Don't go back to where you came from: Australia's Multicultural Genius - Softcover

Soutphommasane, Tim

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1742233368 ISBN 13: 9781742233369

Verlag: NewSouth, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

Offering an unflinching and informed defense of cultural diversity, this book boldly stakes a claim for the overwhelming success of multiculturalism in Australia. Arguing against European governments that declare multiculturalism a failure, it asserts that multicultural Australia has been a national success story. Creating a solid case for why multiculturalism works, it argues against those who believe a multicultural approach to integration and diversity is detrimental to society. This is a celebration of Australia’s cultural diversity.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Tim Soutphommasane is a political philosopher at Monash University’s National Centre for Australian Studies and the Per Capita think tank. He is also a columnist with The Weekend Australian. He worked for Bob Carr when he was NSW Premier and for Kevin Rudd when he was federal opposition leader. A former leader writer at the Financial Times and The Guardian, he is a regular contributor to The Monthly and The Australian Literary Review as well as ABC News 24. Tim holds a doctorate (and masters) in political philosophy from the University of Oxford, where he was a Commonwealth Scholar. He is the author (with Nick Dyrenfurth) of All That’s Left: What Labor Should Stand For (NewSouth, 2010) and Reclaiming Patriotism: Nation-Building for Australian Progressives (Cambridge University Press, 2009).

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Don't Go Back to Where You Came From

Why Multiculturalism Works

By Tim Soutphommasane

University of New South Wales Press Ltd

Copyright © 2012 Tim Soutphommasane
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-74223-336-9

Contents

Introduction, 
1 The life and times of multiculturalism, 
2 The Australian model, 
3 How racist is this country?, 
4 A bigger Australia, 
5 The sovereignty of fear, 
Afterword: Having a go, 
Acknowledgments, 
Notes, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

The life and times of multiculturalism

The precise time of multiculturalism's birth is open to debate. Some would say that pluralism has always been present in Australia, given the original presence of some 700 indigenous nations, speaking more than 250 languages – all long before the arrival of the British. Others highlight that the First Fleet included soldiers, sailors and convicts with ancestral origins in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Others, meanwhile, note that the goldfields of the 19th century were something of a cultural laboratory, populated as they were by diggers from a multitude of nationalities. Yet few would seriously dispute that cultural diversity, at least as we know it today, is the distinctive creation of the second half of the 20th century. Our multicultural society is a product of the successive waves of mass immigration following the Second World War, which have brought more than 7 million people to settle in this country.

And if by multiculturalism we mean a form of government policy responding to ethnic and cultural minorities, there is little ambiguity about the moment of its introduction. Its arrival was modest, the details largely unknown to most Australians. But the first official use of the word 'multicultural' in August 1973 would signify the arrival of a revolution – not one of the sort identified with coups or wars, but of that species that Donald Horne called 'revolutions in consciousness'. It came in a speech delivered by Al Grassby, the then Minister for Immigration in the Whitlam Labor government. 'A multicultural society for the future', as the speech was titled, offered a contemplation of what Australia would look like by the year 2000. The composition of the Australian population, Grassby noted, would be much different as a result of mass immigration. Increasing diversity had 'gradually eroded and finally rendered untenable any prospects there might have been twenty years ago of fully assimilating newcomers to the "Australian way of life"'. It was time to enlarge our understanding of the national identity to reflect the cultural and social impact of Australia's new arrivals:

Our prime task at this point in our history must be to encourage practical forms of social interaction in our community. This implies the creation of a truly just society in which all components can enjoy freedom to make their own distinctive contribution to the family of the nation. In the interests of the Australians of the year 2000, we need to appreciate and preserve all those diverse elements which find a place in the nation today.

For Grassby, the goal was to ensure that Australians of all backgrounds would always be proud to declare, in their different accents, 'I am Australian' – just as Roman citizens in ancient times could boast 'Civis Romanus sum'.

It has often been remarked that Grassby was the father of Australian multiculturalism. Born to an Irish mother and a Spanish father, he was a man whose penchant for flamboyant ties and garish outfits seemed to symbolise the loud, unapologetic insertion of colour into a monochrome Australian society. His intervention in 1973 was certainly a seminal act. According to sociologist Jean Martin, one of the early chroniclers of 'the migrant presence', Grassby's statement was 'a comprehensive document' and 'a manifesto for the plural society' which Grassby was to promote as Minister for Immigration. At the very least, it offered a new language for discussing national identity, and a new perspective on the place of immigrants in Australian society. It acknowledged that a multicultural society was a reality that demanded a national response.

Almost four decades have since passed. What was then a fledgling reality has come to be accepted as a permanent feature of Australian life. As for the response, multiculturalism has evolved through a number of phases since 1973, reflecting not only changes in Australian society but also in political leadership. The story of Australian multiculturalism is one of champions and critics; perhaps even of heroes and villains. But in order to understand it, we must first turn to what preceded it.

After assimilation

Looking back, it isn't hard to see how large-scale assisted immigration – instigated by Ben Chifley's postwar Labor government and continued under that of his Liberal successor Robert Menzies – was bound to transform Australia. It wasn't that the country hadn't experienced waves of immigration before. The gold rush saw Australia's population double in the decade from 1850 to 1860. More than 800 000 immigrants from Britain arrived through assisted passage from 1831 to 1900, many seeking prosperity in the 'long boom' that culminated in the 1880s. But from the Depression of the 1890s through to the Second World War period, immigration was limited and the demand for labour low. When the postwar immigration program began in 1947, fewer than 10 per cent of Australians were born overseas. This would change in the decades that followed. Between 1947 and 1964, more immigrants arrived than in the 80 years from 1860. The national population from 1947 to 1973 increased by close to 6 million. Far from being overwhelmingly British in origin, immigrants came increasingly from central and southern Europe. Diversity had arrived.

The national consciousness was slow to incorporate this new development. At the time, the postwar immigration program was regarded as an imperative born of postwar reconstruction and the strategic requirement of 'populate or perish'. The Department of Immigration, established in 1945 under the watch of its inaugural Minister Arthur Calwell, began planning for the most extensive period of organised migration since convict settlement. A 'scientifically calculated' absorption rate of 70 000 per year was set, aimed at providing a mobile reserve army of labour to meet the demands of an expanding national economy. The grand Snowy Mountains Scheme, designed to generate cheap hydroelectricity for Canberra and elsewhere, captured the public imagination. Here, most literally, was mass immigration as an exercise in building the nation.

Postwar leaders and their bureaucratic planners had no intention of using immigration to remake an Australian identity. For Calwell, in 1946, the preferred source of immigrants was clear: 'Australia hopes that for every foreign migrant there will be ten people from the United Kingdom.' It was only when Britons couldn't be persuaded to come in the numbers required that Australian governments turned to recruiting immigrants from the European continent. This began in 1947 with the Displaced Persons Scheme, which would bring thousands of refugees from Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Ukraine and the Baltic states. Even then, the non-British nature of such a program wasn't intended to weaken a white Australia. But by the mid-1960s, the mix of arriving immigrants was changing: there were fewer coming from Britain and northern Europe, and an increasing number from southern Europe. Greeks, Italians, Maltese,...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: NewSouth
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2013
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1742233368
• ISBN 13: 9781742233369
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 252
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland