Mediating Multiculturalism. Daniella Trimboli
l’Australia cu tre di suoi fidiogli da Platì, Calabria a 1955, tre anni dopo u suoi marito, Domenico vini ca. A canusciu a chista fimmina pe paroli chi dicivinu e cuntavanu e pa fatti chi succeriru – muoriro quando mi patre ero troppo giuvane. Eo canuscia ca pechi sugno diaspiaciuta pechi tutti sacrifici chi fici, non nepe opportunità u vidi na vita lunga, u vai a scuola, o se cunta i stori chi di supia di suoi sette fidiogli. Sicuramente non eppe l’opportunita u vai a l’universita, o passa anni cercando na cosa importante e interresante. Eo era a prima da mi famidgia, da parte di mamma e di mi patre, u finisce laurea da l’universita, pensando di dove vinimo, canusciu che non ne una cosa picciola. Eo vodgio penso che una picciola cosa represento a mia nonna Caterina, come a fimina Trimboli, e vi ringrazio a sai per l’amore e graditudine a dia e la forte e coragiusa Trimboli chi hanno venuto a presso i dia, cui suoi fidiogli (e u miei ziani), e la suoi fidiogli (e li miei cugini). Chisto libro e il vostro, come e il meo.
*Naarm is the word used by the Boon Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation to refer to the bays adjacent Melbourne, and thus the Indigenous term for Melbourne city, which is located on unceded land of the Kulin Nation.
INTRODUCTION: MULTICULTURALISM as A CRISIS OF CONTRADICTION
The twenty-first century has been a time of unprecedented migration and intensified global mobility, two compounding phenomena enabling cultural plurality to become a commonplace feature of contemporary societies. Jarringly, the dominant and previously most-utilised governmental framework for managing culturally diverse communities, namely, multiculturalism, has suffered a serious decline in popularity. As Andrew M. Robinson (2011, p. 29) succinctly noted on the topic of multiculturalism in 2011: ‘The last decade hasn’t been kind to multiculturalism.’ Indeed, since the turn of the century, multiculturalism has not just been ‘losing ground’ (p. 11) but has frequently been posited as a past societal mode – declared ‘inadequate’, ‘failed’ or simply ‘dead’. These reactions have circulated in both the domains of public rhetoric and scholarly endeavours, most frequently in locations long-attached to multiculturalism, notably Canada, Australia, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, but also in the United States and other Western European countries (see Vertovec and Wessendorf 2010).
In this book, I argue that the continued discussion about the success or otherwise of multiculturalism registers the topic as alive as ever, albeit in a mode of crisis. It is not so much that multiculturalism has become irrelevant; rather that the framework through which its relevance has been conventionally understood is not malleable enough to capture the shifting and increasingly contradictory nature of contemporary cultural difference. Since the inception of multiculturalism in Canada in the 1970s, and its subsequent adoption in other countries such as Australia, the ways in which people move and engage with one another have become increasingly hybrid. At the same time, issues that multiculturalism promised to solve/tensions it hoped to alleviate continue to recirculate – racism, inter- and intra-community conflicts, institutionalised discrimination, to list a few. One need only glance at race riots in Cronulla, Australia, the Black Lives Matter movements in the United States and the rise of white nationalist parties in the United Kingdom and Western Europe for cursory evidence.
The sense that multiculturalism has failed has been attributed to many factors. For some, the identity focus of theoretical multiculturalism has been inadequate to address the complexity of lived cultural difference, while the political aspects (programmes and policies) have failed to service this complexity adequately. As Australia and comparable colonial nations enter an era of ‘evolving hyper-diversity’, whereby diversity itself is diversifying (Ang et al. 2002; Noble 2009, p. 47), these inadequacies become increasingly evident.
Certainly, the messiness of the term ‘multiculturalism’ has not helped matters. As Sneja Gunew (2012, p. 1450) outlines, scholarly discussions about multiculturalism often generate confusion because so many elements are designated ‘multicultural’. Multiculturalism is approached as both a philosophy and a political theory, alongside the simultaneous impetus to ‘unpack the term “culture” itself’. Gunew explains: ‘As a political theory with policy dimensions, multiculturalism has often been described as marking a shift from previous stages where differences remained unrecognized and were simply subsumed into dominant groups and institutions […] Multiculturalism as philosophy is linked with preserving universal rights for both individuals and distinctive groups, although there are often tensions between the two’ (ibid.). Both the philosophical and the political domains have difficulty conceptualising multiculturalism into neat frameworks, ultimately because it is impossible to compartmentalise culture (p. 1451).
Previously (though this is far from a thorough survey), scholars have carried out meticulous analyses of multiculturalism by examining its relationship to migratory patterns (Castles 1992; Vertovec 1996), nationalism and citizenship (Castles 1992; Jakubowicz 1994, 2011; Stratton 1998, 2011; Modood 2007; Levey 2008), concepts of ethnicity and race (Gilroy 1987, 1990, 2000; Gunew and Mahyuddin 1988; Jakubowicz 1994, 1998; Hall 2000; Gunew 2004; Modood 2005) and the idea of universal recognition (Taylor 1994; Kymlicka 2007, 2012). In an Australian context, multiculturalism is often studied from a social sciences or political theory perspective and includes the work of Lois Foster and David Stockley (1984), Stephen Castles et al. (1988), Andrew Jakubowicz (1994, 1998, 2011), James Jupp (1984, 2007a), Geoffrey Brahm Levey (2008), Mark Lopez (2000) and, most recently, Andrew Jakubowicz and Christina Ho (2013). Cultural studies perspectives on Australian multiculturalism gained traction in the 1990s, especially through the work of Ien Ang (in Stratton and Ang 1994; Ang 1996, 1999) and Jon Stratton (in Stratton and Ang 1994; Stratton 1998), and it is within this cultural studies tradition that I situate this book.
Multiculturalism takes different forms in different locations, but its basic impetus and structure has been informed by human rights ideals emerging in Western, liberal democracies following the Second World War (Kymlicka 2010, pp. 35–38). This book is concerned with the role of multiculturalism in former British settler colonies, specifically Australia, but notes resonances with multicultural narratives in the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States. These geographical contexts are ripe for cross-comparison not only because of the way their respective multiculturalisms have emerged, but also because digital storytelling, the genre I use to unpack multiculturalism in this book, started in the United States and then moved quickly to Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom.
When it comes to the contemporary terrain of multiculturalism within these locations, lived, studied or otherwise, it is clear that contradiction is a prominent feature. Mobility, cultural hybridity and interconnectedness are as heightened as ever, at the same time that aggressive nationalist practices are exaggerated and borders are tightened. In Australia, the highly fragmented and diverse cultural landscape of the twenty-first century has exacerbated the instability of its multiculturalism, which continues to struggle against a prevailing Anglo-Celtic ‘battler’ mythology. Thus, the tension between the multifarious and mobile aspects of the Australian population and the nationalistic, security-conscious aspects has surfaced in ways that are both familiar and strange. Hybrid cultural products and encounters develop in a continuous and seemingly mundane manner. Yet, the nation is also experiencing the reprisal of white, racist resistance in the form of independent political parties and vocal community groups.1 This paradoxical condition has wedged itself within practical and theoretical work on multiculturalism, stalling its critical development and leading to what scholars have termed the ‘crisis’ of multiculturalism.2 The task for contemporary studies in multiculturalism must therefore be to unpack the paradoxical conjuncture of cultural plurality and formulate ways to navigate its contradictions.
The everyday turn
In the past decade, there have been two approaches employed to address the so-called crisis. The first retains the importance of multiculturalism by inflating and promoting its positive attributes. The second, which can broadly be described as critical multiculturalism, problematises the field by retexturing its meaning and attempting to reconnect its political/theoretical domain with its everyday