Using buzzwords of belonging: everyday multiculturalism and social capital in Australia
2011; Routledge; Volume: 35; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/14443058.2011.591412
ISSN1835-6419
Autores Tópico(s)Global Education and Multiculturalism
ResumoAbstract This paper examines the concepts of multiculturalism and social capital, their relationship with each other and how these concepts are utilised by different interested parties in Australia. In the context of the United States of America and the United Kingdom, some commentators and scholars have argued that multiculturalism can have a negative impact on the fostering of social capital. These arguments are described before examining the same debate in Australia. However, the emphasis of this article is its description of how ethnic minorities and migrants on the one hand, and community organisations that assist these groups on the other, make use of the notions of multiculturalism and social capital to either legitimise their place in Australia or to effectively advocate for the social and economic utility of investing in programs that address problems faced by these groups. With data gathered through interviews and ethnographic fieldwork in Melbourne and Sydney, the authors demonstrate how the debates that scholars and commentators engage in are sidestepped by migrants and by those who seek to assist them and how they use these concepts in a positive manner and in a way in which no other concepts can be used with the same efficacy. Keywords: multiculturalismsocial capitalAustralia Notes 1. Chris Bowen, "New Strategy in Support of Multiculturalism in Australia", Chrisbowen.net, accessed 7 March, 2011, http://www.chrisbowen.net/media-centre/media-releases.do?newsId=4155. 2. Chris Bowen, New Strategy. 3. Steven Vertovec, "Super-diversity and its implications," Ethnic and Racial Studies 30: 4 (2007): 1024–54. See also Ulrich Beck, The Cosmopolitan Vision (Cambridge Polity Press, 2006). 4. Ellie Vasta, "Accommodating diversity; Why current critiques of multiculturalism miss the point," Working Paper no. 53, COMPAS, Centre on Migration, Policy and Society, University of Oxford, 2007. 5. Ghassan Hage, White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society (Annandale: Pluto Press, 1998). See also Ghassan Hage, Against Paranoid Nationalism: Searching for Hope in a Shrinking Society (Annandale: Pluto Press, 2003). 6. Katharine Betts, "Immigration and public opinion: Understanding the shift," People and Place 10:4 (2002): 24–37. 7. Christian Joppke, "The retreat from multiculturalism in the liberal state: theory and policy," The British Journal of Sociology 55: 2 (2004): 244–7. 8. Scott Poynting and Victoria Mason, "The New Integrationism, the State and Islamophobia: Retreat from multiculturalism in Australia," International Journal of Law Crime and Justice 36: 4 (2008): 230–46. 9. James Jupp, J. P. Nieuwenhuysen and Emma Dawson (eds.), Social Cohesion in Australia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 10. Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 197. 11. Robert D. Putnam, "E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first century," Scandinavian Political Studies 30: 2 (2007): 137–74; see also Ernest Healy, "Ethnic Diversity and Social Cohesion in Melbourne," People and Place 15: 4 (2007): 49–64. 12. Katharine Betts, "Immigration and public opinion in Australia," People and Place 4: 3 (1996), accessed May 29, 2010, http://elecpress.monash.edu.au/pnp/free/pnpv4n3/betts.htm; Betts, Immigration and public opinion; David Goodhart, "Too Diverse? Is Britain becoming too diverse to sustain the mutual obligations behind a good society and the welfare state?" Prospect February (2004) accessed June 26, 2008, http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=5835. 13. Poynting and Mason, The New Integrationism. 14. Poynting and Mason, The New Integrationism. 15. Poynting and Mason, The New Integrationism, 232. 16. See Vasta, Accommodating diversity; Roger D. Zetter, David Griffiths and Nando Sigona, Immigration, social cohesion and social capital. What are the links? (New York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2006); Steven Vertovec, "Transnational Social Formations: Towards Conceptual Cross-fertilisation," Working Paper Transnational Communities no. WPTC-01-16, 2001, accessed May 21, 2010. www.transcomm.uk.ac.uk/working-papers.htm; Claire Worley, "'It's not about race. It's about community': New labour and "community cohesion'", Critical Social Policy 25: 4 (2005): 483–96; Pauline Hope Cheong, Rosalind Edwards, Harry Goulbourne, and John Solomos, "Immigration, social cohesion and social capital: A critical review," Critical Social Policy 27: 1 (2007): 24–49. 17. See Steven Vertovec and Susanne Wessendorf, The Multiculturalism Backlash: European Discourses, Policies and Practices (London: Routledge, 2010). 18. Laksiri Jayasuriya, "Australian Multiculturalism Reframed," The New Critic 8 (2008): 2, accessed 28 May, 2010, http://www.ias.uwa.edu.au/new-critic/eight/?a=87787. 19. Kalbir Shukra, Les Back, Michael Keith, Azra Khan, and John Solomos, "Race, social cohesion and the changing politics of citizenship," London Review of Education 2: 3 (2004): 187–95. 20. See particularly Joppke, The retreat from multiculturalism; Vasta, Accommodating diversity; Poynting and Mason, The New Integrationism. 21. James Jupp, "The European 'Retreat from Multiculturalism'", A New Era in Australian Multiculturalism? Melbourne, 2010, accessed March 7, 2011, http://www.culturaldiversity.net.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=687:november-melbourne-multiculturalism-workshop-abstracts-now-available&catid=18:research-articles&Itemid=108. 22. Hage, White Nation, 233, emphasis added. 23. Goodhart, Too Diverse? 24. Goodhart, Too Diverse? 25. Goodhart, Too Diverse? 26. Goodhart, Too Diverse? 27. Brian Barry, Culture and equality: An egalitarian critique of multiculturalism (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000): 8. 28. Barry, Culture and equality, 11–12. 29. Barry, Culture and equality, 5 30. Putnam, Bowling Alone. 31. Putnam, E Pluribus Unum, 144–8. 32. Putnam, E Pluribus Unum, 150. 33. Putnam, E Pluribus Unum, 165, parentheses added. 34. Goodhart, Too Diverse? 35. Putnam, E Pluribus Unum 36. Putnam, E Pluribus Unum, 137. 37. Allan Wood, "Multiculturalism becomes poison for social capital," Australian, 26 September, 2007, accessed April 12, 2008, http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22482184-7583,00.html. 38. Healy, Ethnic Diversity, 63. 39. See Keith Banting, Will Kymlicka, Richard Johnston and Stuart Soroka, "Do multiculturalism policies erode the welfare state? An empirical analysis," in Multiculturalism and the Welfare State: Recognition and Redistribution in Advanced Democracies, eds. K. Banting and W. Kymlicka (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); see also Will Kymlicka and Keith Banting, "Immigration, Multiculturalism, and the Welfare State," Ethics & International Affairs 20: 3 (2006): 281–304. 40. Kymlicka and Banting did however find that "countries with large increases in the proportion of their population born outside the country tend to have smaller increases in social spending.' See Kymlicka and Banting, Immigration, 293. 41. Kymlicka and Banting, Immigration, 295. 42. Andrew Markus and Arunachalam Dharmalingam, Mapping Social Cohesion (Clayton: Monash Institute for the Study of Global Movement and the Scanlon Foundation, 2008). 43. Andrew Leigh, "Trust, Inequality and Ethnic Heterogeneity" The Economic Record 82: 258 (2006): 268–80. 44. All 6500 respondents were asked 'whether they agreed or disagreed with the statement, "Generally speaking, you can't be too careful in dealing with most Australians," and one-quarter of the sample (1580 respondents) were asked whether agreed with the statement 'Generally speaking, most Australians can be trusted." Leigh, Trust, 270. 45. Cheong et al. Immigration, social cohesion and social capital, 25–6.Cheong et al. Immigration, social cohesion and social capital, 25–6. 46. Anthony Giddens, "Diversity and Trust," Prospect, November 2007, accessed April 14, 2008, http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=5835. 47. Paul Gilroy, "Melancholia and multiculture," openDemocracy, March, 2008, accessed April 14, 2008, http://www.opendemocracy.net/arts-multiculturalism/article_2035.jsp. 48. Hage, White Nation, 240–4. 49. Hage, White Nation, 241, emphasis original. 50. Hage, White Nation; Hage, Against Paranoid Nationalism; Gilroy, Melancholia. 51. Lee's research in Australia was made possible by a funding from the Australia-Malaysia Institute. Organisations with whom Lee spoke to representatives of, and to whom Lee would like to express his thanks, include Relationships Australia, Hoa Nghiem Temple, Buddhist Society of Victoria, Windermeere, the Centre for Multicultural Youth (formerly the Centre for Multicultural Youth Issues), Anglicare (in Sydney and in Melbourne), the Asylum Seekers Welcome Centre, the Association of Islamic Councils, and the NSW Service for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture and Trauma Survivors (STARTTS). Some of the writing of this article was made possible by support from the School of Arts and Social Sciences, Monash University, for Pardy's visit to School of Arts and Social Sciences in November 2010 as a Visiting Scholar. 52. National Multicultural Advisory Council (NMAC), Australian multiculturalism for a new century: Towards inclusiveness (Canberra: NMAC, 1999): 103, accessed March 7, 2011 http://www.immi.gov.au/media/publications/multicultural/nmac/report.pdf. 53. See Danielle Celermajer, "If Islam is our other, who are 'we'?" Australian Journal of Social Issues 42: 1 (2007): 103–23. 54. Little Saigon is the colloquial name for a local shopping plaza in Footscray. After years of being referred to as Little Saigon, the centre has now formally changed its name and signage to "Little Saigon." Most cities containing significant Vietnamese populations have designated "Little Saigon" areas. 55. ABS, Social Capital and Social Wellbeing (Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2002): 4, accessed January 10, 2009, http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/2/30/2380806.pdf. 56. ABS, Social Capital, 4. 57. ABS, Social Capital, 1. 58. See, for example, Alejandro Portes, "The Two Meanings of Social Capital" Sociological Forum 15: 1 (2000): 1–12. 59. See, for example, Kenneth J. Arrow, "Observations on Social Capital" in Social Capital: A Multifaceted Perspective, eds. P. Dasgupta and I. Serageldin (Washington: The World Bank, 1999); Steven N. Durlauf and Marcel Fafchamps, "Social Capital," Working Paper no. 214, 2004, The Centre for The Study of African Economies. 60. Mark Western, Janeen Baxter, Jan Pakulski, Bruce Tranter, John Western, Marcel van Egmond, Jenny Chesters, Amanda Hosking, Martin O'Flaherty, and Yolanda van Gellecum, "Neoliberalism, Inequality and Politics: The Changing Face of Australia," Australian Journal of Social Issues 42: 3 (2007): 401–18. 61. Sonia Martin, "Reconceptualising Social Exlcusion: A Critical Response to the Neoliberal Welfare Reform Agenda and the Underclass Thesis," Australian Journal of Social Issues 39: 1 (2005): 79–94. 62. The pull towards using social capital is apparent, for example, in the "Strong Rural Communities" program of the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. It notes that drought in Australia has had significant negative impacts on rural communities. The language in which the various impacts of the drought was couched was in terms of social capital. In Changing Perspectives on Dryness: A Report to Government by an Expert Social Panel (Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Canberra, 2008), it notes for example in its first sentence on the section on "Community," that "Dryness poses increasing difficulties in maintaining the social fabric or social capital of rural regional Australia, and hence may threaten the viability of some rural communities." Among the primary assessment criteria for determining the success of projects seeking funding from the Strong Rural Communities program is its engagement in "building social capital and community networks" (see http://www.daff.gov.au/agriculture-food/drought-pilot/stronger-rural-communities/stronger_rural_communities_program_guidelines, accessed January 1, 2011.) 63. Sue King, John Bellamy, Natalie Swann, Rachel Gavarotto and Philip Coller, Social Exclusion: The Sydney Experience (Parramatta: Anglicare Diocese of Sydney, 2009): 9. 64. Youth Identity and Migration: Culture, Values and Social Connectedness, Deakin University, 2008, accessed January 1, 2011, www.aracy.org.au/publicationDocuments/REP_SF2_FINAL_Francis.doc. 65. Jorge Aroche, "Smoke on the Horizon," Refugee Transitions 12 (2001) accessed January 1, 2011, http://www.startts.org.au/default.aspx?id=238. 66. James C. Alexander, "Theorizing the Modes of Incorporation: Assimilation, Hyphenation, and Multiculturalism, Sociological Theory 19: 3 (2001): 246. 67. Bob Hawke, "Foreword", in National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia (Canberra: Department of Immigrations and Citizenship, 1989). 68. Chris Bowen, "What makes multiculturalism great is mutual respect," Sydney Morning Herald, February 17, 2011, accessed May 12, 2011, http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/what-makes-multiculturalism-great-is-mutual-respect-20110216-1awik.html.
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