which challenges and redefines notions of citizenship and identity. Proficiency in English - the international language of communication and trade - was then considered as an absolute necessity in South-Korea. Subsequently, further alliances and partnerships were/are forged with the Anglo-Speaking world in the educational field. But for South-Korea, in some respects, the challenge is for the English language not be perceived, in its ideological and cultural applications, as a language competing against the Korean language – a language of rich historical resistance that embraces its own (non-Western) ideals. English should neither be a language which is a historical and painful reminder of Chinese and Japanese colonial rules. That said, these former rules, if not prolonged, must however not stop Regional Corporation among North Eastern Asian countries. This article is a review of the language policies in the land of the morning calm since the 1990s and discusses the Korean linguistic and socio-political history that still shapes and outlines the challenges and hopes of the South-Korean complex identities in the global world. The varied statuses and linguistic identities of ethnic Koreans in adjacent countries and the Anglo-Saxon world are also examined in relation to the ongoing debate of global citizenship.
Keywords: language policies, language planning, globalization, internationalization, identity, resistance
*TaLK: Teach and Learn in Korea - Korean government scholarship program, aiming to provide opportunities to ‘learn a living’ in English in educationally weak areas of South-Korea and increase understanding of Korea to foreigners.
Bio - Mr Mico Poonoosamy
Research interests: international mindedness, multiculturalism and intercultural awareness in education, the relevance of local knowledges in the internationalised/globalised knowledge industry, cultural/language/philosophical studies, post-colonial studies, learning theories, Ontology (the philosophical study of the nature of ‘being’, existence and reality), Epistemology (theories of knowledge) and Phenomenology (studies/theories on the making the structures of consciousness, and the phenomena which appear in acts of consciousness). |
Mr Atsushi Takeda
PhD candidate, University of the Sunshine Coast
Abstract:
This paper discusses the way in which transnationalism is practised within families across generations of children, parents and grandparents located in different countries with the focus on Japanese migrant women in Australia. Theories of transnationalism are generally understood as migrants’ ongoing relationship and connections with homeland. These theories suggest that contemporary migrants actively engage in taking actions, making decisions and feeling the need for connection across distance. This implies a multiplicity of social relationships generated by individuals who are positioned neither in their homeland nor in the host society. These general traits of migrants are also identified among Japanese migrant women. This paper presents the main finding of nine interviews with migrant Japanese women and found that transnationalism highlights the nature of connections across generations, that is to say, ‘intergenerational transnationalism’. Children’s bilingual education, which is a great concern among Japanese mothers, plays a role in linking grandchildren in Australia and grandparents in Japan. Bilingualism, thus, does not simply involve bicultural language ability as such but is also something that contributes to and extends transnational connections. Furthermore, intergenerational transnationalism relates to the roles of Japanese women as mothers and daughters. In such a context, Japanese women act as a bridge between their children and their parents to form new transnational connections across the generations.
Bio -Mr Atsushi Takeda
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Dr Wolfgang Aschauer
Abstract:
Nowadays many European Countries have problems dealing with the fact that they have become multicultural societies. The main strategy of several national governments in Europe is now to give up tentative attempts of multiculturalism in favour of the policy of assimilation. Austria, a small country in Central Europe, is a good example of the new European approach integrating immigrants in the residence societies. The high number of foreigners in Salzburg (21% of the 150000 inhabitants have a foreign citizenship) offers a good possibility to conduct empirical studies about intercultural relations. The foreigners in the city of Salzburg mainly come from Balkan States, Germany and Turkey, similar to the Austrian general structure of immigrants. In the first study, between November 2007 and June 2008, a standardized questionnaire was given to 187 immigrants in Salzburg. The results allow a broad overview of the perceptions of immigrants with regard to the structural level (mainly labour market), the intercultural sphere (acculturation strategies) and the personal level (subjective well-being). In the second study, between April and June 2009, 253 respondents of the autochthonous population in Salzburg (without migration background) were interviewed.
This study, based on a quota sample, had two primary goals. In a comparison with the first study, the view of the host society on the living conditions of migrants was analysed. In addition several societal and individual explanatory factors to measure and explain ethnic prejudice were integrated in the research design.
Comparing the study results immigrants report rather negative views regarding their education, work and income but they perceive their personal integration and the intercultural communication with the host society far better than expected. The host society interprets the demographic and socioeconomic situation of immigrants quite realisticly but they demonstrate a high level of xenophobia and even hostility towards specific groups (the Turks for instance).
Combining both perspectives, it turns out that immigrants prefer multiple integration (adaptation to the Western society and conserving their own culture) while the Austrian citizens demand assimilation. European values of egalitarianism are deeply rooted in the host society but when it comes to certain fields of competition with migrants (e.g. labour market, residential property, social benefits) the native population shows a high potential for discrimination.
Altogether, the empirical results clearly show that the risks of interethnic conflicts between the autochthonous population and ethnic groups are growing in European societies. The threat to European values, such as egalitarianism and tolerance, comes not only from immigrants and their separation in parallel worlds. Due to individual reactions to the challenges of societal developments, it is also a homemade problem.
Bio - Dr Wolfgang Aschauer
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Ms Jingnan Xu
PhD Candidate, School of Social and Political Sciences,
University of Canterbury, New Zealand
Abstract:
Today diasporic networks are maintained, enhanced and intensified over a more developed and diverse mediascape in which the Internet becomes the main medium of ‘selective social interaction and symbolic belonging’ (Castells, 2001: p.37), challenging the national boundaries and political restriction, and thereby enabling transnational communities to overcome structural communication barriers. In this context, the transnational characteristics of most popular New Zealand based Chinese portal site http://www.skykiwi.co.nz, in terms of its membership, its bilingualism, and intra community communication has taken my attention to the link between diasporic network and issue of identity.
Focused on New Zealand based Chinese website- www.skykiwi.co.nz, this paper has examined the role of transnational Chinese diasporic networks play for Chinese diaspora in building of a hybrid cultural identity. Based on the data obtained from the discourse analysis, the findings reveal that the website dedicate significant space to the coverage of current events in China, New Zealand and other countries where Chinese diaspora reside, which assist in the creation of a vivid Chinese online diaspora, enabling intra community contacts and strengthening affinity to their homeland. Therefore, I will argue that such online community has the strong impact of building of a hybrid cultural identity between host and homeland culture.
Bio - Ms Jingnan Xu
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Professor Neil Small
School of Health Studies, University of Bradford, UK
MPN 060 - Read Full paper
Abstract:
Bradford, a city in northern England, has attracted migrants from the Mirpur district of Pakistan since the late 1950’s. A first wave of male workers was followed by family migration and a continuing inflow, often for marriage. The migrant population of Pakistani origin, all Muslims, is now a three generational community and is of a size such that half of the 5500 babies born in the city each year have parents of Pakistani origin.
Infant mortality and morbidity is considerably higher in Bradford than UK averages, and higher than other UK cities of comparable size and deprivation. Mortality is highest in babies of Pakistani origin, highest rates are for first generation migrant mothers but rates in babies of second generation mothers are still higher that city averages. Morbidity in the city is also high, differentiated by a complex interaction of ethnicity and social class. Of particular concern is obesity and diabetes. This paper reports on the rationale behind the establishment of a new birth cohort study, Born in Bradford (www.borninbradford.nhs.uk) . This study will recruit and track 10000 births in the city to enable an examination of the relationship between circumstances of birth and health outcomes for babies and children.
The paper will consider the impact of migration on health, manifestation of hybridity in relation to health related and heath seeking behaviour and how far community engagement and mobilisation can be mechanisms for responding to health inequalities.
Personal details.
Bio - Professor Neil Small
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Dr Nabila Jaber
School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
Abstract:
What’s in a name? The term ‘ethnic’ has come to be associated with multiple and contradictory meanings. Historically the term has undergone a conceptual shift from use to identify and label national fears of the Other (monoculturalism) to global anxieties related to the inclusion of the Other (multiculturalism).
In New Zealand, as in many other Western countries, multicultural discursive practices in both popular and government usage of the label ‘ethnic’ tend to take on a quasi normalising effect in identifying and grouping migrants of particular cultural and racial background, namely perceived non-white or people of colour. This paper takes a critical look at the nuanced/complexity of meanings in the deployment of the term ‘ethnic’ and questions its representative usefulness and implications as a mode of inclusive multicultural citizenship.
Bio - Dr Nabila Jaber
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Ms Selen Ayirtman Ercan
PhD Student, Australian National University, Australia
Abstract:
The deliberative approach suggests a distinct way of dealing with the issues of cultural diversity. Its peculiarity lies in its capacity to offer a critical alternative to the conventional forms of politics, most notably interest and identity politics. Deliberative democracy is designed to keep a safe distance on the one hand from the strategic consequences of interest politics and on the other from the essentialist implications of identity politics. In this paper, I argue that although desirable, this goal is difficult to reach in culturally diverse societies, especially after the ‘pluralist turn’ in the deliberative approach. The attempt to make deliberative democracy more inclusive may end up undermining the core ideals of this approach. I address this possibility by focusing particularly on the idea of ‘plural public reason’. Allowing cultural reasons in public deliberation makes this approach clearly more inclusive, yet at the same time more vulnerable to the unwanted consequences of interest politics and identity politics. Cultural reasons may be used to mask the strategic interests of individuals or to essentialize group identities. In this paper, I will briefly discuss the existing solutions to this danger and propose a way to locate deliberation at a safe distance from interest and identity politics. This proposal emphasizes the necessity of talking about deep disagreements in order to make the deliberative approach a sustainable form of politics in the face of cultural diversity.
Bio - Ms Selen Ayirtman Ercan |
Ms Annalisa Ornaghi, Ph.D Candidate, Faculty of Sociology, University of Trento and Université Paris – Sorbonne
Associate Professor Di M. Tognetti Bordogna,Department of Sociology and social research, Faculty of Sociology, University of Milan-Bicocca
Abstract:
Observing and studying the caregiver phenomenon means, above all, analyzing female migration, which is a particular characteristic of Italian immigration. As highlighted in the literature [Favaro, Tognetti, 1991; Martinelli, 1999; Tognetti, 2003; 2004; Zanfrini, 2004; Ambrosini, 2005], already since the 1970s women were the protagonists of Italian migratory flows, a trend which continued in the new millennium. However, it is just with the end of the 1990s, and exponentially in the new millennium, that Italy is facing a type of female immigration, which plays an important role in caring: female immigrants who look after unassisted and not self- sufficient elderly people, or also disabled people. This new migratory phenomenon has been defined as the caregiver migration.
These women form a significant part of the migratory flows in Italy, although this type of migratory flow is characterized by a strong irregularity, as they work as outsiders. The women usually come from Eastern Europe, South America (Peru and Ecuador), but also from Morocco. As has been pointed out by other researches [Catanzaro, Colombo 2009] informal caregiving women have specific strategies and migratory projects, and they are distributed over the whole national territory. Any migratory phenomenon is, for its nature, complex and at the same time dynamic, with different historic, demographic, social and anthropological characteristics.
Among social scientists [Vicarelli, 1994; Tognetti, 2004 b; Colombo 2005] there is no common stand about the decline, the rebirth or the revival of female caregiving work; they only agree that they are facing a phenomenon that has specific characteristics and peculiarities, which cannot be simplistically assimilated to the previous domestic work. Our contribution will examine and describe the informal caregiver phenomenon, particularly emphasizing the role these women play for health welfare in general, but also highlight some specifities of the Italian reality. Thus, our goal is to analyze the Italian migratory reality and the informal caregiver phenomenon. In other words, the aim of this paper is to describe the phenomenon and to analyze the role of the caregiver (as resource and as user) in the Italian welfare system. After having described peculiarities of the studied phenomenon, we will try to comprehend and analyze mechanisms which stand at its origins, correlating it to the surrounding contest and describing the main characteristics.
Bio - Ms Annalisa Ornaghi and Associate Professor Di M. Tognetti Bordogna
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Dr Tae-Jun Kim
Research Fellow, Korean Educational Development Institute (KEDI),Seoul, Korea
Abstract:
In 2007, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination advised that Korea should make efforts to overcome its support for a mono-ethnic society because in reality it is a multiracial society. Since the 1990s, the increase in international marriage (especially for low income rural men) and the immigration of foreign workers have led to a multiracial and multicultural Korean society. There are currently approximately 1,100,000 foreigners who live in Korea and this has doubled since 2006 when it numbered 540,000. DeSeCo (Definition and Selection of Key Competencies) project by OECD has conducted research to identify key competencies underlying multicultural societies. One of the key competencies include the importance of individuals to interact with heterogeneous groups. This study measures and analyzes educational factors relating to this competency and how this competency relates to citizenship issues. The paper also examines the level of social capital amongst young Koreans who will lead this rapidly-changing and multicultural society into the future. Consequently, this study locates the educational problems that exist when we focus solely on the cultivation of individual’s knowledge and skills. Finally, the paper puts forwards suggestions for the civic and citizenship education of young Koreans so that they can better interact and tolerate culturally different others and thus deal with conflict in pluralistic and multicultural society.
Bio - Dr Tae-Jun, Kim
Dr Tae-Jun Kim was involved in the following research activities. The study of measuring and developing citizenship in the context of social capital for regional human resource development. Presentation at the American Sociological Association 2004 Annual Meeting (2004, 8, San Francisco, CA, USA) / New challenges in the cooperation between learning and working for life-skills development in Korea. Presentation at the Asian Human Resource Development Conference of Academy of HRD (2003, 12, Bangkok, Thailand) / The current status and the future of life-skills development in Korea. Presentation at the Adult and Continuing Education of Korea International Conference (2003, 9, Seoul, Korea) / Visiting Scholar, LEAP(Lifelong learning, Education, Administration and Policy), UGA(University of Georgia), USA, 2005-2006 / National Research Coordinator, ICCS(International Civic and Citizenship Education Study), IEA(The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement), 2009.. |
Ms Kelly Parker
PhD Candidate, Discipline of Geographical and Environmental Studies, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia
Abstract:
A contemporary global situation fuelling highly-skilled, temporary and circular mobility and transnational migration experiences has lead to increasing interest from origin countries in understanding emigration and diaspora. There is evidence countries of origin can benefit from emigration if they capitalize on the networks and identifications migrants keep with home. Little research about emigration and diaspora has been undertaken in high-income countries therefore there is limited data available to help understand these populations.
Using data collected in an online survey of 1,581 Australians living in the US, this paper will explore the international mobility patterns and transnational networks and identifications kept by the Australian diaspora living in the United States (US). The Australian diaspora in the US maintain transnational livelihoods with regular return visits to Australia, frequent long-distance communication and continued identification with Australia as ‘home’. Emigration from Australia to the US is usually intended to be temporary, but in fact the migration journey often evolves as experiences accumulate and opportunities arise. Many end up staying away from Australia longer than originally intended but regardless of their time away, most keep an open attitude towards future mobility and continue to identify with Australia; in the current global context this is not restricted by distance. The activities of the Australian diaspora in the US support the view that the Australian diaspora should be seen as a distinct part of Australia’s population and a potential resource for Australia.
Bio - Ms Kelly Parker |
Associate Professor Kristina(Tina) Murphy
Alfred Deakin Research Institute,
Faculty of Arts & Education,
Deakin University
Abstract:
Public cooperation with police is essential for the effective management of crime and disorder in our society. Understanding factors that shape public cooperation with the police is therefore important. However, Australian and international studies show that police find it difficult to elicit cooperation from ethnic communities, this made difficult by the fact that various ethnic groups display low levels of trust and confidence in the police. This study examines the role that procedural justice-based policing might play in relationship building between ethnic minority groups and the police. Using survey data collected from 2120 Australians, results confirm that citizens from ethnic minority groups hold less favourable views of police than the general population. They also show that their cooperation with police is shaped predominantly by perceptions of procedural justice, and that this relationship is mediated by people’s perceptions of police legitimacy. The findings have implications for theories of cooperation, as well as for determining how the police can foster better relationships with all members of society.
Bio - Associate Professor Tina Murphy
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Dr Katie Vasey
Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences,
Monash University, Victoria, Australia
Abstract:
In a country such as Australia, where people originate from 185 countries, many people have the capacity to live their everyday lives both 'here' and 'there,' across and between two or more nation states, where the construction of their identities extends beyond Australia's national boundaries. In this paper, I explore how the existing multicultural policy connects, interacts with and accommodates the 'transnational.' I address the complex and ambivalent relationship between the national and transnational. I argue that the transnational possibilities, understood in terms of the challenge that cultural pluralism poses to national master narratives, are often suffocated by a predominately national, if not nationalistic, framework. Through an ethnographic examination of the everyday processes and practices that are experienced by Iraqi refugees in a small country town in Victoria, I will demonstrate how migrants' normative membership is predominantly defined within the boundaries of the nation state at both national and local levels. Iraqi people in general and Iraqi women in particular are deeply entwined with their status as non-nationals, as foreigners, even though many have formal citizenship status (or the privileges and rights of formal citizenship). This results in their exclusion in substantive terms from dominant sectors of society and from dominant representations of society.
Bio - Dr Katie Vasey
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Dr Paul Obi-Ani
Department of History and International Studies,
University of Nigeria, Nsukka,
Enugu State, Nigeria
Abstract:
The world is gradually shrinking that at the press of a button events happening in far-flung part of the earth could be followed live via cable network. Globalization or capitalist penetration of every economy is the new phenomenon. Industrialized nations of the West are growing richer and having access to natural resources of the third world. Most of the third world countries are experiencing harsh economic turn. World trade organization (WTO) continues to harp on the need for free trade which is beneficial to the developed countries. Yet developed Western countries mount an impenetrable fortress to ward off immigrants from their paradise.
Nigerian immigrants device different strategies to scale protected Western fence at great cost. Desperate Nigerians trying to escape economic difficulties at home change citizenship as one change his clothes. A cable dealing on sale of international passport of various countries exist in Nigeria and for a good price valid passports are procured that could yield one a place in the enclosed economic safe-havens of the world. While citizens of the West enjoy unrestricted free-movement from one part of the world to the other, even as tourists, Nigerian citizens seeking economic opportunities in Europe are quarantined, threatened with imprisonment, deportation and denied such access. Employing newspaper, magazine reports and other extant secondary materials including oral interviews of those in the business of securing visas in Nigeria and migration theories, the paper will attempt an analysis of this phenomenon.
Bio - Dr Paul Obi-AniDr Paul Obi-Ani is a senior lecturer in the Department of History and International Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He has authored a book and published articles in learned journals and book chapters. |
Ms Rachel Stevens
PhD Student, School of Historical Studies, Monash University
MPN 069 - Read Full paper
Abstract:
This paper will examine political debates on the proposal to designate English as the official language of the United States between 1981 and 1996. During the early 1980s, a small but influential political movement emerged with the objective of designating English as the official language of the United States. On the surface this movement might appear benign: the central premise of this movement was that recognising English as the official language would provide an incentive for non-English speakers (particularly Spanish-speaking immigrants) to gain English language skills. Although advocates employed the liberal ideals of social mobility, equal opportunity and liberation to advance their proposals, it is evident that the official English movement was less about bringing linguistic minorities into the mainstream by helping them to acquire English proficiency but more about reinforcing the dominance of English in American society. Moreover, the incentive for immigrants to acquire English proficiency would be created through coercion and the denial of civil rights, rather than practical assistance. The official English movement has yielded considerable success at the state level, explained in part by the popular appeal of the nationalistic overtones of the movement. The proposal to designate English as the official language raised important questions about the limits of tolerance, the role of government in protecting and maintaining minority cultures, as well as the degree of assimilation expected of immigrants upon settlement. Therefore the proposal to designate English as the official language was (and remains) an important battleground on the meaning and application of multiculturalism in the United States.
Bio - Ms Rachel Stevens
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Ms Wan Munira Binti Wan Jaafar
PhD Candidate (Sociology),
School of Social and Political Sciences,
University of Canterbury, New Zealand
Abstract:
Malaysia as a multiracial country has a main concern to maintain social integration within the society. In 1996 the Malaysian government established the national ICT policy intended to transform Malaysia into an information and knowledge society. The implementation of the policy has been interpreted as part of the policy to overcome ethnic segregation through encouraging the development of online communities.
The aim of this paper is to discuss how online communities have contributed to the generation and maintenance of social integration and social capital. The research explores the views of eight selected online communities’ administrators into this issue. The findings suggest that the administrators’ views reflect some tensions around developing social integration in online communities and how this is also challenged by transferring online activities into actual offline communities.
Keywords: Online communities, social integration, social capital, ethnic groups
Bio - Ms Wan Munira Binti Wan Jaafar
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Ms Amy Nethery
PhD Candidate,
Centre for Citizenship, Development and Human Rights, Deakin university
Abstract:
In 1999, the Howard government introduced a policy that would see the deportation of over 500 long-term permanent residents over the following decade. The deportations of permanent residents were justified on ‘character grounds’, which in most cases meant that they had breached the conditions of their visa by committing a crime and receiving a sentence longer than one year. Before 1999, long-term permanent residents were not liable for deportation because of the so-called ‘10-year rule’. This rule acknowledged that permanent residents who had been living in Australia for ten years or more would have established strong social and familial ties, and, regardless of the crime, would not be deported. Its abolition in 1999 was the result of an inquiry at the request of then Minister for Immigration, Philip Ruddock, and received bipartisan support.
Close scrutiny of the parliamentary inquiry and debates leading up to the abolition of the 10-year rule reveals certain ideas of citizenship, permanent residency and limits to membership in the Australian community. An underlying theme in these arguments is the populist notion that decisions pertaining to the rights of permanent residents to stay in Australia should reflect the wishes of the wider Australian community. The policy introduced in 1999 granted Minister Ruddock broad discretionary powers to implement ‘community expectations’ and override administrative checks and balances. This paper examines ideas of populism and majoritarianism in the parliamentary inquiry and debates. It argues that populist ideology formed the foundation of many migration policy decisions made throughout the 1990s and 2000s, to the detriment of democratic processes, and with devastating consequences for some of the permanent residents concerned.
Bio - Ms Amy Nethery
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Ms Katie Hepworth
PhD Student, University of Technology, Sydney
Abstract:
The metropolis is a multiple and contradictory superimposition of physical and symbolic spaces, simultaneously active at across numerous scales, from the intimacy of the body to the national and even transnational. Proceeding from this embodied and corporeal understanding of space, made through human practices and imaginaries, the research interrogated how the presence of irregular migrants calls into question the smoothness of the national space, exposing volatile urban imaginaries and identities (Chambers 2008), and assumptions of an easy relationship between city, state and individual. This investigation occurred through a period of fieldwork conducted in Milan in 2008 and 2009, which focused on three carefully defined ‘out-of-place’ populations - Latin American live-in carers, Romanian Rom living in unlawful shanty settlements and Senegalese vendors – chosen for their high visibility in Italian political and media discourse. In order to extrapolate this relationship (and its contradictions) the research focused on three spaces which corresponded to and was in some way representative of the three groups, using participant observation and in-depth interviewing, in conjunction with informal conversations, to chart complex spatial, social and symbolic dynamics. Focusing on a narrow part of the research, namely the way in which national borders are found (and defended) within the city, this paper will extrapolate on the unique theoretical and methodological approach to urbanism and migration employed in the fieldwork.
Bio - Ms Katie HepworthFollowing studies in architecture, Katie Hepworth’s work has grown to address the realms of the public and private and their personal and political manifestations. Developed through in parallel through artistic and academic research, her work proceeds from an understanding of space that is corporeal and social as well as material.She is currently completing her PhD in International Studies at the University of Technology, Sydney. Her work looks at the migration, citizenship and the city, with a particular focus on the production of invisible borders within the cities. Her work has been presented at conferences across Australia, as well as in the UK and Germany. In addition, her work has been exhibited in Australia and internationally. In 2005, 2006 and 2007 she co-directed the Transit Lounge, a series of experimental, multi-disciplinary collaborative residencies and projects for Australian and European artists and architects in Berlin. The Transit Lounge was a partner event of the Transmediale, and was responsible for curating a series of talks on Australian art and architecture for the German Architecture Centre (DAZ), leading up to their exhibition Living the Modern: Australian Architecture. Her work has been published on the blog www.free-soil.org, and presented at conferences in Berlin, Sydney and Melbourne.She is an active member of arts collective boat-people.org. |
Ms Vittoria Grossi
PhD student , Macquarie University, Linguistics Department
Abstract:
According to Appadurai (1996, 2003) the world is characterized by flows and objects in motion which includes objects, persons, images and discourses. Australian immigration policy has long encouraged the flow of migrants to Australia to fill skills shortages. At present most migrants who settle in Australia hold the skilled migration visa with recent trends showing an increase of onshore visa applicants for this visa category. Others who contribute to the Australian workplace are international students as well as 457 temporary working visa holders.
This paper will report on aspects of migrants’ experiences in the quest for work and in workplace discourses, which can be said to be at odds with a multicultural and inclusive society. The paper will claim that in some cases the migrants’ experience supports Appadurai's claim that these people flows are characterized by what he has called 'relations of disjuncture'' (2003: 5) as some studies such as Lakha (2005) suggest.
The data, drawn from pre-employment interviews as well as observations and recordings in the workplace, is part of an ongoing ethnographic study of professional migrants in the IT area.
Bio - Ms Vittoria Grossi
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Associate Professor Mostofa Tarequl Ahsan
Associate Professor,
Department of Folklore,
University of Rajshahi
Abstract:
There are some migrated groups have been living in Bangladesh for long time. They came here when undivided India divided into two parts (India and Pakistan) due to crucial political turmoil in 1947. The division was made especially for ethnic conflict between Hindu and Muslim and large number of minority people left their country from India to Pakistan (west and East Pakistan, East Pakistan is now Independent Bangladesh).Bihari people came basically from Bihar province in India and also from Pakistan to Bangladesh. In 1971, when Bangladesh became independent Bihari people couldn’t back to Pakistan and rest Bihari from India settled here sine die. The UNO, Bangladesh Government and some NGO took initiatives for their shelter. But since then they have been living with miserable condition in two camps, in Dhaka (Geneva Camp) and Syodpur (Hatikhana camp)
Bihari people inherited a different, rich culture through their own language (It may be called a dialect that is mixed with Urdu and Bengali.) This culture or tradition includes some rituals and narratives. The narrative is an especial one touching their lifestyle, memories, habits, tyrannies and some special events of daily life. The song, riddles, rhymes, tales are the main elements covering their own folk-culture. But, their socio- economic condition is not up to the mark ---- poverty, illiteracy and many other problems make their lives miserable.
The main objective of this article is to evaluate and analysis the socio -cultural conditions of the migrated Bihari people in Syodpur. It will be a field work based research following the anthropological method. To compare their lives to Bangali lives will be other end of this article. We will be able to examine their human rights condition. After all, this article will make some arguments regarding Bihari people’s cultural and social life.
Like other migrant people in different parts of the world, Bihari is treated as ethnic and political problem but, in this article, we will try to study their cultural and social problems.
Bio - Associate Professor Mostofa Tarequl Ahsan
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Dr Ali Yousofi , PhD.,Assistant Professor of political sociology, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran
Abstract:
Religious ceremonies are one of the main elements of the religion and according to a number of sociologists social integration is enhanced through religious ceremonies and
The collective ones in particular. As Durkheim says “ Religion …….. is a memorial of the rituals providing emotional(affectionate)ties among the participants in them” . Religious ceremonies enhance social relationships from two sides: on one side they cause a common feeling(sense) based on a religious belief in the participants of the ceremony; on the other side the ceremonies give the coreligionists a chance to get to know each other and expand the relationships. For Moslems and in particular the Shiites, pilgrim is one of the significant worship ceremonies(rites) and since performing it is limited to specific time and places it brings about a better chance of making broad relationships with pilgrims from different communities. The present paper is trying to prove(show) that “Pilgrimage provides the opportunity for making cultural relations and strong social interactions among different Shiite communities”. To try the accuracy of the hypothesis(to put the theory into trial) a study was done on a sample group of 600 non-Iranian Shiite pilgrims who had travelled to Iran (Mashad) from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait and Bahrain to visit the shrine of the eight’s Imam of the Shiites as a pilgrim. The study indicates pilgrimage (pilgrim journey) enhances the socio-cultural relations of the host and the pilgrim on three different levels including” familiarity and inter cultural relations, inter-personal trust and affectionate(emotional) relations. Obviously (Easily) may conclude that participating in pilgrim ceremonies(rites/rituals) and relationships arising from that enhances and expands the Shiite community beyond tribal, national or political boundaries.
Bio - Dr Ali Yousofi
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Ms Taghreed Jamal Al-deen
PhD Student, Monash University
Abstract:
As in many other western countries, Muslim women in Australia have experienced religious discrimination which may be represented by anti-Muslim prejudice and hostility towards Islam and Muslims, particularly over the last few years. This hostility has been described by the term ‘Islamophobia’, a word that was first around the late 1980s in Britain and that has gained a notable purchase in the literature today. Literature on the Muslim minority in Australia has increased in recent times. Nevertheless, there is a lack of studies examining Muslim women teachers, particularly in relation to identity construction/negotiation in an islamophobic discourse. In this paper, I will identify from the literature the types of prejudice faced by Muslims, and in particular those which confront female teachers. I will also identify some key ways used to understand this prejudice, and show where gaps exist in the literature. I will argue, based on the works of Benn (2003) and Osler (1997), that Islamophobia is important in shaping the identities of female Muslim teachers. Also I will discuss how a focus on the conception of agency is important in understandings of Islamophobic practices experienced by Muslim women. In order to conceptualize the notion of agency in the face of power, which is represented by anti-Muslim racism, I will reflect on Mahmood’s (2001) work. The concept of agency will be used in this paper to refer to the capacity that is involved not only in those acts that lead to change in the world and in oneself but also those that aim toward continuity, stasis, and stability.
Bio - Ms Taghreed Jamal Al-deen
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Ms Elena Ostanel
PhD Student, University of Venice.
Abstract:
With the end of the apartheid regime and despite the strict immigration policies introduced since 1994, the number of foreign workers in Johannesburg, South Africa has increased significantly up to approximately 7 percent of the city population. The Census 2001, recorded approximately 220.000 international migrants (6.7%) around 10.000 from Mozambique . In South Africa, one of the main obstacles to constructive thinking about international migration is the growth of xenophobic intolerance (Crush, 2005). Policy response is greatly influenced by the strong public perception that immigration is a threat to the economic and social stability of the local population.
Starting form this assumption, the paper looks at some critical aspects of the relationship between Mozambican migrants and urban inclusion in Johannesburg. The paper wants to analyze the issue of citizenship looked at from the point of view of the practices immigrants put in place ‘to have access’ to the city (urban services and urban public space). Self-governing initiatives that are neither planned nor provided by the local government poses major challenges to urban policies that address issues of social and spatial inclusion and has important implications for urban governance (Toner, Taylor, 2008). The paper suggests that migration should be viewed as a “deployment” (Foucault, 1976) to rethink about the traditional notions of citizenship and social integration of immigrants.
Bio - Ms Elena Ostanel
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Mr Jalil Azizi, Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran- Managing Director Institute of Educational Research, Jahrom, Iran
Mr
Mojtaba Hemayatkhah, Payam Noor University, Jahrom, Iran
Abstract:
Immigration is the most important event which affect on the personal and social life of an emigrant due to its high social, cultural, economical and security impacts. Now days, identity issues are the most remarkable and major factors which emigrants are faced with them. Immigrants usually feel ties to their own national and identical values while they are away from their original country and resident in the second country. This disturbs their social emotions and feelings in the new society. In the last decades, due to low security levels and unstable political situations in Afghanistan, many Afghanis are entered to Iran as immigrants and asylum seekers. Iran is the only country which host majority of Afghans, i.e. more than a million people. It seems that the second and third generations of Afghani immigrants accept the social and cultural values of Iran and some of them feel that they have Iranian identity as their original identity. This is possibly due to many common values between two nations of Iran and Afghanistan. This paper is an experimental research which tries to find ties of Afghans teenagers and young generation to the national identity of Islamic Republic of Iran. It has also been tried to relate the factors which affect on this ties. To collect real and representative data, 250 young Afghan people (13-18 years) from a residential in Jahrom were selected to fill a designated questionnaire. SPSS software was used for statistical analysis of the data.
Keywords: Immigrant, Immigration, Afghan, Afghan identity, National identity, Iranian identity.
Bio - Mr Jalil Azizi and Mr Mojtaba Hemayatkhah
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Dr. Joel Windle
Lecturer in Culture and Pedagogy,
Faculty of Education,
Monash University
Abstract:
This paper analyses efforts to combat racism and promote intercultural understanding undertaken by immigration museums. Such museums present varied responses to complex histories of race relations, but their strategies are also structured by narrowly framed narratives of immigration. In order to capture the dynamics of this framing, I use the concept of ‘public pedagogy’ (Giroux, 1999) for an investigation of the Melbourne Immigration Museum, the Ellis Island Foundation, the Tenement Museum (New York), and the Museum of the History of Immigration (Catalonia). At each institution displays and education programs present an opportunity for a re-imagining of identity at individual, community, national and global levels, and for a repositioning of these identities and the agency associated with them in relation to past and present racism. The pedagogical strategies I identify and critique include (a) personalisation: the production of intercultural empathy through emphasis on individual experiences, (b) distancing: the containment of racism to a previous historical juncture, (c) naturalisation: the presentation of racism as an inevitable but temporary product of the intercultural encounter, (d) relativisation: the presentation of perspectives allowing empathy with ‘well-meaning’ racism, and celebration of ‘happy times’. These approaches limit racism to the phases of relocation and settlement, in keeping with the focus on immigration itself, and wider society is understood primarily in terms of cumulative incorporation and nation/community building. This hampers the capacity of immigration museums to engage their publics directly with wider manifestations of racism in society, and can even have counter-productive effects as sympathy for earlier waves of migrants sets them up as models of resilience and assimilation which current migrants fail live up to.
Bio - Dr. Joel Windle
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Ms Sarah Jameson
PhD Student, RMIT
MPN 081 - Read Full paper
Abstract:
This paper will explore the experience of dislocation arising from the loss of homeland on the occasion of migration. It examines the relationship between family archives, artefacts and memory in the construction of identity within the context of place and migration. By examining paternal family artefacts the lack of maternal ones, and mapping the topography of self-identity, the faultlines created by migration are revealed.
This exploration examines the importance and hierarchy of family artefacts linked with homeland and memory and its place in identity construction. Through the lens of the migrant’s memory, artefacts are imbued with specific meaning and become the repository of memory and help with relocation. Migration provides the imperative for people to retell their narratives and relive customs and keep alive artefacts of their homeland in an effort to ground themselves in a new and foreign culture as they re-negotiate their identities and loss of a sense of place.Memory is the link between the culture abandoned and the new, where multiplicity of meaning is inscribed. Imposed on it are all the hopes, dreams and aspirations of the migrant’s loss of culture and readjustment to a new one.This paper aims to contribute to the mapping of identity using images of the self; the faultlines and fractures of emigration can be traced and tracked to reveal a new understanding of the role of homeland and place in identity construction.
Bio - Ms Sarah Jameson
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Mr George Vasilev
PhD Student, University of Melbourne
Abstrcat:
Deliberative democracy tends to view dialogue among ethnically-like members as inimical to the goal of establishing healthy ethnic relations. This view stems from the observation that preexisting commitments frequently move in more extreme directions when discussion occurs in socially homogenous contexts. Bearing this in mind, deliberative democrats have sought to further interethnic tolerance and understanding by disrupting insular discursive spaces and advocating modes of coexistence that encourage increased dialogue across ethnic boundaries. In opposition to this view, I argue that in-group communication has the potential to play a positive, if not indispensable, role in fostering positive attitudinal change. While there is no doubting that across-group deliberations can produce the desirable effects its proponents make note of, achieving this reliably requires the construction of carefully controlled discursive environments, in which subjects are provided with good information and interactions are skillfully facilitated to ensure constructive, rather than destructive, encounters take place. In practice, the complexity and scale of modern societies precludes the realisation of these conditions, rendering across-difference deliberation no more a reliable vehicle for positive attitudinal change than its in-group counterpart. On the other hand, in-group dialogue is not simply a generator of extremist views. Many examples show that it can also function as a source for tolerance and positive embracement of the other. What has often been key to this has been the presence of influential and charismatic individuals within an ethnic group, who have taken it upon themselves to advocate a more integrationist understanding of society among ethnic co-members. I call these individuals ‘integration leaders’, and draw on empirical examples to conceptualise their actions and to provide guidelines on how future efforts towards positive attitudinal change can be modeled.
Bio - Mr George Vasilev
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Dr Niranjala (Nina) Weerakkody
School of Communication & Creative Arts,
Faculty of Arts & Education,
Deakin University
Abstract:
International fee-paying student revenue for Australia recorded A$13.5 billion in 2007, taking third place after coal and iron exports. Students from South Asia, China, Africa, South America and elsewhere arrive at Australian universities seeking a qualification, as well as future permanent residency in the country.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that many academic staff find international students with low English proficiency and the cultural differences between staff and students causing challenges and anxieties during teaching and learning. Many domestic as well as international students also find working in diverse national groups in class often posing challenges due to varying English abilities and differences in attitudes between them. However, not many studies have examined in-depth how staff or international students themselves find these challenges and what may be done to address them.
This paper examines the preliminary findings of a larger study that examined the opinions of academics teaching courses popular with international students; support staff providing academic skills training to internationals; and fee-paying international postgraduate coursework students, to explore issues related to intercultural communication competence, inter-subjectivity, the challenges faced by all groups and how they are and could be better addressed at one Australian university. The paper reports on the findings related to the various discourses embedded in 15 interviews conducted with international fee-paying post graduate coursework students from a diversity of nationalities, in the arts and education disciplines at one Australian university. It analyses how they framed ‘others’ –such as Australian staff, students and other international students when recalling their experiences.
Keywords: Intercultural communication competence, international students, Australia, inter-subjectivity, discourses of the ‘other’, depth interviews, qualitative research, exploratory study.
Bio - Dr Niranjala (Nina) Weerakkody
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Ms Tuba Boz, PhD Student, Monash University
Dr. Wendy Smith, Director of the Centre for Malaysian Studies, Monash Asia Institute
Prof. Gary Bouma, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, Monash University
Abstract:
Using qualitative interview data we explore the extent to which Turkish Muslim migrants in Germany and Australia fall back on traditional community and religious social protection mechanisms, either in conjunction with, or as opposed to, accessing state provided social protection. Since the 1960s Germany and Australia both received large numbers of Turkish settlers as “guest workers” or immigrants to work in the manufacturing sector of their respective economies. The Turkish community made up the earliest and initially the largest group of Muslim settlers in both countries, and is still the largest group in Germany today, although in Australia there are now so many migrant groups of different national origin that the Turkish community is one of many predominantly Muslim groups.
Turkish workers who came to boost the manufacturing sectors of both economies now find that these avenues of employment are drying up due to the restructuring of the national economies and the influence of the global financial crisis. Since the first generation of settlement, the potential for social mobility through education has been less in Germany than in Australia. As unemployment increases, it is important to focus on mechanisms of social protection for the Turkish communities. These mechanisms include community and cultural organisations, schools as well as state-provided services. In such communities, it is analytically necessary to widen the modern definition of ‘social protection’ to include more traditional, pre-state mechanisms. And, in the transition from pre-industrial rural peasant economy to industrial wage labour socio-economic lifestyles, institutions of social protection provide a focus for examining the interplay between tradition and modernity, with the traditional mechanisms often providing a safety valve for the modern state in times of economic downturn.
Bio - Ms Tuba Boz, Dr. Wendy Smith and Prof. Gary BoumaTuba Boz is an early career researcher with Monash/Go8 team. She recently submitted her PhD to Monash University on The Politics of Independent Documentary Film Production and Distribution. Her extensive networks within the Australian Turkish community were invaluable for the setting up of the program for the German/DAAD’s team’s visit to Melbourne and Sydney in 2008. Wendy Smith is the Director of the Centre for Malaysian Studies, Monash Asia Institute, and a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Management, Monash University. Her research interests include social protection in Malaysia, Islamic work ethics, New Religious Movements as global organizations and international education and nation building – the case of Monash Malaysian alumini. In 2009 she is Gervinus Visiting Professor at the Institute for Social Sciences, University of Hildesheim Gary D Bouma is Emeritus Professor of Sociology and UNESCO Chair in Intercultural and Interreligious Relations – Asia Pacific at Monash University and Chair of Board of Directors for The Parliament of the World’s Religions 2009. He is Associate Priest in the Anglican Parish of St John’s East Malvern. His research in the sociology of religion examines the management of religious diversity in plural multicultural societies, postmodernity as a context for doing theology, religion and terror, inter-cultural communication, religion and public policy, women and religious minorities, and gender factors in clergy careers. Recent books include: Australian Soul: Religion and Spirituality in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge University Press) and Democracy in Islam (Routledge) which he has written with Sayed Khatab. |
Ms Rebecca Cameron
PhD student in International Relations, Monash University
Abstract:
Complex and plural state-encompassed identities are widening the conceptual gap between ‘state’ and ‘nation’. Pluralism undermines traditional patterns of allegiance and loyalty to a geopolitical ‘nation’ by complicating the socio-spatial dimensions of national identities and partially re-locating them within transnational spaces of interaction. This works to blur the frontiers of political and social identities as they simultaneously separate and overlap. This paper argues that complex and plural state-encompassed identities undermine the traditional state-national-citizenship model that has sustained the sovereign ideology and the modern state order. Untangling citizenship from its territorial groundings connects its core values to Cosmopolitan visions of overlapping sovereignties, international justice and the accommodation of complex diversity.
Thickening interdependence has expanded the social sites of collective identity formation, changing the ways that difference is negotiated and threatening the utility of ‘inside/outside’ dyads. Social and political loyalties and affiliations overlap as individuals mediate different social meanings arising from layered ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ cultures. This layering of personal and group identities distorts ‘self/other’ binaries and renders sovereignty an anachronistic site of identity. Territorial sovereignty encourages a view of allegiance as located within state boundaries, however the explanatory function of material borders is generally subordinate to social boundaries that split collective identities. These dynamics of identity formation highlight a conceptual distinction between political and social identities and their particular characteristics. These developments encourage new avenues for thinking about citizenship and the relationship between states and people.
Bio -Ms Rebecca CameronRebecca Cameron, PhD student in International Relations at Monash University. Her research interests include formative sites of collective identity, sovereignty, the modern state order and international justice. |
Dr. Dvir Abramovich
Director & Jan Randa Senior Lecturer in Hebrew-Jewish studies,
Centre for Jewish History and Culture, The University of Melbourne
Abstract:
This paper critically explores the complex and crucial subject of interfaith and intercultural engagement Between Victorian Jews and Victoria Muslim. It identifies the crucial role dialogue plays in empowering the major stakeholders to move beyond oppressive cultural stereotypes and assumptions.Moreover, the paper will particularly focus on transformational personal encounters between Victorian Jews and Muslims and how those encounters have broken down prejudices, have radically changed the dynamics of this problematic relationship and have fostered mutual respect and tolerance. In different ways, the paper will examine the varying strategies, conceptual and practical tools employed to bring these two religious groups together and how these interfaith activities has overcome people’s natural proclivity is to regard those who are different as “The Other”, a concept that often leads to judgment, labels and categories By employing a wide range of examples and narratives, drawn from various sources, the paper aspires to bring appropriate case studies from the grassroots level in order to analyze and detail the success intercultural encounters in Victoria have brought to bear. The paper will put forward a range of key principles that are can be used to affect real attitudinal change in each community. One of the underlying objectives of the presentation is to showcase the programs and concepts deployed in improving relations between Jews and Muslims so as to inspire others who wish to bring differing cultures/faith groups together and promote harmonious relations.
Bio - Dr. Dvir Abramovich
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Ms Lisa Elford
PhD Student,
Monash University, Australia
Abstract:
Throughout the world large populations of people exist as migrants outside the norm of the citizen - state relationship. Without a safe home to return to, they maintain a tenuous existence on the margins of both their countries of origin and temporary or permanent exile. This existence is especially tenuous then in the dual border-bound region of Nkomazi in Mpumalanga were undocumented migrants from Mozambique and Swaziland reside alongside South Africans. This paper explores how community based interventions, based on so-called universal notions of human rights, negotiate this distinctly unique political landscape where difference is based not so much on the origin of the individual but more on the political recognition of that person. It will discuss how stigma, xenophobia and ambiguous legal status combine to not only circumscribe the realm of possible community based interventions but also result in enhanced sovereign control over ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’. The paper will draw on the ideas of social philosophers such as Foucault, Arendt, and Agamben to question current ‘traditions’ of human rights, the policies and practices surrounding them, as well as what Giorgio Agamben term’s the condition of ‘bare life’ that arguably emerges out of migrants’ existence in this context.
Bio - Ms Lisa ElfordLisa Elford is a PhD student with Monash University, Clayton. Currently she is researching NGOs and community-based organizations in South Africa and how they use ideas and discourses of human rights in their programming. Her research interests include geographies of health, human rights and refugees and political theories of state sovereignty. Prior to returning to studies she worked in Canada as a community development practitioner in a local HIV/AIDS organization and immigrant women’s association. |
Dr Angeline Ferdinand MPH,
Research Fellow,
Centre for Health Policy, Programs and Economics,
Health,
University of Melbourne
Dr Deborah Warr, Sr. Research Fellow, Centre for Health Policy, Programs and Economics,
Health,
University of Melbourne
Abstract:
Building Bridges is a VicHealth initiative that aims to reduce race-based discrimination by providing opportunities for cooperative inter-cultural contact. Five flagship projects targeting young people across a range of settings have been funded and are currently being evaluated. The evaluation aims to assess the effectiveness of projects in promoting mental health and wellbeing and reducing discrimination through positive experiences of inter-cultural contact. The evaluation involves surveys of participants and community members, semi-structured interviews with project staff and group discussions with participants. In our presentation we will discuss early findings from our evaluation of the initiative.
Participants through the five Building Bridges projects range in age from 11-25 years. Interviews and focus group data shows that guiding notions such as the concept of ‘inter-cultural contact’ are complex experiences and mediated by biography, class and neighbourhood. The experiences of social inclusion and exclusion described by young people involved in the projects are complex and shifting. Notably, social inclusion and connection are being forged through connections with people from other migrant communities, and there are often tenuous connections with ‘mainstream’ Australians.
Bio - Dr Angeline Ferdinand & Dr Deborah Warr
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Ms Claire Loughnan
PhD Candidate,
School of Social and Political Sciences,
University of Melbourne
Abstract:
This paper aims to ground a discussion of border protection policies, by exploring the way in which the ‘linearization’ of the line (as Tim Ingold terms it), is reflected both in the construction of national borders, and more particularly, in the way in which these borders are asserted through immigration law, as a tool of categorisation and control The development of cosmopolitan norms is urged by Held and others as an means of overcoming exclusionary practices, yet it seems that his account fails to adequately account for the material impediments to such a justice which the ‘linearisation’ of the line presents.
Instead, I propose that a Levinasian approach provides us with a richer vocabulary with which to consider a cosmopolitan alternative. I draw on parallels between the encounter with the other which he urges as constitutive of our subjectivity, and Ingold’s study of the line, proposing that our responses to immigration pressures have been shaped by this. My reading of his discussion asserts the possibility that this linearising process has been accompanied, or even characterised by, a diminishing encounter with the other; so the line (whether reflected in national borders, or in the form filling conducting by immigration officials, and representation of asylum seeker cases in the court system) has become a way of containing the other. This is revealed in the way that individuals are not only categorised in the law, but also represented in cases of asylum application, in that we lose the sense that we are talking here about a person, like you or me. Hence our capacity to engage with the materiality of experience of human bodies, and their stories is diminished.
Bio - Ms Claire LoughnanClaire Loughnan is a PhD candidate, enrolled in the School of Political Science, Criminology and Sociology, at the University of Melbourne. Her thesis topic ‘The Tears of the Other: On locating the political in Emmanuel Levinas’, seeks to retrieve an ethical dimension from Levinas which might provide a productive encounter with politics, in order more critically to oppose the ‘wrong’ of immigration detention and border control. Her academic interests are broadly in the area of political theory, identity and migration, border politics, sovereignty, hospitality, and the debate between communitarians and cosmopolitan theorists in international political theory. She tutors in international politics, political theory and legal/cultural studies at the University of Melbourne. |
Dr Kayoko Ishii
Associate Professor, Nagoya University of Commerce and Business, Japan
Abstract:
The purpose of this study is to analyze situation of non-returnable stateless migrants in Japan. Undocumented female migrants whose homeland is in Thailand shall be specially focused. The number of ethnic minority population was made into stateless through a process of nation building in the 20th century. Those stateless minority people started to migrate trans-nationally in search of better socio-economic situation, because socio-economic opportunities are quite limited at their homelands, for stateless people. After they enter the destination country with fake passports, they have no choice but become undocumented workers there. When destination country face with economic backlash, many of them lose income, however, on this stage, they realize that original will not accept them as they are not nationals of that country.
For such stateless people in Thailand, one of a destination country for trans-border migration is East Asian countries, including Japan. Today, there are a number of stateless non-returnable migrants whose homeland is in Thailand but Thailand refuse to accept them as they are not Thai nationals. Some of them even report themselves to immigration bureau of Japan, expecting to be deported to Thailand officially, however, Thai officials reply that as far as they are not Thai nationals, Thailand can not accept them. As a result, those non-returnable stateless people are not able to go anywhere but being jobless in Japan, as stateless people. Some of them have stateless children with them. Now, how they can survive? This presentation will report situation of such non-returnable stateless people from Thailand in Japan. Need for further social mechanism in which people who sink in gap between national framework and global framework shall be discussed.
Bio - Dr Kayoko Ishii
|
Mr Teuku Zulfikar
PhD Student, Faculty of Education Monash University
Abstract:
Muslims have a long history of migration to Australia. These Muslim minorities in Australia come from various ethnic and cultural backgrounds such as the Arab, Asian, African and other ethnic backgrounds. This study focuses on Indonesian-Muslims youth in Australia. This research examines Indonesian-Muslim youth’s religious identity in relation to their experiences within their families, their Muslim community in Melbourne and schooling experiences. Indonesian Muslim youth in Australia are living within their Muslims families and participate in the activities of the Indonesian-Muslim Community of Victoria (IMCV) Centre in Clayton, Melbourne. IMCV uses the Westall Indonesian Community Mosque in Clayton to conduct activities. The Indonesian Muslim community in Melbourne is a close-knit one. There are numerous activities in Indonesian mosque such as Friday and Sunday schools for all Indonesian Muslims living and studying in Australia. In addition, social gatherings such as listening to the sermon from Indonesian Muslim clerics take place almost every month. Islamic religious beliefs and practices are important within these social sites. In addition, Indonesian-Muslim youth also spend a significant time within their schooling environment where they engage with different cultures through their interactions with their school peers and schooling community. This research draws on concepts on religious/Muslim identity or Muslimness, Muslim family, Muslim community and schooling and identity. The research will provide insights into the ways in which Indonesian Muslim youth construct their sense of religious identity within the Australian context. Findings from this research project will also add on to research and understandings migrant communities and their experiences in Australia
Bio - Mr Teuku Zulfikar
|
Dr. Mohammad Reza Pak
Department of arts and literature, Islamic azad university, Central Tehran
Abstract :
This paper deals with the historical phenomenon of citizenship rights and immigration, and establishment of modern cities, nations and citizenship culture in the middle ages during the early period of Islamic societies. There is a historical universal fact of citizenship and history of Bedouin that must be mentioned to understand the real meaning of immigration and citizenship rights. This fact is mentioned by some orientalists such as Grunebaum (1972) who explored the role of Islam in the middle ages, the notion of citizenship under the Islamic law and Islamic social organization and its structure. Others like Gibb (1971) wrote several books about Islamic societies during the middle ages. These orientalists divided life of the prophet of Islam in two sections: Mohammad in Mecca, and Mohammad in Medina. Mecca is on the coast of Arabian Peninsula and was the greatest place of paganism in the world before Mohammad. It was a city where human rights had been destroyed and a place of ignorance, oppression and usury. Mohammad’s immigration from Mecca to Medina was the main reason that shifted Arabs away from ignorance and poverty to supporting citizenship and human rights. In the first decades of seventh century of the Middle Ages the prophet of Islam established the first political city and a modern social system based on human rights and citizenship. In less than seven decades the prophet’s immigration changed the face of the medieval world. For example, it encouraged the development of citizenship rights in some places of the world, especially in Iran, Egypt, North Africa and many cities of the Islamic empire. Two centuries later, these changes also became the basis of citizenship within 1400 Islamic cities. Within this historical context the paper addresses several questions:
- How did the prophet of Islam unite Islam’s followers, Christians, Jews, idolaters, in the political city of Medina? and
- How did the prophet organize homeless immigrants of Mecca and other places of the Arabian Peninsula in Medina and provide food, clothing and shelter for these immigrants? The paper concludes that in his dealings with the authorities of Medina the prophet Mohammad combined religion, philosophy and politics and this encouraged Medina to grant its people citizenship rights.
Key words: sources of the citizenship in Islam, social Islamic law, first citizenship organization
Bio - Dr. Mohammad Reza Pak |
Ms Laura Griffin
PhD student, University of Melbourne
Abstract:
Although they travel only a bus-ride away, the journey from home to workplace takes Basotho domestic workers into a different world. Their working lives are spent oscillating through a porous, postcolonial border: leaving rural village homes in Lesotho, they cross into South Africa and hide in servants’ quarters at their employers’ homes, hoping to escape the gaze of police and immigration officials. Come month end, they return, cash in hand, to visit family and pay the grocery bills. Although traditionally a labour reserve for migrant men, the small enclave state of Lesotho is now home to a growing number of breadwinner mothers, who – like their fathers before them – have little choice but to seek work in South Africa if they are to pay school fees and feed their families. The crucial difference: the availability of South African work permits. As they must enter South African territory on visitors’ permits, Basotho women’s transnational crossings are dictated by the ‘days’ they are granted on their passports as they cross the border. This in turn shapes their strategies in terms of work location and remittance practices. This paper examines the social ties, cross-border movements and remittance flows sustained by Basotho women as they balance the demands of employers, border guards, children, husbands and extended family. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in both ‘sending’ and ‘receiving’ areas, it considers some of the strategies these migrant workers adapt in trying to maximise the benefits of their employment for themselves and for others ‘over there’.
Bio - Ms Laura GriffinLaura Griffin is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne. She has completed degrees in Sustainable Development and Law (with honours in migrants’ human rights). Laura recently returned to Melbourne after completing in-depth research with migrant domestic workers and transnational communities in South Africa and Lesotho. |
Dr Dennis Zuev
Researcher, CIES-ISCTE, Lisbon, Portugal
Abstract:
This study of ethnic relations in Russia employs several scales of observation and accordingly several ways of collecting data. It uses macro-observation scale based on the survey data ( 2005-2006) as the starting point. The data are supplemented by the micro-sociological studies of the Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI) and the Russian March, organized by the Russian nationalist movement to celebrate the Russian national holiday - Day of People's Unity.
The underlying thesis is that ethnic relations in Russia are characterized by a rather high unacceptance of Other among ethnic Russians which feeds on the high level of labor migration flows from the repulics of the former Soviet Union. Another assumption of this work is that Russian ultranationalist movement has taken advantage of the political opportunity structure which emerged over the last 5 years. It has led to insitutionalization of the main protest action event of the Russian nationalists – the Russian March and crystallization of the mesomobilization actors (such as DPNI) in the nationalist movement.
The study provides insights into how the ethnic relations and ethnic conflicts in a multi-ethnic context become a powerful political asset for the extreme-right and reflects on the need of more flexible methodological strategies in the study of ethnic relations in the societies in transition.
Bio - Dr Dennis ZuevDennis Zuev graduated from the Krasnoyarsk State University, and received his PhD in sociology of culture from Altay State University in 2004. He had taught Chinese Culture Studies and Media Studies in Siberian Federal University. In 2005-2007 he had been involved in the project «Difference in Russia», funded by the Academy of Finland. He has published articles in the journals «Young», «European Spatial Research and Policy» and «Finnish Review of East European Studies. . |
Ms Luara Ferracioli
PhD Student,
Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (CAPPE),
The Australian National University
MPN 096 - Read Full paper
Abstract:
Following the historic speech of French president Nicolas Sarkozy, in which he called French lawmakers to ban the burka from the French territory, a preeminent Australian journalist, Virginia Haussegger, has published an article[1] calling for a similar ban to take place in Australia. In Haussegger’s view, the burka and niqab are a “tool of patriarchy used to subjugate women”. In addition, she claims that even if women choose to wear them, the use of such garments inescapably “defies freedom”. This essay attempts to examine the arguments put forward by Sarkozy and Hausseger which accuse the use of the burka and the niqab of stripping women from their rights and therefore being morally impermissible. It also responds to intuitions persons in the West normally have against the burka and niqab and assesses whether those intuitions are justified by sound principles or if they are in fact unreliable given that they only invoke our aesthetic beliefs of what constitutes appropriate dress codes for individuals. Although most arguments fail to support a ban on these garments, the fact that some Muslim women are indeed coerced into veiling must still be dealt with. In light of this, I will propose a number of more fruitful avenues that can ensure that all conditions are in place for women to gain or maintain agency over their lives.
Bio - Ms Luara Ferracioli |
Mr Ho Thi Thanh Nga
PhD Student, Department of Taiwanese Literature, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan
Abstract:
Under the impact of economic globalization on labour market, the Viet Nam migrants have entered the economic market of Taiwan. According to statistics by Taiwan Bureau of Employment and vocational Training in March 2009, the number of Viet Nam migrant workers in Taiwan is in the second of Southeast Asia (77,746), the number of Viet Nam migrant wives (brides) has the highest proportion in Taiwan. Taiwan’s economics and society have been influenced by Viet Nam migrants. In particular, the most prominence is the formation of Viet Nam migrant’s socio - cultural space in the Taiwanese society. In this paper, the author focuses on case study of Viet Nam migrant’s socio-cultural space in Tainan - Taiwan. Viet Nam migrants’ socio-cultural space is not only to provide a space for Viet Nam migrants but also serve for their needs. It includes Ethno-Consumptive space, Viet Nam village, Viet Nam shops, Viet Nam noodle shops, public space as well as activities space of Viet Nam community (as Tainan park, Tainan station…). This paper will also focus on analysing the formation and meanings of Viet Nam socio-cultural space in Tainan City. We also analyse the impact of its influence to the urban space. On that basis, in the second step of the research progress, we also learn about their life, the difficulties and problems which Vietnam migrant community is facing in Taiwan society.
Keyword: Viet Nam Migrant, intercultural identities, Space, Socio-Cultural, Cultural Geography, ethno-consumptive, Tainan.
Bio - Mr Ho Thi Thanh NgaI am an researcher in Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences, Institus for Southeast Asian studies. Now, I am also a PhD student at National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan. My research to date has focused on the experiences and identities of members of the Vietnamese diaspora, especial I focus on new waves of migration from Vietnam to Taiwan, including the movement of women from the Mekong Delta to Taiwan as brides and movement of migrant labour to Taiwan. Special attention is the formation and meanings of Viet Nam socio- cutltural space as well as the impact of its influence to the urban space. My research methodology is Cultural geography’s theory. My PhD research focus in Viet Nam Migrant’s Space, landscape and cultural in Taiwan. |
Ms Rachel Woodlock
School of Political and Social Inquiry, Monash University
Abstract:
The integration of Muslims in Western-European and English-speaking societies has recently caught the attention of politicians, social commentators and academics for a number of reasons including political point-scoring, fears about global terrorism, and the resurgence of a public debate about national identity. In Australia, despite official promotion of multiculturalism, Muslim and Australian identities are regularly positioned as being in conflict with each other, based on the “clash of civilisations” thesis, as part of a resurgence of a monoculturalist vision of Australian society. In this paper, I will present a mixed-methods analysis of data arising from 600 questionnaires returned from Muslims living in Sydney, Melbourne and regional Victoria, gathered in 2007-08. In particular, I will look at how Muslim participants value and view their Muslim, ethnic and Australian identities, comparing differences and similarities between categories of participants, including immigrants versus Australian-born Muslims. I will also discuss participants’ perceptions of life in Australia for Muslims, compared to Muslim-majority countries.
Bio - Ms Rachel Woodlock
|
Ms Nayano Taylor-Neumann
PhD Student, University of New England,
Armidale NSW
Abstract:
This paper provides fresh insights into how a sense of inclusion develops in a multicultural society through a study of the integration of refugees who were holders of the now defunct Australian Temporary Protection Visa. While it is commonly acknowledged that integration is a two-way process, most research has focussed on only one side of the story. Most investigations present refugees as the subjects of various settlement conditions, while the broader community is conceptualised as an anonymous set of forces that impede or facilitate integration.
This study is unique in that it illustrates integration as a process of interaction and change in the refugees, the host community and the larger society. It describes a study carried out in Murray Bridge, South Australia of the settlement of Temporary Protection Visa holders, in which the experiences of the refugees and members of the local community and reports in the local media provide the basis for understanding processes of mutual integration through the lens of frame transformation. In so doing, the study illustrates the importance of civil society action in integration.
Bio - Ms Nayano Taylor-Neumann
She is currently Refugee Support Coordinator, Lutheran Community Care Murray Bridge and Project Manager for Murraylands Multicultural, a project that primarily supports the 300+ Chinese on 457 (Temporary Regional Skilled Migration) visas. Nayano publishes the blog A Possie in Aussie, with regular postings about marginalized migrants of all kinds. Her most recent publication, with Mohana Raj Balasingam, is Sustaining Sudanese Settlement in Murray Bridge South Australia, report of a study conducted for the DIAC Sustainable Regional Settlement Project, July 2009. Nayano is in the last stage of a PhD thesis at the University of New England examining the integration of the Afghan TPV holders in Murray Bridge. |
Mr Adebola Ezekiel Akinsanya
PhD student,
Political Science Department,
University of Ibadan,
Ibadan,Oyo State,
Nigeria
Abstracts:
The harsh economic policies of the successive military regimes in Nigeria from the early 80's to the late 90's saw a substantial exodus of Nigerians abroad.Majority left primarily to seek greener pastures,while the minory left in protest and for security reasons.
It has been argued that the slave trade paved the way for military conquest of Africa because the able bodied men has been sold off during the slave trade,leaving the weaklings and children to wage a one sided war against the sophisticated Europeans.In this age of globalisation,one begins to wonder the implications of this brain drain from Nigeria as the global North battles for the minds and resources of the global South through Cyberspace and the role the diaspora communities play in the public sphere of their host countries.
With the return of the democratic rule in May 1999,the government had empowered the people in terms of Information Technology by deploying the GSM technology thereby making Internet facility affordable and accessible to the common man.By the use of cyberspace,Nigerians abroad have been able to influence policies,voice their opinions and actively engage in democratic discourse by participating in online fora,blogs and cybercommunities.Their role in the public sphere is so significant that Nigerian government recognised that Nigerians abroad certainly have a role to play in the nation building and the fight against corruption. Since they have constituted a critical mass and essential democratic constituency,this study examined how Nigerians abroad were making use of the Internet to affect democracy in Nigeria. Some randomly selected websites that are dedicated to Nigeria socio-political issues were used to get questionaires to thousands of Nigeria online users and their responses showed a hunger,thirst and a yearning for homecoming to a country where true democracy,true federalism and a respect for rule of law reign supreme.
It is significant to state that with the emergence of Internet,Nigerians abroad has positively contributed to the ongoing democratic process and had maintained transnational solidarity that transcends the nation-state.
This study has added another dimension to the scanty body of knowledge on Nigerians abroad.
Bio - Mr Adebola Ezekiel AkinsanyaTo be updated soon. |
Dr Juliet Pietsch
Lecturer, School of International and Political Studies,
Deakin University, Melbourne campus, Australia.
Abstract:
This paper examines a social network of Filipino women who migrate to Tasmania to marry a man they have never met. Compared to other Asian countries, the Philippines as a country of origin has by far the largest proportion of women who migrate to Tasmania. Given that the majority of Filipino women are married to Australian men in Tasmania, this paper will engage with contemporary discourses on transnational migration. It provides new insights into the experience of Filipino women in Tasmania, and questions and challenges the assumptions that are often made about their migration. The ultimate aim is to provide alternative realities to the stereotypes of Filipino women that circulate in the media, on the web and through academic discourse.
Bio - Dr Juliet Pietsch
|
Associate Professor Anita Harris
Mid-Career Research Fellow, Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, University of Queensland
Abstract:
It is well established that young people today are at the forefront of cross-cultural mix. Unlike previous generations, urban youth in places such as Australia have not known a time before intense and extensive diversity: young people from different backgrounds now routinely encounter one another in their everyday lives and negotiate and contest ways of living together and sharing civic space. This paper explores the relationship between young people’s strategies for living with difference and the multicultural policy emphasis on community cohesion and harmony. It suggests that a social cohesion agenda may not adequately account for young people’s practices because it assumes adult experiences of community, traditional and singular constructions of cultural identity and rational/discursive modes of participatory citizenship.
Bio - Associate Professor Anita Harris |
Associate Professor D. L. Vasintha Veeran , Dept of Social Work, College of Humanities and Social Work, United Arab Emirates University
Abstract:
In the current climate of globalization, migration remains a complex process posing many challenges to humanely acceptable responses of host countries. Migration in and of itself is a multi-layered experience that is influenced by many factors. Similarly, youth migration is no exception to the plurality of such experiences which can be compounded by the developmental processes of youth especially those concerned with identity and inclusion. In youth migration, the complex process of adjustment, supported or not supported, by a process of inclusion include but is not limited to coping with separation and anxiety, lack of easily accessible and relevant information, language and communication difficulties, cultural barriers and ‘racism’ and coping with loneliness and isolation. A significant process in migration is the extent to which these factors are given due consideration by the host country to promote a sense of inclusion in the host country. Drawing on existing theory and research of youth migration, this paper will highlight some of the factors that influence identification and a sense of inclusion and its manifestation within the host country for youth. The discussion will also elaborate on the following:
• Draw attention to the complex experience of the migration process through the exploration of some of the dilemmas that youth face in host societies
• Elaborate on culture and ethnicity as a significant factor in maintaining a sense of identity and inclusion in the host society
Hence, the paper will explore the question “do youth experience a sense of inclusion and how is this inclusion recognized or manifested in a multicultural society? which adheres to the Conference Theme: Multiculturalism, Identity and Citizenship.
Bio - Associate Professor D. L. Vasintha Veeran |
Ms Fanny Lauby
Université Paris III – Sorbonne Nouvelle
MPN 104 - Read Full paper
Abstract:
Previous research in the area of migration, education, and citizenship tends to focus on migrants as workers (Fortuny, 2007; Fry, 2002), or as at-risk students in secondary and post-secondary education (Gonzalez, 2002). Less information has been published on young migrants and their experiences with the finances of the higher education system, especially in the expensive context of American public universities. Over the past decade several states have changed the laws governing access to financial aid. Most of these revisions limited such access to citizens and legal residents only. While public policies have aimed at helping secondary education improve national cohesion through standardization (St. John, 2004), little public attention – and monies – have been given to study the role that public universities can play in fostering a similar sense of belonging and success, especially in today’s competitive labor market (Carnevale & Fry, 2000). In fact, the recent tightening of public financial aid, and its subjection to citizenship and other legal requirements, indicate that new state laws concerning financial aid access may increase the hardships faced by immigrant youth.
This study examined the impact of financial aid availability on the relationship between immigrant youth and higher education in the United States. More broadly it addressed the sense of inclusion or exclusion that financial aid availability could create among this group. The findings are based on interviews conducted in 2007 with immigrant and citizen students living in Tucson, Arizona. They show that the recent intrusion of immigration laws in public universities has led to a decrease in the amount of trust immigrant youth place in such institutions, and indicate that they may foster division in communities rather than unity.
Bio - Ms Fanny Lauby
|
Dr Sabine Krajewski, Lecturer in International Communication, Macquarie University
Abstract:
In times of accelerated globalisation, the number of cultural transitions is on the rise and it is not unusual for people to experience multiple cultural transitions for various reasons such as education, work or immigration. It has been acknowledged that identity is being transformed during processes of cultural transition and adaptation, but the fluid nature of ethnic and social identity is still underrepresented in the theoretical framework of intercultural communication.
In identity-based intercultural communication theories, identity is seen as an influence on communicative behaviour. Subjective identity (the way we see ourselves) and objective identity (the way others see us) are determining factors in effective communication processes and key factors in successful intercultural communication. Due to the symbiotic and transactional nature of identity and communication, identity is in turn constantly shaped and re-assessed through communication with others. The meaning of self is created by avowal and ascription over time and is embodied in intercultural conflict situations.
The influence of identity on the management of anxiety and uncertainty is fundamental to effective communication (Gudykunst 1995). Collier (1997) exemplifies how ethnic identities are negotiated through communication and Ting-Toomey (1988) uses examples of conflict management to analyse the impact of ethnic identity on conflict styles in high context and low context cultures. Though identity is an integral concept of intercultural theories, there needs to be more research on procedural changes.
I will present a research project about the influence of intercultural transition(s) on cultural identities that focuses on the physical and mental wellbeing of sojourners and migrants.
Bio - Dr Sabine KrajewskiSabine Krajewski is a lecturer in international communications in the department of Media, Music and Cultural Studies at Macquarie University, Sydney. Most recent publication: Lili Hernandez and Sabine Krajewski (eds) (2009). Crossing Cultural Boundaries. Taboo, Bodies and Identities. Newcastle upon Tyne: CSP. |
Ms Tannis Atkinson
PhD candidate, Adult Education,OISE / University of Toronto
Abstract:
Rather than contributing to a sense of belonging, current adult literacy discourses and policies in Canada can be seen as hostile to social inclusion. This has not always been the case: until the early 1990s adult basic education was linked directly to issues of citizenship, participation and access to information. This paper traces how the OECD-sponsored International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) has drawn on colonial-era precedents to reshape adult basic education in Canada. IALS uses highly mechanistic definitions of literacy skills and explicitly aims to inform labour policies to address the economic impacts of globalization. It has been highly effective in reshaping discourse in English-speaking member nations, in informing policies, and in justifying increasingly stringent accountability for programs. Building on critics who have pointed out that IALS falsely claims that OECD nations are homogenous (Hamilton & Barton, 2000; Darville 1999), I have argued elsewhere that, by conflating literacy skills and lack of fluency in the dominant language, IALS erases the lived realities of many recent immigrants and blames economic problems on people who struggle with dominant literacies (Atkinson, 2009). This paper draws on postcolonial critiques of the disciplinary uses of statistics to examine why IALS has had such power, and connects the skills discourse embedded in IALS to colonial-era missionaries’ emphasis on alphabetic literacy (Mitchell, 1988; Thomas, 2007). It is hoped that this work will help reveal ethical alternatives that can restore interculturalism and social inclusion to adult basic education.
Bio - Ms Tannis Atkinson |
Ms Cunzhen Yang
PhD Candidate, Faculty of Education, Monash University
Abstract:
In 2009 in Victoria, about 37,000 students are learning ethnic languages in community language schools and among them nearly 1/3 are learning Chinese (ESAV, 2009). However, relevant research on ethnic supplementary schools has received little attention from educational researchers. This paper is based on a doctoral research that focuses on students' educational and cultural experiences in a weekend Chinese school in Melbourne. This ethnographic case study employs observations, document analysis and in-depth interviews with the school principal, teachers and Chinese students (born in Australia or P.R.China). Some preliminary findings are presented in this paper.
Initial findings suggests that some students in this weekend school focus on learning the Chinese language and culture in ways that ensure 'success' within their family, the school, and the wider Australian society. This research findings are also in accordance with what Ang (2001) argues that identities are hybrid, f luid, complex and flexible.
Bio - Ms Cunzhen Yang
|
Mrs Anthonella Muanza
Insitute of Migration/University of Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo
Abstract:
The Democratic Republic of Congo harbored 400,000 refugees from Burundi, 200,000 from Ruanda, 160,000 Angolans, 110,000 Sudanese, and 18,500 Ugandans as of May 1997. After the internal conflict that started there in August 1998, more than 700,000 people were internally displaced from Kivu, Goma, Bukavu and Kisangani to the North Katanga and the Central part of the country. Some 95,000 sought asylum in Tanzania, and 25,000 fled to Zambia. In 2008 the net migration rate in DR of Congo was -9.1 migrants per 1,000 populations, or a loss of 540,000 people. This year the total number of migrants living in the DR of Congo is 939,000, of which 532,500 are refugees. What are the politics of the local governments on migrations? Who care about displaced people beyond the borders or inside the territories? How about the existing hostess structures and what are are strategies to accompany the migrants? In this communication I would like to make a comparison between the national politics on migrations in the Great Lakes Region’s countries. What are the perspectives of migrations in the region?
Furthermore, the consequences of those migrations are not only humanitarian and economic but also social. A lot of ethnic practices and social behaviors identifying groups are these last days subjected to disappear letting the place to new practices and cultures. The displaced people carry with them their practices and identity; the land owners try to overcome the new influences of the new comers. Are the practice and social identity among war displaced people a fact of the ethnicity or a fact of urban diversity?
Bio - Mrs Anthonella Muanza |
*Mr
Hao Duan, Dr Paul Tranter and Dr Scott Sharpe
*PhD Student, School of Physical, Environmental and Mathematical Sciences
University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy, Canberra
Abstract:
This paper exploits an existing gap in the literature, on both permanent and temporary migration, concerning the possible impacts of energy shortages. Even in conservative circles there is a growing recognition that our primary source of energy, oil, will face shortages in the foreseeable future. This moment in the future, when our demand for oil outstrips our capacity to produce it, is known in academic and popular literature as “peak oil.” Peak oil has significant and wide-ranging implications for economies and societies. This paper considers the topic of peak oil in relation to the issue of temporary migration, and considers three broad categories of temporary migrants: managers and professionals, skilled manual workers, and unskilled manual labourers. The paper proposes a model of the possible impacts of energy stress on these three categories of temporary migrants. Two scenarios are modeled: an economy with a closed labour market and an economy with an open labour market. The impacts of energy shortages on temporary migrants involve more than simply their impacts on the cost of travel. Increasing energy costs also affect cultural exchanges between temporary migrants and the host community. Predictions of likely impacts of peak oil are made in the two scenarios. Australian labour markets lie between the two contrasting scenarios, with relatively restricted labour markets and small numbers of temporary migrants from other countries. Australian temporary migration policies are suggested to change in the context of peak oil.
Bio - Mr Hao Duan
Dr Paul Tranter teaches social geography and transport geography in the School of Physical, Environmental and Mathematical Science, University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy. A key theme of both his teaching and research is the study of major challenges facing human society in coming decades, particularly those relating to “peak oil”. Other major research interests include the themes of child-friendly environments and sustainable cities, the public health impacts of motorsport, and the promotion of active transport through the concept of “effective speed”. |
Dr. Nira Rahman, Monash University
Ms Penelope Goward, Faculty of Education, Monash University
Abstract:
In recent years, as part of Australia’s ‘population building’ strategy, a large number of immigrants with high aspirations and hopes for enhanced opportunities have come to Australia as skilled migrants. A significant portion of these migrants have come from South-Asian backgrounds, particularly from India. As per the recent data from Department Immigration and Citizenship (Jul-Dec 2008) the largest number of migrants settling in Australia after New Zealand and UK came from India. These immigrants from India, like any other migrant group, bring with them their own culture, language, experiences and expectations, and have to cope with the existing socio-cultural situation in a new country. One of the most influential, unique and unifying features of Indian origin migrants is their allegiance to ‘Bollywood’ spirit. Previous studies suggest that Bollywood films are contemplated as the most dominant influence, and bring distinguishing features for constructing and maintaining cultural identity, and the notion of ‘Indianness’ for Indian Diaspora. This paper will discuss the influence of Indian films, and essentially Bollywood films on the Indian Diaspora women. Films will be discussed in terms of the changing face of Indian women and the tension between the public and the private worlds, the changing models of conduct, the roles of women that have been inherited and now influenced by the ‘west’ and the notion of ‘modernity’ with the rise of the middle-class, the awakening feminist consciousness, and the changing feminine archetypes. Lastly, themes of living abroad with the accompanying struggles and challenges, and how women’s sense of identity or “Indianness” is influenced and structured through film will be discussed.
Bio - Dr. Nira Rahman & Penelope Goward
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Ms Iris L. Acejo
PhD student in Sociology, Cardiff University, Wales, UK
Abstract:
Recent studies on transnational view in migration have emphasized the migrants’ points of origin and area of destination within their highly diverse and mobile circumstances. The rise in the number of temporary migrants in recent times bears re-examination on direction and scope of transnationalism as it distinctively highlights new definitions and contentions regarding notions of belongingness and mobility. Turning the attention on the global seafaring industry and understanding the seafarers’ instances of transnational moments shed light on the economic, social and cultural consequences they face at sea and on land. The complexity of their encounters on both realms raises the question of whether they experience double belongingness and the manifestations thereof. Drawing on semi-structured interviews and non-participant observation onboard and ashore - three months of fieldwork in a village of seafarers in the Philippines and a month of participant observation on a commercial ship plying the Europe - Asia route - this paper focuses on the transnational connections and relations of seafarers among themselves and their families. Accordingly, the analytical task centers on how effectively seafarers straddle two communities by looking into the ways by which these are manifested in their daily routines on board and in the community. On the ship, empirical issues regarding intercultural relationships, modes of subordination (i.e., rank and nationality) and coping behaviours contribute to enhanced understanding of their form of inclusion. On land, enhanced social and economic status, community and religious affiliations provide insights on their capacity and motives for supporting their local communities. This study argues that the myriad ways they sustain relationships such as accommodating, resisting and going beyond a variety of concerns allow them to transcend social and physical boundaries and therefore simultaneously participate in two worlds that they inhabit.
Bio - Ms Iris AcejoIris Acejo is presently connected with the School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University as a 3rd year PhD student in Social Sciences (Global Political Economy Pathway). Prior to this she has been working as a research assistant at a primary policy research institution in the Philippines. Her field of interest generally revolves around vulnerable sectors such as seafarers, women and children. As a recipient of the PIDS – HRD scholarship program, she took Master of Arts in Economics in the University of the Philippines and has been involved in various policy research concerning labour and employment, migration and computer adoption. She also had a short stint as a teaching fellow at the U.P. School of Economics from 2005 – 2006. Her foray into a multidisciplinary approach to policy research stems from her awareness of a more integrated engagement with the study of labour by incorporating the wisdom from economics and sociology disciplines. Through this, she plans to contribute to social science policy networks focusing on the gender, cultural and political dimensions confronting labour in a highly globalising world of work and employment. |
Ms Alice Le Clézio
Political Science PhD candidate and research assistant, Sciences Po Paris/ C.E.R.I.
Abstract:
Since the second half of the 20th century, the increase in migration flows, the development of transnational practices and globalization in its broadest meaning have given new perspective on immigration and the acquisition of citizenship. In the U.S., historically known as a country of immigrants, contemporary research in migration theory and in immigration policy is particularly important: the proportion of foreign-born in the population is at its highest in history. Today, the United States offer new comers various paths towards naturalization and inclusion. The paper proposed here intends to examine one of these paths: the acquisition of citizenship and inclusion through military enlistment. Far from being a new practice, the recruitment of non-citizens in the armed forces dates back to the Revolutionary war, when recent immigrants were granted U.S. citizenship as a reward for defense of the newly founded nation. Since that time, the armed forces have periodically relied on the enlistment of immigrants to meet their wartime recruitment needs. Although today the eligible candidates must be legal permanent residents, the situation since 9/11 has compelled the different armed services to make adjustments in order to increase the enlistment and retention rates. The Department of Defense is now looking upon immigration as a potential solution to the manpower crisis in the military. This merely unique situation in immigration and military recruitment policies raises a number of ethical issues. It also opens new perspectives on understanding the concepts of national identity, patriotism and citizenship.
Bio - Ms Alice Le ClézioAlice Le Clézio is a PhD candidate and a research assistant in Political Science at the French Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Paris (Sciences Po) and the C.E.R.I., under the supervision of Professor Denis Lacorne. Her thesis subject is the recruitment of minorities in the U.S. armed forces, and more precisely the acquisition of citizenship through military enlistment. She has degrees in Anthropology and in History from the Sorbonne-Nouvelle and Denis Diderot Universities in Paris, France. She has worked on various research projects, including the Projet ECOS Nord and studies for the French Ministère de la Défense, and interned at UNESCO in the International Migration and Multicultural Policies section. |
By Christina Ho, Barbara Bloch, Devleena Ghosh & Tanja Dreher
Dr Christina Ho,
Senior Lecturer, Social Inquiry, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology, Sydney
Dr Barbara Bloch, Lecturer, FASS, Unversity of Technology, Sydney
Abstract:
This paper presents a conceptual framework for thinking differently about recognition in a culturally diverse society like Australia. While liberal political theorists (e.g. Charles Taylor, Will Kymlicka) have shaped the politics of recognition in terms of ‘group rights’ for ethnic minorities, we see this as just one of several forms of recognition that need to be theorised, and in some ways, transcended. Our typology presents a spectrum of four forms of recognition that need to be analysed in order to understand the multiple realities of and possibilities for intercultural relations in Australia:
These forms of recognition will be explored in empirical research in culturally-diverse suburbs in Sydney and elsewhere.
Bio - Dr Christina Ho & Dr Barbara Bloch
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Dr Bruno Mascitelli, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Business and Enterprise, Swinburne University of Technology,
Dr Simone Battiston, Lecturer, Faculty of Business and Enterprise, Swinburne University of Technology
Abstract:
A law passed by the Berlusconi’s centre-right coalition government in 2001 which granted full voting rights and overseas representation to all Italian citizenship holders living permanently overseas including people who are descended from Italian immigrants, was finally put to the test in the recent political elections in Italy. In April 2006 and again in March 2008 more than a million eligible overseas Italians, cast their ballot papers by mail and elected a total of 18 overseas-based candidates (12 deputies and 6 senators) for the Italian Parliament. This model of political participation and representation, which appears to be unique and unprecedented, not only in Italian history but elsewhere for the lack of comparable models, draws one’s attention to the possible impact it may have in the Italian Parliament, as well as, in the European Diasporas of Italian background throughout the world as far as their contribution to European integration is concerned. This paper examines the application of the Italian model and the tentative steps undertaken in other Diaspora populations like the Irish and the Greeks to follow in the same steps. The steps which the latter two diasporas have undertaken including the consolidation of jus sanguinis for the Irish with the referendum of 2004 and the recent constitutional changes proposed by the Greek Parliament to allow Greeks abroad to have a role in the Greek electoral process would indicate there is a commonality of approach. Put simply is the overseas Italian voting system exportable?
Bio - Dr Bruno Mascitelli & Dr Simone Battiston
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Ms Karen Block
Research Fellow and PhD candidate, McCaughey Centre, School of Population Health, University of Melbourne
Abstract:
For young refugees who are settling in Australia, key domains of social inclusion can be described as comprising adequate material conditions; meeting educational and occupational needs; providing a sense of wellbeing and connectedness as well as of a capacity to shape the future (O’Sullivan and Olliff 2006). Newly-arrived refugee youth with backgrounds including significant trauma and long periods in refugee camps face considerable barriers to inclusion.
Challenges for researchers seeking to understand their experiences include those of obtaining access and informed consent; the logistics of working with multiple language groups, varying literacy levels and understandings of research; imbalance of power between researchers and participants; maximising inclusion and agency in the research process; and the tensions between rigour and advocacy when working with a vulnerable population. In this paper I will reflect on methodological considerations for evaluative research we are currently conducting on an intervention incorporating psychosocial support, social connections and a work-focussed curriculum within an English language education setting.
Bio - Ms Karen Block
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Mr Kakan Barua
Mahachulalonkornrajavidyalaya University, Khonkaen Campus, Thailand
Abstract:
The purpose of the present study is the evaluation of material for a new intercultural training instrument. More specifically, we examine the validity of 21 critical incidents used in the training. The training programme is targeted at natives in Western immigrant countries dealing – mostly professionally – with cultural diversity in their own country. The study yields support for the cross-cultural applicability of 14 critical incidents. Experts from Australia, Germany and the Netherlands largely agree in their judgments about to what extent reactions to the critical incidents are interculturally effective. The validity of the critical incidents is examined by relating personal competences and self-reported intercultural behaviour of lay respondents to their performance on the critical incidents. Results show that, in Australia and the Netherlands, intercultural effectiveness is related to measures of competences, in particular to open-mindedness and cultural empathy. The study yields some support for a relationship between self-reported intercultural behaviour and intercultural effectiveness. Moreover, speaking a foreign language shows a moderate relation with intercultural effectiveness.
Bio - Mr Kakan BaruaMr Kakan Barua is pursuing his Masters after completing the Bchelors degree from Mahachulalongkornrajavidyalaya University, a leading University in Thailand. He also completed a Diploma course on Intercultural relation from Dongguk University, South Korea. |
Ms Faorligh Hunter, PhD Stududent, Deakin University, Australia
Mr Atem AtemMasters in Public Policy, ANU
Abstract:
Do newly arrived young people identify as global citizens? Do young people who have experienced forced migration engage in transnational activities in an ongoing manner? How do transnational connections impact on their sense of belonging? How can policy and service delivery contexts in turn contribute to a sense of belonging? This co-presentation attempts answer the above questions as a way of drawing connections between the ‘transnational’ and the ‘local’. Data collection with Sudanese young people in Canberra, Melbourne and Hobart is analysed in an attempt to gain a clearer picture of the transnational nature of their experiences both pre and post-arrival in Australia. Transnationalism is used as a ‘lense’ through which to consider implications for settlement policy and service delivery contexts. The role of the ‘centre’ in policy making for settler nations such as Australia is interrogated with regard to newly arrived young people, leading to reflections on the implications for service delivery. As it is a ‘report from the field’ given both presenters are currently undertaking their research, there will also be some reflection on methodological challenges in undertaking such research. This presentation provides an opportunity to explore the interaction between the transnational and the local in the specific case of young people who have had a refugee experience, in particular, young people from the Sudanese-Australian community.
Bio - Ms Faorligh Hunter & Mr Atem Atem
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Mr Steve Riley, Masters Student (degree by thesis), Victoria University Wellington, UK
Abstract:
Most societies are culturally pluralistic. This can be due to the global movement of people (immigration between and within nation-states), minority nations within state borders, and/or indigenous populations. Whilst, as Will Kymlicka points out, these are often considered as separate but complementary issues that challenge the homogenous nature of the nation-state there are nevertheless reasons to think that they will sometimes be in conflict, not just as a matter of fact but also in their appeals to normative principles. Although Kymlicka discusses these issues he ultimately concludes that the conflict arises from the expression of a non-essential ethnic identity. Although ethnic identity is undoubtedly a source of tension between minority cultural groups I want to suggest that the normative justifications of immigrant and indigenous rights are in tension within liberal theory, even when the language of ethnicity is abandoned. Focussing on liberal theories of distributive justice I will suggest that there are serious underlying tensions between justifications of indigenous claims and the needs and interests of immigrant groups. Whilst these issues may seem to be minor ones in countries where indigenous peoples are themselves minorities, the application of the language and underlying normative justifications of indigeneity are being used to justify policies that most liberals would find unacceptable (e.g. the rightwing British National Party using the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples to justify their anti-immigrant stance). I shall suggest that this reflects a pressing need for conceptual clarification of ‘indigeneity’ within a multicultural framework.
Bio - Mr Steve RileyI am currently undertaking a Masters degree by thesis at Victoria University Wellington looking at normative principles of ethnocultural justice within liberal democratic societies. I am particularly interested in the work of Will Kymlicka and his attempts to combine ethnocultural minority rights with liberal theories of justice.
I am from the UK originally but now reside in New Zealand. After completing a degree in philosophy at University College London I worked for a number of years for the Liberal Democrat Party in the UK. My interest in political philosophy, and liberal theories of justice, reflects this background whilst my interest in applying it to matters of ethnocultural justice is largely a result of efforts to understand some of the debates and principles surrounding the politics of indigeneity in New Zealand with which I was unfamiliar upon moving here in December 2007. |
Ms Shizuka Abe, Centre for East Asian Studies, University of Bristol, U.K.
Professor On-Kwok Lai, School of Policy Studies, Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan.
Abstract:
The new epoch of global capitalism defines by the advanced application of high-tech, like information and communication technologies (ICT)! They open up new modes of communication as far as interactivity, timeliness, active participation, and the cross-border/ cultural encounters are concerned, both in virtual and real social communities. Cyber-linkages have been revolutionizing not just the mode of socio-economic interactions, global-locally, but also the behavioral repertoires among people in different geographical regions and time zones. Perhaps the most important aspect is the enabling of new multilingual, cross -and- inter-cultural communication, juxtaposing global migration processes that socio-economic activities at a global scale seem more and more borderless and just-in-time, allowing most forms of communication: one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one and many-to-many. Communications in both cyberspace and beyond (in the real world), for both linguistic (text, semantic and phonetic) and visual modes, are changing and re-defining the new ethnicity (cultural idiosyncrasy and identity) of the people!
With specific reference to recent global initiatives by the UNESCO and the World Summit on the Information Society, particularly the calling for universal access and multilingualism for the information society, this paper critically examines multilingualism and cross-cultural communication in/beyond cyberspace as follows: (1) the contours of cyberspace and the dynamics of Internet communication in 21st Century, (2) the socio-evolutionary multilingualism in cross-border, cultural communications in Asia-Pacific, contrasting the European case, (3) the new form(s) of cultural identity and idiosyncrasy, particularly driven by the nation state’s e-government initiatives, and (4) the future of the ICT-embedded multicultural communication in a globalizing world.
Bio - Ms Shizuka Abe & Professor On-Kwok LaiShizuka Abe, is PhD candidate at the Centre for East Asian Studies, University of Bristol, U.K. She was research associate at the School of Policy Studies, Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan. Her research interests are on social development issues in the information age.
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Dr Les Morgan
Research Fellow, Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation,
Faculty of Arts & Education, Deakin University
Abstract:
This paper, ‘Paki on-a-bike’ presents material that relates to historical moments relevant to the author’s lived experience of having lived through two historical junctures of heightened racism in my home countries of Britain and Australia. The paper will discuss Enoch Powell’s intervention in 1968 in the field of British race relations and the racialised terrain of Queensland that surfaced following the creation of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party from the mid-1990s.
The paper will use the author’s artwork to demonstrate how the cultural, social and political backdrops of Britain and Queensland respectively, influenced and paved the way for a thinking and art practice that displays a diasporic sensibility.
Bio - Dr Les Morgan
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Ms Moeko Minagawa, Doshisha University Graduate School of Policy and Management, Kyoto, Japan.
Abstract:
As human mobility across the globe garners its intensity, one of the most prominent trends of contemporary global migration is that increasingly, the migrants are moving for reasons other than permanent residence. In recent years, as Japanese corporations increasingly advance into the foreign markets, the number of expatriates, or Japanese emigrants working abroad, has rocketed exponentially.
This qualitative research aims to clarify how the expatriates look at others and how they cultivate their worldviews through their migrating experiences. This empirically-informed research looks particularly at Japanese expatriates living in China as government employees and private enterprise employees through series of interviews.
The expatriates are frequently discussed in sociological debates because of their cosmopolitan traits. This primarily concerns the extent to which individuals are open toward others and what is the constituent of such openness. In this paper, I take Steven Vertovec’s (2009) definition of cosmopolitan vision as the perspective of human attitude, practices and abilities that are open to others, and aim to explore the key elements involved in the process of cultivating such cosmopolitan vision.
The questions this research addresses are as follows. Is there a relationship between migration experience and cosmopolitan vision? If so, what are the elements and what gave rise to such elements? In this paper, I clarify this question by looking at one’s education, ritualised practices, linguistic abilities, work and family. This investigation seeks to redefine the possibilities and limitations of the cosmopolitan vision of Japanese expatriates today.
Bio - Ms Moeko Minagawa |
Mr Mahama Tawat
University of Otago, New Zealand
Abstract:
This paper deals with the integration policymaking of Denmark and Sweden from the end of the 1960s until the 2000s. The two Scandinavian neighbour countries share much of their history, the same welfare and political systems but whilst Denmark has opted for assimilation, Sweden has adopted multiculturalism.This paper argues through a content analysis of their main policy documents and a historical analysis of their institutions that, in essence, both countries adopted the same socio-economic integration policies and the domain where policy divergence occured is in their cultural diversity policies.
Bio - Mr Mahama Tawat
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Associate Professor Hirohisa Takenoshita
Associate Professor of sociology, Shizuoka University, Japan
Abstract:
Integration of immigrants into the host society has received a considerable attention to practioners and policy makers as well as scholars of immigration for a long time. Socioeconomic assimilation matters more in terms of immigrants’ incorporation into the host society, because it allows immigrants to go upwardly and obtain the middle class position there. Acquiring educational qualification in the host society is one of the most important ways of doing these things. Higher educational attainment enables them to overcome the socioeconomic disadvantages of immigrants in the host society. While classical assimilation theory assumed the common straightforward process of assimilation across immigrant groups, segmented assimilation theory stressed that the process of assimilation would depend largely on the environments surrounding immigrants. By contrast, transnationalism suggests that keeping ties with the sending country allows immigrants to adapt more successfully into the host society rather than prevents them from doing it. Many previous studies have attempted to assess whether educational attainment among children of immigrants is consistent with segmented assimilation theory, whereas there is less research which investigates the way in which immigrants’ transnationalism shapes their educational attainment. By focusing on children of Brazilian migrants in Japan, we could examine the effect of transnationalism on their educational attainment, because Japanese immigration policy allows Japanese Brazilian migrants to move back and forth between the sending and receiving nations. This paper highlights the process by which parental assimilation and transnationalism would shape the educational attainment of children of Brazilian migrants by using the survey data.
Bio - Associate Professor Hirohisa Takenoshita
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Ms Gloria Arlini
Postgraduate Research Student, Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore
Abstract:
Cast as the racial and class ‘Other’ in the national imagination, the ethnic Chinese have suffered a long history of discrimination in Indonesia. The heavily curtailed space for them to articulate their lived experience, together with the culture of fear pervading the community under the New Order government, indirectly result in relative silence of the ethnic Chinese, especially their women. In this paper, I will look at how the women in a three-generational Chinese Indonesian family (re)articulate their femininities as subjects embedded in specific racial and class ideologies in Indonesia.
Adopting Abu-Lughod’s approach to view resistance as “diagnostics of power” (1993), I am interested to see how feminine practices are used to challenge the prevalent racial and class discourses that marginalize these women. I find that classed femininity, expressed through silence, is used as a tool to counter the disempowering racialized femininity often imposed upon them in inter-racial encounters with native Indonesians. This is particularly the case when we look at discourses surrounding the term Amoy, a term referring to Chinese Indonesian women that is heavily laden with sexual and racial undertones. I argue that the Chinese Indonesian women in this study rearticulate their femininities by rejecting identification with the externally imposed racialized femininity while foregrounding an alternative femininity, defined along the class axis, to negotiate for power in patriarchal Indonesian society.
Bio - Ms Gloria Arlini
Gloria’s research interests are social memory, race and ethnicity, migration and religion. She has authored working papers on Asian regional integration, social memory and nation building in Indonesia. Outside of academia, Gloria pursues her interest in developmental and gender issues. She co-founded the Nusantara Development Initiatives, an inter-university youth organization which focuses on sustainable development projects in rural Indonesia. She has also written several articles as a foreign correspondent for a Japanese non-governmental organization that focuses on women’s rights and issues. |
Ms Akina Mikami
School of Culture and Communication, The University of Melbourne
Abstract:
In the context of cosmopolitanisation, humanitarian communication as a scholarly enquiry often finds itself soul-searching between a set of inherently irreconcilable conceptions. On the one hand, it is celebrated as a promotion of cosmopolitan ideals, suggestive of a more humane world. Through various symbolic resources, it is seen to offer deterritorialised experiences to connect distant others in a relationship of moral obligation and ethical commitment. Yet, on the other hand, it is criticised as a deficit between the ideals and the reality. As humanitarian agencies undergo rapid rationalisation and professionalisation, they increasingly incorporate the capitalist logic to their communication strategies to the detriment of their raison d’être. This paper aims to illustrate the humanitarian communication practices as performed and ritualised by the practitioners working in humanitarian agencies.
By conducting semi-structured interviews with communication specialists working in major international humanitarian agencies, I deploy practice and discourse analysis to look for various contingencies that inform us of the following things. One is the material contexts in which they perform their rituals. The other is the principles of ordering that anchor their practices and discourses, which produce and reproduce the textures of the wider social life. Findings show that the material contexts in which they practice shape, and are shaped by, ongoing negotiations of various scarce resources. Furthermore, their practices produce a set of rationalities that make their ‘bridging’ practices simultaneously ‘divisive’. I conclude by articulating that the cosmopolitan ideals and its constraints sustain themselves in an ongoing circulation of these paradoxical practices.
Bio - Ms Akina MikamiAkina Mikami is currently completing Master of Global Media Communication in the Media and Communications Program, School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne (Australia). Her research is interested in humanitarian communication, media practices and ethical connection among distant others. Akina has previously interned at International Federation of Journalists, SBS World News and worked as communication coordinator for a Japan-based NGO promoting peace education via travelling. |
Dr Helen McKernan, Institute for Social Research, Swinburne University of Technology
Dr Louise Dunn,
Faculty of Life and Social Science, Swinburne University of Technology
Abstract:
The implementation of food safety legislation with culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) food proprietors is increasingly complex as new settler groups to Victoria establish restaurants and other food businesses. The paper draws on two Department of Human Services sponsored studies on the intercultural issues that affect the implementation of food safety with diverse food proprietors in metropolitan and rural regions. The action learning based studies involved collaboration between researchers, practitioners, policy makers and local government managers. The challenges for Environmental Health Officers (EHOs) included working concurrently in both a regulatory and educative role, balancing food safety requirements with realistic and achievable outcomes and the need for evidence-based knowledge about the safety of specific cultural foods and practices. The paper suggests that both local and global constructs are important for rethinking how these environmental health safety issues are identified and solved. While multicultural policies promote a celebration of diversity that supports an appreciation of ethnic foods, the view is essentially local. Conceptualising the different cultural groups as part of transnational communities with connections to homelands, histories and other diasporic groups leads to different interpretations of some problematic phenomenon. The need for knowledge of cultural traditions, customs and rituals for food preparation and other practical strategies for dealing with food safety issues are explored. The studies show the importance of building relationships and trust between EHOs and CALD proprietors, an approach that is in tension with performance models. The paper concludes that dealing with new and emerging food safety issues requires the sharing of expertise, resources and collaboration in the local government environment.
Bio - Dr Helen McKernan & Dr Louise Dunn Helen is a research fellow at the Institute for Social Research at Swinburne University. She is currently working on a four-year ARC funded research project Exploring the experience of security in the Australian Vietnamese community: practical implications for policing. The study explores practical solutions to improve the effectiveness of community policing strategies with Vietnamese Australians through understanding how trust, risk and security expectations affect police relations. Helen’s current research interests include the sociology of gender, race, ethnicity and identity. |
Dr Kalpana Goel & Dr Rupesh Goel, Centre for Rural Engagement, University of South Australia
Abstract:
The study aims to understand the key factors associated with settlement of temporary and permanent transnational migrants in regional Australia. This includes socio demographic characteristics of recent migrants to regional South Australia capturing their social and economic experiences. The study seeks to enrich knowledge on settlement issues as perceived by temporary and permanent migrants in regional area. The study was completed with a total of twenty four semi structured interviews involving primary applicants in a span of sixteen weeks. It included 14 temporary visa and 10 permanent visa settlers in regional South Australia (Whyalla). A comparison of experiences of temporary and permanent migrants is being undertaken to understand similarities and differences in their settlement perceptions.
For the purpose of this paper the data collected was analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively by using descriptive statistics and thematic analysis. The results indicated differences in socio demographic features of temporary and permanent visa holders but similarities in the reasons attributed to migration and settlement in regional area. However, other factors such as health, education, housing and socio–cultural dimensions were perceived differently by both categories of migrants mainly in view of the applicable visa conditions. This paper argues for a nuanced understanding of aspirations, perceptions and lived experiences of transnational migrant population in regional areas incorporating the subtle variations between the perceptions. The study has the potential of informing policy in bridging the divide between the temporary and permanent migrants for sustainability in regional areas.
Bio - Dr Kalpana Goel & Dr Rupesh GoelDr Kalpana Goel is a Lecturer and Research Degrees Coordinator in School of Social Work and Rural Practice at Centre for Regional Engagement, University of South Australia Whyalla Campus. She is actively involved in research activities under the aegis of CRE- Centre for Rural Health and community Development. Her research interest lies in gender and migration issues on both national and International levels. Dr Kalpana Goe has keen interest in building community capacity and development and also is a team member in developing a framework for Social Inclusion in South Australia. |
Ms Laavanya Kathiravelu
PhD Candidate, Centre for Research on Social Inclusion, Macquarie University
Abstract:
With 90 per cent of its population made up of resident foreigners across 150 nationalities, Dubai is a unique and appropriate location to interrogate the dynamics of multicultural politics, inter-racial relations and belonging. The city-state is typical of the Islamic Gulf states that draw labour migrants not with the promise of eventual citizenship and access to the state¹s resources, but with the trappings of a tax-free lifestyle and opportunity for accelerated capital accumulation. In the absence of government policy that creates a sense of inclusion or community, the emirate is a highly stratified space ¬ divided along lines of gender, race, nationality and class. Dubai has been popularly understood as an uncaring place by academic analyses of social exclusion as well as media and policy reports of human rights abuses of low wage migrant labour and domestic workers.
In contrast, this paper will show that there exist strong informal networks of care within the emirate that cross, but also rely on ethnic, national, gender and class categories. Based on fieldwork conducted in the city-state in 2008, this paper discusses working class solidarities, the role of social workers, charities, migrant organizations and religious groups in providing Œcare¹. In exploring how urban informality functions within a highly controlled space, this research concludes that these networks are an integral part of migrants¹ city life in the absence of legal and moral obligations of care by the state that are ensured through formal citizenship.
Bio - Ms Laavanya Kathiravelu
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Professor Fethi Mansouri, Director, Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Faculty of Arts and Education, Deakin University
Dr Michele Lobo, Research Fellow, Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Faculty of Arts and Education, Deakin University
Abstract:
The emergence of militant Islam has led to feelings of fear and anxiety among citizens, increased securitisation of the nation-state, and policy discourses that focus on inter-ethnic harmony, social cohesion and cultural integration. The outcome is that Muslims as an ethno-religious group have become objects of scrutiny and are often ascribed the status of subordinate citizens within the broader community. This paper draws on in-depth interviews with people who assume positions of leadership in the local community in suburban Melbourne to problematise dominant everyday understandings of inclusive citizenship that construct Muslim migrants and their way of life as un-Australian. The paper will argue that everyday practices in local places that involve negotiation and demonstrate an openness to cultural difference actively reconstitute a perceived normative ‘Australian way of life’. Such practices that involve an ongoing dialogue are significant because they reflect enabling practices and hopeful moments within local governance that have the potential to legitimise rather than essentialise the expression of religious identities in the public sphere and unsettle normative understandings of the ‘good citizen’.
Keywords: Muslim migrants, citizenship, intercultural understanding, local governance
Bio - Dr Michele Lobo & Professor Fethi Mansouri
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Dr Vince P. Marotta
Lecturer, School of History, Heritage and Society, Faculty of Arts and Education, Deakin University
Abstract:
Place identification in urban sociology has traditionally be associated with a sense of ‘being at home’ and connected to the formation of stable and fixed identities. The rise in transnational migration and the increasing number of refugees around the world has made particular regions and communities, within many western nations, culturally diverse. This has led to a re-conceptualisation and re-examination of the relationship between place and home. In light of this new paradigm I explore the existence of multicultural places and investigate the ways, if any, we can speak of ‘being at home’ in these diverse urban places. If home has been traditionally associated with order, sameness and identity while multicultural places are conceptualised in terms of fluidity, contingency, heterogeneity and difference then there seems to be an inherent tension between these two ideas. Are the ideas of home and multiculturalism mutually exclusive? I maintain that they are dialectically interwoven, especially when otherness and home are not conceived in binary terms. In order to examine this complex relationship the paper provides a brief discussion of home within the discourses of modernity and postmodernity and then links these discourses to phenomenological and sociological approaches to home. I conclude by briefly exploring how home and otherness are encapsulated within intercultural moments where sameness and diversity coexist and thus provide the potential for friction but also moments of intercultural dialogue.
Bio - Dr Vince Marotta
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Dr Nicole Oke,
Alfred Deakin Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Institute of Citizenship and Globalisation
Abstract:
Temporary migration has come to be a significant component of Australia’s migration program, most notably via the skilled temporary work visa (the s457), the pilot of Pacific Seasonal Workers’ Scheme, student visas with work rights and working holiday visas. Temporary migration is varied and it clearly creates opportunities for individuals, households and states. But it just as clearly creates additional vulnerabilities. It can be a way to get workers to do work citizens are unwilling to do, and temporary migrants can be politically excluded both at ‘home’ and ‘abroad’. The decoupling of citizenship and work, however, has uneven affects depending on the bargaining positions of workers, meaning it is workers undertaking low paid work who are both particularly vulnerable, but could also benefit most from this work.
This paper looks at temporary migration in the Australian context. It is argued that, to degree, temporary migration transnationalizes politics and political communities, by the creation of social relations which cross-borders, and normatively through transnational conceptions of the significance of temporary migration. However it shows the uneasy tension between national and transnational conceptions of politics, with implications for temporary migrants in Australia.
Bio - Dr Nicole Oke
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Dr. Steve Francis
University of Melbourne
Abstract:
This paper seeks to provide an insight into the ways in which refugee communities experience bureaucratic structures, committee mechanisms, government consultation and service delivery programs, both as powerless ‘receivers’ of help, and as informed agents, advocating for improved life opportunities for themselves, their families and their communities. Many displaced peoples can be impacted by a specific form of victimhood and speechlessness resulting from the bureaucratic processes associated with humanitarian intervention and settlement. At the same time however, some communities are particularly successful in adapting to this process, successfully gaining the attention of government and subsequently attracting funding and resources. These successes are a useful reminder that, in the context of multiculturalism, refugees and migrants, while marginalised and disadvantaged, can also use the mechanisms of bureaucracy as powerful and positive architects and agents of their own destiny and that of their communities.
Bio - Dr Steve Francis |
Monika Biłas-Henne is a cross-cultural psychologist. She is a doctorate student at the Institute of Psychology at Polish Academy of Sciences and at the Warsaw School of Social Psychology. Her teaching interests are Cross-cultural Psychology, Psychological Interview with Immigrants, Cultural Diversity, Adaptation Trainings and Workshops. Her reserach intrests center around acculturation and adaptation processes. The main line of her research focuses on adaptation processes of international students. She is also interested in social and cultural believes and values and in on-line methodology. 
To be updated soon.
Professor Godwin Onu is currently Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences. He has attended many international conferences but non in Australia and South America. he is board member of International Political Science Association (IPSA) Research Committees and a former Director of Research, Nigerian Political Science Association and currently the Secretary South East Political Science Association of Nigeria. He recently organized an African International conference on How Africans Under develop Africa, May 2009. 
Necmettin Gokkir completed MA at Istanbul University and then he was awarded scholarships by The Turkish Higher Education Council (YÖK) and an English Universities Overseas Research Scholarship (ORS) Award which enabled him to carry out his postgraduate academic studies in the UK. In 2004, he completed his PhD, titled ' The Application of Modern Critical Theories to the Study of the Qur’an – With a Particular Focus on Qur’anic Studies in Turkey between 1980-2002', he was appointed at Istanbul University in the Department of Islamic Studies. In 2007, within the project of “Global Ethics” he worked in IIIS- Institute for International Integration Studies, Trinity College of Dublin/Ireland as Research Fellow. 
Dr Yaghoob Foroutan completed his doctoral degree at Demography & Sociology Program of The Australian National University. His doctoral dissertation has been awarded The W. D. Borrie Essay Prize by The Australian Population Association. The author is currently Assistant Professor at Department of Social Sciences, University of Mazandaran, Iran. Amongst his large number of publications, Dr Foroutan has recently contributed a chapter on "Gender and Religion: The Status of Women in the Muslim World" in the collection of The World's Religions: Continuities and Transformations edited by Peter Clarke and Peter Beyer published by Routledge Publication in 2009. He has also published papers in refereed journals such as International Migration Review, Immigrants & Minorities, Journal of Population Research, Australian Religion Studies Review, which often have a main focus on the Australian Muslim immigrants. 
Anna is a PhD student in School of Communication and Creative Arts, Deakin University. She is in the last phase of canditure and have been researching the role of the paramythic function in diasporic Greek Australian Literature. She hope to complete her research by 2010 and would then like to lecture in Multicultural literature. Anna's interest is in cultural identity, multicultural literature and postcolonialism.
Scholar in his own rights, Melville has written several articles which have been published. In addition, several conference papers, and internationaly have been published. He has eight Master postgraduate qualifications from Australia including Deakin University. He is a doctoral student, pursuing Doctor of Education at Charles Stuart University 
Leanne Cause is currently a PhD candidate at Deakin University, Melbourne. Her current research topics are the learning and development of international mindedness in primary schools. Past research projects include teaching and learning in internationally minded schools, and focused on ways in which inquiry learning can help develop international mindedness. Leanne is also currently teaching in a school in Melbourne that is implementing the PYP of the IB. 
Dr Andrzej Antoszek teaches American Studies, Cultural Studies and Translation Studies at John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin. He wrote his PhD dissertation on the works of Don DeLillo (“Don DeLillo’s Evolving Picture of Contemporary America”) and is currently working on a post-doctoral dissertation dedicated to the problems of transferring and appropriating American culture by local cultures of (East-Central) Europe. He is member of Polish Association for American Studies, European Association for American Studies, Collegium for African-American Research and The Society for Multi-Ethnic Studies. He has contributed to many academic journals and attended several American Studies conferences worldwide. Recently, his book, Black on White; Contemporary African-Americans Who Have Moved America, co-edited with Ewa Luczak from Warsaw University, was published in Poland. 
Shah M. Nister J. Kabir is a PhD candidate in the Department of Media, Film and Communication at the University of Otago, New Zealand. His current research will focus the representation of Islam in Australasian newspapers. Nister completed a Masters of Philosophy (MPhil) in the field of journalism in the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Queensland, Australia. He is the author of the book: The Iraq War in Bangladeshi Newspapers (VDM Verlag Dr. Müller Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2008). 
Archana Parashar is an Associate Professor in Law, at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. Her research interests focus on the potential of law to achieve social justice and include areas of critical legal theory, feminist legal theory, family laws, and anti-discrimination laws. She has published many articles on the subject of women’s position under the personal laws, the relevance of legal pluralism, and its implications for gender justice in the Indian Family laws as well as on the importance of legal education in creating ethical citizens. She is the author of the book Women and Family Law Reform in India (1992) and has co-edited the books Engendering Law: Essays in Honour of Lotika Sarkar (1999); Redefining Family Law in India(2008) and Decolonisation of Legal Knowledge (2009). 
Neeti Trivedi is currently a student of Master of Philosophy of Architecture in Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Western Australia. Born and brought up in Central India, she completed Bachelor of Architecture from Rashtrant Tukdoji Maharaj Nagpur University, Maharashtra, India. After graduation, worked as an Architect with well-renowned architects and established firms like D3+1 and Sanjay Puri Architects Pvt. Ltd. before resuming studies again. She has also worked as an Assistant Art Director in the Indian Film Industry for designing and execution of sets for movies and commercials, to get hands on temporary construction techniques.
Currently Ms Trivedi is working on the identity issues of the Urban poor and trying to build a dialogue between Identity and Built Environment. The study intends to overcome the stigma over Urban poor by re-creating and re-developing the physical settings of the poor, by reconciling their social and physical sustainability and empowering them with a liveable space.
Farida Fozdar is Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Community Development at Murdoch University. Her research focuses on race relations and migration settlement issues, racism, citizenship and nationalism, and issues to do with refugees and asylum seekers. Farida has published widely including 3 books (most recently ‘Race and Ethnic Relations’, co authored), 5 book chapters and 26 journal articles, as well as reports to government and numerous conference proceedings. 
Davinia Thornley lectures on indigenous and New Zealand cinema at the University of Otago. She has published articles (for example, European Journal of Cultural Studies; National Identities (U.K.); Film Criticism) and book chapters (Lord of the Rings: Popular Culture in Global Context; Film Studies: Women in Contemporary World Cinema) on nationality and Aotearoa New Zealand cinema. 
On-Kwok LAI, Dr. rer. pol., is Professor at the Graduate School of Policy Studies, Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan, honorary professorship in Social Work & Social Administration and honorary fellowship in Urban Planning & Environmental Management, both at The University of Hong Kong (HKU). He gained his B.Soc.Sc. and M.Soc.Sc. from the HKU; Dr.rer.pol. from University of Bremen under the German DAAD fellowship. He has taught/researched policy studies and sociology in Germany, China (Hong Kong and Shanghai), and New Zealand. He publishes over 100 journal papers and book-chapters on environmental, social and urban issues and policy studies on Asia and Europe, and has been invited as speaker for conferences of UNESCO, UNU-IAS and WHO-Kobe Centre. His recent research is on social development issues / impact of information society, comparative policy studies on globalization, and socio-ecological modernization.
Yihua Hong is one of the two million ethnic Koreans in China. Her great grandparents left their homeland, northeast Korea, and settled in Manchuria sometime around the 1870s.Since the late 1980s, more than 90% of Korean Chinese have migrated either to the big cities of China or the overseas. her parents spent several years in Korea, and four of her cousins left for Korea, Japan, USA, and even Brazil as international brides. For Yihua, therefore, international migration is a natural course of life, and she developed interests in international migration from early stage of her life. Through her MA, Yihua's research focus was the international marriage migrations of Korean Chinese women, and she particularly paid attention to their identity transformation experiences in Korea. Yihua's PhD is about Korean Chinese and Korea’s multiculturalism. This study is relevant to ethnic nationalism, globalisation, and multiculturalism. It will investigate the impacts of Korea’s multiculturalism on Korean Chinese, and the ways in which Korean Chinese perceive Korea’s multiculturalism on the basis of their traditional understanding of ‘nation’ and ‘ethnicity’. Her plan is to become a professional researcher on the issues of migration and multiculturalism while focusing on Korean Chinese. Yihua publised her own experiences of living in New Zealand as a Korean Chinese in the last two years, she would like to continue her academic journey while learning from others and reflecting on her own identity as a Korean Chinese. 
Shikha Gupta is a Senior Lecturer at Jagannath International Management School, one of the premier and renowned B-Schools of New Delhi, India. She is a graduate and post graduate in Political Science, with specialization in International Relations and area of specialization in M. Phil is East Asia in general and Sino-American relations in particular. She has Post-Graduate qualifications in Journalism, Chinese Language, and Software Design and Development and currently pursuing M.B.A. and working towards her Ph.D. on “Political culture and new media”.
Paul O’Connor was recently awarded his doctorate in sociology from the University of Queensland. Originally from the UK he has been living in Hong Kong for the last 8 years. His doctoral thesis “Everyday Hybridity: Young Muslims in Hong Kong” explored empirical grounding to work on cultural hybridity and examined the cultural diversity and challenges that young Muslims face living in a multicultural Chinese city. He has an interdisciplinary background and is interested in research on everyday life, multicultural youth, postcolonialism, and religious minorities.
Phiona Stanley holds Masters degrees in Education and Politics, and is a Doctoral candidate at Monash University, Australia. Since 1993, she has worked in English Language Teaching in six countries including China, and has taught on Masters programs in Linguistics and Education at the Universities of Adelaide, South Australia, and Sydney, the latter including teaching on offshore Masters courses at Fudan University, China. Her research interests include transnationalism, identity, language and culture, teacher education, and gender. 
Dr Yin Paradies is a Research Fellow jointly at the Menzies School of Health Research and the University of Melbourne. He has qualifications in mathematics and computing (BSc), medical statistics (MMedStats), public health (MPH), and social epidemiology (PhD). Yin’s research focuses on the health, social and economic effects of racism as well as anti-racism theory, policy and practice. Yin also teaches professional development short courses on multicultural competence and anti-racism.
Dr. Louise Jenkins has research interests in two contrasting, but often complementary areas. Her recent work has involved the development of teaching and learning materials for schools with multicultural student communities. This work was the result of an ARC linkage grant which examined the management of cultural diversity in education with a focus on Arab-Australian youth. She is currently working on an ICG project for the Foundation for Young Australians which will investigate the effects of racism upon young Australians. Louise is also a researcher in the area of Australian music history with a particular focus on Australian women composers, performers and music teachers.
Professor Fethi Mansouri holds a Chair in Migration and Intercultural Studies and is the Director of the Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University. Professor Mansouri is the author of many books including (with M.P. Leach) ‘Lives in Limbo: Voices of Refugees under Temporary Protection’ (UNSW Press, Sydney 2004), ‘Australia and the Middle East: A Frontline Relationship’ (I.B. Tauris/Palgrave, London/New York 2006); and two edited volumes (with S. Akbarzadeh), on ‘Political Islam and Human Security’ (CSP Press, UK 2008), and ‘Islam and Political Violence: Muslim Diaspora and Radicalism in the West’, (I.B. Tauris/Palgrave: London/New York 2007). His latest books are ‘Identity, Education, and Belonging: Arab and Muslim Youth in Contemporary Australia’ (2008, with S Percival-Wood, MUP, Melbourne) and ‘Youth Identity and Migration: Culture, Values and Social Connectedness’ (2009), Common Ground Publishers, Melbourne). 
Dr Lucas Walsh is Director of Research at The Foundation for Young Australians. Previously, Lucas has held three academic research fellowships in the areas of international education, new media and democracy, and citizenship and globalisation, and published internationally across all of these areas, including an edited book on the politics of recognition.
Dr. Mohd. Shuhaimi Bin Ishak is an Academic Fellow with International Islamic University Malaysia and is currently attached to the Department of General Studies, Kulliyyah of Islamic Revealed Knowledge and Human Sciences. Dr. Mohd. Shuhaimi Bin Haji Ishak completed his Ph.D from Usul Al-Din and Comparative Religion from International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM), 2007. He is currently attached to Department of General Studies, IIUM. He received his M.A. in Usul Al-Din and Comparative Religion and Diploma in Islamic Studies from IIUM, and Bachelor in Business Administration from ITM/Ohio University. He joined IIUM in 2004. Prior to joining IIUM, he had wide experiences in the private sectors for more than 16 years in banking, manufacturing, telecommunication and water services. His last position was the Human Resources Manager. His book entitled Islamic rationalism: a critical review of Harun Nasution thought has been approved by IIUM for publication and is scheduled for release before end of the year. He had presented a few papers at International Conferences held in Malaysia and the International Conference on MCIR organised by Deakin University, Melbourne is his first visit abroad. 
Mozhgan Azimi Hashemi, Researcher at Mashhad Academic Center For Education and Research .PhD student of economic sociology and development, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran. I got my Bachelor degree in Social Sciences researching in 1990 from Ferdowsi University of Mashhad(Iran) and got my Master's in Social Researching in 1994 from Beheshti University of Tehran (Iran). I am now a PhD student of Economic Sociaology and Development in Ferdowsi University of Mashhad (Iran). I have been working as a research faculty in sociology group in " Academic Center for Education and Research" since 1990. I have done several projects in social problems. For instance: Free Times of Youth in Mashhad (1999),Parents Expectations from high school (1998), Youth Attitude to religion in Mashhad (2002),Religiousity and Life Satisfaction in Mashhad (2003),Secondary Analysis of Crime, Secondary Analysis in Research in Context of Family(2004), Youth Work Culture (2005). I participated in two national projects including Iranian Personality System (1997), Social Integration in Iran (2005). I have also 10 papers published in Iranian scientific journals. I was awarded for the following projects:Free Times of Youth in Mashhad(1999),Parents Expectations from High School(1998),Youth Attitude to Religion in Mashhad(2002).
Anne McNevin is a post-doctoral Research Fellow in the Global Cities Institute, RMIT University. She has published on Irregular Migration, Border Policing and Citizenship Theory in journals such as Review of International Studies, Citizenship Studies, and New Political Science.
Val Colic-Peisker is a Senior Research Fellow / Senior Lecturer at the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI-RMIT), School of Global Studies, Social Science and Planning at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT University). She holds degrees in political science, women's studies, education and sociology and has worked as a journalist, author, translator and radio-producer before becoming an academic. She has published extensively in Croatian and English, in mainstream and academic media and taught sociology at several Australian universities. Val’s central research interest is migration and mobility in association with issues of class, ethnicity, identity and multiculturalism, as well as labour market integration of NESB immigrants in Australia. Her latest book is Migration, class and transnational identities: Croatians in Australia and America, Urbana and Chicago: Illinois University Press, 2008. 
Rumel Halder is an Assistant Professor (on leave), Department of Anthropology, Jahangirnagar University, Bangladesh, where he has worked as a lecturer since 1997. Currently, he is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, Canada. He is writing his thesis on identity construction and negotiation processes within Bangladeshi immigrant communities in Toronto, Canada. He has conducted anthropological fieldwork mostly in Bangladesh and in Canada. His work in Bangladesh has addressed disaster and human resettlement, riverbank erosion and vulnerability, NGO development interventions in rural villages and women empowerment, and the political economy of the arsenic crisis in Bangladesh. His work in Canada has focused on identity, global migration, transnationalism, South Asian and Bangladeshi immigrant communities.
Samantha Balaton-Chrimes is a PhD candidate in the School of Political and Social Inquiry, Faculty of Arts, Monash University. She has recently returned from seven months fieldwork in Nairobi with the Nubian community, a marginalized tribe of Kenya. Her research is focused on the nature and conditions of political life, citizenship and statelessness in Kenya, both theoretically and empirically. Sam was the recipient of a Layne Beachley Aim for the Stars Foundation grant in 2009 for her doctoral research. In 2008 she was awarded the AFSAAP (African Studies Association of Australasia and the Pacific) Postgraduate Prize, and from Monash University, the Rufus Davis Memorial Prize for Honours (Politics).
Balambigai Balakrishnan is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Adelaide, her thesis is titled “Comparative Analysis of Permanent and Temporary Indonesian Labour Migration to Malaysia: Nature, Causes and Consequences”. Balambigai is completing her thesis under the supervision of Professor Graeme Hugo and Dr Dianne Rudd. She is a recipient of the “Endeavour International Research Postgraduate Scholarship 2008”. She has a Masters Degree in Applied Statistics with Distinction and has over 10 years of lecturing experience, prior to commencing her PhD. Currently, in addition to writing her thesis, she tutors for the subjects “Thinking Economically” and “Global International Migration” at the University of Adelaide. Her interests lie in the application of statistics and Geography Information System in demography, with a focus on assisting governments to identify better pathways for migrant integration. 
Amartya Bag is a 3rd Semester student of Integrated B.A. LL.B.. He is currently studying in KIIT Law School, KIIT University, Bhubaneswar, Orissa, India. The author has special interest in human rights issues and associated laws and wants to do his higher studies in Human Rights laws. The author also has special interest in working for the rights of the Dalits and has written a paper on “Dalit Victimhood”. 
Associate Professor Michele Langfield is Associate Head of School (Research) in the School of History, Heritage and Society, Faculty of Arts and Education, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia. Her research interests include migration, ethnicity, identity and cultural heritage and she has published widely in these areas. Her books include Welsh Patagonians: the Australian Connection (with Peta Roberts) 2005, More people imperative: immigration to Australia, 1901-39 (1999), and Espresso bar to EMC: a thirty-year history of the Ecumenical Migration Centre (1996). Much of her work utilises oral histories and videotestimonies, particularly in the field of Jewish and Holocaust studies, and she is joint editor of Testifying to the Holocaust, (with Pam Maclean and Dvir Abramovich), 2008. A further edited collection (with William Logan and Mairead Nic Craith) entitled Cultural Diversity, Heritage and Human Rights: Intersections in Theory and Practice, is currently in press (Routledge) 2009/10.
Ela is a PhD candidate at the School of Political and Social Inquiry at Monash University. Her research is around issues of citizenship, identity and social inclusion/exclusion of youth from the Horn of Africa in Australia. Prior to this, Ela completed her Masters also at Monash University, looking at the relationship between Turkish and Kurdish nationalisms in Turkey. Alongside her PhD candidature, Ela works at the Global Terrorism Research Centre at Monash University as a tutor, researcher and centre officer.
Dr Giancarlo Chiro is Senior Lecturer in the School of Communication, International Studies and Languages at the University of South Australia where he is Program Director of the Associate Degree in Languages and Culture Studies and the Bachelor of International Studies (Transnational). His research interests extend to migration studies and intercultural relations, cultural identity and the maintenance and loss of minority languages and cultures in ethnically plural societies. He is a member of the Migration, Ethnicity and Multiculturalism research group of the Australian Sociological Association, the Language and Society research panel of the International Institute of Sociology and the Culture, Knowledge and Communication research committee of the International Sociology Association.
Camille La Brooy is a PhD student currently in the third year of her candidature at the University of Melbourne. In 2008, she completed a postgraduate fellowship at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. Whilst in Europe, she undertook fieldwork in the UK, interviewing more than thirty members of the British Muslim community. Her research interests include identity, multiculturalism, migration, religion and youth. 
Pamela Leach (Ph.D. York University, Canada), is Assistant Professor of Political Studies at Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg. She teaches in the areas of political philosophy, peace and conflict, human rights, gender and development studies. Pamela has published in the fields of political theory, African politics and critical security. Recent research examines the impact of securitization on politics, including changes in the nature of citizenship and citizen security initiatives. Pamela is a former urban planner and policy analyst, and also worked in international development in West Africa.
Lejla Voloder has recently completed her Ph.D. in Anthropology at the School of Political and Social inquiry, Monash University, Australia. Her doctoral research investigated Bosnian migrant experiences of citizenship in Australia with a particular focus on the ways in which belonging is claimed within multicultural spaces. Her research interests include migrant claims to citizenship; multiculturalism, social inclusion, and secular and religious belonging. Lejla is also interested in autoethnographic methods of research, a topic on which she has published an article in The Australian Journal of Anthropology.
Tanja Glusac, Doctor of Philosophy candidate studying at Curtin University of Technology. Currently, a Higher Degree by Research representative for the School of Built Environment, sessional academic employed in the field of architectural history and theory and associate editor for Reflections: Journal of Built Environment Research. She has obtained Bachelor of Architecture (Honours) and Bachelor of Applied Science degrees from Curtin University of Technology. Her wriitings include ‘Territorial Loyalty – Migration, Reterritorialisation and Architecture’, a paper presented at the 23rd Annual SAHANZ conference in 2006 and published in conference proceedings, and paper ‘Place, Memory, Identity’ presented at the Tenth Annual Post Graduate Conference held at Curtin University of Technology in 2008. 
Mercedeh Makoui recently moved from Iran to Australia to take up a PhD scholarship to study children’s literature in the school of Communication and Creative Arts at Deakin University, Melbourne. Her thesis examines gender roles in a selection of Iranian picture books and a selection of Western picture books produced in English representing mothers of West Asian/North African descent. In analysing various discourses in the books of her selection, Mercedeh interrogates the extent to which the relations of power and systems of government inform picture books. Her research also examines the ways the modes of representations in picture books may connect with power and regulate conduct in society. Her research interests are in the areas of Ideology and cultural studies. She is a member of International Research Society for Children’s Literature and the recipient of the IRSCL research grant 2009. 
Scott Downman is a lecturer in journalism at Griffith University. For the past 10 years he has been involved with community development projects in south-east Asia aimed at addressing the issues of human trafficking, labour exploitation and work migration. From 2007-2009 he worked as a fieldworker for the Thai-based NGO Mekong Minority Foundation, in an Ausaid-funded project in northern Thailand..
Mico was a teacher in an international school in Mauritius, and, in pursuit of further studies, travelled to Australia. He taught French in three schools in Victoria and is currently teaching in an elite independent school in Melbourne offering the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme. Mico also has had teaching experience in South Korea. He is currently undertaking doctoral research at Monash University. He is exploring the notions of local identities and knowledges in the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme in Mauritius and in Australia.
Atsushi Takeda is a PhD candidate at the University of the Sunshine Coast. He has investigated the experience of Japanese migrants in Queensland focusing on their settlement experience and transnational connection with Japan. His research interests include transnationalism, international migration, identity, gender, globalisation and qualitative research methods.
Wolfgang Aschauer is sociologist, psychologist and communication scientist and is working as a Postdoc at the department of political science and sociology at the university of Salzburg (division of sociology and cultural science). His main research areas are cross cultural research, value research, migration research, tourism sociology and tourism psychology (he is in the editorial management of a new journal of tourism science in German-language). Currently he is preparing a cross-cultural research project which analyses the influence of societal developments on ethnic prejudice and islamophobia in four selected western European Countries (Austria, Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark). 
Xu Jingnan is a PhD Candidate in School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Canterbury, New Zealand. Her supervisors are Associate Professor Jim Tully and Dr. Donald Matheson. Her current Thesis is titled Chinese Diasporic Network in NZ: www.skykiwi.co.nz. She has completed Master’s of Mass communications from University of Leicester, UK, her dissertation was on British based Chinese websites—A study of Chinese international students’ uses of internet. She did her Bachelor of English language and literature in International Studies from University Shanghai, China.
Neil Small is Professor of Health Research in the School of Health Studies, University of Bradford. He is a sociologist with an interest in chronic illness and in health inequalities. His current focus, as academic lead of the birth cohort study Born in Bradford, is on infant health in a predominantly bi-ethnic community. 
Nabila Jaber is a senior lecturer in Sociology in the School of Social and Political Sciences. She is currently researching the making of identity in diaspora and the construction of ethnicity in (inter)national migration. Nabila teaches in both areas of study, Postcolonialism with a focus on identity (tans)formation, and Development Studies concerning gender policies and market relations. .
Selen Ayirtman Ercan have a B.A. degree in Political Science from the Middle East Technical University (Turkey) and a M.A. degree in Political Science (major), Sociology and German Literature (minors) from the University of Heidelberg (Germany). Her master’s thesis was about the relationship between rule of law and democracy in the theories of Jürgen Habermas and Carl Schmitt. Currently she is pursuing her PhD in the Political Science Program of the Australian National University under the supervision of Prof. John Dryzek. During her studies, she has been involved in several research projects and co-authored articles on the various aspects of democratic theory and practice. Her PhD thesis is about the merits and limits of deliberative democracy in the face of cultural diversity. It seeks to define ways in which accommodation of cultural diversity and resolution of cultural conflicts can be further democratized through deliberation.
Annalisa Ornaghi, Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology and social research, Faculty of Sociology, Department of Sociology and social research University of Trento and Université Paris – Sorbonne, She develops research topics on compared health politics, with particular focus on health systems performing her research with a deep insight about the migratory phenomenon through analysis of demographic factors and the evolution. She recently published: 
Mara Tognetti Bordogna is Associate Professor of migration politics and migration and ethnic relationship. Research topics developed during past years concern social politics, mostly focused on healthcare, health systems, complementary medicine and medicines, health inequality. Concerning immigration, she was involved in research mainly focused on woman, families (mixed and reunited), teenagers, health and access to the health services. Coordinator for the migration politics series published by FrancoAngeli. She recently published: 
Dr Tae-Jun Kim is a Research Fellow at Korean Educational Development Institute (KEDI),Seoul, Korea. Hi reserch involves the conflict and resolution between the generations in Korean education (2004, The Korean Journal of Developmental Psychology, 17,2) / Modeling regional human resource development strategies – Based on case study of England (2004, The Journal of Korean Education, 31, 1) / The psychological mechanism to reduce educational credentialism in Korean adults: From perspective contraction to perspective expansion (2003, The Korean Journal of Educational Psychology, 17, 3) / Qualification system of lifelong learning for human resource development (2003, Interdisciplinary Journal of Adult & Continuing Education, 6, 2)
Kelly Parker is a PhD student in the Discipline of Geographical and Environmental Studies at the University of Adelaide, South Australia. Originally from the United States, Kelly completed undergraduate studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2000 and a Masters Degree in Population and Migration studies at the University of Adelaide in 2004. Her PhD research explores experiences of the Australian diaspora living in the United States of America. The research examines how emigration and diaspora should be conceptualized in a contemporary context and what Australia can do to better engage with these populations.
Associate Professor Tina Murphy received her PhD in Psychology from the Australian National University in 2002. In 2009, she joined Deakin University’s Alfred Deakin Research Institute as its Research Partnerships Manager. Prior to this she spent six years employed as an ARC Postdoctoral and Research Fellow at the Australian National University’s Research School of Social Sciences, followed by two years as a criminology lecturer at Deakin University. In 2005 she was a Visiting Fellow at New York University’s Department of Psychology, and she is currently an Associate Investigator at Griffith University’s ARC Centre for Excellence in Policing and Security. . Tina’s major research interest centres around the concept of procedural justice; the idea that giving citizens voice in decision making, and governing citizens in a procedurally fair and respectful manner will encourage cooperative behaviour and voluntary compliance with rules and decisions. She has undertaken this work in the law enforcement, taxation, and social security contexts. She has a particular interest in how authorities can build relationships with disenfranchised groups, including ethnic minority groups, youth, offenders, and victims of crime. She has recently commenced working on a project exploring how policing with procedural justice can improve police relationships with ethnically diverse communities.
Katie Vasey is a social anthropologist who completed a PhD in 2007 at the University of Melbourne on the emotional well-being and belonging of Iraqi refugee women who resettled in rural Australia. Since mid 2006, she has worked as a research fellow in the school of psychology, psychiatry and psychological medicine at Monash University. Her current research explores the interrelationship between immigration, parenthood and identity with Iraqi women in Australia. Recent publications include: Johnston, V., Vasey, K., Markovic M., (2009) Social policies and refugee resettlement: Iraqis in Australia. Journal of Critical Social Policy 29(2). Vasey, K., Manderson, L. (2008) The paradox of integration: Iraqi women and service support in regional Australia. International Journal of Migration Health and Social Care 4(4). 
Rachel received her BA (hons) from Monash University in 2004 and is currently completing her Ph.D. in the Department of History at the same institution. Her thesis aims to analyse and compare public debates on the admission of legal and unauthorised immigrants in the United States and Australia between 1975 and 1996.
Wan Munira Wan Jaafar is currently a graduate student within the School of Social and Political Science engaged in Doctoral study under the supervision of Professor David C. Thorns and Dr. Nabila Jaber. Wan joined the School and commenced her studies in July 2006. She had previously studied at the University of Technology Malaysia where she was awarded a Master of Science in Urban and Regional Planning in 2002. Her current project is designed to explore the contribution that online communities may be able to make to generating and maintaining social capital within Malaysian communities. As this emerging research is considered importance for both international literature and the Malaysian, it has qualified her to be selected as one of the winners for NZASIA studies societies in 2007 that awarded her an amount of grant for conducting fieldwork in Malaysia. Wan enjoys teaching and is passionate about research; she has lectured at a tertiary level at University Putra Malaysia for two years and also has a working experienced as a research officer. 
Amy Nethery is a PhD candidate in the Centre for Citizenship and Human Rights at Deakin University, Melbourne. Her thesis examines the social and political function of immigration detention in Australia, and her approach is interdisciplinary, drawing on history, law and social theory. Her research interests include political responses to forced migration; the history of administrative incarceration; and theories of bureaucracy and governance relating to national boundaries. Amy has a long-standing interest in the treatment of refugees in Australia, and has been active in establishing networks and linking together other researchers in the field in order to further inform government policy on the area..
Vittoria Grossi is a PhD student in the Linguistics Department, Macquarie University. Her thesis is an ethnographic study of workplace communication among IT migrant professionals in Australia. Her interests include issues related to migration and settlement, sociolinguistics, English as global language and discourse analysis. 
Dr Mostofa Tarequl Ahsan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Folklore, University of Rajshahi, Bangladesh. He completed his PhD from Institute of Bangladesh Studies, Rajshahi University in the field of Bengali Literature. He has Academic membership in Asiatic society of Bangladesh and is a permanent member in Bangla Academy. He is also the editor of a folklore journal named ‘Brattyo’. In 1999, Dr Ahsan started his career as a lecturer in the Bengali language & Literature department in Govt. Shaid Bulbul College, Bangladesh. Later in 2003, he joined the Department of Folkore in Rajshahi University where he is now an Associate Professor. His research interests are in the area of folkdance, folksong, healing or shamanism and folk medicine, religious and ethnic culture, folklore study in interdisciplinary approach, traditions, community development and communication. He has six Mphil and PhD students under his supervision.
He has published several books, journal articles and presented papers in conferences around the world.
Taghreed Jamal Al-deen, is a PhD candidate at Faculty of Education, Monash University. She completed her Master of Education in 2005 also from Faculty of Education, Monash University. She is a Teacher in Chisholm TAFE (English as a second language (ESL)). 
Elena Ostanel completed undergraduate degree in International Relation and Human Rights, Padua University (2005) and graduate degree on Local and International Cooperation and Development, Bologna University (2008). Currently a PhD candidate in Regional Planning and Public Policy at Iuav, University of Venice. She is working for the SSIIM (Social and spatial inclusion of international migrants: urban policies and practices) Unesco Chair at Iuav, University of Venice, since 2008.
Her research work focuses on urban inclusion of international migrants with particular attention to policy analysis. Aside from her academic work, she is working as Project Manager in the area of international cooperation and development. She is also working as “Desk Angola” for the Italian NGO Doctors with Africa Cuamm.
She is author of several papers on the urban dimension of international migration:
Mr Jalil Azizi is the Managing Director Institute of Educational Research,Iran and also Professor of social science department in Azad University of Jahrom,Iran. In 2005 he completed M.S in Social Research from Shahid Beheshti University (National University) of Tehran and
he did his Bachelor of Arts Social Science from University of Isfahan in 1995. He was the Elite Researcher in" 11th Annual Students thesis in Social Sciences" (2007), elite Researcher in" Youth's Studies in Iran" (2006) and also the elite Researcher in "Cultural Researches" (2005).
He is managing the following research projects:
Mr Mojtaba Hemayatkhah graduated from University of Payame Noor, Tehran with a Master's degree Sociology in 2006. He completed his Bachelor Degree In Sociol Investigation from University of Chamran, Ahvaz in 2003.He is a member of The Society of Sociology of Iran, The Sociological Depatment of Payame Noor University and also the Director of Sociology Course in Jahrom Payame Noor University . He has published a few articles:
Joel Windle taught in French and Australian schools, and lectured in sociology and education in both countries before commencing his position at Monash University. His research is in the field of comparative sociology of education, and analyses the implications of cultural diversity for pedagogical and social relations across institutional settings.
Sarah Jameson is a PhD candidate in the department of Creative Media, RMIT city campus.
Sarah Jameson was born in UK, emigrated as a child to Sydney, lives and works in Melbourne. Began tertiary study as an artist in 1978 and earning a living by teaching art since 1986 working in various Victorian state and private Secondary Colleges as well as Tafe and University. Currently is a PhD candidate in the department of Creative Media, RMIT city campus part time, and teaches secondary Art in the Eastern suburbs of Melbourne. 
George Vasilev is a PhD student in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne. He is writing a thesis on deliberative democracy in divided societies. 
Niranjala Weerakkody (Ph D Rutgers U, NJ, USA)is a Senior Lecturer in Media and Communication at Deakin University. Her current research examines the issues related to the 'cultural divide' in the teaching and learning of international postgraduate course work students in Australia. She also studies the discourses and the framing of 'others' in society and especially in media messages. Her book Research methods for media and communication (2009) was published by Oxford University Press. Her forthcoming co-edited book (with Margaret Kumar and Heather D'Cruz) '"Where are you from?": Voices in transition' will be published by Common Ground Publishers, Melbourne.
Dr. Dvir Abramovich, the Jan Randa Senior Lecturer in Hebrew language and literature, is Director of The Centre for Jewish History and Culture, The University of Melbourne. Dr. Abramovich is President of the Australian Association of Jewish Studies and is editor of the Australian Journal of Jewish Studies - Australia’s only peer-reviewed journal devoted to this field. A regular contributor to the media, he sits on the editorial board of several international academic journals. Dr Abramovich has authored more than 45 scholarly articles and book chapters and is the co-editor of the book Testifying to the Holocaust (2008).
Ms Ferdinand is a Research Fellow whose current projects include evaluating Victorian anti-discrimination programs and examining indigenous eye care services across Australia. Ms Ferdinand’s main interests are the health of disadvantaged populations, particularly of migrant groups. In addition to her work with the university, Ms Ferdinand is a caseworker with the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre. During 2006-2007 she worked with La Trobe University’s Refugee Health Research Centre to examine the use of Melbourne’s asylum seeker clinics. In 2006-2008, Angeline worked with Monash University’s Women’s Health Program in examining the effects of breast cancer therapies and the effects of testosterone on breast cancer risk. Prior to this, she worked with Harvard University Medical School’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology developing strategies to more closely examine the serum proteome. She received her Master of Public Health from La Trobe University in 2008 and her Bachelor of Biology from Cornell University in 2003.
Deborah is a sociologist and is a Senior Research Fellow and holds a VicHealth Public Health Research Fellowship. She is based at the McCaughey Centre VicHealth Centre for the Promotion of Mental Health and Community Wellbeing at the University of Melbourne. Her research is broadly concerned with social contexts for health issues. She has longstanding commitment to collaborative and participatory research methods, and knowledge transfer and exchange activities that maximise the value of research for disenfranchised communities and populations. Her current research program comprises projects exploring associations between neighbourhoods and health, promoting social inclusion and preventing social exclusion among socio-economically disadvantaged populations and people from migrant and refugee backgrounds. She is also a principal co-investigator on two complex evaluations of flagship interventions that involve evaluating outcomes of an integrated social support program for newly arrived young adults; and an initiative to reduce racial discrimination among young people. 
Kayoko Ishii, PhD, is a sociologist whose focus of research is on migrants and gender, ethnicity and nation-state. Her current focus is Thai migrant women and their children in Japan. Amongst her recent publications are Ethnicity and Citizenship: from the Case of Multicultural Community, [2007, Keio University Press], “Social Network among Foreign Residents in Japan: the Case of Thai migrants in Tokai area,” NUCB Journal of Economics and Information Science 50(2), and Comparative Study on networks among foreign residents in Japan: Comparative study on Philippine, Chinese and Thai migrant, [2007, K. Ishii eds., final report for Research project of Ichihara International foundation]. She is currently associate professor of Department of International Studies, Faculty of Foreign Language, Nagoya University of Commerce and Business. 
Teuku Zulfikar, PhD candidate at Faculty of Education Monash University. Teuku gained his BA at Islamic State University in Indonesia. He gained his masters’ degree at Monash University, Australia and Ohio University, USA. His current interest is exploring religious identity of Muslim Diaspora in the West. Teuku Zulfikar was a senior lecturer, Faculty of Education, Imam Bonjol Islamic State Institute in Indonesia for about 6 years. He came to Australia in 2002 to pursue my master's degree in Faculty of Education. In 2004, he completed another master’s degree through Fulbright scholarship. He went to Ohio University focusing on educational studies. As Teuku enrolled at Monash for his PhD program, his interest turned into researching the identity of the Muslim Diaspora in the West. At the moment, Teuku is focusing on researching how Indonesian Muslim youth define themselves within the Australian context. 
Since 1992 Mohammad teachs history, history of Islam and Iran and Islamic civilization and culture and history of Islamic education and historiography in many universities in Iran. Hi research interst is in Islamic history, history of Islamic organization and and others and has published books and article. His book was titled Islamic culture and civilization of ghom in third century of H/9 A.D. Mohammad is Assistant Professor in Islamic azad university central Tehran. He completed his B.A in philosophy and B.A in civilization and culture of Islamic nations from Tehran university and his masters degree was about migration of prophet of Islam holiness Mohamad(A.S). Title of his doctorate thesis was Islamic culture and civilization in ifriqya in HAFSID period .
Luara Ferracioli has a Bachelor Degree in International Relations and a Masters in Applied Ethics from the University of Melbourne. She is now a PhD student at the Australian National University (Center for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics), where she is writing a thesis on the ethics of migration. She also coordinates a research project as part of her role with the WomenSpeak Network, an active and vocal member of the women’s movement in Australia. In addition, she has been recently appointed to the ACT Youth Advisory Council. 
Rachel Woodlock, M.Islam.Std., is a doctoral candidate in the School of Political and Social Inquiry, Monash University, studying issues surrounding the social inclusion of Muslim Australians. Rachel is supervised by Professor Emeritus Gary D. Bouma FAICD, Professor Greg Barton and Dr Pete Lentini. During 2007 and 2008 she completed two research projects sponsored by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, one looking at the hopes and aspirations of Muslim Australians in Sydney, the other mapping political attitudes among Muslims in Melbourne. Her most recent publication is the chapter “Islamic Beliefs and Practices” in the Encyclopedia of Religion in Australia, edited by James Jupp (Port Melbourne, Vic: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). She also writes for the Faith column of the Sunday Age 1.
Juliet Pietsch is a lecturer in International and Political Studies and deputy postgraduate director of the International Relations programme at Deakin University. Previously, she has worked as a lecturer in Asian Studies and Chinese (Mandarin) at the University of Tasmania.
Her research is focused on using national and international survey data to analyse changing social trends towards migration, the environment and human security issues in the Asia Pacific.
Juliet was a team investigator for the 2007 Australian Survey of Social Attitudes and has since worked with the Australian Election Study. In 2007, she co-authored with Professor Ian McAllister a report on trends in Australian political opinion using the Australian Election Study. 
Associate Professor Anita Harris is a Mid-Career Research Fellow in the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland. Her current research is on youth, politics, multiculturalism and citizenship, and she has also published widely in the area of girls’ studies. 
Dr D L Vasintha Veeran is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social Work in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at the United Arab Emirates University. Prior to this she was a faculty member in the Dept of Political Science and Sociology and the Director of the Masters in Social Work at the National University of Ireland, Galway. Dr Veeran’s academic career began in Durban, South Africa where she was a Senior Lecturer and Researcher at the Centre for Social Work in the Dept of Psychology and Anthropology at University of Natal (now called University of Kwa-Zulu Natal). She has presented a number of papers as well being an invited keynote speaker at International Conferences on her special interest area which is young people. In addition to having published articles in peer reviewed international academic journals and chapters in books, she is a peer reviewer for the European Journal of Social Work. Her international profile includes guest lectureships at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth and University of Goethe in Frankfurt, Germany. Some of her internationally funded research projects include collaborative programmes with universities in South Africa, Northern Ireland, Germany and Netherlands. Dr Veeran has built strong community links in order to strengthen partnerships between field practice and academia and has been involved in many government initiatives on child and youth care. Her research interests include: young people and social inclusion/exclusion; children in especially difficult circumstances such as street children, child labour and the sexual exploitation of children; risk and resilience, youth migration and youth policy and advocacy
Fanny Lauby is a PhD student at the University of Paris III - Sorbonne Nouvelle. Her research interests include Latinos and Latino students in the United States, immigration, access to education and higher education, and the fate of undocumented students. Her current research focuses on the role of financial aid and in-state tuition for undocumented students in higher education in the United States. 
Tannis Atkinson is founding editor of Literacies, Canada?s journal linking research and practice in adult basic education. She worked as a plain language editor and adult literacy educator for many years before entering doctoral studies in Adult Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. Her current research interests include exploring connections between epistemologies and social exclusions and examining the continuities and ruptures between colonial-era education policies and contemporary discourses of literacy. In 2009 her paper ?Commodifying literacy, justifying inequality: timely relations in the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS)? won the Tilda Gaskell Award for the Best Student Paper at the Standing Conference on University Teaching and Research in the Education of Adults held at Downing College, Cambridge.
Cunzhen Yang is a PhD canditate of Faculty of Education, Monash University, Australia. Originally from China, Cunzhen was a lecturer in the Foreign Language Department of Beijing Univerisity of Physical Education. She completed her Master in Education at Monash University in 2004. Before she started her PhD research, she worked for La Trobe University and later RMIT University as representative in China. Her current research focuses on students’ experiences in a weekend Chinese school in Melbourne. Cunzhen is also a NAATI accredited translator (English into Chinese). 
Anthonella Muanza Banaciny is a graduate student of the University of Kinshasa. Born at the Eastern Congo, she moved to the west where she graduated in journalism. After a short career in the radio and television, she started having an interest about the war displaced people. Since 1998, she has accumulated a lot of experiences and witnesses on this topic. Those people living out of the media’s coverage, out of their home villages, need more support and care. Her advocacy for the raped women’s case in the Eastern Congo has made her famous. She is an engaged journalist who is now preparing a master degree on the migrations due to the war. Her testimonies are well known through conferences where she shares the situation of those thousands people living in such rude conditions in refugee’s camps. 
Hao Duan is a PhD student in geography in the School of Physical, Environmental and Mathematical Science, University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy. His major research interests are human mobility, which includes migration and commuting behaviours, and “peak oil” – a concept indicating possible future energy shortage. 
Penelope Goward's research interest in non-English speaking communities and migrant issues has stemmed from her work in community health, teaching international students in higher education, and travelling extensively in India and Asia. She is preparing to commence a PhD on the topic of "The impact of global English on the Tamil community in Chennai and Melbourne”, with a focus on women as the carriers of the culture. Penelope is currently completing a Certificate IV, TESOL. Until recently, Penelope’s research interests and publications have been in education and technology.
Dr Christina Ho is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Technology, Sydney. She researches migration, cultural diversity and cultural citizenship in Australia. She is the author of Migration and Gender Identity: Chinese women’s experiences of work, family and identity in Australia, and co-editor (with Tanja Dreher) of Beyond the Hijab Debates: New conversations on gender, race and religion.
Barbara is a casual teacher in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at UTS, teaching in the social inquiry program of the Communications degree. Her current research interests lie in the areas of cultural diversity and the various ways to recognise difference that do not depend on stereotyping the other. She is the author of ‘Unsettling Zionism. Diasporic consciousness and Australian Jewish Identities’ (2008), vdm publishing: Germany.
Dr Bruno Mascitelli is Senior Lecturer in Italian and European Studies at Swinburne University of Technology. He worked for Austrade in Italy for over 17 years and was primarily engaged in export promotion of Australian products into the Italian market. On returning to Australia, Bruno was employed with the Commercial Office of the US Consulate which involved assisting US companies entering the Australian market. Since joining Swinburne University in 2000, Bruno has specialised in European Studies and International Business. He completed his Masters in International Business in 2001 and completed his PhD at Melbourne University in 2005. His additional interests include Italian Political Economy and Italian politics. He is President of the European Studies Association of Australia and is President of the School Council of the Victorian School of Languages. He has co-authored with Simone Battiston “The Italian expatriate vote in Australia” (Connor Court Publishing, 2008). He is dedicating his research interests in areas to do with Italian-Australian matters.
Dr Simone Battiston is the Cassamarca Lecturer in Italian at Swinburne University of Technology. This position is partly sponsored by the Italy-based Cassamarca Foundation. He is a history graduate from the University of Trieste (Italy). He completed his PhD in Italian Migration Studies at La Trobe University in 2004. Excerpts from his doctoral dissertation on the history and collective memory of the Italian migrant organisation FILEF of Melbourne have been published in the Journal of Australian Studies and the Australian newspaper The Age. He has published widely on the issue of Italian expatriate voting, including a co-authored book with Bruno Mascitelli “The Italian expatriate vote in Australia” (Connor Court Publishing, 2008). His research interests also include Italian-Australian studies, and migration and trade.
Karen Block is a Research Fellow and PhD candidate in the McCaughey Centre, School of Population Health, University of Melbourne. Karen has an interest in qualitative methodologies and mixed methods research and is currently working on a range of projects involving children and young people with a focus on social inclusion, health inequalities, evaluating complex interventions and working in collaborative partnerships with the community. Her doctoral project aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of the issues impacting on social inclusion for newly-arrived adolescent and young adult refugees in Australia and to inform policy and program development relating to service provision for this population. 
Ms Faorligh Hunter is a PhD candidate. Her working title is Young Refugees: transnational experiences, cosmopolitan conditions. She has worked over the past 6 years for the Centre for Multicultural Youth in Melbourne in a range of State and National roles within specialist newly arrived service delivery and policy contexts.
Mr Atem Atem, came to Australia from Sudan as a refugee in 2002. He spent time in Ethiopia and Kenya before migrating to Australia and is currently completing his Masters in Public Policy at ANU. His research project is exploring Service delivery to Migrants in Australia from a historical perspective.
Dr Les Morgan is a visual artist, educator and researcher. Morgan’s art practice spans thirty years and he is represented in private and public collections in Britain, Australia and America. His trans-disciplinary research interests include: painting, diaspora, migration and cultural hybridity. He is author of two books ‘Illegal Action ‘(2005), ‘The Significance of Diaspora Politics in the Visual Arts’ (2008) and journal articles, including the online journal article: ‘Please Explain’.
Moeko Minagawa is a PhD candidate at the Graduate School of Policy and Management at Doshisha University, Kyoto (Japan). Her research is interested in cross-border migrations especially their ‘sense toward others’ through their experience of migration. She is currently working on the investigation of expatriate in China. 
Mahama Tawat holds degrees from Dalarna and Stockholm Universities in Sweden. He is currently completing a PhD project at Otago University, New Zealand on the integration policies of Denmark and Sweden for which he was awarded the prestigious New Zealand International Doctoral Research Scholarship in 2006. His research combines contemporary political theory (issues of multiculturalism, citizenship and equality), migration, development and comparative public policymaking. Past publications include a comparative study of the policymaking of Denmark and Sweden's cultural diversity policies.
Hirohisa Takenoshita is an associate professor of sociology in Shizuoka University, Japan. His research interest is social stratification and inequality, and immigration studies. His publications include: Takenoshita, Hirohisa. 2008. “Voluntary and Involuntary Job Mobility in Japan: Resource, Reward and Labor Market Structure.’ Sociological Theory and Methodology 23(2): 85-104, Takenoshita, Hirohisa. 2007. “Intergenerational Mobility in East Asian Countries: A Comparative Study in Japan, Korea and China.” International Journal of Japanese Sociology 16: 64-79, Takenoshita, Hirohisa. 2007. “Transnationalism among Japanese Brazilian Migrants: Circular Migration and their Socioeconomic Position,” in Curtis, B et al. (eds). Public Sociologies: Lessons and Trans-Tasman Comparisons: TASA / SAANZ 2007 Joint Conference Proceedings, Department of Sociology, The University of Auckland, December, 2007, Takenoshita, Hirohisa. 2006. “The Differential Incorporation into Japanese Labor market: A Comparative Study of Japanese Brazilians and Professional Chinese Migrants.” Japanese Journal of Population, 4(1): 56-77.
Gloria Arlini is a Graduate Research Scholar at the Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore. Prior to her postgraduate studies, she pursued a brief career with the Singapore Civil Service and interned with the International Organization for Migration’s Counter Trafficking Unit in Jakarta. This paper is part of an ongoing research for her Masters thesis, which aims to study the construction and transmission of social memory in a three-generational Chinese Indonesian family. 
Laavanya Kathiravelu is a final year PhD candidate at the Centre for Research on Social Inclusion at Macquarie University, Sydney. Her research, which included 7 months of fieldwork in the United Arab Emirates, interrogates experiences and processes of migration and city-building in the Gulf emirate of Dubai. After attaining a masters degree from Goldsmiths College, University of London, Laavanya was a Research Assistant at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, prior to commencing the PhD. Details of her research on Dubai can be found at 
Dr Michele Lobo is a Research Fellow in the Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia. She is working on an Australian Research Council project focusing on multiculturalism, local governance and citizenship. Michele's main research interest is the cultural experience of marginalised groups and the implications for social inclusion in Australian cities. 
Dr Vince P. Marotta is a lecturer in sociology at Deakin University, Australia and is a co-editor of the Journal of Intercultural Studies (Routledge). His research and publications have focused on urban sociology, multicultural cities, cultural identity, the migration experience, attitudes to immigrants, and the nature of cross-cultural understanding. His recent publications include ‘Intercultural hermeneutics and the cross-cultural subject, Journal of Intercultural Studies, 30 (3): 267-284, 2009 and ‘The hybrid self and the ambivalence of boundaries’ Social Identities, 14 (3): 295-312, 2008. 
Nicole holds an Alfred Deakin Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University. She is working on a project which investigates the experience of migration for temporary workers in Australia, and has published articles on globalization theory and on temporary migration.
Steve has a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Melbourne and is an Honorary Fellow with the School of Philosophy, Anthropology and Social Inquiry at the University of Melbourne. His anthropological interests include a focus on transnationalism, movement and migration in Oceania, and his most recently published work includes the co-edited volume, Migration and Transnationalism: Pacific Perspectives. Steve has 15 years experience in the community sector and currently works with Australian Red Cross. He has applied his research, policy, advocacy and stakeholder liaison skills to a range of fields including the human services sector (multicultural and youth), the academy and government. A key focus of his work has been the needs of the disadvantaged, particularly refugee and migrant communities.