Discursive Constructions of Second Generation Immigrant Identity and Belonging Amongst Young Adults of New Zealand Descent in Sydney, Australia

Beyond 'insiders on the outside':

Discursive constructions of second generation immigrant identity and belonging amongst young adults of New Zealand descent in Sydney, Australia

Ranmalie Priyanthie Jayasinha

A thesis in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

School of Public Health and Community Medicine Faculty of Medicine

UNSW Australia

March 2015

THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES Thesis/Dissertation Sheet

Surname or Family name: Jayasinha

First name: Bellanavidanalage Other name/s: Ranmalie Priyanthie

Abbreviation for degree as given in the University calendar: PhD

School: Public Health and Community Medicine Faculty: Medicine

Title: Beyond 'insiders on the outside': Discursive constructions of second generation immigrant identity and belonging amongst young adults of New Zealand descent in Sydney, Australia

Abstract 350 words maximum: (PLEASE TYPE)

Studies of immigrant experience have tended to privilege a first generation immigrant-centred framework, including in research on second generation immigrant identity. This has led to the construction of this group as 'insiders on the outside', struggling to navigate cultural divides between family, community and host society. In challenging this conceptualisation I employed a poststructuralist approach, informed by intersectionality and Discourse theories, to explore the discursive constructions of second generation immigrant identity and belonging amongst young adults of New Zealand descent in Sydney, Australia.

First, I examined how the subject position of the 'New Zealand immigrant' has been discursively articulated in relation to the nation-state Australia utilising a genealogical analysis of texts and a discourse analysis of media articles related to trans-Tasman migration and settlement. Second, drawing on in-depth interviews, I explored the lived experiences of participants born in Australia of New Zealand descent as they negotiated their identity and belonging within the confines of this discursive terrain.

Findings from this study demonstrate that the subject position of the 'New Zealand second generation immigrant' is consistently figured as the 'almost similar other' to the 'host' Australia. The operation of logics of equivalence and difference between Australia and New Zealand, articulated through myths related to historical and cultural similarities and to racial and class-based differences, serve to structure the New Zealand second generation immigrant subject position. This positioning in turn serves to reinforce the nation building agenda of Australia as a multicultural society, where the 'New Zealand immigrant' is a constitutive outside to the 'Australian' identity. Participants’ experiences of belonging highlighted the shifting role of national identifications through participation in transnational social fields. Interactions across local, national and transnational landscapes led to fluctuating identifications, characterised by differing levels of allegiance, ambiguity and displacement within both contexts. Negotiating dislocationary moments of othering, participants sought to engage in an alternative space not directly linked to national identifications. They asserted their political subjectivity by occupying highly localised subject positions, established through relational engagements with everyday spaces in Australia and New Zealand.

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I also authorise University Microfilms to use the 350 word abstract of my thesis in Dissertation Abstract International (this is applicable to doctoral theses only). I have either used no substantial portions of copyright material in my thesis or I have obtained permission to use copyright material; where permission has not been granted I have applied/will apply for a partial restriction of the digital copy of my thesis or dissertation.'

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Acknowledgments

To my supervisors, Associate Professor Joanne Travaglia and Dr Anne Bunde- Birouste, you have been an amazing supervisory team. Thank you for your intellectual generosity, enthusiasm, never-faltering encouragement, and friendship.

I am indebted to my participants, without whom this thesis would not have been possible. To those who gave freely of their time and entrusted me with their personal stories, I thank you.

I would like to acknowledge and thank the School of Public Health and Community Medicine for funding my doctoral studies through the Postgraduate Scholarship.

Thank you to the people who read drafts of my thesis and took the time to discuss my work with me. Special thanks to Dr Stanley Jayasinha for his tireless hours reading over my thesis.

To all to my friends and family, you have provided me with so much care and support over these four years and for that I am truly grateful. To all my ‘Aussie’ friends, thank you for becoming my family away from home. And thanks to all my ‘Kiwi’ friends and family, who went months without seeing me and provided an important source of strength from afar.

To my parents, Romani and Channa, thank you for instilling in me a joy for learning, for encouraging me to further my education and for always believing in me.

And last, but not least, my deepest thanks to Kim Burns and Namalie Jayasinha; your enduring love and wisdom helped me weather many a turbulent storm and reach calmer waters.

This thesis is dedicated to my little sister, Gothami.

Table of contents

Acknowledgments...... i

Table of contents ...... iii

List of tables and figures ...... viii

Glossary of terms ...... ix

Publications and presentations arising from this research...... x

Chapter 1 Introduction ...... 1

Australia and New Zealand: A trans-Tasman relationship ...... 3

Research on New Zealand immigrants in Australia ...... 10

Framing this study ...... 16

Overview of the thesis ...... 23

Chapter 2 Literature Review ...... 29

Introduction ...... 29

Who are ‘Second Generation Immigrants’? ...... 30

The Generation ‘Problem’ ...... 32

It’s all ‘relative’: immigrant parents and their children ...... 35

(Ac)counting for the first generation ...... 37

Key debates in international second generation immigrant research ...... 42

Educational and employment attainment ...... 45

iii

Transnational experiences ...... 49

Health and wellbeing ...... 51

Language proficiency ...... 53

Identity and belonging ...... 56

Key developments in second generation immigrant research in Australia ...... 59

Chapter summary ...... 71

Chapter 3 Identity theory and the second generation ...... 73

Introduction ...... 73

Current theoretical perspectives on second generation immigrant identity ...... 74

Acculturation and assimilation: navigating the ‘cultural divide’ ...... 75

Hybridity theory: The case for cultural mixture ...... 80

Turning to intersectionality theory ...... 85

Discourse Theory: An ontology ...... 93

Discourse Theory: A political identity theory ...... 97

Chapter summary ...... 109

Chapter 4 Methodology and study design ...... 111

Introduction ...... 111

A methodology: Discourse Theoretical Approach and qualitative research ...... 112

The importance of text ...... 115

Discourse Theoretical Analysis: Techniques ...... 116

Positioning of the discourse analyst and rigour ...... 118

Triangulation ...... 119

Sampling and saturation ...... 121

Reflexivity and positionality ...... 123

Audit trail ...... 126

Study design ...... 126

Genealogical analysis ...... 129

Data collection ...... 134

Data analysis ...... 134

Print media analysis ...... 136

Data collection ...... 137

Data analysis...... 140

Interviews with second generation immigrants ...... 144

Recruitment ...... 145

Sample ...... 147

Data collection ...... 149

Audio recording and transcription ...... 151

Data analysis ...... 153

Ethical considerations ...... 155

Chapter summary ...... 157

Chapter 5 Trans-Tasman migration and Australia’s national identity ...... 159

Introduction ...... 159

Considering national identity ...... 161

1780 – 1970: Britain and her ‘white’ colonies ...... 165

1970 – 2000: Re-imagining a multicultural Australia and trans-Taman migration

...... 178

Chapter summary ...... 192

Chapter 6 Media discourses of New Zealand immigrants in Australia ...... 193

Introduction ...... 193

Overview of print media coverage ...... 194

Overview of the discourses ...... 197

Discourse 1: ‘Good guest’ ...... 200

Discourse 2: ‘Deviant visitor’ ...... 211

Discourse 3: ‘Strong, exotic Māori’ ...... 227

Chapter summary ...... 235

Chapter 7 Second generation immigrant narratives of identity and belonging

...... 237

Introduction ...... 237

Re-imagining parent(s) migration experiences ...... 241

Navigating everyday places ...... 250

Encounters with New Zealand ...... 263

Patriotism, ambivalence and displacement ...... 279

Chapter summary ...... 291

Chapter 8 Negotiating the position of the ‘other’ across transnational and localised spaces ...... 293

Introduction ...... 293

The visibility of whiteness and subordination through difference ...... 296

Navigating the ‘almost similar’ subject position ...... 305

Traversing transnational landscapes ...... 312

Localised identification and belonging ...... 323

Chapter 9 Conclusion ...... 331

References ...... 341

Appendices ...... 363

vii

List of tables and figures

Table 4.1 Key sensitising concepts of Discourse Theory ...... 115

Table 4.2 Overview of study design...... 128

Table 4.3 Media article inclusion and exclusion criteria...... 139

Table 4.4 Summary of participant demographics ...... 149

Figure 1.1 Overview of thesis ...... 23

Figure 4.1 Media article screening process ...... 140

Figure 4.2 Example Leximancer concept map ...... 142

Figure 5.1 Key Trans-Tasman migration legislative changes 1901 – 2010 . 180

Figure 6.1 Number of print media articles by publication ...... 195

Figure 6.2 Print media article coverage by year ...... 197

Figure 6.3 Overview of discourses and key signifiers ...... 198

viii

Glossary of terms

Term Definition

ABC Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the national television broadcasting company

All Blacks New Zealand national rugby team

ANZAC Australia and New Zealand Army Corps

Aussie Colloquial term for an Australian

Haka Indigenous cultural practice performed by Māori males. A traditional a war cry, dance, or challenge.

Iwi Māori/New Zealand Indigenous tribal group

Kangaroo Colloquial term for an Australian

Kiwi Colloquial term for a New Zealander

Pākehā New Zealander of European descent

Marae Māori/New Zealand Indigenous cultural meeting house

Māori Indigenous people of New Zealand

MP Member of Parliament

NSW New South Wales state of Australia

SCV Special Category visa granted on arrival in Australia

Te Reo Māori language

Wallabies Australian national rugby team

Whānau Concept of Māori family including extend family and community

Publications and presentations arising from this research

Refereed publication Jayasinha R. 2011. Beyond ‘insiders on the outside’: Towards a conception of identity and experience for the ‘second generation’, In D. W. Riggs and C. Due (Eds.). Directions and Intersections: Proceedings of the 2011 Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association and Indigenous Studies Research Network Joint Conference, pp. 108-121. International presentations Jayasinha R, Travaglia J. 2012. Multiple sources of belonging, difference and resistance: Conceptualising second generation youth identity(s) and experience(s). The 2nd International Sociological Association (ISA) Forum, 1st – 4th August 2012, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Jayasinha R, Travaglia J. 2012. Risky or resilient? Moving towards an understanding of multiplicity and difference in youth experience(s) through a conceptual framework of ‘resistance'. The 2nd International Sociological Association (ISA) Forum, 1st – 4th August 2012, Buenos Aires, Argentina. National presentations Jayasinha R, Travaglia J. 2013. Welcomed guest or foreign menace? Discursive constructions of New Zealand immigrants in Australia. The Australian Sociological Association (TASA) conference. 25th – 28th November 2013, Melbourne, Australia. Jayasinha R, Travaglia J. 2013. Dangerously exotic: Discursive constructions of New Zealand Maori and Pacific Islander immigrants in the Australian context. The Australian Sociological Association (TASA) conference. 25th – 28th November 2013, Melbourne, Australia. Jayasinha R. 2011. Crossing the Ditch: the lives and wellbeing of New Zealanders and their children in Australia. The Australian Sociological Association (TASA) Local Lives/Global Networks conference, 28th November – 1st December 2011, Newcastle, Australia. Jayasinha R. 2011. Beyond ‘insiders on the outside’: Towards a conception of identity and experience for the ‘second generation. The Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association (ACRAWSA) and Indigenous Studies Research Network (ISRN) Joint Conference, 7th – 9th December 2011, Gold Coast, Australia.

Chapter 1 Introduction

In reaction to growing public animosity towards an increase of New Zealand immigration to Australia, in 2001 the Australian Federal Government, led at the time by the then Prime Minister John Howard, announced the introduction of the temporary Special Category visa (SCV), a non-permanent visa (Birrell and Rapson,

2001). Following years of relatively relaxed immigration and settlement requirements, during which New Zealand and Australian citizens could freely travel between the two nations, this legislative action effectively curtailed the rights of New Zealand immigrants living in Australia. This action was not mirrored in New Zealand for Australian citizens. Under the SCV, although able to stay, work and pay taxes in Australia indefinitely, those New Zealand citizens who have arrived since 2001 cannot vote, join the defence force, obtain long-term work with

Federal and State governments, are ineligible for social security entitlements and face a more restrictive pathway to citizenship than previously experienced

(Duncan, 2013). Through this action who was and, more importantly, who was not an ‘Australian’ was clearly defined. These restrictions translated into limitations in the support provided for New Zealand citizens in Australia. For example, those living in Queensland during the floods in 2011 were not entitled to the $1000

Australian Government Disaster Recovery Payment support (Garry, 2001). New

Zealand citizens who have a child with a disability cannot access social security

support for their child or themselves due to their temporary status (Marriner,

2011).

Nearly a decade after the introduction of the SCV, Pauline Hanson, the leader of the

One Nation Party leader (a far right wing party) and former Liberal Party MP, voiced her support of improving conditions for New Zealand citizens in Australia, stating, “…they are working, paying their taxes, and raising families, but when hardship hits they cannot apply to receive help from our social security system”.

Further, she argued that, “…many New Zealanders are then left homeless, destitute and desperate… We have opened our borders and our hearts to people from all over the world offering them the opportunity to become Australian citizens, but not to our closest neighbours, our allies and our ANZAC mates” (Hanson 2013, cited in: Ansley, 2013). Drawing on the notable historical ties and the so-called

‘neighbourly’ relationship between Australia and New Zealand in her statement

Hanson simultaneously distinguished between “people from all over the world”, read ‘others’/on the outside, and “our closest neighbours”, read ‘similar’/on the inside. This provided an interesting parallel to her previous comments made during her highly publicised Parliamentary Maiden Speech in 1996 where she controversially stated, “I believe we are in danger of being swamped by Asians…

They have their own culture and religion, form ghettos and do not assimilate… If I invite whom I want into my home then I should have the right to have a say in who comes into my country” (Hanson, 1996).

These moments provide a snapshot into the highly variable subject positioning of

New Zealand immigrants1 living in Australia. This thesis explores the shifting and competing nature of the discursive construction of New Zealand immigrants, the implications of these discourses for the rights of New Zealand immigrants, and how this impacts on the lives of their Australia-born children, known as the second generation. Specifically, I consider the historical and contingent discursive constructions of the New Zealand immigrant as either ‘inside the nation’ based on their ‘similarities’ or ‘outside the nation’ based on their ‘differences’, and how these constructions support or threaten the Australian national identity. I explore how this positioning impacts on the lived experiences of young adults of New

Zealand descent (the second generation) as they negotiate their identity and sense of belonging against this discursive landscape.

Australia and New Zealand: A trans-Tasman relationship

Australia and New Zealand, two geographically isolated nations in the Pacific region, have historically enjoyed a unique and close bilateral relationship. This connection has been shaped through a range of factors, including historical and cultural ties, such as a shared colonial British heritage and the ANZAC legacy,

1 Throughout this thesis various terminology will be used to identify people from New Zealand based on their status. ‘New Zealander’ refers to an individual from New Zealand, regardless of their country of birth, citizenship status or migrant status. ‘New Zealand immigrant’ refers to an individual who immigrated to Australia, regardless of their country of birth or citizenship status. ‘New Zealand-born’ refers to an individual born in New Zealand (but may not necessarily have New Zealand citizenship). ‘New Zealand citizen’ refers to an individual who has New Zealand citizenship (but may not have been born there, such as third country migrants).

legislative agreements related to economic and trade partnerships, joint security efforts and the relatively unrestricted Trans-Tasman Travel Arrangement, enacted in 1973 (Department of Immigration and Border Protection, 2013). This latter legislative action and subsequent regulatory processes have radically influenced the connection between these two nation-states.

A significant contributor to immigration to Australia is trans-Tasman movement largely comprising New Zealand citizens entering Australia. For instance, according to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship at 30 June 2013 approximately 640,770 New Zealand citizens were present in Australia

(Department of Immigration and Border Protection, 2013). Australian Census data from 2011 indicates that of the total Australian population 2.2 percent were born in New Zealand, the second most common country of origin (with the most common immigrant source country being England at 4.2 percent) (Australian

Bureau of Statistics, 2013).

New Zealand citizens are not included in the annual migration program. Instead they are included in settler arrival and net overseas migration figures if they are in

Australia for 12 months or more over a 16 month period2. This means that New

Zealand immigrants are not included in routine migration data collection, with

2 Figures are obtained from the Incoming Passenger Card (IPC) completed by travelers entering Australia and also service as the application form for Special Category visa (SCV) applicants (Department of Immigration and Border Protection, 2015).

data collected providing limited information about their long-term migration and settlement patterns. Based on available figures, 52,012 New Zealand citizens came to Australia as permanent and long-term arrivals in the 2011–12 financial year

(Department of Immigration and Border Protection, 2013). Overall, there was a net permanent and long-term increase of 35,308 New Zealand citizens in Australia during 2012-13. Of these, 20.2 percent reported that they intended to live in New

South Wales, 32.6 percent in Queensland, 23.0 percent in Victoria and 19.8 percent in Western Australia.

Within Sydney, the context for this study, the New Zealand-born population in

2011 comprised the fourth largest overseas-born population group (77,000 people or 2.1 percent of Sydney’s total population) (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2014).

In terms of distribution they are a dispersed population. In 2011, there was no suburb in Sydney where the New Zealand-born made up more than 10 percent of the population (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2014).

While trans-Tasman travel of New Zealand citizens has fluctuated in response to differing immigration and settlement policies, New Zealand immigrants have continued to move to and subsequently ‘settle’ in Australia, resulting in an under- recognised impact on the composition of the growing and diverse second generation immigrant population in Australia. For instance, whilst there were

291,388 New Zealand-born persons living in Australia in 1996, only 54,700

Australian-born persons were residing in New Zealand, 28 percent of which were

below 15 years of age (Birrell and Rapson, 2001). As noted by Birrell and Rapson

(2001), this may indicate that a large proportion of this Australian-born cohort are in fact the Australian-born children (second generation) of New Zealand immigrants who had returned to New Zealand.

This complex phenomenon of mass New Zealand trans-Tasman migration tends to reflect the different economic and social dynamics that exist within and between the two nations, and is correlated with economic prospects. That is, inwards migration of New Zealanders appears to increase in response to improved economic prospects in Australia and conversely decrease when economic prospects decline (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2010; Department of

Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs, 2005). These changes were captured in a report by the Australia Bureau of Statistics based on a range of data sources between 1989 and 2009 (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2010). Findings indicated that there was an 89 percent increase in the number of New Zealand- born people living in Australia (280,200 to 529,200, respectively) during this period. Within this, there were variations in annual growth, with increases exceeding 25,000 in 1989, 2001, 2008 and 2009, and negative growth in 1991. The report suggests that this latter decrease coincided with the 1990s recession in

Australia, which may have influenced the decision of some New Zealand-born people to come to Australia and encouraged others to return to New Zealand

(Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2010).

In terms of employment, as of 30 June 2013, of those who indicated they had an occupation on their Incoming Passenger Card (IPC), 59.2 percent reported to be

‘skilled’, 20.0 percent were ‘semi-skilled’ and around 20.7 percent were ‘unskilled’3.

Rates of labour market participation by New Zealand-born in Australia were relatively high, with 78.2 percent at July 2012 employed compared to 68.0 percent of Australia-born, while the New Zealand-born unemployment rate was similar to that of the Australian-born population (4.8 percent and 4.9 percent, respectively)

(Department of Immigration and Border Protection, 2013).

The nature and composition of New Zealand trans-Tasman movement is diverse.

Those of Māori (Indigenous ancestry) comprise the second largest sub-group after

Pākehā (European/British ancestry) immigrants (Australian Bureau of Statistics,

2010; Birrell and Rapson, 2001). According to 2011 Australia Census data there were 128,430 individuals who identified as Māori by ancestry, either alone or in combination (Kukutai and Pawar, 2013). Due to issues related to census data collection practices and a lack of administrative data in Australia on ethnicity, there are difficulties in calculating the number of Māori living in Australia (Hamer,

2007, 2009). Thus the authors suggest that the number of Māori should be considered to be taken as a minimum and note that it could potentially range from

140,000 to 160,000 (Kukutai and Pawar, 2013).

3 The ‘unskilled’ category includes those who were believed to be employed but did not provide an adequate description to properly classify their occupation (Department of Immigration and Border Protection, 2013).

Taking these enumeration issues into account, in a previous study Hamer (2009) calculated that there were around 105,000 Māori in Australia in 2001 and 126,000 in 2006, up from the official counts of 72,956 and 92,912 respectively. This equates to as many as one in six New Zealand immigrants living in Australia being of Māori ethnicity; the largest Māori population outside of New Zealand. This was supported by Bedford and colleagues (2004, p. 133) who explored the internal and international migration of Māori based on 2001 data and concluded that the focal point of the Māori ‘diaspora’ is based Australia.

In terms of the second generation, Kukutai and Pawar (2013) found that one in three Māori in Australia were born in Australia, which has been the case since

2006, pointing to a considerable second generation immigrant population of Māori descent. In both the 2006 and 2001 Australian Censuses, data indicated that the

Australia-born Māori population with either one or two immigrant parents made up 30 percent of all Māori in Australia (Kukutai and Pawar, 2013, p. 21-22). Of the

35,801 second generation Māori resident in Australia in 2011, 47.8 percent had two parents born overseas. For second generation Māori with one Australian-born parent, a higher proportion had a father compared to a mother who was born overseas (31.5 and 20.8 percent, respectively) (Kukutai and Pawar, 2013, p. 21-22).

Besides Māori and Pākehā, increasing third country migration represents a considerable proportion of the flow of New Zealand citizens to Australia (Birrell and Rapson, 2001). As I further explore in Chapter Five, third country migration

from New Zealand has been historically controversial, often cited in media and political discourse as a form of unfavourable ‘back door migration’ to Australia

(Scollay, Findlay, and Kaufmann, 2010). This was particularly the case during the

1990s, when third country movement rose sharply, representing 30 percent of the flow of New Zealand citizens to Australia, many of whom were from Asian source countries and also ‘newer’ European source countries, including Russia and the

Balkans (Birrell and Rapson, 2001). As the Trans-Tasman Travel Arrangement

(1973) extends to all New Zealand citizens, those residents born in a third country

(outside of New Zealand) who obtained New Zealand citizenship are in fact entitled to move to Australia under current legislation.

A large part of this third country migration includes the growing ‘Polynesian’ population in Australia, many of whom embark on the trans-Tasman crossing, arriving and settling in Australia on the basis of their New Zealand citizenship.

Consisting of immigrants from the Cook Islands, Samoa, Niue and Tonga,

Polynesian settlement in Australia via New Zealand has been linked to chain migration or the ‘beaten path effect’; the influence of prior immigration by family members and established communities ties on the choice to immigrate (Forrest,

Poulsen, and Johnson, 2009; Rodriguez, 2007). 2006 Australian Census data indicates that six percent of the New Zealand-born population reported having

Polynesian ancestry (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2010). As noted by

Department of Immigration and Citizenship (2009) figures, besides English the main languages spoken by the New Zealand-born population in Australia in 2006

included both Te Reo (Māori language) (1.3 percent) and Samoan (2.4 percent). It is important to note, however, that these estimates are based on the New Zealand- born population, not New Zealand citizen population in Australia, thus excluding many other third-country migrants. This does indicate the diversity within the

New Zealand population in Australia.

Research on New Zealand immigrants in Australia

Research on the migration and transnational experiences of New Zealand immigrants in Australia to-date is limited. Where available, research has mainly focused on demographic features of the New Zealand immigrant population (Green,

2006; Green and Power, 2006). For instance, Pope (1985) conducted a study into trans-Tasman migration, focusing on the economic position of New Zealand migrants in relation to their income and job market participation. While more recently, Carmichael (1993) and Poot (1991) both undertook demographic studies into trans-Tasman migration, examining migration patterns between Australia and

New Zealand, comparing the characteristics of New Zealand populations on either side of the Tasman and considering the economic impact of New Zealand immigration on Australia.

There is limited research examining the reasons for New Zealand immigrants’ trans-Tasman travel and their experiences once they arrive and settle in Australia.

Recognising this apparent lacuna, research from both sides of the Tasman Sea has

begun to provide some insight into the identity of New Zealanders, particularly

Pākehā and Māori in Australia (Bergin, 2002; George and Rodriguez, 2009; Green,

2006; Hamer, 2007).

In a study by Green and colleagues of recent and settled New Zealand immigrants to Australia it was found that while many adapted to the ‘Australian way of life’, they continued to experience and express a strong allegiance to New Zealand and their identity as ‘New Zealanders’ (Green, 2006; Green and Power, 2006; Green,

Power, and Jang, 2008). The existence of family in Australia was found to be an important factor in encouraging the participants to move to Australia (Green,

2006). Transnational connections to New Zealand through family and friends in

Australia, financial and social networks in New Zealand and frequent travel to New

Zealand were also found to play central roles in the establishment of a connection to Australia and the simultaneous maintenance of their New Zealand identity

(Green, 2006). Despite the cultural similarities between the two nations 80 percent of the participants felt that moving to Australia was like moving to another country rather than another part of New Zealand. The participants also engaged in boundary maintenance to reinforce their New Zealand identity, which involved comparative discussions about the differences between the two countries.

Reflecting on the experiences of their locally-born children, some participants noted that their children felt a diminished connection to New Zealand (Green,

2006). This indicates the differential experiences of immigrants compared to their second generation immigrant children within this unique trans-Tasman situation.

The most extensive study on Māori immigration to and settlement in Australia has been undertaken by Te Puni Kokiri in New Zealand, led by Paul Hamer (2007).

Findings were drawn from a survey with 1,205 people (1,144 born in New

Zealand, 56 born in Australia and five born in another country) and interviews with a sub-sample based on: the reasons for being in Australia, identity problems they may face, factors of success and their ability to live in Australia as Māori

(Hamer, 2007). While economic opportunities were a key motivation for many

Māori, other pull factors included: the lifestyle, climate and multiculturalism of

Australia. Migration to Australia also provided many Māori with a means of escaping negative experiences in New Zealand, including the impact of drugs, gangs, and crime; prejudice and discrimination within New Zealand society; and negative attitudes from relatives regarding their success (Hamer, 2007).

It has been noted that there is lack of uptake of Australian citizenship by New

Zealand immigrants (Forrest et al., 2009; Green and Power, 2006; Hamer, 2007).

For Māori reasons include a perceived ‘lack of a need to do so’ because of the flexibility of the Trans-Tasman Travel Arrangement (1973), a desire to maintain a

New Zealand identity, and the goal to eventually return to New Zealand (Forrest et al., 2009; Hamer, 2007). Reflecting this view, findings from Hamer’s (2007) survey indicated that Māori who arrived in Australia prior to 1990 regarded themselves as ‘Australian-Māori’, however those who had arrived during or after 1990, identified most closely with ‘a New Zealand Māori living in Australia’. In addition,

60 percent of New Zealand-born Māori living in Australia noted that they would

‘probably’ or ‘definitely’ return to New Zealand to live (Hamer, 2007, p. 64).

Bedford and Pool (2004) support this notion of temporary settlement by Māori in

Australia. They contend that the circulation of Māori between Australia and New

Zealand has come to be a significant characteristic of their general contemporary mobility.

Forrest et al. (2009) studied the migration and residential behaviour of Māori in

Sydney. The authors found that Māori tend to be mainly return migrants to New

Zealand, with many of them only temporarily resident in Australia. There was a class differential observed, with those situated in ‘blue collar, manual occupations’ being more likely to be temporary migrants. On the other hand, intergenerational patterns indicate a smaller ‘more permanent settler’ Māori presence in Sydney comprising second and third generation immigrants, who were more likely to be

‘skilled’ and ‘white collar workers’ (Forrest et al., 2009, p. 489-490). It was also noted that Māori in Sydney are distributed in multiple local clusters

(approximately 40 percent of the population) as well as dispersed throughout the city. Māori within the clusters were more likely to be socio-economically disadvantaged and first generation immigrants (Forrest et al., 2009).

Sullivan’s (2008) study on the causes of Māori immigration to Australia and the impact of this process on their identity after long-term settlement (more than 10 years) highlighted the importance of certain Māori cultural values in the maintenance of identity away from home. These values related to Māori cultural

conceptions of ‘home’, cultural protocols and whānau (family and community). The research indicated that whilst remaining important to them, living in Australia altered the participants’ view of these values, requiring them to adapt them within this different context (Sullivan, 2008). In addition, the author noted how the use of contemporary labels: Mozzie/Maussie4 (a combination of Mā ori and Aussie),

Plastic Māori, Ngati Skippy and Ngati Kangaru/Kangaroo, which developed in response to the influx of Māori immigration and the substantive Australian-born

Māori population, played a central role in the construction of identity. For instance, those who moved as adults seemed to dislike such labels, arguing that their Māori identity was foremost to them, whereas Māori who immigrated to Australia as children did not seem to share the same disregard, in fact adopting such labels to express their connection to both New Zealand and Australia (Sullivan, 2008).

Sport has also come to serve as a source of cultural preservation and identity formation away from ‘home’ for many Māori and Pacific Island people in Australia

(Bergin, 2002; George and Rodriguez, 2009; Hamer, 2007). Involvement in

Australian sporting endeavours has been found to not only solidify the position and contribution of Polynesian immigrants to Australia, but also serves as a source of cultural preservation and identity formation away from ‘home’ (Bergin, 2002).

In the latter regard, Bergin (2002) comments on the centrality of sports such as rugby in Sydney-based Māori festivals, the Sydney Māori Easter Festival and the biennial Australian Māori Festival, and annual sporting tournaments, including the

4 The term‘Mozzie/Maussie’ is also used in Australia by and about Muslim-Australians.

Taki Toa Challenge Shield Tournament and the Harry Bartlett Memorial

Tournament. With the assertion of cultural acts such as the performance of pre- match haka (traditional war dance performed by men) and the conclusion of such events with a hangi (communal meal that is cooked in the ground for several hours) Māori sport and life in Australia are intertwined (Bergin, 2002).

Involvement in local and international sport also provides a means for Māori to connect with Aboriginal people and other Australians in their local communities, with many Māori preferring to play for local clubs rather than exclusively for all

Māori or New Zealand rugby teams. Whilst this is important for the immigrant

Māori population, Bergin (2002, p. 266) argues that second generation Māori also express some attachment to learning traditional cultural practices but have been known to often assert their allegiance with Australia. This was the case for

Australian-born league player Tamana Tahu, who advised New Zealand selectors that his national representative ambitions were aligned with the Kangaroos

(Australians), not the Kiwis (New Zealanders) (Bergin, 2002).

Whilst research on New Zealand immigrant experiences in Australia is limited, the available literature and unique trans-Tasman context raises a number of questions: How have trans-Tasman migration and settlement policies evolved and what are the implications of these shifts for New Zealand immigrants living in

Australia? How do the issues arising from these changes influence the way in which the Australian-born children of New Zealand descent negotiate their

identities? And how do these processes of identification influence their sense of belonging in this transnational context?

Framing this study

In framing this study I identify the role of my own positionality in this project. I was born in New Zealand to Sri Lankan (Sinhalese) immigrant parents and therefore am a ‘second generation immigrant’ within that context. I am also a somewhat recent ‘migrant’ to Australia having migrated here to embark on my postgraduate studies.

Being a ‘visible other’ in the context of New Zealand, but not a first generation immigrant, has certainly moulded the way I perceive the position of second generation immigrants, how others construct meaning around this category and the function of this subject position as a point of difference. Throughout my childhood I was constantly asked “where are you from?”, based on my visible appearance in a largely Anglo-Saxon society. This was despite my tireless assertion that I was a ‘New Zealander’, based on the reasoning that a) I was born in New

Zealand and b) I held New Zealand citizenship. Under repetitive questioning of

“but really, where are you from?” or “ok, but where are your parents from?” I would ultimately have to ‘confess’ my immigrant heritage. Following such interactions, I would always be left with the feeling that even though I felt no personal need to qualify my position as both a New Zealander and a child of

immigrants, because of my visible difference others around me would think otherwise. This process of having to legitimate or justify my rightful ‘New

Zealander’ status from a young age continued to shape my experiences of being an

‘other’ throughout my childhood and early adulthood.

It is important to note that although this was a common pattern of conversation when meeting someone new I rarely experienced any explicit exclusion based on this point of difference. What is difficult to ascertain is whether there were more subtle forms of exclusion occurring that I was not privy to or aware of due to my age and lack of insight to be able to identify these acts. What I was able to identify was at that early age was the fact that no one was asking the other students or children (read not visibly different) that I was with where they were from.

A further experience of my ‘difference’ coming to the fore will occur in encounters with first generation immigrants who share a visible resemblance to myself. Often they will assume that I was born in New Zealand and will proceed to ask where my parents are from, due to my visible difference. In some albeit limited cases this would then be followed by commentary on the fact that I have supposedly become

‘Westernised’. This form of othering as it is less frequent often surprises me partially because my parents’ country of origin is not my most immediate identification in everyday social settings. In these interactions however, it functions as the basis from which I am othered against.

My perceptions of Australia have been mostly moulded by my childhood in New

Zealand context. Attending All Blacks verses Wallabies rugby games and being privy to banter about ‘Aussies’ as a child, such as the origins of Pavlova and

Crowded House, while viewed as ‘just a bit of fun’ certainly engendered strong ideas in my mind about what New Zealand was relative to Australia. These perspectives have now been supplemented by my short-term experience living in

Australia. For example, instead of the common initial questions of, “where are you from?” I often encounter a rather different scenario. This entails me saying a few introductory remarks in my Kiwi twanged accent and then a few seconds later being told, “hey, you’re a Kiwi!”. Alternatively, I often get asked, “can I hear a bit of an accent there… what is it?” Once my ‘New Zealand immigrant’ status has been confirmed, this can then follow with either “I know a Kiwi…” or some cheeky banter about New Zealanders. Having moved to Sydney to undertake my postgraduate studies, I too am an apt example of the many young New Zealand migrants who embark on the journey to Australia for study and employment opportunities. Thus, I guess it is no surprise that many people latch on to my most obvious New Zealand characteristic, my accent. Although some stop here, usually as the conversation shifts, I do get some people who continue to then ask, “where are your parents from?”

The need for people to delineate my origins and ancestry in order to situate me within the confines of their predetermined categories in both New Zealand and

Australia has obviously shaped my interest in this topic. Indeed, when I was doing

my Honours degree in New Zealand I was interested in exploring second generation immigrant identity and belonging within that context. However, due to opportunities to be part of a research team focusing on a different subject matter, I put that on the back burner. When I wrote my proposal for this doctoral study I began by wanting to explore the experiences of second generation immigrant participants from a range of ethnic backgrounds. As the scope of my thesis narrowed it became apparent that my situated knowledge of being both a first and second generation immigrant with ties to New Zealand and Australia would be a point of value within a project focused on this specific context.

I situate the study within a poststructural ontological and epistemological frame, drawing on intersectionality theory and Discourse Theory (Laclau, 1990; Laclau and Mouffe, 1985). The research is also informed by qualitative research methods.

A qualitative approach is particularly well suited as it provides a platform for gaining an in-depth understanding of the identity and belonging experiences of second generation immigrants.

From this positioning, the focus of this study is twofold. Firstly, I examine the identity and belonging of Australian-born people of New Zealand descent living in

Sydney, Australia. Specifically, I consider the following research questions:

1. How have New Zealand immigrants and their children been constructed in the

Australian discursive context?

2. How do second generation immigrants of New Zealand descent negotiate their

identity(s) and what influence does this have on their sense of belonging?

In line with the overarching research framework, to address the first research question I consider the discursive field of the trans-Tasman relationship through a genealogical analysis of the development of migration and settlement policies between Australia and New Zealand. This is augmented by a media discourse analysis to understand the way in which the New Zealand immigrant has been positioned in the Australian public imaginary.

In terms of the second research question, I employ the political identity theory developed by Laclau and Mouffe (1985) and in-depth interviews with second generation immigrants to consider the way in which the discursive field structures the available subject positions. I take subject positions to refer to those discursively constructed identities that subjects occupy, within the discursive terrain, at any given time. Aligned with intersectionality theory, which emphasises the multiple axes of difference that an individual can experience (Brah and Phoenix,

2004), I examine how the participants occupy seemingly ‘normalised’ or ‘objective’ subject positions. This involves exploring the points at which these subject positions are rendered unstable and disrupted, due to dislocationary moments characterised by antagonistic discourses, and the ways in which participants

negotiate these to assert their political subjectivity and navigate their sense of belonging in relation to these.

Anthias (2006) articulates that belonging can be understood broadly as

“experience of being part of the social fabric” (p. 21). As part of this, belonging is more than identification with or membership of a collective, but includes the affective dimensions of one’s social bonds and ties in specific contexts (Anthias,

2006). The relational aspect of belonging is central, insofar as it comprises both formal (e.g. citizenship) and informal (e.g. social bonds) dimensions. This is because belonging is linked to experiences of inclusion and exclusion, where to be situated on the ‘inside’ of a ‘community’ involves feeling accepted and having a vested interest in the future of that community (Anthias, 2006). Social inclusion, although not a direct pathway, can increase a sense of belonging and acceptance within different social groups (Anthias, 2006). Belonging, in the case of second generation immigrants, can thus be seen to include their social and affective experiences across a range of ‘communities’, including those at the neighbourhood, national and transnational levels. The way in which second generation immigrants navigate a sense of belonging in different places and social interactions and the functionality of mechanisms to include and exclude New Zealand immigrants and their children is a key focus of this study.

In an effort to capture some of the diversity within the New Zealand immigrant population I include references to the experiences of the general New Zealand

immigrant population as well as those from Māori and Pacific Islander backgrounds, within the historical and contemporary discourses examined (as presented in Chapters Five and Six). I extend this focus to the interviews with second generation immigrants by including participants who identified as either

Pākehā or Māori. Due to sampling and time constraints I did not actively seek participants from other third country backgrounds. By including Pākehā and Māori participants however, I was able to capture some of the diversity in experiences of the two main sub-groups within the New Zealand immigrant population in

Australia.

Secondly, in this study I sought to challenge the tendency of research on ‘second generation immigrants’ to privilege an immigrant-centred framework in research.

As I will explore further in Chapters Two and Three, this prevailing framework has tended to support the discursive construction of this group as ‘insiders on the outside’. Within this construction, the second generation are seemingly situated within the cultural divide between ‘family’, ‘community’ and the ‘host’ society, which they struggle to navigate. I posit that in turn this limits possible alternative understandings of the lived experiences of second generation immigrants

(Jayasinha, 2011). Further, previous research in Australia and in comparative international contexts has tended to focus on post-World War Two immigrant groups and more recently on immigration from countries that are often economically, socially, politically and culturally distinct from the host country. I propose that the focus of this study, namely that of contemporary immigration

between two seemingly similar nation-states, and the use of intersectionality and

Discourse Theory, can provide an alternative perspective to studies on second generation immigrants in Australia.

Overview of the thesis

An overview of this thesis is provided in figure 1.1.

Figure 1.1 Overview of thesis

Following this introductory chapter, in Chapter Two I review the extant literature relevant to the lived experiences of second generation immigrants. I commence with a discussion of the difficulties researchers have encountered in defining and categorising second generation immigrants for research purposes. I then present a

review of international scholarship on second generation immigrant populations from three comparable contexts to Australia, namely the United States, Canada, and Britain. The latter part of the chapter includes a review of the research to date on second generation immigrant populations in Australia.

In Chapter Three I examine the theoretical underpinnings of the current second generation immigrant research agenda, namely an attempt to position studies within an immigrant-centered framework, comprising a focus on acculturative and hybridity theories. Addressing calls to explore alternative ways to approach second generation immigrant research I then consider more recent attempts to translate intersectionality theory from feminist critiques to immigrant identity research. In the latter part of the chapter I propose the application of Laclau and

Mouffe’s (1985) Discourse Theory, which provides the ontology and guiding theoretical framework for this study. In particular, I discuss the applicability of this approach for understanding the pervasiveness of discourse in shaping how we understand and interpret the discursive construction of second generation immigrant identity.

The methodological underpinnings of this study, namely a Discourse Theoretical

Approach and qualitative methods, are presented in Chapter Four. Within this chapter I consider the importance of ensuring rigour to promote trustworthy qualitative data collection and analysis and how I sought to address this throughout the study. I also discuss the research design adopted for this study for

the purposes of data collection, management and analysis. The ethical considerations of the study are outlined in the latter part of the chapter.

In Chapter Five I draw on an archive of texts to develop a genealogy, charting the historical antecedents of trans-Tasman migration and settlement, focusing on how this has evolved over time in relation to Australia’s shifting national identity. I assert that a contemporary discursive shift has occurred, where the Australian political agenda has been concerned with forging a national identity distinct from its British colonial roots in favour of an identity that embraces multiculturalism and the forging of global linkages. Subsequently, I suggest that the subject position of the New Zealand immigrant in the Australian context shifted from one of equivalence to that of difference, calling into question the contemporary positioning of New Zealand and New Zealand immigrants in this context.

In Chapter Six I present the findings from a media discourse analysis to elucidate the way in which New Zealand immigrants have been constructed in the contemporary Australian public imaginary. Employing Derrida’s (2000) notion of

‘conditional hospitality’, I demonstrate how the New Zealand immigrant has been discursively articulated as a ‘visitor’ in relation to the Australian ‘host’. Specifically

I identify three competing discourses: the ‘good’ and therefore ‘welcomed guest’, the ‘deviant visitor’ and therefore a ‘foreign menace’, and the ‘strong, exotic Māori’.

These discourses, I suggest, rely on the construction of the ‘white’ New Zealand immigrant population as more culturally aligned with the ‘white’ majority

Australian population, which in turn serves to reinforce the binary between the

‘white’ majority and the ‘black’ other (Māori and Pacific Islanders) in both the New

Zealand and Australian contexts.

In Chapter Seven I explore the way in which second generation immigrant participants negotiate their identity and sense of belonging within the trans-

Tasman context. I begin the chapter with an analysis of the participants’ re- construction of their parent(s)’ migration experiences and I demonstrate how the participants are bound to their parents’ trans-Tasman migration experiences, understood through stories told by significant others, as well as personal encounters with New Zealand. I then discuss the way in which the participants’ negotiate their identifications and sense of belonging across local, national and transnational spheres and in relation to processes of othering along ‘class’ and

‘racial’ lines.

The discussion in Chapter Eight provides an integrated analysis of each data set presented in the foregoing chapters to interrogate the implications of the changing immigration context for the identity negotiations and belonging experiences of second generation immigrants. Based on the findings of this study, I consider how the subject position of the New Zealand migrant is consistently figured as the

‘almost similar other’ to the Australian ‘host’. I consider how the operation of logics of equivalence and difference between Australia and New Zealand based on assumed social class and racialised differences, effectively serve to structure the

limits of the inclusion and exclusion of New Zealand immigrant subject position.

This in turn influences the identity and belonging experiences of second generation immigrants, specifically in relation to their shifting local and national identifications through active participation in transnational social fields. In

Chapter Nine I present the implications arising from this thesis and conclude with reflections on future research.

Chapter 2 Literature Review

Overview of thesis

Introduction

In an age of global migration researchers are increasingly aware of the need to consider not only the experiences of immigrants, but also those of successive generations. It is thus unsurprising that a perennial concern of sociological and psychological research has been the experiences of ‘second generation immigrants’.

In this chapter I provide a review of the extant literature on second generation immigrants both internationally and in Australia. To begin, I examine the various

ways in which the second generation immigrant has come to be defined in the literature and the potential implications of the different conceptualisations for conducting research on this population group. Following this, I provide a review of scholarship from a range of comparative international contexts, including the

United States, Canada, and Britain, as well as research in the local Australian context, highlighting the key themes emanating from this literature to date. This research, similar to other international contexts tends to focus on two stages of immigrants: post-World War Two immigrants largely comprised of ‘European’ source countries, and contemporary immigrant groups within the current multicultural immigration policy setting adopted by Australia. I argue that this body of research has tended to focus on measuring the assimilative success of second generation immigrant populations, compared to other first and third generation immigrants.

Who are ‘Second Generation Immigrants’?

Second generation immigrant. That’s a complex term. For a start it

is contradictory. How can you be born in Australia but also be an

immigrant? If you were not born in Australia but came here at an

early age, how can you be second generation?

- Herne, Travaglia and Weiss (1992, p. 1)

‘Second generation immigrants’ are terminologically framed as the ‘locally born

children of one or two immigrant parent(s)’ (Portes and Rumbaut, 2005), however efforts to conceptualise this group have proved complex and challenging, as the above quote aptly attests. Generally speaking, it has been suggested that the second generation can be defined in three ways (Bottomley, 1992, p. 155-156).

First, there is a statistical definition of the second generation, usually provided by national level census information based on country of birth of the person and their parents. Using such data it is possible to conceptualise a second generation immigrant as a native-born person with at least one parent born overseas. Second, is a social definition, which includes those born in the ‘host’ country and people who migrated to Australia at a young age. This indicates the influence of the culture of the host society in determining second generation immigrant identification. A third approach is a subjective definition. This allows for the individual’s own construction of identity and the idea that an individual can occupy multiple identities, for example, ‘Greek-Australian’.

In this chapter, I critically examine the multiple and seemingly divergent, ways in which the second generation immigrant has been labeled and categorised through efforts to measure migrant generational status. I posit that this is due to a tendency for research to focus on the degree to which immigrants gain entry into the

‘mainstream’, as measured by the ‘success’ of subsequent generations.

The Generation ‘Problem’

Data collection processes, such as the census and periodic surveys, frequently focus on migrants. This can be with the intention of tracking the spatial and temporal movement(s) of population groups across and within national borders or to approximate the economic ‘burden’ of this movement and determine the subsequent impact of population growth in largely fiscal terms. Research on the children of immigrants has tended to parallel such data collection practices with efforts directed at elucidating and measuring their ‘migrant’ generational status

(Oropesa and Landale, 1997).

Broadly referring to age groups or cohorts that share “…common locations in the social and historical process” (Mannheim, 1952, p. 291), a ‘generation’ can be defined by virtue of shared experiences that are spatially and temporally contingent. In addition, migration-based studies have also tended to draw on the notion of “historical periodicity”, or the shared experience of a particular historical period, to separate between migrant generations (Oropesa and Landale, 1997). As

Oropesa and Landale (1997) note this is demonstrated by the use of the terms

‘new’ and ‘old’ immigrants to describe the two major migration waves in the

United States. The first time periods in the United States points to post-World War

Two migration experiences, which were characterised by immigration of predominately European migrants particularly those from Southern Europe. The second wave, which has been termed ‘new’ migration, refers to increased immigration from the 1970s onwards and was marked by higher diversity of

immigrant source countries including those from Asia and South America. Similar patterns in the shifting diversity of immigrants has been witnessed in the Canadian and Australian contexts with the abandonments of various ‘white’ immigration policies in the 1960s and 1970s, respectively (Ongley and Pearson, 1995). Thus, the ethnic make-up of the different ‘groups’ of immigrants and their children in each of these countries as well as the political context under which immigration occurs will have an impact on the lived experiences and outcomes of these groups.

Through these efforts, immigrants and their offspring can be seen to be grouped within generations based on their shared experiences, which are located within a specific time and place. Clear distinctions can thus be made between generations.

For example, those who immigrated as adults are considered part of the first generation having spent the majority of their formative years in their ‘homeland’ or country of origin. Alternatively, second generation immigrants are termed so as they constitute the next (locally born) generation following that of ‘first’ generation of immigrants.

Due to the complexities of migration, including the age and life stage of migration, as well as intermarriage between and across migrant and non-migrant groups, this seemingly clear distinction is blurred by two issues. First, is the issue of young migrants who it has been argued share experiences with second generation immigrants because of their exposure to the ‘culture’ of the receiving country during their formative years (Rumbaut, 2004). Second, the above view of a

‘generation’ does not account for the children who are a product of marriage between an immigrant and non-immigrant parent and have mixed parental influences in their lives (Oropesa and Landale, 1997). Consequently, attempts to define the second generation immigrant have been complicated by two key concerns: first, whether researchers should account for the experiences of migrants who migrated during their ‘early formative years’ (Thernstrom, 1973, p.

120), and have supposedly been exposed to and shaped by the ‘culture’ of the receiving country for an extended period of time; and second, whether researchers should differentiate between locally born children with one or two migrant parents and how this should be done (Oropesa and Landale, 1997).

In response, the concept of the second generation immigrant has been

“operationalized in a variety of ways to take into account the complexities of the migration experience” (Oropesa and Landale, 1997, p. 430), often becoming an umbrella term for all immigrant offspring (Portes and Rumbaut, 2005). In light of the fact that this catch-all approach is limited in recognising a diversity of experiences, efforts have been made to enumerate the degree to which immigrant offspring are directly linked to the process of migration resulting in a list of numerical labels or categories (Rumbaut, 2004).

Some researchers have also distinguished their sample populations on the linguistic abilities of immigrant offspring. As a similar concern over the operational criteria for defining first and second generations have been discussed at length

elsewhere (see: Oropesa and Landale, 1997; Rumbaut, 2004), I do not seek to provide an exhaustive discussion of these issues here. Instead, by outlining the key components of these issues, I intend to elucidate the immigrant-centred discourse that underpins the numerical categorisation or labelling of the children of immigrants and which I suggest serve to support the construction of the ‘second generation’ as a proxy for immigrant assimilation.

It’s all ‘relative’: immigrant parents and their children

Though the technical definition of the second generation immigrant is seemingly straightforward, determining the extent to which parent’s migration status shapes the experiences of subsequent generations has posed difficulties. This has particularly been the case when trying to ascertain the potential difference between having one or two migrant parents. It has been argued that parents play different roles in a child’s life, with there being the potential for one parent to be more influential than the other (gender differentiation), particularly within intermarriages between couples of different ethnic/national backgrounds

(Rumbaut, 2004, p. 1163):

In mixed marriages where the parents were born in different

foreign countries, the nationality of the mother took precedence in

the assignment of ethnicity, reflecting both the mother's more

influential role in the children's socialization and the fact that

fathers were absent in 30 precent of the homes in the sample.

This excerpt reflects the emphasis placed on the country of birth of the mother when determining second generation status, particularly in studies on ‘cultural transmission’ (Oropesa and Landale, 1997). This classification draws on gendered notions of the role of women as ‘mothers’ positioned with more ‘dominance’ within the private sphere of the home and thus having a more invested role in their children’s everyday lives. Conversely, others have emphasised the father’s country of birth, often when exploring issues of social mobility and the impact of socioeconomic status on second generation immigrant wellbeing (Oropesa and

Landale, 1997). For example, in a study exploring second generation Australians, drawing on 1996 Census data where parents came from different national backgrounds, the father’s country of birth was prioritised for the determination of second generation immigrant ethnicity because “preliminary analyses showed that the socioeconomic outcomes – except in terms of language shift – were not very different between those with the father only born in a particular country of birth and those with the mother only born in that country” (Khoo, McDonald, Giorgas, and Birrell, 2002, p. 7). Even though there is recognition of the potential influence different parents play in shaping the identity and wellbeing of their children, these are based on assumed gender roles and researchers have adopted often conflicting criteria to account for this. This has engendered a number of implications insofar

as data collection practices and determining the size and characteristics of second generation in different contexts are concerned.

As a possible solution to the ‘one or two migrant parent’ dilemma, Rumbaut (2004) has proposed the ‘2.5 generation’ to refer to the locally-born with one immigrant parent and to differentiate them from second generation immigrants who have two immigrant parents. In support, Montazer and Wheaton (2011, p. 25) argue that making a clear distinction between second and 2.5 generation populations is crucial because “there are more potential sources of parental conflict resulting from cultural or religious differences” within the 2.5 generation because of the presence of only one migrant parent. Underpinning these numerical categories is the normative assumption that the ‘cultural tension’ is experienced to a greater degree by 2.5 generation, than by those of the second generation. I propose that this brings to the fore, and strengthens the argument by the dominant culture, that second generation immigrants are by definition situated between the conflicting worlds of their culture and that of the mainstream, constantly struggling to reconcile the two.

(Ac)counting for the first generation

It has been proposed that first generation immigrants who immigrated as children have similar experiences to the second generation because of their early and prolonged exposure to the ‘host’ society or mainstream ‘culture’ (Oropesa and

Landale, 1997; Thernstrom, 1973; Zhou, 1997). This is based on the view drawn from developmental psychologythat events during the ‘formative years’, or the years prior to adolescence, play a significant role in shaping a child’s life. As such, younger immigrants are often grouped within the second generation for research purposes (Child, 1943; Thernstrom, 1973). For example, Kasinitz et al. (2002, p.

1021) explored the experiences of second generation young people growing up in

New York, stating that they included within their sample “people who were born abroad but arrived in the United States by age 12 and had lived here for ten or more years” in order to “represent the full range of children of immigrants” having lived in New York.

This study reflects a common concern that if younger immigrants are not separated out from the first generation (which encompasses adult immigrants), the experience(s) of those young immigrants, who often move as part of family migration, will be overshadowed. This concern for the experiences of child immigrants is encapsulated by Stephan Thernstrom’s (1973, p. 120) argument for a de facto second generation:

Legally they were foreign-born, but in terms of experience they

were less like true immigrants than like the native-born children

of immigrants, the second generation immigrants. These de facto

second generation immigrants were exposed to immigrant ways

at home, of course, but they were involved in American culture

early in their formative years.

Whilst young immigrants are often collapsed within the second generation immigrant category, some researchers have argued that older immigrants should also be included as part of what is referred to as the ‘second generation immigrants’ (Jensen and Yoshimi, 1994; Oropesa and Landale, 1997).

In response to the need to classify child migrants as separate to the second generation but also account for their unique experiences as children Rumbaut

(1997, 2004) proposed a “seven ages typology”. This provides numerical labels according to seven life stages of arrival for first generation immigrants that are useful for understanding the different stages of life at which migration can occur and the unique experiences said to be embodied within each stage. These life stages have been operationalised and adapted within research to suit different data limitations and study requirements that do not always align with the above definitions (Boyd, 2002; Zhou, 1997). In an exploration of the ‘success’ of immigrant offspring in the Canadian context, for example, Boyd (2002, p. 1046) utilised the notion of the 1.5 generation to refer to “respondents who were foreign born but who immigrated to Canada before age 15” in order to align the sample population with data from the 1996 Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics

(SLID). As such, the so called 1.75, 1.5 and 1.25 generations were collapsed

together within the 1.5 generation category, reducing the ability to examine life stage related experiences. In some studies, such as that of Zhou and Bankston

(1999) exploring the experiences of Vietnamese second generation immigrants in the United States, the second generation was expanded to encompass the 1.75 generation or children who arrived at pre-school years (0-4) because they were suggested to, “…share many linguistic, cultural, and developmental experiences similar to those of immigrant offspring” (Zhou, 1997, p. 65).

This perspective and consequent categorisation of first generation child immigrants as having shared experiences with the second generation is potentially problematic for a number of reasons. First, migration is a social and physical movement, with a strong potential to shape future experiences. It has been argued that even if they immigrate at an early age, first generation immigrants can often continue to identify with their country of origin (Phinney, Madden, and Ong, 2000).

Determining which life stage(s) the experience of immigration is most profound is thus difficult to predict as each individual has different interpretations of the influence migration has on their life.

Second, these ‘first generation immigrant’ categories are problematic for understanding the second generation. This is because the 1.75, 1.5 and 1.25 categories are based on the underlying assumption that young immigrants are a fraction of ‘the second generation’ (depending on the age of migration) and are thus awkwardly positioned with one foot in the immigrant world and another in

the supposedly ‘culturally’ confused world of the second generation. This not only dilutes the immigrant experience, which is arguably a strong element of one’s identity, but also adds to the ambiguity of the second generation, who are not immigrants by virtue of the fact that they have not immigrated.

Thus, whilst there is agreement that there are differences between first and second generation immigrants, the inconsistency in the use of generational classifications undermines attempts to separate child migrants from the second generation.

These identity labels underscore the immigrant-centred nature of how second generation immigrants have come to be conceptualised within research, insofar as they are constructed in relation to their first generation immigrant counter-parts. I suggest this hinders our ability to determine the size and characteristics of the second generation immigrant population and limits the comparability of findings across different contexts.

In line with these various conceptions of the children of immigrants, researchers in a range of contexts have focused their attention on the assimilative experiences of the second generation, and their 1.75, 1.5, and 1.25 counterparts, with a view to measuring the factors that facilitate or hinder their ability to integrate into mainstream society (Boyd, 2002; Portes and Zhou, 1993; Rumbaut, 1994;

Silberman, Alba, and Fournier, 2007). This research will be further examined in the following section where I provide a review of scholarship from a range of

comparative international contexts, including the United States, Canada, and

Britain, as well as research in the local Australian context.

Key debates in international second generation immigrant research

Researchers from the United States have been at the forefront of shaping second generation immigrant research on a global scale, as well as providing a foundation for theoretical developments in the field. The United States has experienced two major waves of migration, those of European origin prior to World War Two and a second cohort from non-European backgrounds post-World War Two (Oropesa and Landale, 1997). As a result of these different immigrant patterns there have been two second generation cohorts – the ‘old’ second generation, the children of

European immigrants who arrived in America prior to World War Two, and the more recently emerging ‘new’ or ‘contemporary’ second generation, who comprise the children of immigrants from largely Asian, Latin American and Caribbean backgrounds (Farley and Alba, 2002; Massey, 1995; Portes and Zhou, 1993;

Rumbaut, 1997).

Second generation immigrant research has followed suit initially focusing on the experiences of the ‘old’ and more recently examining the experiences of newer second generation immigrant groups. Empirical studies in this context have explored various outcomes, such as language adaptation (Portes and Hao, 1998;

Portes and Schauffler, 1994), educational and employment outcomes (Chávez-

Reyes, 2010; Schmid, 2001), health and wellbeing (Montazer and Wheaton, 2011;

Viruell-Fuentes, 2011), intergenerational relationships (Choi, He, and Harachi,

2008; Dennis, Basañez, and Farahmand, 2010), and experiences of identity and belonging (Rumbaut, 1994; Waters, 1994). The theoretical developments that have also occurred in this field, led by the likes of Portes, Rumbaut and others, have centred around the integration and assimilative patterns of successive cohorts and the implications of this for immigrant acculturation in the United States (Portes and Rumbaut, 1996; Portes and Zhou, 1993; Rumbaut, 1994).

Scholarship examining second generation immigrant populations within the

Canadian context has grown considerably in recent decades. Similar to the United

States, changes to immigration policies during the 1960s led to an increased prevalence of immigrants from non-European origins and in turn a growth in the

‘new’ second generation population (Reitz and Somerville, 2004). Canadian studies have tended to emphasise the assimilative success and resilience of contemporary second generation immigrants (Boyd, 2002; Boyd and Grieco, 1998; Krahn and

Taylor, 2005), although this does vary by parents’ country of origin. Boyd and

Greco (1998) for example, discuss the ‘triumphant transitions’ in terms of socioeconomic achievements of the second generation in Canada, arguing that

Canada’s differential race relations when compared with the United States have protected against possible negative outcomes.

In comparison to these contexts, emerging research from Britain has tended to examine the experiences of the second generation immigrant population from mainly Caribbean, ‘black’ and broadly Asian backgrounds. Intermarriage within the second generation population has been a significant topic of interest, particularly in relation to measuring the integration of different immigrant (minority) groups

(Muttarak and Heath, 2010; Song, 2010). The transnational activities of second generation immigrants have also been explored focused on their experiences of

‘return’ migration to their parent(s) homeland and the maintenance of cultural identification achieved through transnationalism (Reynolds, 2010).

As outlined above, there have been a number of points of interest within the broad field of second generation immigrant research variously focused on examining the acculturative experiences and success of these groups along the lines of social, economic and cultural mobility, transnationalism and identity. Across all these dimensions a central focus within empirical research has been the factors that facilitate and hinder the ability of the second generation to integrate into mainstream society. In the following sections I outline the key themes in selected international contexts and findings from this research to date. I have included both older and more recent literature to demonstrate the historical and contemporary differences in the literature and highlight how theoretical perspectives have changed overtime.

Educational and employment attainment

Research focusing on the social and economic mobility, in particular the educational achievement and employment status, of second generation immigrant young people and adults has tended to seek to measure their ability to successfully acculturate to mainstream society. Research from the United States generally indicates that second generation immigrant youth have the same or higher educational attainment than their first immigrant generation counterparts

(Chiswick and DebBurman, 2004; Kao and Tienda, 1995; Schmid, 2001). Kao and

Tienda (1995) discuss that generational status influences scholastic achievement, with first and second generation samples surpassing third and fourth generation groups in their study. Racial and ethnic differences were found to intersect to shape these outcomes as well as access to cultural resources and parents’ optimism about their children’s ability to achieve. In an empirical analysis of data drawn from the 1995 Current Population Survey (CPS), comparing educational attainment by different immigrant generations, it was found that second generation immigrant adults had the highest level of schooling compared to that of the foreign-born and of the locally-born with locally-born parents in the United

States (Chiswick and DebBurman, 2004). Specifically, second generation immigrants were identified to attain approximately half a year more schooling compared to those with parents born in the United States (Chiswick and

DebBurman, 2004).

Some research however, points to difficulties experienced by certain second

generation immigrant ethnic groups to attain the same level of education achievement as their peers with locally-born parents in the United States. Schmid

(2001) for instance, notes that there has been an uneven absorption and educational achievement of the ‘new’ second generation of Asian and Latin

American decent in the United States. The author suggests that factors contributing to this phenomenon include ‘external factors’, such as economic opportunities, racial and ethnic status, and group reception, and ‘intrinsic factors’, such as human and social capital, family structure, community organisation, and cultural and linguistic patterns (Schmid, 2001).

The relationship between ‘race’ and educational achievement of different second generation immigrant populations has been examined in the United States and

Canada. In a qualitative study, Cammarota (2004) explored the influence of race and gender of second generation immigrant Hispanic young people on their perceptions of education as oppressive or useful in resisting oppression. The author argues that participants’ negative perceptions towards education in the

United States were influenced by the differential treatment of Hispanic students in the school system. Conversely, Krahn and Taylor (2005) presented findings from a national Canadian survey of 15-year old students and their parents, highlighting that visible minority ‘immigrant’ students (only 9 percent of respondents were immigrants, the rest were second generation) have higher educational aspirations than Canadian-born non-visible minority students, despite studies which indicate that ‘immigrant’ minority youth face educational disadvantage in this context.

Kasinitz, Mollenkopf and Waters (2002) undertook research on the array of second generation immigrant ethnic groups within New York City and explored their views on ‘coming of age’ in an immigrant and non-‘white’ concentrated environment exploring school and work experiences. The study found that overall the second generation groups had higher levels of educational achievement than their non-immigrant parent counter parts (Kasinitz et al., 2002). This pattern extended into the work place, with occupations among second generation participants closely resembling those of other New Yorkers of similar age and gender. This was in stark comparison to their immigrant parents who tended to be concentrated in, what the authors termed, ‘ethnic niche’ occupations and displayed gender differentials in job types (Kasinitz et al., 2002).

Efforts have also been directed at ascertaining potential differences in educational attainment between the second generation and their first and third generation counterparts in Canada. Analysing data from the 1986 Canadian General Social

Survey (GSS), Boyd and Norris (1994) found that second generation immigrants with two foreign-born parents had higher educational attainments and occupational status on average than the other generation groups. Additionally, the extent of intergenerational mobility was higher than for the first and third generation groups (Boyd and Norris, 1994). Following on from this, Boyd and

Grieco (1998) utilised data from the 1994 Canadian General Social Survey (GSS) and similarly found that second generation immigrants experienced higher levels of education and labour market successes. Drawing from the Survey of Labour and

Income Dynamics (SLID), Boyd (2002) found that 1.5 and second generation immigrant adults (20-64 years) had higher educational attainment than their third-generation counterparts based on highest educational level attained. The author also notes that visibly different groups exceed the educational attainment of non-visibly different groups. All these findings, as the authors go on to argue, align with the linear (or straight-line) theory of assimilation and acculturation and with the related "success-orientation" model of second generation achievement, as will be further explored in Chapter Three.

In terms of labour market experiences, research indicates varied experiences by generation and whether immigrant groups are visibly different or not. In a study of

1991 United States Census data, results indicated that there were higher poverty rates for native-born ‘blacks’, Chinese, South Asians, and others than for those from the first immigrant generation (Kazemipur and Halli, 2001). Based on the same data studies have found that there are socio-economic disparities based on gender and race within the second generation (Baker and Benjamin, 1997; Pendakur and

Pendakur, 1998). Baker and Benjamin (1997) found that in comparison to the

United States, the second generation fared less well in the Canadian context.

Further, Pendakur and Pendakur (1998) identified that for both men and women there were substantial earning differentials both between and within the ‘white’ and visible-minority grouping. Analysis based on 1996 data has found similar disadvantages based on net income for those who are native-born visible minorities in Canada (Li, 2000; Reitz, 2001).

In comparison to these findings, using the 2001 and 2006 Canadian Censuses

Skuterud (2010) compared the weekly earnings of first, second, third and higher generation Canadian men. Findings demonstrated that there was a tendency for earnings to increase across subsequent generations of visible minorities, but not

‘white’ men (Skuterud, 2010). This trend was strongest between the first and second immigrant generations, except for those within the ‘black men’ category. It was also evident between the Canadian-born with and without a Canadian-born parent (Skuterud, 2010).

Transnational experiences

The creation of transnational communities can influence the lived experiences of second generation immigrants, both in the ‘host’ society and in their parents’ homeland. Portes (2001) argues that immigrant transnationalism can alter the process of acculturation for both first generation immigrants and their offspring in two ways. First, immigrants with strong transnational links may ‘return home’ taking their second generation children with them (Portes, 2001). Alternatively, transnational activities may support successful adaptation of first generation immigrants to the host society by providing “strong networks with the country of origin and the implementation of economic and political initiatives based on these networks may help immigrants solidify their position in the receiving society and cope more effectively with its barriers” (Portes, 2001, p. 189). Although these direct effects have not be witnessed within second generation immigrant groups in

the United States, the positive effect of their parents adaption may positively impact of the lived experiences of the second generation (Portes, 2001).

Similarly, Reitz and Somerville (2004) observe that immigrant transnationalism can provide a more direct link for second generation immigrants to their parents homeland, which may lead to the maintenance of ethnic and cultural identities with increased contact with their ethnic community (Reitz and Somerville, 2004).

In a study of British-Caribbean second generation youth for instance, Reynolds

(2010) examined the factors influencing the ‘return migration’ of the second generation to their parents’ country of origin. Drawing on in-depth interviews with sample of second generation return migrants from Britain residing in Jamaica, the author highlighted how the participants’ transnational family ties and social networks served as social capital resources, facilitating their return migration to the Caribbean (Reynolds, 2010). Further, in a study by Smith (2001) examining the experiences of a Mexican immigrant community in New York City and the village of

Tijuana, Puebla it was found that second generation immigrant adolescents while acculturated, found their parents’ hometown a source of recreation and support for their self-identification as Mexican-Americans.

The manner in which and time that second generation immigrants choose to actively engage in transnational social fields has been found to vary by group and a range of social and cultural factors (Levitt and Gtick Schiller, 2003; Levitt and

Waters, 2002). Drawing on qualitative research, Levitt (2009) argues that class

and religion may play an influential role in the transnational practices of the second generation. For instance, upper and middle class Pakistani and Gujarati families living in Boston were found to possess sufficient social and cultural capital to increase opportunities both in the United States and in their homelands, thus choosing transnational lives (Levitt, 2009). Transnational practices have also found to vary by geographic distance between the home and host countries, politics in the country of origin, the frequency of visiting and remittances, and language abilities (Kasinitz, Mollenkopf, Waters, and Holdaway, 2008).

Interestingly, the transnational activities of immigrant parents do not necessarily influence those of the second generation (Alba and Nee, 2003; Kasinitz, Mollenkopf, and Waters, 2004).

Health and wellbeing

There are a growing number of studies examining the psychological health and wellbeing of different second generation groups with varying outcomes. In a study from the United States based on data of adolescents in secondary school from the

National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) the links between immigrant generation (first and second) and adolescent psychological wellbeing status were examined (Harker, 2001). The author noted that while first generation immigrants experienced less depression and greater positive wellbeing than their native-born counterparts, second generation participants did not differ significantly from native-born youth in terms of psychological wellbeing (Harker,

2001). In addition, Pena and colleagues (2008) argue that there are generational

differences in suicide risk among Latino youth in the United States, with Latino second generation youth more likely to commit suicide and experience depressive symptoms than first generation Latino youth.

In the Canadian context, studies have pointed to the healthy immigrant effect among second generation immigrants, insofar as they appear to be as well- adjusted as the mainstream population, despite the tendency for higher rates of poverty amongst these groups (Beiser, Hou, and Hyman, 2002; Kobayashi, Moore, and Rosenberg, 1998; Reitz and Somerville, 2004). However, these patterns are not observed within all second generation immigrant groups, with immigrant parents’ ability to acculturate found to influence the psychological and behavioural wellbeing of the second generation (Abouguendia and Noels, 2001). Anouguendia and Noels (2001) identified that in-group stressors, caused by conflict between first and second generation differential acculturation experiences, can lead to psychological stress and lower self-esteem.

Montazer and Wheaton (2011) examined the mental health of children from migrant families in Toronto, Canada. They demonstrated that generational differences in the mental health of children were evident in families from countries of origin at the lowest levels of economic development. The authors found that the second generation immigrant children were not significantly different from the third generation or later generations in terms of their mental health outcomes

(Montazer and Wheaton, 2011). They conclude that a potential reason that

previous studies find higher problems in the second generation may be due to the combination of the 2.5 generation with the second generation (Montazer and

Wheaton, 2011).

Language proficiency

With the ‘new’ waves of immigration from a range of non-European sending countries and the subsequent ethnic and cultural diversity this brings to host societies, researchers have increasingly turned their attention to the ‘cultural’ ramifications of this diversification on nation-states. Studies have sought to add to these considerations by examining the English language use and proficiency amongst first and second generation immigrants. This in turn, presents a further

‘outcome’ by which to measure the acculturation of these groups. Portes and Hao

(1998) for example, when studying the patterns of language adaptation of second generation immigrant students in south Florida and southern California of

Hispanic and Asian background found that the majority of respondents preferred to use English as their primary language, with only a minority remaining fluent

(Latin American students) or having very limited knowledge of their mother tongue. They also demonstrated in-group differences, with Mexicans being more likely than other ethnic groups within the sample to speak Spanish at home (Portes and Hao, 1998).

Discussing the characteristics of the ‘new’ second generation, namely those born to immigrant parents post-1965, Portes and Zhou (1993) reviewed 1980 United

States Census data to examine bilingualism in the second generation. The authors noted that the second generation were more likely to be bilingual when compared to their counterparts of native-born parents. Further, it was found that 47.7 percent of the second generation immigrant participants spoke English only, with

66.4 percent speaking a language other than English in the home (Portes and Zhou,

1993, p. 79). Despite these trends, linguistic assimilation is demonstrated by the fact that only 12 percent of the second generation reported speaking English ‘not well or not at all’ (Portes and Zhou, 1993, p. 79).

The language adaptation of children in south Florida was also examined by Portes and Schauffler (1994) who found that knowledge of English was widespread, with the majority of second generation immigrant children preferring to speak English in daily communication. This in part, has been explained by the idea of an intergenerational linguistic shift, specifically over three generations, with the second generation often speaking the mother tongue at home but adopting unaccented English in public environments (Alba, Logan, Lutz, and Stuls, 2002;

Veltman, 1988). The loss of the ability to speak the mother tongue language by the second generation has also been attributed to the demand from local born

Americans on the offspring of immigrants to not only speak English, but to speak

English alone (Portes and Hao, 1998).

Portes and Hao (2002) analysed data from the Children of Immigrants

Longitudinal Study (CILS) and found that there are a variety of second generation linguistic adaptation types related to English and mother tongue language proficiency. The authors argue that despite historical political goals for assimilation including the loss of the mother tongue, fluent bilingualism is preferable as it has “positive effects on family solidarity and personality adjustment, reflecting cultural continuity and mutual understanding across generations” (Portes and Hao, 2002, p. 893). Whereas, limited bilingualism and

English monolingualism will have the opposite effect. The authors also identify that there were gender differences in bilingualism, with girls more likely to be bilingual than males, which they go on to argue is linked to the girls greater attachment to their families (Portes and Hao, 2002).

Examining the effects of language adaptation and bilingualism overtime within the

Latino second generation in the United States, drawing on data from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey (CILS), Tran (2010) found three distinct patterns. First, both English and Spanish proficiency increased within the group and second, there were in-group differences in language proficiency, with those of

Mexican heritage being the least proficient in English but most proficient in

Spanish (Tran, 2010). Finally, use of Spanish within the home did not negatively impact on English language retention and in turn, increased Spanish language fluency amongst the second generation immigrant group (Tran, 2010).

A further study in the United States context explored how household factors and first and second generational status impact on the English language proficiency of children with African immigrant parents based on Census data (Thomas, 2010).

The findings indicate that there is a stronger positive correlation between mother’s

English language proficiency and that of the child and having other children in the household who are English language proficient (Thomas, 2010). In turn, these papers point to the fact that the second generation demonstrate a high level of proficiency in English, but have varying adoption and ongoing proficiency in their immigrant parents’ language overtime (Portes and Schauffler, 1994).

Identity and belonging

There is an expansive body of international and local literature examining the connections between second generation immigrant identity, community belonging, intergenerational relationships and social capital. Fuligni (1998) in a review essay explored the value of education, family obligation and cultural identity for the ‘new’ wave of second generation immigrant young people in the United States and how this structures their assimilative patterns. The author noted that young people tended to relate positively to more nationalistic type identities, such as being

Mexican or Chinese, in comparison to pan-ethnic or hybridised cultural identity labels. Additionally, some groups were found to actively distance themselves from negative stereotypes associated with certain ethnic categories in an effort to not be associated with negative perceptions. Findings from this review also point to an

association between ethnic identifications and positive educational experiences when compared to those that identify with a more ‘Americanized’ identity (Fuligni,

1998).

Waters (1994) explored the racial and ethnic identities of West Indian and Haitian young Americans in New York City. The author highlights the highly racialised experiences of this visible minority, particularly when negotiating their identity in reference to mainstream perceptions and expectations. In particular, the study identified three types of identities among the second generation participants

(Waters, 1994). First, those who identified with a ‘black’ American identity tended to be aware of racial discrimination and the limitations for ‘blacks’ in the United

States (Waters, 1994). Participants with an ethnic or hyphenated national origin identity actively distanced them from a historical ‘black American’ identity, which in part involved a perception that West Indians were superior to ‘American blacks’

(Waters, 1994). Lastly, those who adopted an immigrant identity were recent immigrants themselves and their accents and clothing were symbolic of their status of being overseas born (Waters, 1994).

Focusing on the formation of ethnic self-identities during adolescence Rumbaut

(1994) quantitatively examined the psychosocial adaptation of second generation immigrant youth from Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean in the United States.

The results show four different forms of ethnic self-identification: (1) an ancestral, immigrant, or national-origin identity; (2) an additive, syncretic, or hyphenated

identity; (3) an assimilative or American national identity, without the hyphen; and

(4) a dissimilative racial or pan-ethnic identity (Rumbaut, 1994). Whilst the former two reflect an origin and immigrant experience identification, the latter two are related to an American-based construction. In terms of distribution of the sample across these categories of the second generation participants, 11 percent adopted a national origin identity, 49 percent adopted a hyphenated identity, 20 percent identified with an American identity, with significant in-group differences by immigrant parents’ country of birth and immigrant language proficiency (Rumbaut,

1994, p. 765).

Research has demonstrated that second and ‘later’ generation immigrants tend to adopt hyphenated American labels compared to the use of heritage or pan-ethnic labels as is seen amongst the first generation (Kiang, Perreira, and Fuligni, 2011;

Masuoka, 2006; Zarate, Bhimji, and Reese, 2005). In a recent study for instance,

Kiang, Perreira and Fuligni (2011) considered the differential ethnic labeling among ‘Asian’ and ‘Latino’ adolescents in Los Angeles and North Carolina. Study findings highlighted that second generation youth were more likely than first generation youth to use hyphenated American labels and less likely to use heritage or pan-ethnic labels. The authors argue that the participants who were native-born generally exhibited a preference for ‘bicultural’ identification (Kiang et al., 2011).

Costigan, Su and Hua (2009), through a review of the literature, explored the process of developing an ethnic identity amongst first and second generation

Chinese youth growing up in Canada. The authors conclude that across the studies the young people demonstrated a largely positive stance towards their Chinese heritage and displayed a strong sense of belonging to the Chinese communities they were part of (Costigan et al., 2009). In contrast, there was high variability in their adoption of a Canadian national identity, linked to factors including age and generational status, with younger and second generation immigrants integrating ethnic and national identities more readily (Costigan et al., 2009). Parental attitudes, with differences in mother and father cultural transmission were also identified to impact on the level of ethnic identification displayed by first and second generation immigrant youth (Costigan et al., 2009).

Key developments in second generation immigrant research in Australia

Similar to the other contexts discussed above, Australia is a country shaped by immigration. The immigration history of Australia corresponds with that of countries such as the United States and Canada, which have experienced two major immigration waves (Collins, 1993; Freeman and Birrell, 2001). Prior to the 1970s, the Immigration Restriction Act (1901) commonly referred to as the ‘White

Australia’ policy, encouraged immigrants from European origins to settle in

Australia. The ‘White Australia’ policy was dismantled in stages and eventually

abolished in 1973, allowing the entry of non-European immigrants to Australia

(Collins, 1993; Ongley and Pearson, 1995).

This change to immigration policies has had implications for the diversification of the population, and an impact on the demographics of the second generation immigrant population. According to Australian Census data, the proportion of the overseas-born population from European source countries has been in decline in recent years, from 52 percent in 2001 to 40 percent in 2011 (Australian Bureau of

Statistics, 2012). As a result of shifting immigration policies, in the 1970s South-

East Asian countries increased as a source for first generation immigrants to

Australia and this has continued in contemporary immigration patterns. Reflecting this trend, the proportion of migrants born in Asia increased from 24 percent of the overseas-born population in 2001 to 33 percent in 2011 (Australian Bureau of

Statistics, 2012). The proportion of the overseas-born population arriving from countries outside Europe and Asia has also increased.

Based on 2011 Australia Census data, there were 4.1 million people or 20 percent of the population that fit within the category of ‘second generation Australians’, having at least one overseas-born parent (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2012).

This may also be an undercount as 1.6 million Australians did not state either their birthplace or their parents’ birthplace and thus were excluded from this calculation. Ancestry is used within Census data collection as a measure for

capturing the cultural group that respondents most closely identify with and may not be related to their place of birth. It was found that in comparison to first and third generation groups, the second generation were most likely to report having two ancestries (46 percent), which was suggested to be due to second generation immigrants having a strong connection to Australia as well as their parent(s)’ country of birth (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2012). The top ancestries reported by second generation immigrants were Greek (44.8 percent), Dutch (43.3 percent), Italian (41.0 percent), Chinese (21.3 percent) and English (20.1 percent),

Scottish (19.1) and Australian (18.3) (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2012). In terms of language, first generation immigrants were the most likely group to speak a language other than English at home (53 percent), compared to second generation immigrants (20 percent) and the third-plus generations (1.6 percent)

(Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2012).

In a report for the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous

Affairs the characteristics of the second generation population in Australia were explored using 1996 census data (Khoo et al., 2002). It was found that approximately 3.4 million people or 20 percent of the Australian population identified as ‘second generation’. Within this, the largest proportion of second generation people in Australia had immigrant parents of ‘European’ origins. The authors noted that there was evidence to demonstrate that those second generation from ‘Asian’ backgrounds would continue to rise as immigration from

Asian countries increases (Khoo et al., 2002). In terms of residential distribution,

1996 Census data highlighted that New South Wales (NSW) had the highest proportion of the second generation (approximately 34 percent) compared to all other Australian states, reflecting high rates of inwards migration to Sydney

(capital city of NSW) (Khoo et al., 2002).

As I review below, the majority of research on the lived experiences of second generation immigrants in Australia was conducted prior to the early 2000s, focusing on the locally-born children of post-World War Two immigrant parents.

As such, this research has largely focused on the experiences of second generation immigrants from European backgrounds. More recent research, whilst limited, provides interesting insights into the emerging second generation sub-populations from more recent immigrant source countries.

In the 1970s Bottomley (1979) conducted one of the first studies focusing on the identity experiences of second generation immigrants of Greek heritage. Drawing on interviews with participants in Sydney, NSW, the author found that the participants strongly identified with a Greek ethnic identity based upon strong social networks and linkages within the Greek immigrant community as well as a desire to preserve a sense of ethnic identity and belonging (Bottomley, 1979).

Whilst the participants identified as ‘more Greek than Australian’, they simultaneously perceived themselves as different to Greeks living in Greece and newly arrived Greek immigrants (Bottomley, 1979).

There was increased research interest in this field during the 1980s and early

1990s in exploring the experiences of second generation immigrant populations in

Australia. At the same time interest in other aspects of the immigrant experience, including gender and sexuality, began to emerge (Herne et al., 1992). The research samples tended to be a reflection of the immigrant profile of Australia, which at the time was generally from European source countries. As noted earlier this was related to the ‘White Australia’ policy effectively limiting the source country of immigrants.

Some studies focused on the labour market outcomes and economic impact of this group within the wider population. Mistilis (1985) for instance, using 1981 Census data, explored the socioeconomic attainments of second generation Australians aged 18 years and over from a range of European immigrant backgrounds based on their father’s country of birth. Results showed that almost all the second generation immigrant groups had higher incomes when compared to other native- born Australians and first generation immigrants. Whilst there was no notable difference based on the participants English language proficiency, the author suggests that this does not necessarily indicate an absence of discrimination in the labour market towards this group (Mistilis, 1985). In Hugo’s (1987) study on second generation youth with immigrant parents from European backgrounds, it was highlighted that they had higher levels of educational and occupational attainment compared to their first generation immigrant counterparts.

Maani (1994), using Australian Longitudinal Survey data from 1985-1988, measured the assimilation of first and second generation immigrants using total weeks of unemployment. The findings demonstrate that first and second generation immigrants are initially at a disadvantage however, this declines over time with those having spent more years in Australia having better employment outcomes than more recent immigrants (Maani, 1994).

Undertaking an analysis of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in

Australia (HILDA) survey, Messinis (2008) examined the performances of second generation immigrants of Greek and Italian heritage in the labour market between

2001 and 2005. Results indicated that most second generation immigrants of

Greek background were over-represented amongst the overeducated and the overskilled. In particular, women of both Greek and Italian background were found to be more likely to be overeducated or overskilled. The use of a language other than English did not appear to provide any income benefits to individuals. The author also noted that the incidence of overeducation and overskilling was associated with parental occupation status and the lack of provision for developing new skills through the workplace.

There have been a number of studies focused on the identity and belonging experiences of second generation immigrants. In one study, researchers examined the ethnic identity of young men of Arabic-speaking backgrounds living in the south-western suburbs of Sydney of both Christian and Muslim religious affiliation

and found that the participants engaged in the construction of essentialised identities (Noble, Poynting, and Tabar, 1999; Noble and Tabar, 2002; Poynting,

Noble, and Tabar, 1998). Although espousing ‘hybrid’ identities (half Lebanese and half Australian), their ethnic identity was seen to be taken as a given, exemplified through symbolic notions of what it means to be Lebanese (equated with honour, virtues, and family) in contrast to being Anglo-Australian, and viewing their friendship groups as ‘Lebanese’ regardless of in-group ethnic and religious differences. Despite this ethnic identity, the participants also identified with certain Australian tropes, such as sport and the beach, but these held seemingly more surface level meaning than their ethnic identity (Noble and Tabar, 2002, p.

141).

Pallotta-Chiarolli (1989) qualitatively explored the female sexuality and identity experiences of second generation Italo-Australian women. The study highlighted the role of their immigrant parents’ (patriarchal) attitudes and the participants’ perceptions of the values (liberal) of the ‘host’ society in influencing their own views of what defined femininity and the role of females in society. Overall, the traditions that their immigrant parents wished to transfer to their children did not directly translate into the participants’ sexual code, attitudes and behaviour, although the participants understood the reasons for their parents’ traditions. The same held for the participants’ interaction with Anglo-Saxon value system of the

‘host’ society’. Instead, they effectively evaluated the values of both social systems

and adapted them within the context of their own lives, while retaining their sense of Italian-ness (Pallotta-Chiarolli, 1989).

Baldassar (2001) conducted an ethnographic study on the identity of second generation youth of Italian ancestry living in Perth between the ages of 17-25 years. The study found that the ‘family’ and a cultural emphasis on ‘marriage’ were considered to be important traditions informing their ethnic identity. The participants rejected aspects of the ‘Australian’ culture and they defined their sexual morality in contrast to that of their Australian peers, viewing themselves as superior to mainstream values and norms (Baldassar, 2001). Whilst their experiences were structured by heteronormative and gendered cultural norms, the participants were also found to be opposed to the constructions of ‘being a good

Italian girl’, although attempts to disrupt these were difficult to navigate within the confines of cultural norms (Baldassar, 2001).

Qualitative research conducted by Pallotta-Chiarolli and Skrbis (1994) explored the choice of marital partner amongst Southern Italian, Croatian, Slovenian, and

Yugoslav second generation individuals, both heterosexual and lesbian. The authors found that issues of parental, communal and societal authority and degrees of acceptance and resistance impacted on the ability of second generation groups to explore issues related to their sexual behaviour and marital choices.

Specifically, monitoring by parents and the ethnic community served to limit the participants’ choices within a predetermined frame in order to preserve ethnic

purity, family cohesion and maintenance of the community structure. Whilst not viewed as a binary to the ‘family’ and ‘community’, the ‘host society’ also served to situate the sexual behaviours of the participants within the limits of a heteronormative frame. In response to these structures, the participants were found to passively or actively accept the perceptions of their parents and community or engage in forms of resistance resulting in either cultural conflict or cultural synthesis.

Pallotta-Chiarolli (1996) discussed how the multiple subject positions occupied by second generation women of non-English speaking backgrounds should be taken into account when considering their mental and emotional health issues. Based on an in-depth literature review, she posits that hegemonic homophobic and heterosexist structures of society can lead to emotional and mental disorders within this population group, with there being more conflict and stress for lesbians and bisexual women than heterosexual women from non-English speaking backgrounds. As such, the author advocated that the health system should recognise multiple axes of difference in order to appropriately cater for its target audience. This involves understanding the cultural and linguistic differences as well as recognition of the diversity and fluidity of sexuality.

Butcher and Thomas’ (2001) study qualitatively examined the identities of second generation immigrant youth from Asian and Middle Eastern backgrounds living in

Western Sydney. The authors argued that the participants’ identities were highly

flexible in that they were able to deal with multiple everyday cultural spaces and adapt to these as needed. The participants displayed attachment to their cultural heritage as well as a sense of being ‘Australian’. The authors note that Australian culture from the perspective of the participants was constructed in ‘stereotypical’ ways and, despite being defined by ‘multiculturalism’, many of the participants did not see their own cultural heritage as being part of this national identity.

Khoo (2004) undertook an analysis of 2001 Australian Census data to explore the intermarriage patterns among first and second generation Australians of various ethnic backgrounds. The author concluded that whilst intermarriage increased significantly in the second generation groups, by the third generation most people where opting to marry outside their immediate ethnic group, particularly those of

Greek, Indian and Chinese ancestry.

Drawing on two studies of interviews with second generation immigrant women from Latin American and Turkish backgrounds, Zevallos (2003, 2005, 2007, 2008) examined their identity constructions in relation to their transnational experiences within Australia and their parents’ country of birth. The majority of participants were born in Australia, with a smaller sub-sample having migrated to Australia on average by the age of six. Within both groups there was a reported identification with a ‘migrant national culture’ (their parents’ country of birth) and a ‘pan-ethnic migrant culture’ (broad ethnic or religious groupings). The majority of participants were found to adopt hybrid migrant-Australian identities despite, as the author

notes, their belief that people did not see them as ‘Australian’. Interestingly, all respondents discussed being asked the question ‘where are you from?’ Zevallos

(2007) notes that:

The question ‘where are you from’ may be asked out of curiosity,

but in effect, it functions as a gate-keeping tool regarding

Australian identity, even if it not intended this way. This question

can be seen as a way of connecting people: it is an opportunity to

learn more about another person’s ethnicity and it therefore

promotes multiculturalism. At the same time, this question can

also be seen as problematic because it operates through notions of

race (as it is mostly asked of people who look or sound ‘different’)

and, in this way, it reproduces racist constructions of national

identity (p. 4).

The participants stated that while they were not ‘offended’ or ‘bothered’ by the questioning, it could become ‘frustrating’ and ‘annoying’. As Zevallos (2007) suggests, this points to issues around the exclusionary result of this discursive mechanism of demarcating their subject position outside that of being ‘Australian’.

Maculiffe (2007) examined the national belonging experiences of Iranian diaspora in London, Sydney and Vancouver, comparing those of Muslim and Baha’i religious

affiliations. For many of the second generation participants from a Muslim background, their engagement in the discourses of national belonging supported their desire for return to the ‘homeland’. In contrast, for many second generation

Baha’i participants, their positioning as a minority, in both the ‘homeland’ and the diaspora, led them to leave Iran and thus display less affinity to the idea of ‘return’ migration.

More recently, researchers have explored the acculturation and adaptation of Arab and Islamic second generation groups within urban settings such as Sydney and

Melbourne. For instance, Kabir’s qualitative study (2008) explored the life stories of Muslim youths living in Sydney and Melbourne to demonstrate how the enculturation and acculturation processes of the participants differed between first and second generation immigrant identity. The findings revealed that the second generation immigrant youth were more ‘bicultural’ than the first generation. This was demonstrated through their attachment to cultural traditions including food, dance and music, while also following Australian sports and

‘Western’ music.

Ali and Sonn (2010) considered the way in which second generation immigrants of

Cypriot Turkish background constructed their identities and how this influenced their sense of belonging. Drawing on interviews, the authors indicate that the participants engaged in four discourses in the construction of their identities namely, modern Muslim, phenotypes, language, and ancestral and generational

discourses. Focusing on the first two discourses, the participants were found to identify with multi-hyphenated identities of either Cypriot Turkish Australians or

Cypriot Turkish in Australia. The authors argue, “this identity arises from a sense of exclusion (from Australian, Turkish and Cypriot identities) and a sense of belonging simultaneously (to Australian, Turkish and Cypriot communities) and acts as a form of resistance to assimilation to all three groups” (Ali and Sonn, 2010, p. 431).

This more recent literature, whilst notably limited compared to research prior to

2000, sheds some light on the identity experiences of contemporary second generation immigrant groups. It also points to the need for more research on the experiences of second generation immigrants from emerging immigrant ethnic populations. In light of this, I posit that the current study will provide further insight into the ‘diversity within diversity’ of Australia and build theory in relation to second generation immigrant lived experiences within this context.

Chapter summary

In this chapter I provided an in-depth review of the extant literature on ‘second generation immigrants’. I began with a consideration of the different ways in which researchers have attempted to define and categorise the children of immigrants, often for the purposes of measuring their acculturation in comparison to their first generation counterparts. I then reviewed the current debates in the second

generation immigrant research in three comparative contexts, namely the United

States, Canada and emerging research from Britain. Within these contexts researchers have sought to enumerate and explore the assimilative patterns of second generation immigrants across a range of indicators. This research points to the highly varied experiences of this population, indicating the ongoing need for research that is sensitive to the layered dynamics and increasing diversity of this broad group.

Following this international review, I then considered the literature in Australia on different second generation immigrant groups. Again, this research is highly varied, reflecting the shifting immigration flows in Australia. In the following chapter, in light of these research trends I further consider the way in which researchers have privileged an immigrant-centred lens developing theory to understand the experiences of second generation immigrants. I also consider the potential limitations of this approach in reinforcing an essentialised view of the second generation based on assumed ‘cultural conflict’ and ‘struggle’.

Chapter 3 Identity theory and the second generation

Overview of thesis

Introduction

In the previous chapter I provided an overview of the extant literature on second generation immigrants and considered the challenges of defining this population group. In this chapter, I begin by considering the key theoretical developments relating to second generation immigrant identity. Drawing on a critical analysis, I posit that current conceptualisations reveal the prevailing immigrant-centred

discourse shaping research within the field, which potentially limits possible other conceptualisations of the lived experiences of second generation immigrants. I next consider more recent attempts to translate intersectionality theory from feminist critiques to migrant identity research. In the latter part of the chapter I propose the application of Discourse Theory as presented by Laclau and Mouffe (1985), which provides the ontology and theoretical framework for this study. In particular, I discuss the applicability of this approach for understanding the pervasiveness of discourse in shaping how we understand and interpret the construction of second generation immigrant identity.

Current theoretical perspectives on second generation immigrant identity

Theoretical developments concerning immigrants and subsequent generations have frequently sought to explore the acculturative patterns of second generation groups in comparison to their immigrant parents or peers and in contrast to second generation cohorts overtime (i.e. old versus new), as I discussed in the preceding chapter. In the following sections I review some of the key theoretical debates in the literature, specifically related to acculturation and assimilation theories and comparative, yet complementary notions of hybrid identity and culture. A range of literature is included to highlight the historical development of these key theoretical traditions and provide a point of comparison to the theoretical framework adopted in this thesis, which I outline further in this chapter.

Acculturation and assimilation: navigating the ‘cultural divide’

Early assimilative theories on immigrants have been pivotal in shaping contemporary debates surrounding the second generation. Gordon’s (1964) assimilation typology serves as an example of one of the initial theoretical frameworks presented for understanding the process of immigrant assimilation into mainstream society. Providing a system for understanding the complex, yet supposed step-wise process of immigrant assimilation, Gordon’s (1964) typology involves a number of steps or stages encompassing: cultural, structural, marital, identificational, attitude-receptional, behaviour-receptional, and civic assimilation.

Gordon argued that immigrant assimilation would eventually occur through a sequential process of migrants simultaneously shedding their own culture and adopting that of the receiving society, often over generations. In this view, immigrants are seen to adapt to the new country through cultural assimilation or acculturation however, this process does not necessarily mean immigrants will experience other forms of assimilation, such as entrance into institutions. Thus structural assimilation is necessary for other forms of assimilation to progress.

Core to this typology is the assumption that over generations and through intermarrying ethnic groups will eventually cease to exist and will instead merge with the mainstream.

An adaptation of this view is ‘straight line assimilation’ (Gans, 1992; Sandberg,

1973; Warner and Srole, 1945); the notion that with each sequential generation comes the next stage of immigrant assimilation and a further step away from a

connection to their original ethnic community and culture. This intergenerational view has been critiqued by scholars on the basis of the underlying assumption that ethnic cultures are isolated from outside influences and conditions and thus will gradually fade from the generations without interference from the host society.

Instead, it has been suggested that ethnic cultures may undergo considerable modification in response to external conditions, and even experience periods of revival (Conzen, Gerber, Morawska, Pozzetta, and Vecoli, 1992; Glazer and

Moynihan, 1970; Greeley, 1977).

In a later article, Gans (1992) proposed what he terms the ‘second generation decline’; the inability of ‘new’ second generation groups (non-European) to experience the upward mobility that European second generation groups experienced previously in the United States. The ‘bumpy-line theory of ethnicity’ has instead been proposed as an alternate view emphasising the central idea that assimilation is an intergenerational step-wise process that, whilst involving divergent tangents, still progresses along a general linear direction.

Portes and Zhou’s (1993) pioneering work on the notion of ‘segmented assimilation’ provides a different approach to early assimilative theories, focusing on the increasingly divergent assimilative patterns of contemporary migrant groups: the ‘old’ and ‘new’ second generation cohorts, and sub population groups within the second generation. From this perspective there are three possible

avenues of second generation adaptation within the context of the United States.

The first corresponds with the ‘straight-line’ assimilation model, highlighting the acculturation patterns of members of the ‘old’ second generation from European backgrounds into the ‘white-middle class’ of the ‘host’ society. Downward assimilation, as a second and contrasting avenue, emphasises the integration of members of the second generation into lower-socioeconomic groups or the

‘underclass’. Bankston (1998), in a review essay, underlines the increasing presence of youth gangs, many of whom have a strong second generation constituency in the United States, highlighting the phenomena of downward mobility within the ‘new’ second generation in this context. Alternatively, upward assimilation, as a third possible avenue, draws attention to the role of ‘coethnic’ connections, or strong affiliations with communities and associated ‘cultural values’ in supporting and propelling the ‘rapid economic advancement’ of some second generation groups, often well above that of their mainstream peers (Portes and Zhou, 1993).

Portes’ (1996) conception of the second generation as ‘the generation in transition’, pertinently captures a common idea within research of a generation which is struggling to negotiate a supposed ‘cultural divide’ or experiencing, what Zhou

(1997, p. 83) has termed, the “clash between two social worlds”; that of their migrant parents/family/community, and the supposedly contradictory ‘culture’ of

‘mainstream society’. ‘Intergenerational cultural dissonance’, or the struggle to reconcile parental cultural values (Choi et al., 2008), is suggested to commonly

occur during adolescence as this is the life stage that is often characterised by an

‘identity crisis’ (Erikson, 1968; Rumbaut, 2004), where members of the second generation are more likely to identify with the values and social practices of the host society (Rumbaut, 1997). As part of this “dissonant acculturation” (Portes and

Rumbaut, 1996; 2001), the second generation are vulnerable to ‘intergenerational conflict’ encompassing issues regarding “independence, space, finances, activities outside home, sexual relationships, values, expectations of success, and family responsibilities” (Francis and Cornfoot, 2007, p. 17).

Perlmann and Waldinger (1997) provide a critical reconsideration of ‘second generation decline’ by reviewing the second generation upward mobility in the past and considering comparisons to present trends. The authors contend that proponents of the ‘second generation decline’ perspective have been too pessimistic in light of the similar challenges they believe European immigrants and their offspring faced early on. Instead they argue that contemporary immigrants face greater class differentials within American society, with a large portion of the

‘new’ immigrant and second generations often found to experience high-class status, as is true for the case of Jewish and Asian immigrant generations in that context. From this class positioning, the authors suggest that they have greater agency to shape not only their own lives (i.e. higher educational attainment than peers) but also a greater ability to transform the ‘host’ country, in this case

America.

Acculturation, with its associated issues of intergenerational conflict and identity crisis may reflect a valid experience of the second generation. This acculturative perspective, whilst critiqued and developed in relation to the experiences of different waves of second generation immigrants, has prevailed as the dominant theoretical framework in the field since the establishment of Gordon’s typology in the 1960s. However, this perspective promotes an immigrant-centric discursive construction of the second generation. Specifically, by focusing on the assimilative experiences of the second generation, researchers are implicated in the construction of the second generation as ‘insiders, on the outside’, which involves a series of linked assumptions. Firstly, there tends to be an unquestioned assumed binary between the seemingly homogenous cultures of the ‘host’ society and the immigrant group in question (Viruell-Fuentes, 2011). Secondly, it is assumed that the second generation, as ‘migrant offspring’, will inevitably have to engage in a struggle to navigate the assumed ‘cultural divide’. Research that uncritically privileges these theoretical frames for second generation research, I argue, contributes to the discursive construction of an essentialised identity of the second generation, insofar as the hegemonic immigrant-centred view of culture and the second generation is continually reinforced and ‘naturalised’. Other possible avenues of identification are thus rendered invisible, in turn foreclosing other possible lived experiences from being identified and understood.

Hybridity theory: The case for cultural mixture

Hybridity theory presents an alternative perspective to considerations of shifts in identity and culture as a result of migration. Hybridity initially emerged in postcolonial critiques of cultural imperialism (Bhabha, 1994; Canclini, 1990; Hall,

1992; Spivak, 1988). Bhabha’s (1994) examination of hybridity, drawing on the work of Said, proposes that central to the process of colonisation is the attempt of the colonial power to structure the identity of the ‘colonised’ (read the ‘other’) to resemble that of the coloniser (Easthope, 1998). In this process, the coloniser is conceived as a ‘snake in the grass’ who ‘speaks in a tongue that is forked’; through mimicry the colonised establishes a mimetic representation of the coloniser and in doing so, destabilises the dominance of the coloniser (Easthope, 1998). A hybrid identity arises however, when the coloniser fails to produce a similar identity but instead a new identity is formulated. This ‘in-between space’, which Bhabha

(1994) refers to as the ‘third space’, represents a site of liminality; a place or moment where the subject becomes ambiguous thus presenting a moment of anxiety for the coloniser. In turn, he argues that by producing a form of ambivalence ‘colonial hybridity’ shifts the dominance of power between the coloniser and colonised.

Extending this theorisation, hybridity has been applied to studies of the effects of identity and cultural mixture in context of migration and more broadly, globalisation (Easthope, 1998; Hutnyk, 2005). In the application of ‘hybridity’ to the mixing of cultures, Pieterse (2001) differentiates between two types of

hybridity: ‘new hybridity’, heralded by current mixing through migration, trade and globalisation, and the ‘existing or old hybridity’, involving historical combinations, some of which have prevailed to the present. Pieterse (2001) also notes that hybridity can take form as a process (hybridisation), a phenomenon, and as a discourse or perspective, depending on the context in which hybridity operates.

Through its use in migration research, hybridity has been used in a variety of ways linked to race, culture and ethnicity, which Anthias (2001) contends is an attempt to challenge current theoretical understandings of identity. For instance, hybridity has been used to refer to the practices involved in ‘cultural exchange’ through migrants who bring their culture to, and simultaneously negotiate and adopt

(aspects of), the host culture (Voicu, 2011). There is resonance with the idea of a

‘hyphenated identity’, which refers to first and second generation immigrants who identify themselves with a hyphenated category, such as Lebanese-Australian

(Noble and Tabar, 2002). Racial hybridity involving the concept of ‘mixed parentage’ (Phoenix and Owen, 2000) is also of relevance to the field of second generation research in studies that focus on the 2.5 generation (those with a one migrant and one ‘host’ country parent) (Hutnyk, 2005).

There has been some critical debate concerning the way in which hybridity has been used in relation to ‘cultural’ mixture and as an identity state (Anthias, 2001;

Hutnyk, 2005; Pieterse, 2001). In relation to culture, it has been suggested that if

hybridity is defined by the mixing of cultural experiences, then everything is possibly hybrid, insofar as culture by definition is the so called ‘mixing’ of socially accepted practices, beliefs and ideas held by a particular group of people (Pieterse,

2001). Thus, every culture is an ongoing process of ‘hybridisation’ (Pieterse, 2001) and therefore, it is potentially impossible to identify which culture or person is a

‘hybrid’. This reveals the potential ambiguity of the concept; insofar as hybridity is defined against what it is not (Bhabha, 1994; Easthope, 1998).

In terms of denoting an identity state, the traditional definition of hybridity originates from the Latin ‘hybridia’, refering to the ‘offspring of a tame sow and wild boar’ or the ‘child of a freeman and slave’ (Oxford University Press, 2013). In this instance, the notion of a ‘mongrel’, involving the mixing of two genetically different species, is the result of genetic hybridity (Easthope, 1998). In turn, this conceptualisation promotes a binary, biologically-determined view of identity as the product of ‘racial’ and/or cultural mixture, which is effectively essentialised

(Phoenix and Owen, 2000). The potential application of hybridity to influence essentialised identities has been noted within studies of the children of ‘white’ and

‘black’ mixed parentage (Phoenix and Owen, 2000). Phoenix and Owen (2000, p.

73) note that binary constructions have led to conceptualisations “…that people can be ‘between two cultures’ or ‘neither one colour nor the other’ and denies that it is possible to have identities which are ‘both/and’, rather than ‘either/or’”.

This conceptualisation also relates to public debates of the authenticity of

Indigenous people and their identities. Such debates tend to draw on biological and racialised constructions of identity, where skin colour and the ‘quantum’ of

Indigenous ancestry are used to challenge the authenticity of Indigenous identities

(Gelber and McNamara, 2013; Wall, 1997). These constructions effectively essentialise Indigenous identities by eliding any lived experience beyond that which can be genetically defined.

From these critiques, I suggest that the application of hybridity to denote both cultural mixing and an identity state has the potential to reinforce a binary division between those who are ‘mixed’ and those who are not. I contend that aspects of cultural hybridity echo the acculturation perspective outlined before, where a

‘cultural divide’ notion is reinforced. However, this time it is between those who are ‘pure’ and those that are ‘mixed’ and are rendered the ‘other’.

Whilst limited, constructs of hybridity have been argued to have potential explanatory power if taken to denote a process in the formation of identity as opposed to an identity state (Parker, 1995; Phoenix and Owen, 2000; Young, 1995).

For instance, Anzaldua’s (1987) borderlands theory addresses the dominance of cultural essentialism in identity constructions. Establishing the ‘mestiza’ consciousness – being of ‘white’, Mexican and Indian descent – she critiques the seemingly invisible borders between culturally pre-determined identities, such as those that exist between men and women, migrants and non-migrants and

Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. Anzaldua (1987) posits that an inability to fit within these categories results in an outsider status. Borderlands, which

Anzaldua presents as the site at which multiple identity and cultural borders intersect, is a space in which individuals engage in a process of challenging binary identities and assert a form of negotiated hybrid cultural identity. This ability to negotiate and assert multiple cultural influences has been further elaborated on by

Pallotta-Chiarolli (2004) where she considers the motif or metaphor of a tapestry to conceptualise the dynamic interweaving of ‘multiple lifeworlds’ or cultural identities. Pallotta-Chiarolli (2004) suggests that points of tensions and convergence of these cultural identities are harnessed in her own academic work to position herself in relation to and explore the multiple life worlds of her participants.

Extending this latter perspective, in the following sections I consider the application of poststructural understandings of identity as fluid, dynamic, shifting and multiple through the application of intersectionality theory and Laclau and

Mouffe’s (1985) Discourse Theory within second generation immigrant identity research. I suggest that these theoretical perspectives can assist in capturing a more nuanced understanding of the continual process of ‘combination’ that second generation immigrants experience when negotiating their identity(s) across multiple axes of difference.

Turning to intersectionality theory

Researchers have more recently attempted to assess the utility of intersectionality theory, originally developed within gender and race studies, to the field of migration studies (Bürkner, 2011). When initially conceived, intersectionality signalled a departure from previous analyses within gender studies and more generally ‘identity politics’, which tended to emphasise the structural category of gender in relation to other inequalities (i.e. social class and race). Scholars during the 1980s covering a range of feminist to anti-racist studies suggested that it was not possible to treat multiple types of oppression in isolation from each other, nor view them as equal categories to be added together (Anthias and Yuval-Davis,

1983; Brah and Phoenix, 2004; Crenshaw, 1989; Davis, 2008; hooks, 1984; McCall,

2005; Nash, 2008; Yuval-Davis, 2006).

Intersectionality was coined by Crenshaw (1989) in the late 1980s as a problematisation of the treatment of the law in relation to the employment of

‘black’ women in the United States, which by design was only able to recognise one category of discrimination at a time (Yuval-Davis, 2006). This was illuminated by the experiences of ‘black’ women, who Crenshaw (1989) argued:

…sometimes experience discrimination in ways similar to white

women’s experiences; sometimes they share very similar

experiences with Black men. Yet often they experience double

discrimination—the combined effects of practices which

discriminate on the basis of race, and on the basis of sex. And

sometimes, they experience discrimination as Black women—not

the sum of race and sex discrimination, but as Black women.

In line with this critique, intersectionality was proposed to capture the notion that subjectivity or subject positioning can be characterised by the overlay and intersection of various categories and variables, contingent on the historical and contemporary context (Bürkner, 2011; Crenshaw, 1989; Nash, 2008). In turn, the notion of an ‘intersection’, where several lines or axes of difference and discrimination are mutually constituted (Davis, 2008), allows for consideration of the multiple socio-cultural factors that contribute to oppression and marginalisation.

Importantly, it allows for a departure from identity politics, which tends to emphasise differences between groups but overlook differences within groups

(Crenshaw, 1991; Nash, 2008; Phoenix and Pattynama, 2006). As a response to this limitation, intersectionality promotes the exploration of multiple forms of discrimination, seeking to uncover differences within categories of identification such as women, those of colour and so forth. Moreover, there is an explicit recognition of privileging a focus on the experiences of marginalised subjects, addressing the historical absence of these voices in scholarship (Nash, 2008).

As Davis (2008) notes, there is contestation as to whether intersectionality can be viewed as a ‘crossroads’ of different identifications (Crenshaw, 1991), axes of difference (Yuval-Davis, 2006) or as a dynamic process (Staunæs, 2003), and as to whether intersectionality should be directly applied to studies of individual identity or considered as a feature of structure and discourse. There has been variable application of intersectionality within research as a result of these different approaches (Phoenix and Pattynama, 2006).

For instance, there is debate as to whether intersectionality is a theory of the specific marginalised subject positions or more a general theory of subject positions (Nash, 2008). Considering the former perspective, Nash (2008) observes that intersectionality scholarship has tended to exclude the study of any identities that are perceived to have any privileged position, even though these identities are also the result of intersections and power imbalances. Proponents of the latter perspective suggest that intersectionality extends to all subject positions, which are the interplay of multiple categories, including race, gender, sexual orientation, country of birth etc. (Nash, 2008; Zack, 2005). Within this perspective it can be argued that within an identity category the experience of privilege along one axis does not undervalue intersectionality claims. For instance, a woman may experience discrimination due to race or class in one context, but also experience privilege due to another aspect of their identity with another context (Zack, 2005).

Yuval-Davis (2006) discusses the complexity faced by researchers in providing a multiple level analysis that captures the structural and political processes that produce marginalisation, such as racism, patriarchy, class oppression, as well as the individual/everyday level interactions and experiences of discrimination, which are structured by these macro level processes. Whilst some researchers choose an analysis that clearly differentiates between these levels (Maynard 1994), others caution such an approach. Instead these latter scholars argue that ‘structure’ and ‘individual level’/‘cultural experiences’ of marginalisation should be viewed as

“relational processes and neither is privileged over the other” (Yuval-Davis, 2006, p. 199).

A further consideration in the application of intersectionality theory is the need to analyse what Nash (2008, p. 7) terms ‘multiple burdens’ or “the intersections of privileges and burdens” that exist beyond the categories of race and gender. This critique partly arises from Crenshaw’s original application of intersectionality theory, which was to demonstrate that neither the category of ‘woman’ or ‘black’ was sufficient to capture the notion that ‘back women’ are burdened in multiple ways. Whilst a ground-breaking analysis, the focus on race and gender resulted in an elision of other ‘burdens’ faced by ‘black’ women. Nash (2008) contends that this in turn effectively configures race and gender as the primary sites of experience for ‘black’ women. Instead, by extending the reach of intersectionality theory, it provides an alternative ontological position to identity politics, in that it avoids focusing on one identity category at a time or in isolation (Phoenix and

Pattynama, 2006). Furthermore, as Phoenix and Pattynama (2006, p. 187) posit, this latter take on intersectionality promotes the epistemological stance that social positions are considered relational.

Yuval-Davis (2006) contends that a practical issue remains: how to identify the many possible social divisions within a given context and how to select which ones to incorporate into an intersectional analysis of that context. The list of possible social divisions may include: socio-economic status, nationality, sexual orientation, age, disability, mental ill-health, and migrant status, amongst many others (Bradley,

1996; Brah and Phoenix, 2004; Meekosha and Dowse, 1997; Nash, 2008). This notion of a ‘limitless list’ has been critiqued for instance, by Butler (1990) in relation to the use of ‘etc.’ to denote the possibility of limitless social divisions.

Butler (1990) argues that the usage of ‘etc.’ at the end of a list indicates a “sign of exhaustion as well as the illimitable process of signification itself” (p. 143).

However, others have critiqued this perspective, arguing that this notion is largely limited to the ambit of identity politics (Yuval-Davis, 2006). Instead, it is suggested that to overcome the ‘illimitable process of signification’ the analysis of social divisions should be situated within the specific historical and political conditions that structured those social divisions. Additionally, the meaning/value attributed to certain social divisions within a specific historical/political context, and the interconnectedness of those social divisions need to be simultaneously considered

(Knapp, 1999; Yuval-Davis, 2006). The historical landscape and specific political struggles will assist in determining which social divisions and intersections are

attributed with meaning and thus, which sites of multiple marginalisations are salient within that context.

Intersectionality holds potential for advancing migration studies and more specifically second generation research by promoting a thorough consideration of both structure and agency, while avoiding previous cultural essentialism (Bürkner

2011). In turning to the utility of intersectionality to second generation research,

Anthias (2001) argues that in addition to approaches that acknowledge the multi- layered nature of ‘identity’, there is a continuing need to recognise both the “social relations of ‘othering’ on the one hand, and resource struggles on the other” or what she terms ‘translocational positionality’. The translocational approach, which she proposes, suggests that lives, such as those of the second generation, are:

…located across multiple but also fractured and inter-related

social spaces. Narratives and strategies of identity and belonging

are relationally produced (in terms of both commitment and

struggle). They are situational, temporal and subject to different

meanings and inflections. The notion of translocational moves

away from the idea of cross-cutting groups, which characterizes

much of the discussion of intersectionality and enables a focus on

wider social processes in a space and time framework. (Anthias,

2009, p. 12)

In turn, translocation is an active critique of previous ‘culture’ dominated second generation research, where a singular category of identity is emphasised. Instead consideration of several axes of difference that intersect with the category of ‘the second generation immigrant’ is promoted. Furthermore, Anthias (2001, 2009) extends the notion of ‘intersectionality’, by privileging a situated and contingent analysis of second generation experience, in that the role of structure features as a key aspect of analysis. The translocational aspect allows us to undertake specific and localised analysis of second generation experience; one which pays attention to the spatial and contextual processes involved in identity construction and experience. Positionality provides a space to consider the intersection of structure and agency in the processes of identity construction, negotiation and contestation.

Proposed methods of applying intersectionality in terms of analysis have been to date somewhat limited. This is partly due to the emphasis on the theoretical critique focus of intersectionality in and of itself, as well as the difficulties of developing a method that can capture the complexity of analysis of the intersections of different social divisions whilst also accounting for the historical and political context and processes structuring these intersections (Nash, 2008). In response, McCall (2005, p. 1772) presents three methodological approaches. First, anticategorical complexity encompasses a critique of the validity of current analytic categories. As McCall (2005) outlines, scholars within this approach argue that categories such as race and gender are too simplistic to encompass the complexity of lived experiences of identity and oppression and instead seek to

bring to light the social/political processes that draw boundaries of exclusion and mark subjects within certain categories. Second, intracategorical complexity focuses on marginalised intersectional identity and research. Those adopting this approach seek to uncover the lived experiences of subjects within such groups.

This research addresses the multiple burdens that an individual might experience due to being positioned within multiple, intersecting social divisions. Similar to intracategorical complexity, McCall’s (2005) final proposed and favoured methodology of intercategorical complexity also uses as its starting point current analytical categories. However, research adapting this approach furthers the analysis from individual lived experience in an attempt to illuminate the inequality between social groups and analyse the shifting nature of these inequalities.

In taking up the concerns of intersectionality outlined above and a translocational positionality perspective within second generation immigrant studies I propose the use of Discourse Theory, as articulated by Laclau and Mouffe in their seminal text Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (1985). I contend that Discourse Theory is aptly positioned as an ontology and theoretical framework to examine the discursive constructions of second generation immigrant identity whilst promoting the principles of intersectionality. I suggest that Discourse Theory allows for an analysis, which takes into account the historically situated and contingent nature of intersecting social divisions while also promoting engagement with individual experiences of multiple burdens, across multiple axes of power. As I will outline in the following sections, Discourse Theory promotes an

understanding of the interconnectedness between structures that create and reinforce forms of discrimination and the individual experiences of these along several axes of oppression. I begin with a consideration of the ontological assumptions of Discourse Theory, namely the primacy of the political and the impossibility of separating the discursive and non-discursive. I then consider what

‘discourse’ is in relation to the construction and contestation of identity and examine the key concepts central to this theoretical framework, including articulation, hegemony, social antagonism, logics of equivalence and difference and myths.

Discourse Theory: An ontology

The first ontological assumption of Discourse Theory is the primacy of the political in the construction of discourse and identity. Generally speaking, within Marxism it is proposed that society is determined by a foundational economic/material base, which in turn determines the political ‘superstructure’. It is through ‘relations of production’, such as employee and employer, that occur at the base that ‘determine the economic structure or foundation of society’. Therefore, in this view it is

‘material’ production that structures other domains of life, such as the social and the political. Gramsci (1991) critiqued this notion by introducing a dialectic relationship between the base and superstructure, whereby the base acts on the superstructure and political processes (the superstructure) also are capable of acting back on the base.

Building on Gramsci’s interpretation, Laclau and Mouffe (1990, p. 33), argue that

“the economic space itself is structured as a political space first and foremost”, highlighting that the political processes are considered the most important – politics has primacy. From this perspective, as noted by Howarth and Stavrakakis

(2000, p. 8), Discourse Theory:

…implies that all ideological elements in a discursive field are

contingent, rather than fixed by a class essence, and that there is

no fundamental class agency or political project that determines

processes of historical change in an a priori fashion.

As a result, the political is elevated so that it has ontological primacy over other domains such as the social and economic. Furthermore, Laclau and Mouffe argue for the primacy of political concepts, such as hegemony and antagonism, relating to the idea of conflict and struggle, as these operate to determine ‘the social’.

The second ontological assumption relates to the impossibility of dividing discursive and the non-discursive. In Foucault’s approach to conceptualising the role of discourse, a clear division is maintained between the discursive - the rules of formation that determine the objects of a particular discourse - and the non- discursive - the [material] practices and conditions that are beyond discourse. For example, within a Foucauldian perspective, what is discursively constructed as the

criteria for belonging to a nation, such as being a citizen of that country, is seen as separate to the political and institutional practices, such as regulating who can apply for citizenship and on which basis citizenship is granted. This idea is emphasised in Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (Fairclough, 1995, 1995) where discourse is viewed as a linguistic process (written and spoken language as well as visual images) and the non-discursive dimension is considered to be social practices (i.e. applying for and being granted citizenship).

In comparison, Laclau and Mouffe (1985) do not view discourse as language alone.

Instead, discourse encompasses all social processes - it is language and practice. In stating this Laclau and Mouffe (1985) do not suggest that the ‘material’ is no longer important. For example, to draw on the example cited above, the conditions of citizenship are governed by administrative and legislative procedures.

Underpinning both these aspects, are the political processes and struggles over what criteria provides the basis for belonging to a nation. In turn, this places value on ‘citizenship’ as a meaningful way of belonging to a country, and being a non- citizen as having obvious implications for non-participation in a country’s life.

Material/textual practices cannot be separated from the political discourse of national belonging, as they are part and parcel of the discursive process. From this perspective, it is not possible to divide the linguistic and material components of a discourse, as they act together to form a discourse.

Critics of Discourse Theory often misunderstand Laclau and Mouffe’s (1985)

conception of discourse and the discursive, couching it in terms of a realist versus idealist or thought versus reality contest. As such, critics suggest that Laclau and

Mouffe (1985, p. 108) believe ‘reality’ no longer exists. Laclau and Mouffe dismiss this assertion stating:

The fact that every object is constituted as an object of discourse

has nothing to do with whether there is a world external to

thought, or with the realism/idealism opposition. An earthquake

or the falling of a brick is an event that certainly exists, in the

sense that it occurs here and now, independently of my will. But

whether their specificity as objects is constructed in terms of

‘‘natural phenomena’’ or ‘‘expressions of the wrath of God’’,

depends upon the structuring of a discursive field. What is denied

is not that such objects exist externally to thought, but the rather

different assertion that they could constitute themselves as

objects outside any discursive conditions of emergence. (Laclau

and Mouffe, 1985, p. 108)

In Discourse Theory, the domains often referred to as the physical and social exist, however we are only able to access such objects through discourses, which are symbolic systems of meaning (Jorgenson and Phillips, 2002). Laclau and Mouffe argue against the idea of objects or subjects having a priori meaning. Instead, drawing on the Lacanian notion of ‘the lack’, whereby all attempts to fix meaning

are seen as efforts to remedy primordial estrangement, they argue that there is an on-going attempt to fill this lack by actively constructing meaning at specific historical and political moments. This is achieved by the process of drawing frontiers or boundaries between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ (Howarth and

Stavrakakis, 2000). In the following sections on Discourse and other critical concepts, I will return to this notion of frontiers, and the role of opposing meanings, through the logics of equivalence and difference as central to the construction of subject positions and identity.

Discourse Theory: A political identity theory

Much of the work undertaken by Laclau and Mouffe in establishing Discourse

Theory as a theory of political identity has involved critiquing and combining

Marxist, poststructuralist and psychoanalytic theories (Howarth, 1995; Howarth and Stavrakakis, 2000). Drawing from this base, Discourse Theory views society or the ‘social’ as a discursive construction which is intrinsically political, insofar as social practices and interactions (speech, talk and actions etc.) can only be rendered meaningful in relation to the power struggles in which they are situated and from which they emanate (Torfing, 1999). As noted by Howarth and

Stavrakakis (2000, p. 3), “Discourse theory assumes that all objects and actions are meaningful, and that their meaning is conferred by historically specific systems of rules”. This provides us with an initial understanding of what discourse is – a system of rules or a signifying sequence that determines objects and the identity of

subjects (Howarth and Stavrakakis, 2000; Torfing, 1999). More specifically, discourse refers to the temporary and partial fixation of meaning.

Discourses are formed through articulatory practices:

We will call articulation any practice establishing a relation among

elements such that their identity is modified as a result of the

articulatory practice. The structured totality resulting from the

articulatory practice, we will call discourse. The differential

positions, insofar as they appear articulated within a discourse,

we will call moments. By contrast, we will call element any

difference that is not discursively articulated. (Laclau and Mouffe,

1985, p. 105; italics in original)

As this quote asserts, articulation refers to every practice that attempts to fix the meaning of signs in relation to other signs by linking them to a central reference point (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985, p. 112). A nodal point is a privileged sign, which provides the central point around which other signs are ordered. The fixing of signs around nodal points is understood as moments. In other words, discourse involves the fixing of signs in a system where they become moments. Each sign gains its meaning in relation to other signs and the signs are brought together around a master signifier (nodal point) (Jorgenson and Phillips, 2002). Laclau and

Mouffe (1985) state that moments are the signs that are fixed, creating a unity of meaning. The quotation also introduces the concept of an element as ‘any difference that is not discursively articulated’. Elements are the signs that are empty of meaning and which are capable of having multiple, potential meanings.

As such, articulation involves the process of transforming elements into moments by preventing the other possible meanings.

In the case of this research, articulation can be illustrated by the construct of

‘national identity’ and meaning attributed to the concept of ‘citizenship’ within both traditional national discourse and transnational discourse (Bloemraad, 2004).

In traditional discourse, a number of signifiers (citizen, immigrant, foreigner etc.) acquire meaning by being articulated around the signifier ‘citizenship’, which acts as the nodal point or master signifier. ‘Citizenship’ is also an element, insofar as there are many different competing ways of understanding citizenship. In traditional discourse, by linking ‘citizenship’ to ideas of rights and belonging, citizenship is heralded as a key pillar of national identity and closed national boundaries in terms of explicitly defining ‘who belongs’. As such, targeted interventions are employed by governments to regulate who has access to citizenship, managed through stringent policies and processes. On the other hand, a transnational discourse emphasises deterritorialised citizenship, where the possibility of dual citizenship and multiple allegiances are promoted (Bloemraad,

2004). In turn, ‘citizenship’ is understood in a more fluid sense, where dual citizenship and multiple allegiances are supported and national boundaries are

more porous. Thus the question of ‘who belongs’ is rendered less clear. The word

‘citizenship’ in and of itself has no a priori meaning. Instead it is through the process of articulation that it is positioned in relation to other signs and gains different meanings.

Nodal points, such as ‘citizen’, are privileged signs that provide the central point around which other signs are ordered. Nodal points are also empty signifiers in that they have no a priori meaning, only acquiring meaning through their association with other signifiers through articulatory practices. Nodal points are what Laclau and Mouffe term floating signifiers, “the signs that different discourses struggle to invest with meaning in their own particular way” (Jorgenson and

Phillips, 2002, p. 29). To clarify, ‘citizenship’ is a floating signifier (empty master signifier), in that it is involved in the continuous struggle between different discourses as the ‘central’ point of meaning. As a nodal point, which indicates “a point of crystallisation within a specific discourse” (Jorgenson and Phillips, 2002, p.

29), ‘citizenship’ provides the ‘central’ point within traditional national and transnational discourses, through the process of articulation.

But what happens to all the possibilities that are excluded? Here, the notion of the field of discursivity (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985, p. 111), as all possible meaning outside of discourse (Jorgenson & Phillips, 2002), is important. The field of discursivity constitutes the ‘theoretical horizon’ in which objects are given meaning through a socially constructed system of rules and significant differences

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(Howarth and Stavrakakis, 2000). It can be imagined as the ‘surplus of meaning’ that signs have or have had in other discourses, but which have been excluded from this discourse in order to create a totality of meaning.

In explaining this idea further, Laclau and Mouffe build on poststructuralist arguments relating to language, namely by critiquing Sassurian linguistics

(Jorgenson and Phillips, 2002; Torfing, 1999). Laclau and Mouffe negate the

Sassurian idea of a closed structure determined by the presence of a privileged centre. Instead they argue that the exclusion of all other possible meaning threatens the internal order of the structure, preventing full closure. In other words, discourse can never be totally fixed or closed because of the threat of being undermined and changed by the multiplicity of meaning outside of the structure

(Jorgenson & Phillips, 2002). Discourses are thus contingent (Howarth and

Stavrakakis, 2000, p. 11); as the transition from elements to moments can never be complete, the establishment of a discourse is dependent on the “constitutive outside” (Laclau, 1990; Laclau and Mouffe, 1985), which in turn threatens its very existence.

It is through hegemonic articulatory practices, by attempts to prevent signs from relating in other ways, that a unified system of meaning or a discourse is established. As a product, certain identities or fixations of meaning become the dominant way of knowing and thereby form, what Laclau (1990, p. 64) terms, our

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collective social imaginary. As defined by Laclau (1990, p. 64), a collective social imaginary is ‘a horizon’ or ‘absolute limit which structures a field of intelligibility’

(Howarth and Stavrakakis, 2000). This can be understood as ‘objectivity’ of meaning, insofar as whilst a discourse appears static and unchallenged or naturalised, the moments of discourse can become elements and thus open for new articulations of meaning. For instance, the notions of ‘the country’ or ‘the nation’ within patriotic discourses are imagined as if they exist as a totality (closed structure) by ascribing them an ‘objective’ nature. However, this totality is still an imagined entity and is open to change, depending on how it is articulated, for instance by a right-wing versus left-wing politician (Jorgenson and Phillips, 2002).

As referred to above, ‘the country’ and ‘the nation’ are floating signifiers (empty of meaning), in that they are invested with different meanings and linked to other signifiers by different discourses, thus appearing as a totality.

Laclau (1990, p. 61) discusses the role of myths to further elaborate on hegemony of discourse. Myths arise from structural dislocation providing new spaces for representation of identities or meaning, with the intention of disrupting the very space of dislocation from which it can emerge (Howarth and Stavrakakis, 2000)

Hegemonic articulatory practices utilise myths to temporarily structure the social or a subject position in the event of an antagonistic struggle in order to make acts meaningful or seemingly ‘objective’ within a discourse (Howarth and Stavrakakis,

2000). When a myth reaches the point of dissolving a given social disruption the myth is translated into a social imaginary (Howarth and Stavrakakis, 2000), in that

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the horizon of possible meaning is limited to the confines of the hegemonic discourse.

The very process of hegemonic articulation depends on, and can be subverted or displaced by, antagonisms through the exercise of power (Howarth and

Stavrakakis, 2000; Jorgenson and Phillips, 2002). Antagonisms, as a negative instance, characterise the conflict between discourses, or the way discourses mutually exclude one another in the constant struggle to fix meaning (Jorgenson and Phillips, 2002, p. 28). The presence of antagonisms enables discourses and the subject positions they engender to be destabilised from the outside (from the field of discursivity), and through the rearticulation of its elements, discourse is challenged by an alternative discourse. From the perspective of psychoanalytic theory this occurs when a subject position is called into question, usually during a crisis, and the presentation of an opposing or contrasting identity destabilises the seeming ‘objectivity’ or naturalised certainty of that identity. In a Lacanian sense, antagonisms reveal ‘the lack’ at the centre of all social identity and ‘objectivity’

(Howarth and Stavrakakis, 2000, p. 14). Through antagonisms, the prevention of identity is experienced by both the oppressor and the oppressed:

Insofar as there is antagonism, I cannot be a full presence for

myself. But nor is the force that antagonizes me such a presence:

its objective being is a symbol of my non-being and, in this way, it

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is overflowed by a plurality of meanings which prevent it being

fixed as full positivity. (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985, p. 125)

To account for the presence of antagonisms, Laclau and Mouffe introduce the logics of equivalence and difference and myths. The logic of equivalence operates within articulatory practices to create a single chain of equivalence, emphasising similarities between identities over the differences of the ‘Other’. Frontiers are drawn, dividing the field of discursivity into two competing camps (antagonistic poles) and, in turn, strengthening the link or chain between the similar identities

(Howarth and Stavrakakis, 2000). Logics of difference do the exact opposite. They involve expanding the system of difference by dissolving the chains of equivalence, thus weakening the antagonistic polarity between the competing camps. Thus the similarities between identities, established through logics of equivalence, are called into question through logics of difference, blurring the necessary distinction between the ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’.

Based on the ideas of antagonisms and logics of equivalence and difference, the

‘subject’ in Discourse Theory can been explored. In theorising subject positions,

Laclau and Mouffe appropriate Derrida’s (1998) notion of the ‘constitutive outside’, arguing that identities are determined by difference or in relation to the ‘other’. As such, subject positions are relationally dependent and thus contingent. Because of this, neither the subject nor the other is fixed or stable. Moreover, distinctions between the subject and the other cannot be distinguished as they both form each

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other; the outside is constitutive. In other words, Derrida’s (1998) notion of the constitutive outside suggests that without the existence of the other, the subject in question could not be determined, but at the same time, the presence of the other prevents the complete closure of the subject.

The psychoanalytical concept of subject as lack further supports this claim. Lacan argued that there is an on-going experience of a lack that we strive to fill, but never completely close. Lacan’s theory of the infant argues that, whilst in symbiosis with the mother the infant experiences completeness. When detached that completeness is remembered. Overtime the child is socialised and through discursive representations is shown (from the outside) ‘who she/he is’ and the conditions of that identity. Whilst these ideas are internalised there is a constant feeling of disconnect with those outside representations that are attempting to fill the internal order. As the outside determines the subject, which in turn never completely aligns or fills the lack, the attainment of a full identity is impossible.

The subject is therefore split or fractured into multiple subject positions (Howarth and Stavrakakis, 2000; Jorgenson and Phillips, 2002).

Returning to Derrida’s notion of the ‘constitutive outside’, and linking this with the lack of the subject, we can see how the outside or the other identity is both constitutive of the subject and also prevents it from ever being complete. Thus, as

Laclau and Mouffe (1985) posit neither identity is ever fully closed, with the

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hegemonic discourse instead conditioning the subject and its outside at any given moment.

Drawing on Althusser’s approach to the subject, Laclau and Mouffe suggest that subjects are interpellated (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985). Subject positions are engendered by discourses (discourse designates the positions people will occupy), which in turn provide the basis for choices in relation to identification at various points in time. Thus, the subject is not autonomous in the sense that they are free to choose subject positions. For example, in migration law the subject positions of

‘immigration officer’, ‘foreigner’ and ‘citizen’ are specified. Corresponding to these positions are certain expectations about how the different subjects will interact, for example at immigration clearance at the airport.

According to Laclau and Mouffe (1985), subjects are also fragmented, in that they can be given many different positions by different discourses. For example, subject may be a ‘mother’ in a family situation, an ‘employee’ in the work place and a

‘foreigner’ when arriving in a new country. Whilst the shift between subject positions is usually not obvious, if competing discourses attempt to simultaneously interpellate subject positions, the subject is interpellated in different positions at the same time. As indicated above, the subject is split or fractured, and as such the subject is constituted by an ensemble of different ‘subject positions’ that do not necessarily accommodate one another. For example, when it comes to voting in elections, the subject could be interpellated as a feminist, worker or conservative

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(Jorgenson and Phillips, 2002). Whilst they all seem like plausible subject positions, due to their contrasting nature the subject becomes overdetermined. This refers to the way in which the subject is positioned by several conflicting discourses and as a result conflict arises (Jorgenson and Phillips, 2002). In Laclau and Mouffe’s view, subjects are always overdetermined as they will always be spilt across many different subject positions. Subject positions appear naturalised, or not in conflict, as a result of hegemonic processes by temporarily excluding alternative possibilities (Jorgenson and Phillips, 2002).

In summing up, Discourse Theory aims to capture the positioning of subjects within a discursive structure. There is a constant drive to fill the lack of the subject, which is in part addressed by the ‘constitutive outside’ or the other. Thus subject positions are relational. Due to the impossibility of filling the lack however, the subject is also split, whereby they can be ascribed multiple subject positions.

Through discursive articulatory processes, the subject is interpellated into different subject positions, which often conflict with one another resulting in the overdetermination of the subject.

Overall, Laclau and Mouffe’s (1985) notion of the subject highlights the multiplicity of identity - the intersection of competing subject positions at any given moment, and how these are discursively determined through antagonistic process. This theoretical framework, I posit, has potential to expand intersectionality theory, and attend to the concerns of translocational positionality within the context of second

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generation immigrant research. Discourse Theory provides a comprehensive ontology of how knowledge and the material world are constructed through discursive practices that are inherently political and historically contingent.

Specifically, the assumptions of Discourse Theory - the primacy of the political and the impossibility of a divide between the non-discursive and discursive (or the material and non-material) - indicates the pervasiveness of discursive practices in the construction of knowledge and meaning. Thus, as intersectionality and translocational positionality requires, the analysis of identity is situated within the appropriate historical and political context.

As Anne Marie Smith (1991) has noted, Laclau and Mouffe’s Discourse Theory also provides a dynamic theoretical framework for conceptualising political identity, which identifies the role of discourse in structuring subject positions and outlines key concepts of antagonism and hegemony, which elucidate the political struggles inherent within identity construction. By using Discourse Theory as the theoretical framework for this study, the key conditions of intersectionality and translocational positionality approaches to second generation immigrant research can be applied. This will enable an analysis that attends to the previous tension of structure and agency by critically considering the competing discursive conditions that structure available subject positions. In turn, I will be able to actively examine identity as a relational construct which is spatially, temporally, contextually and politically contingent.

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Chapter summary

In this chapter I considered the key theoretical debates on second generation identity relating to the acculturation, which focuses on the ability of the second generation to assimilate into the host society. I also critically outlined the current application of hybridity theory, from post-colonial studies, to migration and cultural research. Drawing on critiques of these perspectives, I argued that current conceptualisations tend to privilege an immigrant-centred notion of the second generation, where they are positioned as ‘insiders, on the outside’, either due to having to navigate an assumed cultural divide or because of their assumed hybrid culture, which positions them on the ‘outside’.

By considering intersectionality theory and translocational positionality, it can be seen that research that examines the intersectional, multi-layered, spatially and contextually situated nature of identity is needed. In taking up this challenge, I subsequently presented Laclau and Mouffe’s Discourse Theory, as an aptly positioned ontology and theoretical framework to examine the discursive construction of second generation immigrant identity. In the following chapter I discuss how Discourse Theory can be extended as a methodological approach for empirical research inquiry, the use of qualitative research within this approach as well as an outline the design of this study.

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Chapter 4 Methodology and study design

Overview of thesis

Introduction

This chapter provides an overview of the theoretical framework and methods I employed in this study to examine the identity and wellbeing of second generation immigrants of New Zealand descent in Australia. Building on the theoretical considerations presented in the previous chapter, I outline the applicability of a

Discourse Theoretical Approach as an appropriate methodology to guide the qualitative methods utilised in this study. This is followed by consideration of the

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importance of ensuring rigour to promote trustworthy qualitative data collection and analysis and how I sought to address this throughout the study. In the latter part of the chapter, I discuss the research design adopted for this study for the purposes of data collection, management and analysis. This involved a genealogical analysis of trans-Tasman immigration and settlement legislation, a discursive analysis of print media articles related to the subject position of New Zealand immigrants in Australia and semi-structured interviews with Australian-born young adults of New Zealand descent. I explain why these methods for data collection and analysis were employed, describe the process of implementing these in a rigorous manner and consider some of the methodological and ethical issues involved.

A methodology: Discourse Theoretical Approach and qualitative research

The applicability of qualitative research within Discourse Theory has been outlined as a necessary aspect for transferring the principles and concepts of

Discourse Theory into a methodological approach. As Carpentier (2010, p. 258) suggests there are “significant parallels between Discourse Theory and the basic principles of qualitative research”, making it a suitable mode of inquiry.

Qualitative inquiry focuses on exploring people’s experiences in particular settings, placing emphasis on understanding the world from the positioning of individuals

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(Denzin and Lincoln, 2003; Jongbloed, 2000). In defining qualitative inquiry there has been a tendency for scholars to provide a contrast from quantitative research, in part because quantitative research has a longer standing presence in ‘scientific research’ (Creswell, 1994; Denzin and Lincoln, 2003). While it is commonplace to distinguish between quantitative and qualitative research when justifying the use of either, it is important to recognise that both approaches provide ways to capture a sense of ‘reality’ (both have different understandings of the concept of reality), providing different and legitimate ways, or frameworks from which to do so

(Denzin and Lincoln, 2003).

While quantitative research aims to objectively “describe, explain or predict phenomena” (Jongbloed, 2000, p. 14) that exist out there in the world and determine cause and effect, “qualitative researchers tend to stress the socially constructed nature of reality, the intimate relationship between the researcher and what is studied, and the situational constraints that shape inquiry” (Denzin and

Lincoln, 2003, p. 13). Qualitative research seeks to move beyond description in order to provide an interpretation of the experiences, emotions, memories and social interactions of diverse individuals and groups (Jongbloed, 2000). Thus qualitative research can support and enhance the information produced from quantitative research. Additionally, when conducting inquiry into a little known area, qualitative research can provide a useful starting point to investigate in a more exploratory and ‘open’ manner the phenomenon in question (Denzin and

Lincoln, 2005).

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Carpentier (2010) suggests that qualitative research is ideally suited for Discourse

Theory because of: the interpretive nature of inquiry, the privileging of social construction in knowledge production, and the contingency of meaning and methods that require openness to meaning within the data. Qualitative methods allow us to capture in-depth data about the way identities and meanings are determined by discourse, and are subsequently interpreted and negotiated by individuals (Howarth, 1995; Howarth and Stavrakakis, 2000). In transferring

Discourse Theory to Discourse Theoretical Analysis, the mission of the discourse analyst is to deconstruct the discourses that are viewed as natural or ‘objective’ through interpretive methods.

As a methodology, a Discourse Theoretical Approach involves drawing on sensitising concepts – the tools that enable researchers to identify ‘what to look for and where to look’ within data and during analysis (Carpentier, 2010). Within

Discourse Theoretical Analysis the primary sensitising concept is discourse, as specifically defined and conceptualised by Discourse Theory (as discussed in

Chapter Three). Secondary sensitising concepts from Discourse Theory are found at two levels – the way in which discourses operate and political identity theory

(table 4.1).

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Table 4.1 Key sensitising concepts of Discourse Theory

Level Sensitising concepts Primary Discourse

Secondary – Discourse Articulation Nodal point Floating signifier Subject position Secondary – Political identity Logics of equivalence and difference theory Antagonism Hegemony (adapted from (Carpentier, 2010))

The importance of text

Drawing on Derrida’s notion that ‘there is nothing outside the text’, Howarth and

Stavrakakis (2000) ague that Discourse Theoretical Analysis can involve many forms of ‘textual’ data. Textual data can include written texts, such as speeches, government reports, legislation, interview transcripts, and media articles, as well as images and symbols (Carpentier and DeCleen, 2007; Howarth and Stavrakakis,

2000).

Within Discourse Theory, all ‘texts’ are regarded “as sets of signifying practices that constitute a ‘discourse’ and its ‘reality’ thus providing the conditions which enable subjects to experience the world of objects, words and practices” (Howarth and Stavrakakis, 2000, p. 6). Specifically, ‘texts’, as a discursive ‘unit’, provide the site at which discourses are recorded in partial ways; it is here that discourse are

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inscribed, enacted and understood in their historical context (Chalaby, 1996;

Phillips and Hardy, 2002). As Philips and Hardy contend (2002, p. 4):

Texts are not meaningful individually; it is only through their

interconnection with other texts, the different discourses on

which they draw, and the nature of their production,

dissemination, and consumption that they are made meaningful.

It is thus the role of the discourse analyst to examine the processes through which certain ‘texts’ are rendered meaningful and in turn how they discursively operate to structure certain discourses (Phillips and Hardy, 2002).

Discourse Theoretical Analysis: Techniques

Various methods congruent with the ontological assumptions of Discourse Theory for analysis can be drawn from linguistic and literature theory. These include

Derrida’s deconstruction ‘method’ (Derrida, 1996), Foucault’s archaeological and genealogical approaches (Foucault, 1972; Koopman, 2009), and Laclau and

Mouffe’s notions of equivalence and difference (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985). Each can be applied to empirical data with the aim of deconstructing or rendering visible the way in which hegemonic discourses are articulated and come to form the collective social imaginary, or come to be understood as ‘reality’.

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When undertaking analysis of specific qualitative textual data, the sensitising concepts of a Discourse Theoretical Approach can be harnessed. For instance, it can be useful to begin by identifying the key signifiers: nodal points, which organise discourses; master signifiers, which organise identity; and myths, which organise

‘the social’. By identifying these key signifiers in empirical data we can begin to examine how discourses and subject positions are discursively organised. As noted in Chapter Three, key signifiers are empty signs, insofar as they have no meaning in and of themselves. Instead it is through their association with other signs, via chains of equivalence that they become filled with meaning. Thus by highlighting how these key signifiers are associated with other signs through chains of meaning we can start to identify discourses, and their identities and social spaces. When undertaking this investigation, both linguistic and non-linguistic practices/objects are part of discourse and can be identified as part of chains of equivalence. In addition, identities can also be examined in line with the notion of chains of equivalence. In particular, by identifying how identities are relationally established or established in relation to the outside (what they are not), we can uncover the chains of equivalence and difference at play (Jorgenson and Phillips, 2002).

By using these concepts, functioning of discourses in empirical material can be examined. In particular, Jorgenson and Phillips (2002, p. 32) suggest that the following questions can be considered to guide analysis:

How does discourse constitute reality, identities and social relations?

When and where do discourses function unobtrusively side-by-side?

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Where there are open antagonisms?

Which hegemonic interventions are striving to override the conflicts - in

which ways and with which consequences?

From this vantage point, the discourse analyst attempts to reveal the hegemonic articulation of historically contingent discourses, identifying the processes through which certain identities and meanings are structured as ‘reality’, and importantly, the ‘social’ consequences of these constructions.

Positioning of the discourse analyst and rigour

In undertaking a Discourse Theoretical Approach to data analysis, it is important to recognise that like everyone else, the discourse analyst cannot remove himself or herself from the discursive structure (Jorgenson and Phillips, 2002). As such, deconstruction must begin in the discourse itself. As Derrida (1998, p. 24) aptly notes:

The movements of deconstruction do not destroy structures from

the outside. They are not possible and effective, nor can they take

accurate aim, except by inhabiting those structures.

Whilst the aim of a Discourse Theoretical Approach is to create distance from the discourses in order to deconstruct them and expose how they operate, the

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discourse analyst is inevitably a part of the discourse they are attempting to uncover. As Jorgenson and Phillips (2002) highlight “in this kind of theory there is no hope of escaping from the discourses and telling the pure truth, truth in itself being always a discursive construction” (p. 29). Techniques used to ensure rigour within qualitative research can be harnessed to assist the researcher in taking a

‘deconstructive position’, where they account for their own discursive positioning within the discourses they are unpacking. Additionally, taking steps to promote rigour enables others to assess the quality and trustworthiness of the different methods of data collection, management, analysis and presentation. Barbour

(2001) suggests that techniques for rigourous data collection and analysis can add to the overall rigour of qualitative research if they align with the broader qualitative research design. In line with Discourse Theory, the techniques that I used to promote rigour include triangulation, saturation, reflexivity and an audit trail.

Triangulation

Triangulation refers to the use of different strategies or a variety of methods to gather and analyse data, as a means to ensure the trustworthiness of the research process and findings produced, and to corroborate findings (Denzin and Lincoln,

2003). Triangulation can involve a variety of data sources, investigators, and theories and methodologies (Denzin, 1989; Foster, 1997; Kimchi, Polivka, and

Stevenson, 1991; Tobin and Begley, 2002, 2004). Specifically, triangulation can include:

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data source triangulation, where multiple sources of information are used

methodological triangulation, involving the use of multiple research methods to

collect and analyse data

researcher triangulation, where more than one researcher is used in the data

collection and analysis stages

theoretical triangulation, drawing on multiple theoretical perspectives to

inform findings.

Although triangulation is not an end in itself to ensuring rigour, this approach to data collection and analysis has been noted to enhance a study as it “might yield an interpretation that offers a new perspective on the research question, one that is far more interesting than you could have envisaged at the outset” (Arksey and

Knight, 1999, p. 31). Triangulation can also enable researchers to identify outliers, lead to the consolidation of theories and can sometimes provide a “critical test, by virtue of its comprehensiveness, for competing theories” (Jick, 1983, p 145). In support of triangulation, researchers have commented that this approach can provide a more ‘inclusive’ view of the participants’ world by bringing together a range of different ways to look at the same phenomenon of inquiry, revealing similarities and differences, and ultimately assisting in corroborating findings

(Miles and Huberman, 1994; Tobin and Begley, 2002). Denzin (1989) notes that,

“triangulation of method, investigator, theory, and data remains the soundest strategy of theory construction” (p. 236).

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In this study I used data, theory and method triangulation. This decision was made not only because this process assisted in undertaking rigourous research, but also because the use of multiple sources of data and processes to interpret data is advocated within a Discourse Theoretical Approach. Discourse Theory itself is the product of theory triangulation. In the subsequent chapters I will draw upon the analysis of historical and media text, and interview transcripts to explore in-depth the construction and contestation of discourses relating to the identity and wellbeing of the children of New Zealanders in Australia, guided by the tools of a

Discourse Theoretical Approach.

Sampling and saturation

Within qualitative research obtaining an adequate sample is a key concern, with the focusing on gathering a sample that will lead in-depth, rich and diverse of information on a range of experiences, values and opinions (Gaskell, 2000; Kuzel,

1992. Morse and Field (1995) propose that principles of appropriateness and adequacy should guide qualitative sampling. In terms of appropriateness, the number of participants or cases included in the sample can be determined by the nature of the research topic as well as the resources available (Morse and Field,

1995; O’Reilly and Parker, 2013; Tuckett, 2004). Adequacy of the sample is based on whether saturation has been reached. Saturation occurs when “depth as well as breadth of information is achieved” (O’Reilly and Parker, 2013, p. 4).

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Due to the nature of the topic of this study, I gathered three interrelated data sets: a range of historical, policy and academic texts for the genealogical analysis, print media articles from three major newspapers in Australia published between 1985-

2010 for the media analysis, and participants for the second generation immigrant interviews. Whilst the details of sampling for each data set are outlined later in the chapter, at each stage of sampling I accounted for appropriateness and adequacy in the following ways.

With the genealogy and media, I undertook a key word search of relevant online databases in an effort to gather a range of documents and media articles that covered the breath of historical and contemporary information on trans-Tasman migration and the Australia-New Zealand bilateral relationship. Ensuring data saturation in the genealogy involved a close reading of the documents, charting a timeline of events from this reading and then subsequently using the timeline to check all key events had been covered in depth and from a range of sources. As I had a large corpus of media articles, I used Leximancer software to conduct data mining of the sample in order to identify key themes and outliers (this strategy is outlined in further detail later in the chapter).

In terms of the interview participants, I began with intention of capturing a diversity of perspectives and thus included both Pākehā and Māori participants in the sample. In order to capture rich data I conducted in-depth interviews with the participants, which enabled me to explore a range of issues and experiences with

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the participants. Data saturation was assessed during the data gathering and analysis stages. First, the approach I took to the interviews was iterative, insofar as during the earlier interviews, I continually reflected on and adapted the interview questions based on additional topics that were covered by the participants to ensure there was a breath of issues addressed in subsequent interviews. I began analysis soon after the few first transcripts has been completed. As such, I was analysing and interviewing in parallel which allowed me to identify when certain topics and experiences were being repeated across the participants and when new ideas were identified. Through this simultaneous process I was able to ascertain to some degree when specific topics had reached ‘saturation’ and also when unique/outlier information had been gathered. Sampling for the interviews, as I discuss later in this chapter, was also restricted by accessibility, time and resource limitations.

Reflexivity and positionality

Importance was placed on reflexivity throughout this research. Reflexive research involves recognition on the part of the researcher of the situated nature of knowledge (Haraway, 1991) and the joint endeavour of knowledge production between the researcher and the researched/ subject (Mays and Pope, 2000). It is of particular significance for qualitative research as it allows the researcher to clarify their beliefs, values and background upfront and take into consideration the ways in which the researcher could impact on the interaction and interpretation in the research setting. It also promotes purposeful and frequent integration of the

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researchers’ actions and their role in the research process throughout data collection and analysis. I actively reflected at each stage of the study on how my own positioning within the research I shaped the data I chose to collect, the decisions I made during data analysis and the implications of these actions on the findings produced.

An important aspect of reflexivity, and more broadly rigour, is the researcher‘s positionality - their “personal experiences, values, identities and motivations”

(Cloke, 2005, p. 67) - and how this may influence the research process and findings.

Positionality involves explicitly identifying the researcher’s beliefs, value position, and background and explicitly considering how this will influence the decisions made throughout the research process and the finding produced. Knowledge

(epistemology) is understood to be value-mediated and structured by the position of the knower/ knowledge bearer, as is encapsulated in Haraway’s (1991) metaphor of situated knowledge: all knowledge produced is a bi-product of

“specific embodied knowers, located in particular places and spaces” (Mansvelt and Berg, 2005, p. 252). Thus “knowledge can be partial, located and embodied…

[as it] always comes from someone, somewhere” (Parr, 2005, p. 478). Furthermore, positionality allows for the acknowledgment of our fractured subjectivities or multiple subject positions that we can occupy and how this shapes the way we view and interpret the research (Rose, 1997).

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Drawing on this notion of partial and situated knowledge (Haraway, 1991), the approach I took towards exploring the identity and wellbeing experiences of second generation young people, was a partial one. I acknowledged throughout the research process that I am closely connected to this research topic due to my own positioning, which I outlined in Chapter One.

Through my different experiences and connections to New Zealand and Australia, it was inevitable that my engagement with the subject matter evoked a strong response on my part. With this in mind, during the research process, I have purposely taken time to consider the possible ways my experiences (a few of which are outlined above) mediate my interaction with the participants. Being of similar age to the participants that were involved in my study I believe assisted in developing a sense of rapport. Also, from the outset of each interview I told the participants that I am from New Zealand, and that I am also a ‘second generation immigrant’ in the context of New Zealand. By being up front about my various

‘identities’ I aimed to break down barriers and create a sense of similarity, albeit along somewhat differential lines. This introduction, however, may have shaped the way in which participants interpreted and presented their own answers and stories. In terms of my interpretation of the literature and data, I consciously wrote in the first person pronoun, where appropriate, in order to take ownership over the way I conducted the methods and to explicitly identify my own thoughts and perspectives during the interpretation of the subject matter.

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Audit trail

To further ensure rigour, in the following section of the study design I provide an audit trail as a transparent and detailed description of the research steps involved in each stage of data collection, analysis and management during this study. Mays and Pope (2000) contend that “the methods used in research unavoidably influence the objects of inquiry” and thus a “clear account of the process of data collection and analysis is important” (p. 51). By providing a detailed written account of the process involved, the reader is able to assess whether the findings presented align with methods of data collection and analysis. As part of the audit trail, in the following sections I have described the specific techniques of rigour in data collection and analysis I undertook, including: multiple screening of the media articles, multiple close reading of texts, verbatim transcription of interviews and inclusion of non-verbal communication in transcripts.

Study design

In line with a Discourse Theoretical Approach I drew on a range of qualitative data sources, data collection methods and forms of analysis to explore the identity and belonging experiences of second generation immigrants of New Zealand descent.

Specifically, the study involved the three stages of data collection and analysis, with the following purposes:

1. Genealogy: to consider how historical discursive formations, namely changes in

Australian national identity and subsequent discursive practices, including

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legislative reforms have shaped the positioning of New Zealand immigrants

(and their children) in contemporary discourse(s).

2. Print media: to examine how the subject position of the ‘New Zealand

immigrant’, and more broadly, the identity of New Zealand, is discursively

articulated, in contrast, and relation, to ‘Australia’, as a reflection of the

contemporary collective social imaginary on New Zealand immigrants in

Australia.

3. Semi-structured interviews: to gather in-depth data about the lived

experiences, identity negotiations and wellbeing, of second generation people

of New Zealand descent (one or two migrant parents) in Australia.

The stages of data collection and analysis for each method, as they relate to the tenets of a Discourse Theoretical Approach, are outlined in table 4.2.

This three stage process enabled me to individually collect data from different, yet complementary, data sources and subsequently analyse each set of data using appropriate analysis techniques. The findings of these three stages are presented in Chapters Five, Six and Seven. Then, using the method of triangulation, I was able to link together these analyses to corroborate and further explore ideas relating to the review of the corpus, which is presenting in Chapter Eight. In the following sections I discuss each stage of this study, providing rationale for the use of each method and how it was applied to the subject matter.

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Table 4.2 Overview of study design

PHASE AIM PROCESS Genealogy Media Interviews 1. Data collection To systematically gather Scoping review of Factiva database search Semi-structured data from a range of relevant historical texts, for print media articles interviews with second sources that will enable policy reports and other generation participants the analysis of grey literature historically situated discursive constructions 2. Identify and analyse To delineate the Close reading of texts Data mining to seek Descriptive and the discourses dominant and other to identify the for keyword thematic analysis to competing discourses temporal dimensions associations within examine the key and; of key conceptual the data set conceptual To explore the moments in the data Subsequent thematic categories construction and set analysis of print Group categories, operation of dominant Chart and describe media articles to narrowing down the discourse(s) drawing on the shifts in identify the key number of different the concepts of DT discourse(s) over conceptual groupings discursive positions time and identify key discursive categories Analysis of each data set involved: examining the operation of signifiers, myths and logics of equivalence and difference and the other identifying the possible categories for identification, the intersections of these, social divisions that arise and the spatio-temporal specificities of these moments 3. Draw out the way in To explore the articulation Triangulation of the individual data sets and analyses to critically explore social which the discourses and contestation of consequences of the discourses identified in terms of the available and consenting structure the available discourses and how they subject positions, how they operate to construct ‘objective’ meaning and identities subject positions interpellate subject and the implications of these constructions in relation to political, historical, social positions and cultural dimensions.

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Genealogical analysis

I sought to provide a genealogy of the development of trans-Tasman migration and the implications for the positioning of New Zealand/the New Zealand immigrant in relation to Australia. Before explaining what the genealogy entails and how it was applied in the context of this research project, it is useful to briefly chart the development of Foucault’s (1972) work concerning the methodologies of archaeology and genealogy, although it is difficult to definitively separate them as distinct approaches (Stevenson and Cutcliffe, 2006).

Foucault’s archaeology provides an approach to describing the regulatory practices or ‘systems of statements’ that operate to shore up discourses (Howarth,

2002; Stevenson and Cutcliffe, 2006). Distinguishing this approach from

‘traditional linguistic analysis’, Foucault gave weight to the description of discursive formations, produced within the ‘field of discursivity’ (Foucault, 1972, p.

47), to unveil their historically contingent structure (Howarth, 2002). In working towards revealing the operation of discourses, Foucault (1972) suggested the need to provide a ‘pure description’ of discursive events to bring to the fore the practices that enable their operation.

As Stevenson and Cutcliffe (2006, p. 715) suggest, “It is important to recognize that archaeological research is non-interpretive, in the sense of interpretation aiming to find some deeper meaning”. Thus, arguing against essentialism, Foucault’s

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archaeology proposes the inquirer does not seek to find ‘meaning’ or ‘truth’ within events through interpretation. Instead, using an ‘archive’ of texts (Howarth and

Stavrakakis, 2000), the inquirer seeks to describe the interaction between the linguistic discourses and the non-linguistic practices, to render visible “…the interplay of the rules that make possible the appearance of objects during a given period of time” (Foucault, 1972, p. 36). This attention to examining rules that govern the formation of seemingly ‘natural’ discourses requires that the archaeologist takes the position of a detached inquirer and ‘brackets’ or separates out notions of truth and rationality to focus on the “description of the appearance of statements, and an account of the sets of rules that serve as their condition of existence” (Howarth, 2002, p. 124).

Critiques of archaeology have revealed several ambiguities in this approach. A key concern is Foucault’s conceptualisation of discourse as formed through linguistic practices, such as statements, which in turn shape non-linguistic practices, such as the enactment of laws (Howarth, 2002). Thus there is a privileging of the discursive/non-discursive divide (Howarth and Stavrakakis, 2000; Laclau and

Mouffe, 1985), which I referred to earlier in Chapter Three. By using this binary there is a tendency to describe the manner in which linguistic formations shape non-linguistic practices. Revisiting Laclau and Mouffe’s critique, due to the primacy of the political (Laclau, 1990) this binary view is impossible as it is the political processes and struggles that connect both language and practice as the system of process that operate to determine discourse (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985).

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A further ambiguity relates to Foucault’s differential use of bracketing truth and meaning. In applying his archaeology to a topic of inquiry across different texts,

Foucault shifts from suspending notions of ‘truth’, to having real concern over the production of meaning and truth (Howarth, 2002). Part of this problem lies with

Foucault never clearly defining what he meant in terms of the ‘rules of formation’.

Instead he uses a series of interchangeable terms, such as ‘system’, ‘practice’ and

‘structure’. Due to this Howarth (2002, p. 127) posits is difficult to ascertain the

“precise character and status of the rules themselves”, and how the rules, that underpin discourses, are actually formed.

During what has been termed the genealogical turn (Howarth, 2002), Foucault building on his archaeology, and in responding to some of the ambiguities outlined above, attempted to demonstrate how the historically contingent discourses had contemporary relevance. According to Howarth (2010, p. 326):

The practice of genealogy enabled Foucault to chart the complex

lines of descent and emergence in the formation of an identity or a

rule, and to disclose alternative paths and possibilities.

More than the pure description by a detached inquirer that was advocated in an archaeological approach, the genealogist attempts to question historical discursive conditions and in turn consider their operation in current discursive constructions

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of identity and meaning (Howarth, 2002; Stevenson and Cutcliffe, 2006). Moving beyond the descriptive lens of the archaeologist, the inquirer is now required to assess the application of the discursive rules and statements together with their connected practices (Howarth, 2002). There is a blurring of the discursive/non- discursive divide by recognising the connection between linguistic and non- linguistic practices in the formation of discourses. This latter definition of discourse is more aligned with Laclau and Mouffe’s conceptualisation used in this thesis (Jorgenson and Phillips, 2002; Laclau and Mouffe, 1985).

In comparison to a traditional historian approach where history is seen as an objective process, the genealogist is instead ‘situated’ within the questioning process (Howarth, 2002). In turn, the inquirer:

...diagnoses the problems of contemporary societies by examining

their historical emergence, proffers cures, and suggests

alternative trajectories of development. (Howarth, 2002, p. 128)

Whilst the genealogical approach diverges from pure description, the practice of

‘bracketing’ truth and meaning is not altogether dismissed. Foucault contends that whilst the ‘situated’ genealogist is unable to divorce him or herself or be objective to discursive constructions of truth and meaning, they are still encouraged to view

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such notions with suspicion and understand their problematic nature (Howarth,

2002).

The complex relationship between the genealogy and act of critiquing was conceived by Foucault in his later work as the practice of ‘problematization’

(Howarth, 2002; Koopman, 2009) As Koopman (2009, p. 101) has aptly summarised: “problematization functions to both open up problems in their emergence and to make them available for critical scrutiny”. As such, the purpose of the genealogical approach is to not only describe the rules governing discursive formations, but to also question the way in which discourse has come “...to be accepted as true or legitimate and become objects for thought” (Motion and Leitch,

2007, p. 264). The value of utilising a genealogical approach is thus that it enables the inquirer to analyse the ways in which knowledge and power are structured and explore how this comes to render current discursive practice seemingly legitimate and rational (Howarth, 2002).

This amalgamated methodology allowed for a consideration of how historical discursive formations, namely changes in Australian national identity and subsequent discursive practices, including legislative reforms have shaped the positioning of New Zealand immigrants (and their children) in contemporary discourse(s).

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Data collection

For data collection, an ‘archive’ of texts was compiled, using a hand search to identify relevant government policy documents, Hansard parliamentary transcripts, a review of Australian and New Zealand government and public websites and Google Scholar for academic and grey literature. I used a combination of key words to search online databases Government Hansard, Google and Google

Scholar, Scopus (a social science database), and Trove (a thesis database) to gather a range of literature relating to the historical development of Australia as a nation,

Australian and New Zealand immigration history and the history of ‘relations’ between Australia and New Zealand. Literature included legislation, parliamentary transcripts, government policies, non-government reports, and some academic literature. Each of these forms of ‘data’ were appropriate to examining historical discursive debates as they documented past, and foreshowed current, political debates and legislative changes (Rapley, 2007) relating to Australian immigration policy and restrictions to New Zealand immigration overtime.

Data analysis

In line with a qualitative approach to analysis, a close reading of texts was undertaken to inductively analyse (Thomas, 2006) the archive. The initial use of

Foucault’s earlier archaeology enabled the description of the historical antecedents of the evolution of Australia and New Zealand’s trans-Tasman migration and settlement legislation. Specifically, attention was paid to the temporal dimension of discursive constructions of Australian national identity in

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relation to Australia and New Zealand’s British heritage, political debates on immigration in Australia and, how these related to changes to New Zealand immigration and settlement legislation. Through the close reading of the archive I began by charting the evolution of Australia’s nation building agenda from the

1800s through to the early 2000s, documenting key points in Australia’s

‘development’ as a nation. This involved compiling a descriptive timeline of key events relating to the development of Australia’s immigration policy on the one hand and trans-Tasman migration legislation and commentary about this on the other. On this timeline I accounted for the different sources of information at each key point, and where there was limited information, I conducted a further more specific search of the online databases and search engines outlined above. As such my aim was to gather information about each key event from a range of data sources so as to triangulate and therefore corroborate the various events that had occurred on the timeline. From this timeline I then delineated key time periods where significant shifts had occurred in the direction of the underlying aims of legislative decisions, and further explored these points by re-reading the archive of texts related to these time points.

In attending to the limitations of the archaeology, my analysis was complemented by Foucault’s genealogical approach and the process of ‘problematization’ by questioning (hegemonic) historically contingent discourses of the contemporary positioning of New Zealand immigrants in Australia. I utilised national identity theory to provide a foundation for identifying the shifts in the discursive

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construction of Australia in relation to New Zealand. Then using key sensitising concepts of a Discourse Theoretical Approach, I examined key discursive events along the previously created timeline to identify where logics of equivalence and difference were drawn between Australia and New Zealand/New Zealand immigrants and the operations of myths as a justificatory tool in this discursive process. In examining the development of trans-Tasman migration legislation, I considered the implications of the historically contingent discursive terrain on the contemporary subject positioning of New Zealand immigrants in Australia.

Print media analysis

Building on the genealogical analysis described above, the second stage of the study involved an analysis of print media articles related to New Zealand immigrants in Australia and trans-Tasman migration to further examine the contemporary and competing discursive constructions of the New Zealand immigrant in this context. Torfing (1999, p. 210–224) distinguishes three domains where Discourse Theory can be used within the study of media:

1. studying discourses about the media and how they are situated in society;

2. examining the discourses of mass media, which relates to the form and

content of the discourses produced by the media; or

3. defining media as discourse.

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In this study, I focused on the second operation of the study of media, namely as a means of identifying the ways in which the media has discursively constructed the subject position of New Zealand immigrants in Australia. According to Carpentier and DeCleen (2007, p. 274), within Discourse Theory, media acts “not just as passively expressing or reflecting social phenomena, but as specific machineries that produce, reproduce and transform social phenomena.” As such, the textual data – print media articles – were not treated merely as ‘representations’ of discourse, but instead as both embodying and as a performative practice of enacting discursive constructions of the subject position of the New Zealand immigrant in Australia. The print media analysis of this study was critical for linking the genealogical analysis of the historical antecedents of trans-Tasman migration and Australia’s national identity, with how the subject position of the

New Zealand immigration has been discursively constructed.

Data collection

I used the Factiva database to search for media articles relating to New Zealanders in Australia and the trans-Tasman relationship, within keyword, date and source search limits. The date range of the search was limited to articles published between 01/01/1985 and 01/01/2010. This time period was chosen as it reflects the main life span of the participants (see interviews), with 1985 being just prior to when the oldest participant in the target group was born to experience most recent events. This three-decade time frame also allowed me to examine the evolving nature of discourses over a significant period of time. In order to capture

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a sense of both national and local representations of New Zealanders over time, the search included articles from the following sources: The Australian (national),

Daily Telegraph (national), Sunday Telegraph (national), The Sydney Morning

Herald (local).

I used a combination key word search to gather media texts relating broadly to

New Zealanders in Australia and the New Zealand-Australia/trans-Tasman relationship. Articles relating to Māori and Pacific peoples in Australia were also searched using appropriate keyword combinations. Due to the infinite possibilities of meaning through language, I used synonyms for keywords, such as migration,

New Zealanders, Māori etc., in order to capture a high yield of articles.

Based on 47 key word combination searches, 3150 articles were yielded, of which

40 were duplicates. The articles were downloaded from Factiva as Microsoft Word files. I undertook two hand screens of the sample of media articles for relevance, based on specified inclusion and exclusion criteria, and to eliminate duplicates that had not been picked up within Factiva across the different searches (table 4.3).

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Table 4.3 Media article inclusion and exclusion criteria

First screen Second screen Inclusion New Zealanders living in New Zealanders living in criteria Australia Australia New Zealand New Zealand migration/settlement in Australia migration/settlement in Australia Readers opinion pieces/letters to Māori and Pacific people living in the editor about New Zealanders Australia and New Zealand migration to Perceptions of Māori and Pacific Australia culture New Zealand politics Crime and gangs involving people New Zealand films/actors, of Māori and Pacific background novels/novelists and in Australia music/musicians Trans-Tasman sporting events Famous New Zealanders Specific New Zealand films: Māori and Pacific people in New Whale Rider, Once Were Zealand Warriors Māori and Pacific people in Famous New Zealanders living in Australia or visiting Australia Trans-Tasman sporting events Exclusion Air New Zealand (airline) New Zealand politics and criteria Travel reviews of New Zealand politicians Famous New Zealanders not living in or visiting Australia

The first screen involved a review of all the articles to include those that referred to New Zealand and/or New Zealanders in Australia using broad inclusion/exclusion criteria. I performed a second screen with more specific inclusion and exclusion criteria to reduce the sample and make it more relevant to the focus of the study. To assist with the management of such a large sample of textual data, during the screening process the details of each article (author, title, date of publication and brief synopsis) was entered into a Microsoft Excel spread sheet. Individual articles that were kept in the final sample for analysis were

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stored as individual Microsoft Word files. This two-phase screening process resulted in a total sample of 789 media articles (figure 4.1)

Figure 4.1 Media article screening process

Data analysis

In applying a Discourse Theoretical Approach to analysis of the media articles, I adapted an approach congruent with qualitative thematic analysis, and complemented this by applying the specific sensitising concepts of a Discourse

Theoretical Approach within the analysis process (see Discourse Theoretical

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Approach section). Generally speaking, thematic analysis involves examining qualitative data by identifying “extended phrases and/or sentences rather than shorter codes” (Saldaña, 2009, p. 208) that can be categorised conceptually. The

“units of analysis” (Ryan and Bernard, 2000, p. 780), or codes that were identified during the analysis, were chunks of text. These chunks of text were subsequently grouped with other codes to create a conceptual or thematic unit.

The thematic analysis of media articles followed a two-step process. As the corpus contained a significant amount of articles, an initial process of data mining in

Leximancer was undertaken to identify thematic and conceptual groupings across the articles. Leximancer is an automated content analysis package that enables researchers to analyse a large corpus of textual data. The software uses Baysen logic to automatically generate concepts, based on an a priori list of terms that were applied to the data (Braithwaite, Travaglia, and Crobett, 2011).

The results of the analysis are presented as a ranked list of concepts and a concept map. The concepts were ranked in terms of their absolute and relative usage across the corpus of articles. To achieve this ranking a ‘percentage use’ is allocated to the most commonly occurring concept within each group in Leximancer. All other terms, which are located on the map around the ‘key’ concepts, are then allocated a percentage use that is relative to the main concept (Braithwaite et al.,

2011; Travaglia, Westbrook, and Braithwaite, 2009).

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The concept map is a visual representation of the concepts identified in the data set, based on the frequency of occurrence and the strength of relationships between the concepts (figure 4.2). The coloured circles indicate the ‘concept clusters’ or ‘thematic groupings’. The spatial positioning of individual concepts within and across these circles indicates the “closeness of their semantic relationship to other concepts” and the size of the dot underneath the concept points to the prominence of a concept across the coverage and within each thematic group (Cretchley, Rooney, and Gallois, 2010).

Figure 4.2 Example Leximancer concept map

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For the data mining stage of analysis, I ran the data set through Leximancer in three phases. The first phase involved an automatic overall analysis of the 100 most frequently occurring concepts across the whole corpus. As part of the data mining, common function words, such as ‘and’, were excluded and certain words were merged where there was conceptual overlap (Cretchley et al., 2010). For example, singular and plural words (i.e. Kiwi and Kiwis) were merged because they were so closely located conceptually. The second phase involved producing a concept map that excluded all Australia-related terms, to determine whether the concept clusters would change if the Australia-related concepts were removed.

The final phases involved running the data through in separate sections based on decade to see whether there were any particularly ‘significant’ conceptual differences in the data set over time. From this data mining activity an overall concept map and ranked list of concepts was generated (appendix 1).

I then extrapolated and further investigated these thematic grouping and concepts

(named ‘concepts’ and ‘terms’ in Leximancer) to identify and describe the key discourses employed within the media coverage. For the analysis of media articles,

I primarily used a deductive process of thematic coding. Deductive coding is the process of identifying a priori codes (Miles and Huberman, 1994), which in the case of this analysis involved the thematic concepts and groupings initially identified from the Leximancer analysis. Using Nvivo 10 analytic software, I coded

‘chunks of text’ or in some cases whole articles, against the concepts from the

Leximancer analysis. Whilst reading through the corpus, I also came across some

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themes or concepts that were not accounted for by the Leximancer analysis. In these situations, I inductively coded these sections or articles based on a posteriori codes (Miles and Huberman, 1994), which arose from the data itself.

Interviews with second generation immigrants

As one of the most common methods of understanding others (Fontana and Frey,

2000), ‘qualitative interviews’ or ‘conversations with a purpose’ (Burgess, 1991), are particularly useful for gathering in-depth information regarding a specific individual‘s experiences and perspectives (Barriball and While, 1994; Fielding and

Thomas, 2001; Johnson, 2001). Qualitative interviews are a method of revealing and examining the meanings that are infused in people’s everyday lives, their feelings and practices (Rubin and Rubin, 1995), and thus “allow for understanding and meanings to be explored in depth” (Arksey and Knight, 1999, p. 32). The third stage of this study involved semi-structured interviews with second generation participants to elicit in-depth data about the lived experiences of the participants.

This data was then triangulated with the analysis of the discursive terrain of trans-

Tasman immigration established through the genealogical and print media analysis, to examine the impact of these discursive constructions on the identity and health of second generation people of New Zealand descent.

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Recruitment

During this study, the recruitment process varied tremendously, from the process initially intended and approved by ethics, to the actual method that was employed, following significant amendments to the initial ethics application. In the beginning,

I intended to recruit participants using posters, which outlined the details of the study and contact information of the researchers. I distributed these around the

University of New South Wales and University of Sydney campuses, primary health care centers in the inner west and western suburbs and youth centres in the inner west and eastern suburbs. This was a highly time consuming process as it usually involved me travelling to each site and requesting permission to display a poster.

Simultaneously, I created a Facebook page, which included relevant information about the study, which I distributed via personal and professional networks. This method was also extended to third party referral, whereby contacts known to the research team were asked to pass on information about the study throughout their own social networks, in order to capture possible members of the target group.

None of these approaches yielded any participants.

I also intended to employ snowball sampling in the study, which involves participants being invited to join the study through ‘word of mouth’ via networks known to current participants in the study (Vogt, 1999). As such, this method operates on the assumption that the participants will have some links with the target population (Atkinson and Flint, 2001). However, during the recruitment and interview process, it was made apparent from discussions with participants about

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their networks, that they were not necessarily connected to other second generation New Zealanders, despite having social networks encompassing a range of people from a range of backgrounds. Thus, whilst one participant was recruited via this method, snowball sampling did not eventuate as a suitable recruitment strategy in the context of this study.

In light of the limitations of this initial approach, I revised my recruitment strategy and advertised the study on GumTree, an Australian online public and free advertisement site (appendix 2). This approach to recruitment was effective in reaching a range of people and securing participants for this study. I believe this was more effective than other forms of recruitment for a number of reasons.

Firstly, due to the ready accessibility of the site, any one searching for volunteer or casual opportunities would have come across the study advertisement. Secondly, as I identified above and further explore in Chapter Seven, the second generation participants were not part of an obvious ‘ethnic community’, thus it was not appropriate to attempt to target ethnic specific services. Again in this instance, word of mouth was difficult as it was dependent on someone by chance knowing whether people within their social circle had New Zealand ancestry, something that the participants, I later found were not always readily open about. In a way, therefore, the sample population I was interested in recruiting were a ‘hidden’ and dispersed group, reflecting a number of contextual factors, relating to the nature of the ‘New Zealand’ immigrant population, shaped through discursive conditions

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that I explore in subsequent chapters, and potentially the life stage of the participants.

On the other hand, this form of recruitment had some limitations. As I posted the advertisement under the ‘volunteer’ and ‘other/causal jobs’ categories, people who were seeking to take part in volunteer opportunities or were seeking a job were predominately the type of person who contacted me. The participants, in the study sample, thus reflect the characteristics of this type of person – a few students looking for holiday jobs, and young adults who either wanted to take part in a volunteer activity or were job hunting at the time I posted the advertisement. This way of recruitment also potentially excluded any person that was not familiar with or was not an active user of GumTree as this became the primary way of locating participants. Despite these limitations, I managed to secure a diverse sample of participants to be involved in this study, as outlined below.

Sample

Participants were eligible to participate if they met the following criteria:

aged between 18 to 30 years

born in Australia and currently living in Sydney

had one or two parents that were immigrants from New Zealand

of Māori (Indigenous New Zealander) or Pākehā (European New Zealander)

background/ancestry.

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Due to sampling and time constraints I actively chose to limit the diversity of the sample in two ways. First, I did not seek participants with ‘third country’ immigrant parents. This was due to limitations accessing sub-groups within an already dispersed population. By including only Pākehā and Māori participants, however, I was able to capture some of the diversity in experiences of the two main sub-groups within the New Zealand immigrant population in Australia.

Second, I limited the recruitment of participants to those currently living in Sydney.

The decision to recruit from Sydney was mainly for practical reasons so that I was able to conduct face-to-face interviews within time and financial constraints. As I mentioned earlier, the state of NSW has the third largest population of New

Zealand citizens, and the New Zealand-born comprise the fourth largest migrant group in Sydney (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2014). Thus the sample was drawn from an immigrant group that makes up a significant proportion of the larger migrant population in this more localised context. This also enabled me to explore state and city specific topics with the participants as was relevant during the interviews. The approach to recruitment was thus purposive, in that I sought to capture spread of diversity in the participants to gather a range of views and experiences.

For this study, 10 participants were recruited to take part in interviews, based on the eligibility criteria outlined above. The demographics of participants are outlined in table 4.4. There was a split in the age range of the sample, with six participants classified as young people (18 – 24 years old) and four classified as

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young adults (25 - 30 years old). Five participants had Pākehā ancestry, six identified as having Māori ancestry, and seven participants identified as having more than one ethnicity or ancestry, pointing to the diversity of this sample.

Majority of the sample had grown up in Sydney or NSW, with two participants growing up in Melbourne (capital city of the state of Victoria).

Table 4.4 Summary of participant demographics

Participant Age Gender Childhood Self-identified New Zealand- pseudonym location ethnicity/ ancestry born parent/s /nationality Anna 27 Female Newcastle Pākehā, Czech Mother (NSW) Republic Chris 26 Male Sydney (NSW) Māori, Australian Both Kate 27 Female Sydney (NSW) Māori Both Megan 18 Female Sydney (NSW) Pākehā, Peru Mother Isabella 27 Female Sydney (NSW) Māori, Philippines Father Matt 29 Male Melbourne Pākehā, Australian Mother (VIC) Brooke 24 Female Sydney (NSW) Pākehā, French, Father Australian Nicole 24 Female Sydney (NSW) Māori Both Danielle 24 Female Melbourne Māori Both (VIC) Jake 18 Male Sydney (NSW) Pākehā, Māori, Father Australian

Data collection

Semi-structured interviews generally consist of a broad set of main questions, which can be modified or asked in a different order or omitted by the interview depending on the context of the interview (Barriball and While, 1994; Patton,

1990; Robson, 1993). The interviewer might also probe for extra information as required (Fielding and Thomas, 2001, p. 124). The interviewer can also

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reformulate or rephrase the main questions depending on the level of understanding of the respondent (Fielding and Thomas, 2001, p. 124). One limitation of using interviews is that the views expressed by individual participants may not be representative of other individuals and/or groups with similar characteristics. As such, I was mindful of the limitations of using broad generalisations during the analysis and interpretation stages of the research process.

The interview process involved a face-to-face interview, which ran from between one to two hours. Interviews were held at the University of New South Wales,

School of Public Health or in a public setting such as a library, café or park, as preferred by the participants. The interview schedule (appendix 3) that was developed for the interview included a set of open-ended questions. The questions asked referred to participants’ memories of childhood and their parent’s migration experiences, personal views on Australia and New Zealand, connections to other people and communities, their health and their future visions.

To create a relaxed and conversational atmosphere, I purposely had few, but specific, questions prepared prior to each interview to use as broad conversation starters. Thus, whilst classed here as ‘semi-structured’ interviews, as I tried to create a conversational flow, the interviews tended to be more loosely structured.

However, because I used questions, instead of broad topic areas to guide discussion, the interviews were not unstructured (Fontana and Frey, 2000). Due to

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the flexible nature of semi-structured interviews, I was also able to use prompts and probing questions to elicit further information as appropriate to the flow and direction of the discussion (Barriball and While, 1994).

Audio recording and transcription

I recorded each interview using a voice recorder. Whilst the used of audio- recorders is encouraged (Alasuutari, 1995) it has been cautioned that care should be taken when deciding to record interviews as it can be disconcerting to some participants (Fielding and Thomas, 2001). As such, from the outset, I advised the participants of my desire to record the interview in order to adequately capture our discussions. However, they were also advised that they were not obligated to agree to have the interviews recorded, and that they could ask for the voice recorder to be turned off at any time.

Also, while some researchers have argued that recording can be a safe method of ensuring that an accurate record of the interview is kept, others have argued that a tape-recording of the interview ‘only records the verbal side of the situation’

(Alasuutari, 1995, p. 43). As such, I also took hand written notes during the course of the interview including body language and emotional cues (laughing, crying) and some of these points were subsequently included in the transcripts and considered during analysis.

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Each interview was transcribed verbatim, which is the process of documenting everything that is said by the participant. As Fielding and Thomas (2001) suggest, when first transcribing an interview, the significant points of analysis may not yet be known. If points become significant later on, either when re-listening to audio recordings or during analysis, all the data is available and nothing is lost (Fielding and Thomas, 2001, p. 135).

Although verbatim transcription is useful for capturing all that is said, it is more laborious and time-consuming than selective transcribing. However, as

Burningham and Thrush (2001) note, full transcription of interviews provides the best record of an interview and enables others, external to the research, to scrutinise the data. To maximise time I made the decision to have the interview audio recordings transcribed by an external organisation. To ensure confidentiality and security of the recordings and transcripts, the organisation provided the researcher with a signed confidentiality agreement.

In order to ensure rigour during the stages of transcription a number of measures were taken. I re-read each pre-typed transcript against the audio recordings to check for consistency and accuracy. For instance, as the transcription was undertaken by an American company, there were some instances where the

Australian accent or particular Māori named locations in New Zealand were misinterpreted and recorded incorrectly in the transcript.

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The trustworthiness of transcripts can be compromised due to the loss of emotive and nonverbal communication, hindering the ability of audio-recordings to provide a verbatim account, and the deliberate or accidental alteration of the data during the transcription phase (Poland, 1995). In order to overcome, or at least account for some of these issues, notes were taken during the interviews regarding emotive and nonverbal communication (i.e. crying, laughing and hand gestures). I subsequently added these notes into the pre-typed transcripts, when I was undertaking the secondary review of the transcripts against the audio recording, to indicate when these forms of communication occurred.

Data analysis

Similar to the analysis of the print media articles, I undertook a thematic analysis of the interview transcripts. This involved a number of stages of both inductive and deductive coding (Miles and Huberman, 1994). To conduct rigorous analysis, I undertook a close reading of each transcript prior to coding (Ryan and Bernard,

2000). This meant I could become familiar with the content of each transcript.

During this first reading, I identified and tagged chunks of text relating to participants’ understanding about their parent’s migration, their views of Australia and New Zealand, and their second generation immigrant experiences in both contexts for later categorising and indexing (Ryan and Bernard, 2000, p. 782). For this initial reading and coding activity I ‘copied and pasted’ the chunks of texts into a Microsoft Word document in which I developed a table with headings relating to each concept. I purposely chose to not use Nvivo 10 analytic software at this stage

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to avoid rushing through the coding process and ‘over-coding’ of the transcripts.

This ensured that I carefully read each transcript as an individual piece of data within the context of the individual participant.

In the second stage of analysis, each transcript was deductively coded, and the previously ‘tagged’ sections of text were inductively coded by allocating chunks of text from the transcripts to different codes. At this stage I uploaded all the transcripts to Nvivo 10 to assist with the management of the codes and themes identified during analysis within and across the interview transcripts. During this process I gave each code a specific definition in order to make explicit what I meant by each code.

Once each transcript had been coded, each individual code was reviewed and refined. This entailed reviewing the chunks of text within each code and comparing them to see whether they corresponded with each other, and if they fitted within the parameters of the code’s definition. Outliers, which I identified as chunks of text that did not fit within the parameters of the code‘s definition or did not correspond with other segments of text, were either re-organised into another code or were labeled as a new code. Once the different codes had been firmed up during the reviewing process, they were grouped together into overarching themes.

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This iterative process was particularly important for guaranteeing that the themes logically and systematically related to one another. Also, in the ‘third’ stage of analysis I was able to draw on the sensitising concepts of a Discourse Theoretical

Approach to begin to identify some of the discursive processes and influences in the talk of the participants.

In presenting the data in Chapter Seven, where applicable, the description of each theme is accompanied by an excerpt from the transcripts. These excerpts were chosen because they provided interesting examples that captured the participants’ views and ideas. Each excerpt was cleaned for typographical errors and ‘umms’,

‘errs’ and repeated words were removed.

Ethical considerations

Ethics for this study was obtained from the University of New South Wales Human

Research Ethics Committee (HREC 11383) (appendix 4). The following steps were taken in an endeavour to protect the privacy of participants and ensure respect of the individual voices and experiences of each participant were upheld.

Through an informed consent process participants were advised that participation was voluntary. Prior to participating in the study, each participant was given a

Participant Information Sheet (appendix 5) that outlined the nature and purpose of the study. The researcher talked through the key points on the information

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sheet, including the purpose of the research, the interview process, protection of anonymity, confidentiality, and their right to withdraw at any time, with the participant prior to commencing the interview. Verbal acknowledgement that they understood the purpose of the study and what was required of them was sought from the participant and any questions they had about the study were answered at this time. Following this, two copies of a Consent Form (appendix 5) were signed by the researcher and participant in order to obtain written voluntary informed consent from each participant before conducting interviews. Participants were also supplied with a Revocation of Consent form (appendix 5) at this time, in case they wished to withdraw from the study at a later time.

All transcribed material was kept confidential, with names and personal identifying indicators, such as the names of places, changed to protect individuals’ privacy, unless they requested otherwise. The participants were advised, both verbally and in writing on the Participant Information Sheet, that they would not be identifiable in any information used in my thesis or for the purposes of publication. As per ethics requirements, all audio recordings and type transcripts in Microsoft Word documents are stored on the researchers password protected computer. All data drawn from the interviews with participants will be destroyed after seven years.

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Chapter summary

In this chapter the methodological approach and study design of this research was presented. I outlined the transfer of Discourse Theory to a Discourse Theoretical

Approach as the methodology for this study and discussed how a qualitative research approach fits within the tenets of a Discourse Theoretical Approach. I also provided a consideration of how I addressed issues of rigour, trustworthiness and value at each stage of the research process through triangulation, sampling and saturation, reflexivity and an audit trial. Following this, I presented the methods used for data collection and analysis. Specifically, data collection involved a genealogical analysis, print media analysis and interviews with second generation immigrant participants. Each data set was discursively analysed in line with the theoretical framework and methodology of this study. In the latter part of the chapter I outlined the ethical considerations involved during this study, including the safety and confidentiality of the participants involved. In the following chapters

I present the findings from this study, firstly focusing on each individual data set in

Chapter Five, Six and Seven, and then discussing the triangulated analysis in

Chapter Eight to address the key aims and research questions.

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Chapter 5 Trans-Tasman migration and Australia’s national identity

Overview of thesis

Introduction

In this chapter, drawing on Laclau and Mouffe’s (1985) Discourse Theory and employing a Foucauldian genealogical approach (Prado, 1995), I provide an analysis of the shifts in Australia’s national identity since the 1800s and how this intersects with development of policies and associated political attitudes towards trans-Tasman migration and settlement by New Zealand citizens. Drawing on a

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close reading and analysis of an archive of texts, comprising relevant historical literature, government reports and transcripts from Hansard, in this chapter I chart the development of trans-Tasman migration and settlement legislation, since the 1800s, and examine the implications of these changes for New Zealand citizens living in Australia in relation to the construction of an ‘Australian’ national identity.

I consider how changes in Australian political discourse(s) and subsequent legislative reforms since the 1800s, when Australia and New Zealand were first settled as colonies of Britain, have evolved overtime in response to Australia’s nation building agenda, particularly following the First and Second World Wars, and subsequent shifting national identity.

Drawing on this historical purview, I argue that a contemporary discursive shift has occurred, where the Australian political agenda has been concerned with forging a national identity, distinct from its British colonial heritage, in favour of an identity that embraces a national immigration policy that embodies multiculturalism and the forging of broader global linkages. Subsequently, drawing on Derrida’s notion of the ‘constitutive outside’ I argue that the subject position of

New Zealanders, insofar as their status in the Australian context is concerned, has shifted from one of seeming equivalence, to that of difference, calling into question what the New Zealand presence means for the identity of Australia as a nation.

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Considering national identity

Considerable theoretical debate has focused on the pervasiveness of the ‘nation’ as a site of identification. Nationality or a national identity is often an unquestioned or ‘taken for granted’ category of identification, adopted as a result of birth and/or citizenship (Bloemradd, Korteweg, and Yurdakul, 2008; Smith, 1991). Several theorists have attempted to locate a definition of ‘national identity’. Generally speaking, national identity encompasses the following elements: a group or unit of people who have a shared collective consciousness, are connected via relationships based on economic, political, social, cultural, linguistic, geographical and historical dimensions, exist within a demarcated territorial boundary, and are monitored and regulated by internal and external state apparatuses, such as laws and institutions (Anderson, 1983; Hroch, 1996; James, 1996; Kurthen, 1995;

Triandafyllidou, 1998).

While a seemingly taken for granted identity category, if we turn to intersectionality theory (as outlined in Chapter Three), nationality has the potential for oppression, through mechanisms such as citizenship and ideologies that shape the specific inclusion and exclusion characteristics of a nation. This inherent tension is encompassed in Anderson’s (Anderson, 1983) notion of ‘the nation’ as an ‘imagined community’; one that is “imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign” (Anderson, 1983` , p. 44). The nation is an imagined community in the sense that whilst the members of the nation will never have the

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opportunity to interact with many of their fellow members, yet they still maintain an imagined unity with others positioned within the nation (Anderson, 1983).

Thus, central to this concern is the symbolic sense of ‘unity’ that the identity of the nation provides, which is captured by the term community. Connectedness to others is conceived “…through the shared rights and responsibilities inherent in citizenship of the state, as well as through shared language, culture and history”

(Hawkins, 2006, p. 9), as well as shared ideological beliefs of what it means to belong to a specific nation (Jenkins, 1997; Wodak, de Cillia, Reisigl, and Liebhart,

2009). While ‘unity’ amongst members of the ‘nation’ can never be fully realised, this imagined idea is vital in the creation and maintenance of national identity. To maintain this view of the ‘nation’, there is reliance upon the homogeneity of members of the group. In turn, diversity and difference presents a threat to this construction of the ‘nation’.

Here, however, is where the tension of national identity arises, as inequality persists within every nation through the exclusion of certain subjects due to difference. Revisiting the tenants of Laclau and Mouffe’s (1985) Discourse

Theoretical Approach, the construction of the ‘nation’ as a site of identification can be understood as a discourse (Doty, 1996, p. 240), insofar as it is a “concrete system of social relations and practices that are intrinsically political, as their formation is an act of radical institution” (Howarth and Stavrakakis, 2000, p. 5).

Derrida’s concept of the ‘constitutive outside’ is of particular use in considering the

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role of those outside the nation, such as immigrants, in the construction of the nation as a discourse. As (Doty, 1996, p. 240) suggests:

…it is at the margins that we can find the privileged discursive points

that constitute national identity. However, somewhat paradoxically

it is also at the margins that the meaning of national identity is

subverted, hence the continual need for production and

reproduction… Human migration highlights this salience as well as

the ambiguities of national identity.

In line with this statement, immigration can be seen to play a pivotal role in revealing the seemingly fixed discourse of the ‘nation’ as unified and absent of difference. Discursive formations rely on the drawing of political frontiers between

‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ (Jorgenson and Phillips, 2002; Laclau and Mouffe, 1985).

At the core of the construction of the ‘nation’ is the ability to create division between the inside and the outside, and invoke notions of equivalence and difference (Howarth and Stavrakakis, 2000). Migrants act as the constitutive outside to the construction of the ‘nation’, insofar as through their presence they pose a threat to the destabilisation of what constitutes the ‘nation’. Indeed, through immigration the insider/outsider tension is made apparent and the criteria by which this distinction can be made is revealed (Doty, 1996, p. 240).

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The demarcation of borders have been argued to be an active mechanism in constructing and shoring up national identity (Anderson and O'Dowd, 1999).

Borders act to demarcate a division or frontier between people, institutions, and values that constitute the nation and those that pose a threat to this identity. In the case of the construction of the ‘nation’, the discursive construction of certain subject positions including ‘citizens’ and the granting of citizenship is a key mechanism in the establishment of frontier lines (Howarth and Stavrakakis, 2000) to define who is an insider and who is an outsider to the ‘nation’.

As a discursive construction, the identity of the ‘nation’ relies not on a fixed centre of meaning, but “rather from the lack of a centre which permits a continual process of definition and redefinition, of both exclusion and incorporation” (Doty, 1996, p.

252). The construction of a ‘national’ identity is, therefore, reliant on the division between the inside and the outside, created through notions of equivalence and difference (Howarth and Stavrakakis, 2000). As Doty (1996, p. 240) argues it is at the “margins” that we can identify the “privileged discursive points” as well as the

“subversion of meaning” of national identity. Specifically, it is through the drawing of frontier lines, between the identity(s) (including people, institutions and values) that constitute the nation and those that pose a threat to this identity, that hegemonic articulation of national identity can be achieved (Sutherland, 2005).

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1780 – 1970: Britain and her ‘white’ colonies

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Australia and New Zealand’s identities as colonial outposts in the Pacific region provided a strong basis for a shared sense of history and values. Both nations appeared to evolve politically, socially and culturally in parallel to one another over this period, linked through myths of British heritage, shared culture, the ANZAC and ‘white’ immigration policies.

The colony of New South Wales, formed in 1788, encompassed a significant proportion of New Zealand, including the entire North Island and half of the South

Island), and remained part of New South Wales until it was declared to be a separate colony in 1840 (Kingston, 2006). As a single colony at this stage, Australia and New Zealand were not regarded as independent entities. This was evident through the unrestricted movement across the Tasman Sea and growth of settlement in New Zealand. Movement prior to 1840 consisted of former British convicts, travelling to obtain natural resources, such as whales, seals, timber and flax for the New South Wales colony, and Māori as crew on whaling and trading ships, many travelling to Sydney (Bedford, Ho, and Ligard, 2000; Hamer, 2007;

Kingston, 2006; McCaskill, 1982). In addition, a significant number of Māori moving to the colony may have been attempting to escape slavery from the Bay of

Islanders. This movement was also echoed by Australian convicts who often escaped to nearby New Zealand (Hamer, 2007). Clergy, such as Reverend Samuel

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Marsden and Thomas Kendall, also travelled to New Zealand with the aim of introducing Christianity to Māori in New Zealand (Kingston, 2006).

By 1840, up to 1000 Māori had travelled to Australia, connecting to continue trade of produce grown on their lands (Hamer, 2007). The Gold Rush period from the

1860s in the State of Victoria and cities in New Zealand, also supported continued trans-Tasman migration as gold diggers, many of whom were Māori, moved between the key goldfields in Melbourne, Dunedin and Hokitika (the latter two being in New Zealand) (McCaskill, 1982). In 1860 the Land Wars in New Zealand had begun between some Māori iwi (tribes) and British troops and their Māori allies (kupapa) in response to land sales. At this time British troops stationed in

Australia travelled to New Zealand to fight alongside the Crown in the wars.

Approximate figures indicate that around 500 British troops, 250 kupapa and

20000 Māori fighting against the British lost their lives, with around 1 million hectares of land taken by the Crown from Māori (Keenan, 2014).

Favouritism from both sides of the Tasman to amalgamate through the creation of an Australian Federation gathered momentum in the 1880s (McCaskill, 1982), although this was never brought to realisation. The establishment of the Sydney

Intercolonial Conventions of 1883 and the growing use of the term ‘Australasian’ in titles of organisations, for instance, signalled the sense that settlers in Australia and New Zealand were first and foremost British expatriates “bound by ties of kinship and common interest” (McCaskill, 1982, p 10). The significant distance and

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isolation from the homeland, Britain, arguably heightened the sense that both nations need to be, and in some ways were, unified, thus drawing on the myth of solidarity in the face of this isolation, as well as Anglo-Saxon and Christian values, to draw a logic of equivalence between the two colonies. Support for this connection was evident from within Australia; however the idea gained less traction in New Zealand (Slade, 2003). As McCaskill (1982, p. 10) notes, when the proposal was brought before the New Zealand parliament in 1891, premier John

Ballance remarked:

...we might supply Australia with a few oats, but we should not

lose our freedom... The whole weight of the argument is against

New Zealand entering into any Federation except a Federation

with the Mother country.

Fear of domination was thus a clear driving factor behind New Zealand’s reluctance to join the Australian Commonwealth (Slade, 2003).

In 1901 the federation of former British colonies New South Wales, Queensland,

South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, and Western Australia resulted in the establishment of the independent Commonwealth of Australia (Slade, 2003). The

Federation of 1901 was also dominated by the concept of a ‘White Australia’, with visions of strong ongoing linkages to the homeland Britain (Jupp, 2002). The

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‘White Australia’ was never explicitly outlined in any official policy, however legislation during the time involved procedures to ensure restrictive immigration.

For instance, the Immigration Restriction Act [1901] involved a dictation test based on 50 words in a ‘European language’ at any official port of arrival in Australia.

Whilst the idea of New Zealand joining the newly formed federation was again revisited at this time, a New Zealand Royal Commission released a report outlining several arguments against this move (McCaskill, 1982). Regardless of this strong resistance on the part of New Zealand to merge national borders with Australia, the two countries continued to foster their bilateral relations through other avenues.

In terms of Māori immigration, surprisingly under the ‘White Australia’ policy, their ability to travel remained largely unaffected. As Hamer (2007) notes, “Maori were probably the only non-whites to always be freely admitted to the Australian colonies” (p. 28). Following Federation Māori enjoy unrestricted trans-Tasman migration, like their fellow ‘British’ New Zealand migrants, and were not subject to the dictation test. Under the Pacific Islander Labourers Act [1901] Pacific Islanders were not admitted to enter Australia however Māori were specifically exempted from this policy (Hamer, 2007).

During the early twentieth century Australia and New Zealand remained bounded to their British colony status, with a key connection between the two nations being the establishment of the Australia and New Zealand Army Corp, or the ANZAC,

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formed in support of Britain’s declaration of war against Germany in 1914. ANZAC day marks the first major military action fought by Australian and New Zealand forces as partners at Gallipoli, Turkey on April 25, 1915 during the First World

War (Slade, 2003). At the time, the ANZAC was a demonstration of Australia and

New Zealand’s allegiance to Britain, and this unilateral support was encapsulated by the then Prime Minister Andrew Fisher's statement: "Should the worst happen…" Australia would "...rally to the Mother Country ... to help and defend her to our last man and our last shilling”.

War correspondent and later the official historian of Australia’s effort in World

War One, Charles Bean, was an influential myth-maker in the construction of the

ANZAC as a possibility of distance from Britain, as embodied by the character of the ANZAC soldiers (Slade, 2003). As Bean summarised towards the end of the war

(cited in, Inglis, 1965):

…the big thing in the war for Australia was the discovery of the

character of Australian men. It was character which rushed the

hills at Gallipoli and held out there during the long afternoon and

night.

This character, as suggested by Bean, embodied within the symbolism of the

ANZAC was clearly linked to a highly gendered construct of military camaraderie

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and values (Inglis, 1965; Motion, Leitch, and Cliffe, 2009). It was this character which, Bean, considered to be pivotal in the reshaping of the Australian identity

(Inglis, 1965):

The Australian was becoming to some extent distinguishable from

the Englishman in bodily appearance, in face, and in voice. He also

displayed certain markedly divergent qualities of mind and

character.

This myth of distance in ‘character’ between Australians and the British, was further encapsulated by Mulgan (1967, p. 15. cited in Slade, 2003) who, in considering the character of New Zealand soldiers who participated in the First

World War, stated:

They were mature men these New Zealanders—quiet and shrewd

and sceptical. They had none of the tired patience of the

Englishmen, nor that automatic discipline that never questions

orders to see if they make sense.

At the time of World War One, the ANZAC primarily served as a myth in the drawing of logic of equivalence between New Zealand, Australia and Britain, where the Commonwealth nations demonstrated their allegiance to the Motherland. The victories and sacrifices of this effort also came to symbolise a gendered identity of,

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what Thomson (1994, p. 26) termed “Australian manhood” which was distinct from the English character. The ability of the ANZAC, as a symbol, to conjure nationalist notions of participation and unity in the Australian public imaginary has made this one of the most notable events for national identity formation

(Motion et al., 2009; Seal, 2004). The global recognition of Australia and New

Zealand at the battle at Gallipoli has been argued to be more influential for the realisation of being an independent nation, than Australia’s federation in 1901

(Slade, 2003).

The ANZAC has also been a point of symbolic and cultural reference for the New

Zealand national identity (Green and Power, 2006; Sinclair, 1986). Similar to its construction in the Australia imaginary, the ANZAC provided a sense of national solidarity with troops during the First and Second World Wars, and also plays a role in contemporary national identifications as part of myths based on historical colonial dominance, symbolised through outperforming troops from Britain and other European countries. The ANZAC also serves as a key historical connection between Australia and New Zealand in the contemporary construction of national identity for New Zealand (Green and Power, 2006).

Underpinning these myths was the ideology of egalitarianism, which has historically been a defining goal of Australia (Bennett, Emmison, and Frow, 2001;

Kapferer and Morris, 2003; Peeters, 2004). Aptly captured in the common

Australian phrase “a fair go all” (Peeters, 2004, p. 22), the ideology of

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egalitarianism encompasses the aim for social equality, with forms of social inequality (commonly viewed as hierarchy) considered a threat to this goal

(Kapferer and Morris, 2003; Peeters, 2004). The antecedents of this national vision were born from myths of the ‘pioneer’ and ‘Australian traditions’ (Kapferer and

Morris, 2003). The latter is best exemplified by the ANZAC, which promotes notions of mutual support and citizen service, which I further outline below.

The legend of the pastoral pioneer, a ‘small holder’ who shared their burdens with their worker situated against the landscape of rural Australia, captures the myth of a “hero in a battle with nature in which individual perseverance and effort overcomes hardship” (Kapferer and Morris, 2003, p. 87). As Kapferer and Morris

(2003, p. 87) argue, the pioneer is an important motif as it provided the historical foundation for the:

…egalitarianism and camaraderie that emerged across class lines

between owners and workers in collaboration against the

hardships and unfamiliar and hostile Australian environment.

Through such myths there was an active effort in the nation building agenda at the time to distinguish Australian society from the social divisions in Britain, based on social class and hierarchy. Importantly, the effect was the imaginary of Australia as egalitarian and ‘classless’, and thus different from its colonial ancestor (Kapferer

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and Morris, 2003; Peeters, 2004). The notion of Australia as ‘classless’ has impacted discourses of Australian national identity, insofar as there has been an active absence of ‘class’ in historical and contemporary imaginary of Australia society. As Peteers (2004) suggests, this is reflected in much of the sociological literature, in which there is a tendency to acknowledge the pervasiveness of social class as a line of difference undergirding the development of Australia’s national identity, while also dismissing ‘class’ as a form of prejudice and a myth in

Australia’s history that undermines its egalitarian aims. The ‘silence’ of social class is apparent in much of the discursive articulation of Australia’s nation identity, featuring more subtly along other lines of difference such as ‘race’ and ‘citizenship’, particularly prior to the 1990s.

The adoption and enforcement of discriminatory immigration policies, or ‘white’ policies, which promoted immigration from European or ‘white’ source countries and restricted the entry of immigrants from non-European backgrounds, provided a key mechanism to reinforce the myth of Australia’s British heritage (Jones, 2003).

In Australia, the discriminatory attitude to immigration was formally instituted through the Immigration Restriction Act; the first act passed by the new Australian parliament in 1901. The key focus of Australia’s Immigration Restriction Act (1901) was to allow the selection of migrants of British origin, with the goal preserving the Anglo-Celtic composition of the population (Freeman and Birrell, 2001; Lopez,

2000). Under this legislative framework, migration officers were granted the ability to screen for non-‘coloured’ immigrants, with British immigrants able to

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freely enter Australia on the basis that they were ‘white’. To further promote

British emigration, and later to increase the population, the introduction of assisted passages, enabled those entry who would not initially have been able to afford to come, however there were specific selection criteria based on employment and family status (Jupp, 2002). As such, “assisted passages were a form of social engineering designed to keep Australia British… and to keep

Australia white” (Jupp, 2002, p. 18).

Similarly, whilst New Zealand never adopted an explicit ‘white’ policy, in name at least, exclusionary clauses in the New Zealand Immigration Restriction Act of 1899, and amendments in 1910 and 1920, promoted unrestricted, but preferential, access to people of British birth and descent (Ongley and Pearson, 1995). Thus, it is unsurprising that New Zealanders also were permitted ‘free’ entry to Australia if they were ‘white’. New Zealand citizens of Māori descent were also allowed entry to Australia under this policy (Jupp, 2002). As Lopez (2000, p. 43) comments, in the early 1900s there was an overarching vision that Australia would become “a major component of the British Empire”, which would be achieved by carefully managed immigration and the maintenance of linkages to Britain.

The legislative policies and procedures of immigration were a key discursive process central to the hegemonic articulation of non-European migrants as different and thus outside of ‘the nation’ and subsequently the drawing of a logic of equivalence between Australia and New Zealand. Within the political discourse of

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both countries at this time immigration from Anglo-Saxon countries was an important mechanism in furthering a ‘British’ identity. The ‘constitutive outside’ to the identity of the Australian, and New Zealand, ‘nation’, were migrants from a non-Anglo Saxon background. This was based on the drawing of a logic of difference between outsiders, and insiders, who were ‘British’ aligned in values, belief and appearance, reinforcing a specific characterisation of identity of the

Australian and New Zealand nations. It was through the ‘threat’ of their presence that non-European immigrants posed a threat to the destabilisation of what constituted the national identity of Australia and New Zealand, and thus the need for discriminatory immigration policies. In turn, immigration from an ‘Anglo-Saxon’ and ‘Christian’ New Zealand aligned with this overarching nation building goal, fuelling the myth of ‘similarity’ and thus linking the two nations.

Following the end of World War Two, Australia slowly became more lenient regarding the country of origin of migrants. This was mainly due to the significant population decline in Australia, which threatened the capacity of Australia to defend itself against invasion and also resulted in considerable labour force decline. The necessity of immigration for the survival of Australian society at the time was aptly captured by the then Australian Minister for Immigration, Arthur

Calwell in his slogan “populate or perish … we must fill the country or lose it”

(Australian Institute of Political Science, 1953; Jupp, 2002). Additionally, there was some humanitarian concern for those affected in post-war Europe. In light of this

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the Labour government embarked on an extensive immigration program (Collins,

1993).

This was achieved in part through to the introduction of the Displaced Persons

Scheme introduced in 1947 and closed in 1952, through which Australia aimed to accept a target of 12,000 displaced persons {Wall, 2011 #192;Department of

Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, 2001 #193}. Between 1947 and 1952, approximately 170,000 displaced persons from Eastern Europe settled in Australia

(Ongley and Pearson, 1995, p. 771). Operation Reunion, introduced in 1956, was a similar scheme that aimed to reunite East European relatives in Australia.

Although there was a sense of urgency to ‘fill the nation’, all of these schemes enabled Australia to support immigration from European nations. This was seen through the passage of the Australian Migration Act (1958), which did not explicitly state race or the ‘White Australia’ policy, yet continued to promote the preference for immigration from European source countries.

Parallel to these developments, in 1948, the Social Security Agreement was enacted by the then New Zealand and Australian governments for the purposes of enabling residents of either nation to take up permanent residence in either nation and, significantly, to be entitled to social security or social service benefits and pensions in New Zealand or Australia (Department of Social Services, 2014). At the time

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these included pensions and benefits relating to age, disability, widows, unemployment, and sickness.

During this time, New Zealand remained more conservative towards immigration and maintained a preference for British migrants over those from other parts of

Europe, which was enshrined in the passage of the New Zealand Immigration Act in 1964 (Brawley, 1993; Roy, 1973). As a result, the population in New Zealand remained perhaps more ethnically and culturally homogenous than Australia, except for the Māori population. As such, ‘open’ migration from New Zealand remained during this time, arguably because population growth from New Zealand continued to pose little threat to Australia’s nation building goals. By 1969, the bilateral Social Security Agreement had developed into a ‘full host country agreement’, whereby all New Zealand citizens had access to Australian benefits and vice versa (Scollay et al., 2010). Over the following decades, the Social Security

Agreement between Australia and New Zealand would undergo several significant amendments.

Turning back to Australia’s immigration policies, there was a slight relaxation of discriminatory migration laws in the 1960s, which aligned with a broader immigration policy shift from ‘assimilation’ to ‘integration’ (Lopez, 2000). For instance, in 1957 and 1959, changes were made to firstly allow Non-Europeans with 15 years of Australian residence to become citizens and secondly enable

Australian citizens to sponsor non-European spouses and unmarried minor

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children (Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, 2001). This shift, albeit a subtle one, in Australia’s immigration agenda, indicated more favouritism towards non-Anglo-Saxon immigration flows and subsequent diversification. This would foreshadow a defining shift in Australia’s nation building agenda in the early

1970s, with advocacy for multiculturalism (Brawley, 2003; Jupp, 2002; Stratton and Ang, 1994). Within this discursive context, trans-Tasman migration and settlement policies would evolve considerably, revealing a significant shift in the positioning of New Zealand and its citizens in relation to Australia from the 1970 onwards.

1970 – 2000: Re-imagining a multicultural Australia and trans-Taman migration

Progressive legislative changes started to signal a shift in the nation building goals of Australia, with the discriminatory immigration policies that had prevailed during the latter part of the 1900s phased out during the 1960s and 1970s. Most notable amongst these was the formal abolition of the ‘White Australia’ policy in

1973, in an effort to improve the international image of Australia, including attempts to dismiss charges of racism (Lopez, 2000). With the removal of these policies there was a shift in Australia’s immigration discourse from a period of assimilation and integration, which promoted immigration from European or

‘white’ source countries to post 1970 multicultural policy (Brawley, 2003; Jupp,

2002; Stratton and Ang, 1994). The multiculturalist agenda was largely

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determined by the Whitlam Government, and later by the Fraser Government, which heralded a significant shift in acceptance of the ideology of multiculturalism and translation of this into legislative reform, including more expansive migration and settlement policies (Collins, 1993; Lopez, 2000; Ongley and Pearson, 1995).

Parallel to these developments, was the introduction of formal legislation to regulate the trans-Tasman flows (figure 5.1).

Under the Trans-Tasman Travel Arrangement, enacted in 1973, citizens of either country and citizens of other commonwealth countries who had ‘residency’ status in New Zealand or Australia were permitted to travel freely, without passports, between the two nations. On arrival they had equal rights to work, claim social security payments and live indefinitely in either country without any restrictions

(Australian Productivity Commission and New Zealand Productivity Commission,

2012; Department of Immigration and Border Protection, 2013; Gamlen, 2011).

In contrast to the previous unregulated arrangement, where only ‘white’ and Māori people from New Zealand were able to travel freely, under the Trans-Tasman

Travel Arrangement (1973) non-European residents of either country were also included (Australian Productivity Commission and New Zealand Productivity

Commission, 2012). At this stage, New Zealand was still considered to be a fellow

British/Anglo-Celtic nation and had not yet witnessed the influx in non-European migration that Australia was experiencing.

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Figure 5.1 Key Trans-Tasman migration legislative changes 1901 – 2010

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Significant amendments to visa categories, citizenship requirements and social security (welfare), were enacted throughout the 1985s to early 2000s, reflecting both political and administrative concerns, and a marked reconfiguration of the historically relaxed trans-Tasman migration arrangement. Throughout the late

1900s there was growing political and public dissatisfaction over travel arrangements between Australia and New Zealand (Bedford, Ho, and Hugo, 2003;

Carmichael, 1993), relating to concern that the Trans-Tasman Travel Arrangement

(1973) served as an ‘open door policy’ as well as the unlimited access of New

Zealand citizens to Australian social security.

The ‘open door policy’ was perceived to facilitate the illegal entry of people into

Australia from New Zealand, particularly from countries with which New Zealand had a visa-free arrangement, namely Pacific Island nations including the Cook

Islands and Niue. This ‘free flow’ of people was argued to present the threat of drug smuggling to Australia (McMillan, 1989), thus challenging the integrity of

Australian borders and security and presenting a threat to the security of Australia.

Concern over the prospect of New Zealanders entering Australia and committing criminal acts was encompassed by the then Minister for Immigration and Ethnic

Affairs Ian Macphee’s comments regarding the introduction of passport checks

(Australian Parliamentary Hansard, 1981):

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Past experience has shown that, by adopting false identities and

abusing the travel facilitation arrangements agreed between

Australia and New Zealand, some criminal deportees have

attempted, or have been able, to re-enter Australia.

There was also growing dissatisfaction regarding New Zealand citizens’ ability to enjoy access to all Australia benefits, in light of increased migration from New

Zealand to Australia from the 1980s. As Scollay and colleagues (2010) suggest, attempts to curtail access including stand-down periods for new arrivals to prevent immediate access to benefits and the annual reimbursement system that was introduced in 1989, did not prove satisfactory for the Australian Government and had “become a serious irritant in the bilateral relationship” (Scollay et al., 2010, p. 54).

Regardless of whether these concerns of New Zealand migrants as a potential

‘threat’ to national security and/or Australian’s access to social security were legitimate, these myths functioned to cast uncertainty to the prevailing discourse of ‘similarity’ between Australia and New Zealand. Specifically, ‘open-door immigration’ from New Zealand was constructed as a potential threat to destabilise the security of Australia (McMillan, 1989). This articulation was certainly influential in the subsequent tightening of restrictions of trans-Tasman migration and settlement policies on the part of Australia.

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The myth of New Zealand immigration as a ‘threat’ in part influenced changes to legislation in 1981, which required New Zealand citizens to hold passports and non-citizen New Zealand residents or permanent residents to obtain a visa, in order to enter Australia. In line with this, under the Migration Act (1958), the

Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs had the discretionary power to deport non-citizens who had committed crimes in Australia.

Around this time, Australia and New Zealand were working together. This was evidenced by the implementation of the Closer Economic Relations (CER) agreement in place between the two countries from 1983, as well and defence and security agreements. In 1989 the Annual Reimbursement System was introduced as a bilateral agreement to support welfare payments to citizens on either side of the

Tasman. I posit these efforts to increase bilateral support of countries are of note, insofar as Australia has previously been gradually controlling and limiting immigration from New Zealand, yet were seeking to strengthen their bilateral ties in terms of trade and security.

Subsequent amendments to the Migration Act (1958) in 1994, lead to the requirement of all non-Australian citizens to carry a visa. Effort was made, however, to preserve the Trans-Tasman Travel Arrangement (1973) through the creation of the Special Category visa (SCV) (subclass 444) (Department of

Immigration and Border Protection, 2013). The SCV is granted to New Zealand

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citizens upon presentation of a valid New Zealand passport at immigration clearance, given they pass character and health requirements (Department of

Immigration and Border Protection, 2013). The SCV enables New Zealand citizens, as ‘residents’, to lawfully live and work in Australia as long as they remain New

Zealand citizens (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2010; Department of Immigration and Border Protection, 2013).

The granting of a visa can be seen here as a discursive practice, in that it exposes the division between those inside and outside the nation, and in turn, contributes to the discursive articulation of national identity (Bloemraad, Korteweg, and

Yurdakul, 2008). This discursive practice is brought to the fore when the nation- state permits entry of ‘outsiders’ to access some of the rights to that of citizens, through the granting of visas, but continues to have the authority to deny access to citizenship (Joppke, 1999). It is through contrast and the subsequent marginalisation of ‘others’ that the identity of the ‘nation’ can thus be further shored up (Triandafyllidou, 1998). This is evident in the introduction of protectionist measures such as the SCV, which dictates the rules by which New

Zealand citizens can ‘reside’ in Australia, but also has the ability to deport New

Zealand citizens who act outside these rules (Westmoreland, 2008).

By the mid-1990s, the political landscape in Australia had taken a distinctive right turn, with the election of the Howard Government in 1996. John Howard was

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notably an anti-multiculturalist, instead favouring the ideal of ‘One Australia’, defined by the ‘mainstream’, and underpinned by common values, such as a positive view of Australia’s British history, mateship and individualism (Johnson,

2007). As Hage (2002, p. 433) accounts, Howard was of the view:

…that society and its people are drifting or have drifted away from

the core values and that there is a need to bring them back.

Howard thus advocated for an Australian national identity that embodied

Australia’s British, Anglo-Celtic heritage and Judeo-Christian values. Such sentiments were further captured during this time, firstly by Graeme Campbell, the independent MP for Kalgoorlie, in a 1996 address where he outlined that an

Australian identity is based on ‘predominantly Judeo-Christian, Anglo-Celtic settlement of the early colonial years and legal and constitutional links with

England’ (Ahluwalia and McCarthy, 1998; Carey, 2003).

The views of One Nation Party leader and former Liberal Party MP, Pauline Hanson, between 1996 – 1998, regarding immigration and Australia’s national identity captured Howard’s sentiments and further expanded on his critiques of the state of

Australia at the time (Ahluwalia and McCarthy, 1998; Carey, 2003; Jupp, 2002).

Specifically, Hason’s position broadly encompassed the view that all Australians

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were equal and any form of ‘difference’ presented a threat to the Australian identity; a monocultural identity firmly anchored in ‘traditional’ Australian (read

British) values (Ahluwalia and McCarthy, 1998; Jupp, 2002). As (Carey, 2003) observes the terms ‘Anglo-Celtic’ and ‘Judeo-Christian’ often were used together in speeches by Hanson, promoting a return to the ‘White Australia’ policy. This sentiment was further undergirded by myths related to Australia’s supposed egalitarianism, albeit not explicitly identified within Hanson’s rhetoric. Instead, this theme was articulated by emphasising the threat to Australian traditions and values in the face of multiculturalism, immigration and pro-Aboriginal rights discourses that had prevailed throughout the late 1960s and 1970s (Kapferer and

Morris, 2003). In doing so, Hanson effectively drew a line of equivalence with ‘old identity Australia’, garnering support from a largely Anglo-Celtic working-class and rural and regional population who were aligned with this political rhetoric

(Bennett et al., 2001; Hage, 1998). While discussions of ‘class’ in Australia remain taboo, this discursive act of reigniting the older ‘white Australia’ discourse, capitalised on the ever present, yet silent, contemporary social class divisions of

Australian society.

Hanson’s position on immigration and multiculturalism, are aptly summarised in her maiden speech to the House on September 10th 1996:

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Immigration and multiculturalism are issues that this government

is trying to address, but for far too long ordinary Australians have

been kept out of any debate by the major parties. I and most

Australians want our immigration policy radically reviewed and

that of multiculturalism abolished.

The concern over immigration featured prominently in the One Nation immigration policy platform for the 1998 election. In particular, a zero net policy was proposed, whereby Australia would only admit 30,000 people per year, or about one third of the number, including New Zealand citizens in 1998. Whilst there was no subsequent action to limit the number of New Zealand citizens, changes in 1999 resulted in New Zealand citizens only being able to qualify for permanent residence and citizenship under the same process as other immigrants

(Jupp, 2002). Furthermore, as Jupp (2002, p. 133) notes, “The implied threat that

Australia might limited New Zealand entry was a factor in discussion between the two governments in 1999”.

This discursive shift, shaped in part by key political figures as well as wider dissatisfaction concerning the rights of New Zealand citizens in Australia, had a significant impact on legislative reform concerning trans-Tasman migration during the following decade. In the early 2000s access to social security benefits for New

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Zealand citizens was significantly curtailed, with a requirement that all New

Zealand citizens who are resident in Australia must wait two years before qualifying for social security payments (Goff, 2001). Then, through the Social

Security Agreement on 26 February 2001, specific limitations were introduced in relation to the SCV, differentially affecting the status of New Zealand citizens, depending on their time of arrival in Australia. New Zealand citizens who arrived in Australia on or before 26 February 2001 were considered Protected SCV holders who, for legal purposes, were regarded as Australian permanent residents. As such, this enabled them access to Centrelink payments (social security), on the basis that they are currently residing in Australia and satisfy certain rules, such as qualification criteria and relevant waiting periods (Department of Immigration and

Border Protection, 2013).

On the other hand, those New Zealand citizens that arrived in Australia after 26

February 2001 are considered to be Non-Protected visa holders. Due to broader changes for all SCV holders, New Zealand citizens are ineligible to register to vote in Australian State and Federal government elections, access student loans, join the

Australia Defence Force or obtain ‘ongoing’ work in Australian Government departments (Department of Immigration and Border Protection, 2013).

Regardless of arrival date, all New Zealand citizens are eligible to claim certain social security payments. For instance, at the time of writing, these include the

Family Tax benefit, baby bonus, maternity immunisation allowance, child care

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benefit, Medicare card, seniors health card and paid parental leave, on the condition that they meet all other requirements including waiting periods for concession cards for recent migrants.

Although the bilateral agreement applies to most New Zealand citizens entering

Australia, in 2001 a temporary visa, titled the New Zealand Citizen Family

Relationship visa (subclass 461), was created which enables non-New Zealand citizen family members to accompany SCV holders to Australia and permits them to lawfully remain in Australia with rights to employment for up to five years

(Department of Immigration and Citizenship, 2011; Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs, 2005). For example, 433 New Zealand

Citizen Family Relationship visas were granted in 2002-03, with the United

Kingdom and South Africa being the top two countries of applications (Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs, 2005). Thus, whilst action was taken to prevent New Zealand citizens freely accessing social security payments on arrival and sponsoring family members, arrangements were made to preserve third country migration within certain circumstances, only allowing those who were deemed to meet Australian selection standards to become residents of Australia with work rights.

Prior to 2001, New Zealanders were able to apply for Australian citizenship under the SCV, once they had met certain eligibility requirements. However, in

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accordance with wide-sweeping legislative changes in February 2001, under the planned Migration Program, allocated places for permanent migrants did not include New Zealand citizens arriving in Australia. Instead, as of 2001, New

Zealand citizens were required to apply for, and be granted, permanent residence in Australia if they wished to obtain Australian citizenship through the migration streams outlined in the Australian Migration Program (Department of Immigration and Citizenship, 2011; Spinks, 2010).

This legislative change had retrospective implications for the citizenship status of

New Zealand citizens - depending on the date of arrival, and for the children of

New Zealand migrants, depending on their date of birth (Department of

Immigration and Border Protection, 2013). For instance, citizenship by birth is granted to those born before 1 September 1994 to a New Zealand citizen or born between 1 September 1994 and 26 February 2001 if born to New Zealand citizen parent who held an SCV. On the other hand, a child born in Australia on or after

27 February 2001 to a New Zealand citizen parent is not an Australian citizen by birth, unless the New Zealand citizen parent held an Australian permanent resident visa, Australian citizenship or met transitional arrangements for the 26

February 2001 changes. For those born to New Zealand parent(s) who are not granted citizenship by birth, due to this regulation, they instead automatically acquire it on their 10th birthday, provided they have been residing in Australia

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since their birth. This provision operates regardless of the parents’ immigration or citizenship status.

As I outlined above, the process of granting of visas, such as the SCV, functions as a key discursive mechanism in the construction of national identity, but demarcating who is inside and outside of the nation. As part of this construction, citizenship serves as a key signifier of those who belong inside the nation. Pathways to citizenship are highly regulated, generally involving birth right, parental or familial origins and, for immigrants, through a process of ‘naturalisation’ often involving a period of legal residency and a demonstration of some knowledge about the country and its dominant language(s) (Baubock, 2001; Bloemraad, 2006; Odmalm,

2005). With the status of citizenship, individuals are granted access to certain rights, including health care and welfare support, and are able to be legal political actors in the state (Tambini, 2001). Whilst citizenship entails a set of rights, it is also “a mechanism of closure that sharply demarcates the boundaries of states”

(Joppke, 1999, p. 629). In this way, the nation-state, through discursive drawing of frontier line (Howarth and Stavrakakis, 2000) by the enforcement of legislation, is able to actively regulate who is deemed to rightfully exist within the nation, and who is not.

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Chapter summary

The nature of the connection between Australia and New Zealand has been discursively shaped by Australia’s nation building goals since the 1800s, which has resulted in changes to way in which New Zealanders have been positioned in this context. Initially, Australia and New Zealand were discursively constructed by logics of equivalence around myths of colonial British heritage, being geographically isolated in the South Pacific, the ANZAC. Open migration from New

Zealand during this time was welcomed as a valuable source of population growth during Australia’s attempt to preserve its Anglo-Celtic heritage through the form of the ‘White Australia’ policy. Subsequent shifts from assimilationist and integrationist immigration policies to multiculturalism in the 1970s signaled a change in the manner in which Australia perceived itself as a nation.

Amendments to the legislative and regulatory framework concerning the Trans-

Tasman Travel Arrangement (1973), throughout the 1990s and 2000s, marked a reconfiguration of the bilateral arrangement. This reflected Australia’s increasing interest in determining who will enter the country and remain lawfully resident, and thus ‘who’ will be an insider and ‘who’ will be an outsider in terms of the

Australian national identity. The sustained changes to the Trans-Tasman Travel

Arrangement, since its enactment in 1973, are reflective of the broader shifts in the national values of Australia around forming a progressive and engaged global identity as well as an overarching mission to become a multicultural nation.

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Chapter 6 Media discourses of New Zealand immigrants in Australia

Overview of thesis

Introduction

In this chapter I consider how the subject position of the ‘New Zealand immigrant’, and more broadly, the identity of New Zealand, has been discursively articulated in contrast and relation to ‘Australia’, as a reflection of the contemporary collective

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social imaginary. Guided by a Discourse Theoretical Approach (Laclau and Mouffe,

1985), I undertook a discourse analysis of print media articles published between

1985 and 2010 in The Australian (TA), Daily Telegraph (DT), Sunday Telegraph (ST) and Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) newspapers. I begin the chapter by providing a descriptive overview of the corpus of texts and discuss some of the significant trends and patterns in print media coverage in relation to specific political and social developments between Australia and New Zealand.

Following this, I engage in an in-depth discussion of the three competing discourses I identified during the analysis, namely the ‘good guest’, ‘deviant visitor’ and ‘strong, exotic Māori’. Drawing on Derrida’s (2000) notion of ‘conditional hospitality’ I critically discuss the operation of each discourse by outlining the operation of specific signifiers and myths, and how the production of antagonisms and establishment of frontier lines, through the logics of equivalence and difference, lend to the construction of the subject position of the ‘New Zealander’ as the constitutive outside to the subject position of the ‘Australian’.

Overview of print media coverage

The following tables provide an overview of print media coverage relating to New

Zealand and New Zealand migrants in Australia during 1985 to 2010. Within the search period, a total of 789 articles, with content related to ‘New Zealanders in

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Australia’ and the ‘trans-Tasman relationship’, appeared in The Australian, Daily

Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph and Sydney Morning Herald newspapers (figure 6.1).

The Australian n=261 n=352 The Daily Telegraph

The Sunday Telegraph

The Sydney Morning Herald n=142 n=34

Figure 6.1 Number of print media articles by publication

As mentioned in the foregoing chapter, the Factiva database, which was used to search for articles, has variable coverage of different media sources, particularly prior to 1996. As such, during the period 1985 to 1996, articles were only drawn from The Sydney Morning Herald, contributing to the overall low number of articles during that period. Despite this limitation, the articles that were yielded point to the significant attention paid to policy and social developments and changes which concern the relationship between the two nations.

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The coverage is varied, but consistent, as exemplified in figure 6.2, which highlights the overall print media coverage relating to ‘New Zealanders’ and the

‘trans-Tasman relationship’ between 1985 and 2010. Whilst there is constant coverage over the 25 year period, there are a few notable peaks that relate to specific policy changes. For instance, in 1989 there was an increase in coverage regarding the introduction of the annual reimbursement system between Australia and New Zealand, to support welfare payments to citizens on either side of the

Tasman.

Similarly, in 1997 the increased coverage (49 articles, compared to 14 articles in

1996) related to discussions regarding the migration of New Zealanders to

Australia contributing to population growth and the threat of reduced jobs as a result for the Australian population. The most significant peak on the graph occurred between 2000 and 2001 in line with wide sweeping changes to the citizenship eligibility of New Zealanders migrating to Australia and their access to social security payments. Interestingly, although the SCV was introduced in 1994, characterised by the introduction of waiting periods for social security payments, there was no significant increase in media coverage during that time.

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90 80 70

60 50 40 30 20

Number Number of articles 10 0

Year of publication

Figure 6.2 Print media article coverage by year

Overview of the discourses

From the discourse analysis of the corpus of texts, and employing Derrida’s (2000) notion of ‘conditional hospitality’, I argue that the hegemonic subject positioning of the ‘New Zealander’ has been discursively articulated as a ‘visitor’ in relation to the

Australian ‘host’. I identified two discourses that align with this construction: the

‘good guest’ or the ‘deviant’ and therefore an unwelcome ‘foreign menace’ (figure

6.3). These discourses compete to invest meaning in floating signifiers, such as

‘migrants’ and ‘work’. As outlined in Chapter Three and Four, within Discourse

Theory floating signifiers are considered to be the master signs, which are involved in the ongoing conflict between different discourses as the ‘central’ points of meaning making. Other signifiers, such as ‘market’ (discourse 1) and ‘crime’

(discourse 2) for example, are operationalised differently within each discourse to

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articulate the subject position of the New Zealand immigrant as either a ‘close cousin’ or a ‘social deviant’ in Australia.

Figure 6.3 Overview of discourses and key signifiers

As I will discuss in the following sections, both these discourses engage hegemonic articulatory practices (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985), attempting to prevent the floating signifiers, including ‘migrant’ and ‘work’, from relating in other ways. In this process, the two relational, yet contradicting, unified systems of meaning or discourses are established. Reflecting the social and political shifts, including trans-Tasman policy developments and population increases and declines, both

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discourse one and two, continually compete for hegemony, however at specific points in time appear static and unchallenged. As a result, the identity and meaning of the ‘New Zealander’ is temporarily fixed.

As outlined in Chapter Three and Four, the process of hegemonic articulation depends on, and can be subverted by antagonisms, which characterise the conflict between discourses, or the way discourse(s) mutually exclude one another in the constant struggle to fix meaning (Howarth and Stavrakakis, 2000; Jorgenson and

Phillips, 2002). One such antagonism, which is reflected in both the discourses, relates to the supposed ‘menace’ New Zealanders are within Australia.

In comparison, the third discourse of the ‘strong, exotic Māori’, features as a much more subtle, yet constant alternative representation of a ‘sub-group’ of the New

Zealand immigrant population in Australia. Whilst not hegemonic, this discourse is significant for two reasons. Firstly this discourse further fuels the positioning of

New Zealand as the constitutive outside to Australia, through their assumed positive race relations and treatment of Māori. Secondly, through the process of racialisation (Brah, 1999; Phoenix, 2009; Wall, 1997) this discourse establishes a differential articulation between ‘white’ majority New Zealand/Australia and the

Māori, figured as the ‘black’ other’, in both contexts, an image which is replicated in the two other discourses.

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To further examine the operation of these discourses and implications of these differing constructions, in the following sections I describe and discuss each discourse in-depth providing excerpts from media articles as examples of the mechanisms of each discourse, including key signifiers, logics of equivalence and difference and myths.

Discourse 1: ‘Good guest’

Throughout the media coverage, the discourse of ‘good guest’ operates to construct the subject position of the ‘New Zealand immigrant’ as a welcomed visitor to

Australia. Within this discourse, signifiers including ‘migrants’ and ‘work’ operate to construct ‘New Zealand immigrant’ as productive and obedient subjects in

Australia. The increase in skilled migration from New Zealand, as a result of the fluidity of trans-Tasman travel and work agreements afforded to New Zealand citizens, is regarded positively within this discourse, as they are seen to contribute to the Australian workforce:

New Zealanders migrating to Australia these days head straight to

a job rather than to the dole office. The old stereotype was never

accurate, but the statistics prove the half-million Kiwis who live in

Australia are more likely to be employed than Australians. (ST,

Dec 2010, Hansen)

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As noted above, there is a deliberate contrasting to the notion of New Zealand immigrants as ‘dole bludgers’ (evident in discourse 2) and instead entering the workforce and contributing to the Australian economy, and in the process, being supposedly more productive than their Australian counter-parts. In harnessing the image of New Zealand citizens contributing to the Australian workforce, there was an emphasis on New Zealand entrepreneurs and businesses that were engaging in trans-Tasman ventures and viewed to positively contributing to the Australian economy. An article discussing New Zealand entrepreneur Michael Hill who established an international chain of high-end jewellery stores across New Zealand and Australia highlights that despite the difficulties businesses have breaking into the Australian market there is an acceptance and support of these efforts:

Hill already owned a chain of seven jewellery stores in New

Zealand but hocked everything and moved to suburban Brisbane

in the great Kiwi business tradition of trying to make it "across the

ditch"… "Australians, they're a hard bunch and they are tougher

people than New Zealanders -- I never thought I'd say this"…

However, despite the apparent hostility there is a fundamental

warmth for Kiwis in Australia [doing business], says Hill. (TA,

March 2005, Harvey)

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As noted in the excerpt above, the notion of a “great Kiwi business tradition” points to the increasingly common act of New Zealand businesses attempting to “make it” in Australia, which when successful is considered to be welcomed by the

Australian business community.

There is also a temporal aspect of this characterisation of the ‘productive New

Zealand immigrant’, insofar as amendments to trans-Tasman legislation in 2001 prevented New Zealand citizens who arrived after that date from accessing social security, and instead only allowing for the participation of New Zealand citizens in certain domains of the Australian workforce, that are outside the ambit of State and Federal government. Thus, the supposed threat of New Zealand citizens as ‘job stealers’, which operates within Discourse 2, is not present here in part due to the legislative conditions of New Zealand citizens residence in Australia. The entry of

New Zealand skilled migrants is, in turn, not viewed as a threat but a productive addition to the workforce.

The additional signifier of ‘history’ is used in the media coverage to construct logics of equivalence and highlight the commonalities between the nations, in terms of culture, heritage and values, and show how Australia and New Zealand are ‘almost the same’. This myth-making process is important for the construction of New Zealand as a friend, not a foe. One similarity, which aids the discursive

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positioning of New Zealand as a ‘neighbour’ or ‘cousin’, is the common military history of the ANZAC:

The ANZAC culture is a British Empire-derived military culture,

tempered with the implications of settler society conflicts, that

remains the basis for much of the military traditions of the

defence forces of the countries we know today as the separate

nation-states of New Zealand and Australia. (TA, April 2009,

Hopkins-Weise)

Here, the British legacy of Australia and New Zealand also functions as a point of commonality within the myth. In turn a logic of equivalence is established, where

New Zealand immigrants in Australia by extension, are primarily imagined as part of the European (read ‘white’) population in New Zealand. Thus, within this discourse, the subject position of New Zealand immigrants is assumed to be

‘almost’ the same, as that of the Australian ‘host’, based on racial similarities.

Whilst it has often been claimed that the ‘NZ’ in ANZAC is forgotten, particularly by the media (TA, April 1997, Whitfield), there is an attempt to rectify this by emphasising the idea of an equal trans-Tasman military ‘partnership’:

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The president of the NSW branch of the RSL, Mr Rusty Priest, said

he regretted the article's attempt to "drive a wedge between" the

two countries because it had always been a partnership of equals

in Australian eyes. "Whenever we refer to ANZAC in the RSL, it's

always Australian and New Zealand. All ANZACs fought together ...

and they died together." (SMH, April 1994, Zuel)

The myth of Australians and New Zealanders as ‘blood brothers’ (TA, April 2009,

Hopkins-Weise) on the battle field, shores up the idea that there is a form of equality, albeit in a historical sense, between the two nations. Conversely, in contemporary constructions of the ANZAC, there is less certainty as to what this cultural heritage means and whether it can continue to bind the two countries together:

"Our future relationship (between Australia and New Zealand) is

anything but certain," Dr Hawke said. "The ANZAC relationship is

finely poised on the fulcrum… Australia's political leaders had a

sentimental attachment to the ANZAC links but future leaders

might not... the relationship we have taken so much for granted is

at risk." (TA, Sept 2003, Harvey)

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As the ANZAC connection is perceived to be an unreliable linkage for the contemporary relationship, the hospitality shown towards New Zealand immigrants is therefore not merely based on supposed cultural similarities.

Instead, the establishment of a clear power division is utilised to construct the subject position of New Zealand as the weak, younger nation. This process of establishing a logic of difference (Jorgenson and Phillips, 2002), is made evident through the fuelling of stereotypes surrounding the weaker New Zealand economy and alleged ‘chip on the shoulder’ mentality of New Zealand towards Australia:

New Zealanders, regardless of their not inconsiderable feats, feel

neglected and ignored. Worse still, on the international stage,

reserved and polite Kiwis feel overwhelmed by the overconfident,

overbearing and overachieving Aussies. (TA, March 2000, Dore)

In this, and articles employing a similar narrative, an undertone of pity for New

Zealanders is clear, with Australia articulated as the stronger, more heroic neighbouring country, insofar as they support the Kiwi underdog. This includes, for instance, affording New Zealand citizens the ‘privilege’ of lenient trans-Tasman immigration policies and subsequent ability to freely work and live in Australia.

Within the media coverage, there is often an explicit self-assertion of Australia being the stronger nation, “Australia is New Zealand's most important bilateral partner, not vice versa” (SMH, Oct 2004, Williams), lending to the positioning of

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New Zealand, as a nation, as dependent on Australia, in terms of economic stability and national security. This construction of New Zealand, as a weaker nation, in turn, shapes a narrative of New Zealand immigrants as subordinate to the

Australian ‘host’.

Aligned with this sense of dependence are the diverging attitudes towards military defence expenditure, which has been a long held antagonism between New

Zealand and Australia:

Mr Keating will have talks with NZ's Prime Minister, Mr Bolger,

and his senior ministers. He also plans to bring up Australia's

unease about NZ's cuts in defence spending, officials here said

yesterday. This may cause further ructions in the [New

Zealand/Australia] relationship because of strong anti-defence

spending sentiment in NZ. Officials said Mr Keating would point

out that a viable defence relationship between allies depends on

both countries having a credible defence capability. (SMH, May

1993, Lagan)

The article (from which the excerpt above was taken) goes on to highlight how this attitude difference is not only linked to defence spending, but also New Zealand’s

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anti-nuclear stance, which resulted in New Zealand being “ousted from ANZUS for refusing to allow nuclear-armed ships into its ports” (SMH, May 1993, Lagan). As a result, New Zealand’s potentially heroic anti-nuclear stance is overlooked and instead articulated as another way in which New Zealand is dependent on

Australia.

The hierarchical relationship between the two nations is further distinguished within some articles that point out the teasing that occurs on either side of the

Tasman. For instance, one article highlights that, “Australians have always enjoyed taking pot shots at Kiwi sensibilities” and that, “complaints about Australia's nasty bullying tendencies towards New Zealand have always been around” (SMH, Sept

2001, Mcguinness). This act of making of seemingly jovial, yet somewhat belittling, statements about New Zealand is illustrated in the following excerpt:

The most lively trans-Tasman debate in recent months was

sparked by a satirical Sydney newspaper column which argued

that New Zealand was the perfect setting for the Lord of the Rings

trilogy because of its uncanny resemblance to a backwards Middle

Earth, with its stunted populace of Orc and Goblins. (SMH, May

2002, unknown)

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As exemplified in the above excerpt, the construction of New Zealand as the underdog is reinforced by the act of belittling New Zealand’s achievements, here in relation to the Lord of the Rings trilogy films, a highly successful franchise that generated considerable international attention to New Zealand. However the act of teasing, whilst seemingly mundane, can also have considerable implications, as highlighted below:

The righteous indignation with which we've seized on Paul

Keating's mischievous claim that welfare payments to New

Zealanders in Australia are costing $500 million a year tells me

there's something sick in the Aussie psyche. Kiwi teasing has

turned to Kiwi bashing. (SMH, May 1993, Gittins)

What the author terms ‘Kiwi bashing’ refers to the supposed cost of supporting

New Zealanders on welfare in Australia. I suggest that this discursive act serves to reinforce the subject position of New Zealand immigrants as subordinate to the

‘host’ Australia, within this discourse. In turn, the articulation of logic of difference between New Zealand immigrants and the Australia ‘host’ establishing a clear frontier between ‘us’ and ‘them’.

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Through the drawing of frontier lines between who is a visitor and who is a host, the subject position of the New Zealand immigrant is articulated as the ‘good guest’.

The construction of Australia, as an accepting ‘host’, aligns with Derrida’s (2000) conceptualisation of ‘conditional hospitality’. Whilst Derrida’s theorising has been applied to the case of refugees, I suggest it has relevance in light of the manner in which New Zealand immigrants have been positioned within the Australian context.

Derrida’s deconstruction of hospitality and the host/guest divide elucidates the way in which hospitality, particularly in the West, is conditional, insofar as it is based on rules, laws and regulations (Westmoreland, 2008). In the sense of national hospitality, distinguishing between citizens and foreigners is paramount as it enables nation-states, such as Australia, to determine the individuals who it wishes to include and exclude, respectively, based on the laws it has established

(Westmoreland, 2008, p. 1).

Hospitality then, on the part of Australia, is operationalised within this discourse, to position the subject position of the New Zealand immigrant, the ‘foreigner’, as the constitutive outside to Australia - the ‘host’, and its people, lawful and entitled citizens. Whilst both nations are considered to be separate entities within the media coverage, the articulation of the floating signifier ‘history’, with myths related to the ANZAC and colonial heritage, are used to create logics of

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equivalences between New Zealand and Australia, emphasising similarities between the two identities along racial lines. As such, it is important to note that unlike the following discourses, there is no reference made to Māori or Pacific

Islanders in this discourse. Through this act, New Zealand is positioned as a doubtful threat, and thus more likely to be ‘welcomed’ into Australia. There is also the process of subordination, where there is an establishment of logics of difference, related to the inferiority of New Zealand as the weaker, younger cousin requiring assistance from ‘Australia’, which is geographically larger, and economically stronger.

Conditional hospitality also relies on reciprocity, in that both the giver and receiver are “engaged in an economy of exchange” (Westmoreland, 2008, p. 2). Through the offering of hospitality, conditions and regulations are set in place, requiring the guest to provide and abide by specific rules of conduct, in this case the participation of New Zealand citizens in the skilled workforce, and support of

Australia’s cultural heritage. By employing this ‘good guest’ discourse, the New

Zealand immigrant is characterised within the media coverage as an obedient individual, who follows the rules and regulations imposed on them as a ‘visitor’ to

Australia.

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Discourse 2: ‘Deviant visitor’

The discourse of the ‘deviant visitor’ provides an alternative, competing discursive articulation of New Zealand immigrants as ‘good guests’, as discussed within the frame of conditional hospitality (Derrida, 2000). In contrast to the previous discourse, I posit that the subject position of New Zealanders shifts to that of a

‘foreign nuisance or menace’ to Australia. Signifiers, such as ‘work’ and ‘migrant’ are operationalised alongside other signifiers such as ‘welfare’, ‘crime, and ‘police’, to disrupt the subject positioning of New Zealand immigrants as ‘good guests’, insofar as the New Zealand immigrant is seen to challenge the hospitality of

Australia by ‘abusing the system’ and not behaving within the constraints of what is deemed acceptable, which is demonstrated by their engagement in activities deemed as fraudulent and/or risky, or occupying a less threatening, but ambiguous subject position, where they fail to fit neatly into the multicultural identity of the

Australian national, and are thus viewed as a nuisance.

The idea of abusing the system, in relation to employment, citizenship and welfare entitlements, is closely linked to trans-Tasman policy developments during the last few decades. The tightening of restrictions, particularly on welfare and citizenship, are reflected in the media coverage, with shifts occurring in the way New

Zealanders are positioned within this discourse over time. During the 1990s, for example, emphasis was placed on New Zealanders’ relatively open eligibility for employment and welfare, and the supposed threat this could pose:

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The Budget papers imply that the Government has become

suspicious that some New Zealanders, facing cutbacks and extra

charges within their own health care system, maybe be coming to

Australia to get heavily subsidised medical treatment under

Medicare. The exclusion of New Zealand visitors from future

access to Medicare system will save only about $13.5 million over

the next four years, but the Budget papers say the move will

reduce "medically motivated tourism from New Zealand". (SMH,

May 1998, Lagan)

Through the process of myth-making, the signifiers of ‘migrants’ and ‘welfare’ are operationalised together to highlight the idea of New Zealanders ‘crossing the ditch’ in order to take welfare payments, such as Medicare subsidies, away from

Australians. The use of the term ‘visitor’ as a synonym of ‘migrant’ in the above excerpt further supports the discursive construction of New Zealanders as guests, who are not necessarily welcome in Australia. In turn, restrictions are placed on what is deemed by the Australian government as appropriate conduct for a ‘guest’

(Derrida, 2000; Westmoreland, 2008). There is, I suggest, also a subtle reference to the undercurrent class divisions of Australian society. As I pointed out in the preceding chapter, Australia is often discursively constructed as a classless society.

Thus it is not surprising that there is not explicit mention of class, although I posit

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it does provide some basis to the articulation of New Zealand citizens accessing welfare as situated within a ‘lower-class’.

More general statements within the corpus draw on the signifiers of ‘welfare’ and

‘work’ to highlight stereotypical, yet conflicting, characterisations of New Zealand migrants in Australia. For instance, the excerpt below highlights the commonly cited stereotype of New Zealanders ‘crossing the ditch’ in order to abuse the welfare system (during the 1990s when New Zealanders were eligible to access welfare payments):

So many of us have swallowed the Bondi myth. We believe that a

disproportionate number of the New Zealanders in Australia are

unemployed. Some of us even believe that young Kiwis come to

Australia just so they can go on the dole. (SMH, May 1993, Gittins)

However, with legislative changes during the early 2000, the way in which New

Zealanders were subjectively positioned within this discourse was altered.

Specifically, as New Zealand citizens cannot access welfare and citizenship as readily, attention shifts to the employment and workforce participation levels of

New Zealand immigrants:

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Six years ago, Kiwis were among our least employable migrants -

their unemployment rate was 8.7 percent, compared with 8.2

percent for all overseas-born, and 7.3 percent for the Australian-

born. Last month, the New Zealand-born unemployed rate was

down to 3.6 percent, compared with 4.4 percent for immigrants

generally and 4.6 percent for the Australia-born. (TA, Feb 2008,

Megalogenis and Taylor)

Related to this is the threat New Zealand, more broadly, supposedly poses to the security of Australia’s economy. For instance, drawing on the signifier of

‘immigration’ the below excerpt highlights that whilst many New Zealanders are attracted to the opportunities in Australia, Australians are also leaving to New

Zealand, creating a deficit in the skilled workforce:

Australia’s best and brightest are leaving the country in record

numbers and, worst of all, many are heading for New Zealand...

New figures released by the Department of Immigration show that

a record number of people emigrated in 2007-08, with 76,923

leaving Australia permanently. (TA, Oct 2008, Maley)

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Debates related to the uptake of Australian citizenship by New Zealand immigrants also features in this discourse of social deviance. In particular, there is perception expressed in the articles that New Zealand immigrants are not willing to adopt the new country in which they are living:

New Zealanders are happy to live here but many snub their noses

at Australian citizenship, government research has found. The

research shows Kiwi residents are the slowest immigrant group to

take up citizenship, with many actively opposed to the idea. They

believe they can enjoy all the work and lifestyle benefits of living

in Australia without committing to their adopted country. The

"Australian Citizenship Promotion Campaign" report concludes

Kiwi residents are one of the most "difficult to win" groups in

terms of loyalty to the Australian community. (ST, Sept 2002,

Jackman)

As demonstrated by the excerpt above, there is a perceived time limit on the ability of New Zealand citizens to live and work freely in Australia. After a certain point,

New Zealand ‘residents’ like other migrants are expected to shift their national allegiance and become ‘Australian’. Where this does not occur there is a sense that

New Zealand citizens are taking advantage of Australia’s hospitality. This is articulated by drawing a line of equivalence between the signifiers of ‘citizenship’,

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‘Australia’ and ‘community’ to establish a frontier line, demarcating those within the nation and those outside of it.

This construction relies on the idea that New Zealand immigrants, regardless of their access to work and ability to live indefinitely in Australia, will always remain foreigners. As New Zealand immigrant Sally Irwin, an Australian based biographer and scriptwriter, comments: “People don't consider you a proper migrant if you're from New Zealand; you're more of a nuisance” (TA, June 2001, Carruthers). Here, the inconvenience of the ‘New Zealand immigrant’ to Australia is apparent, insofar as they do not fit with pre-determined categories and thus present a somewhat ambiguous subject position within the Australia context.

An alternative positioning of the ‘New Zealand immigrant’ as a social deviant is articulated in relation to fraudulent and risky behaviour. For example, the following excerpt highlights an instance where a New Zealander attempted to fraudulently migrate to Australia:

B came to Australia lawfully in 1987 and returned to New Zealand

when he was 17 in 1996. Last year, however, he re-entered

Australia fraudulently using a passport issued in his brother's

name. He probably chose that route as he had a criminal record in

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New Zealand between January, 1997, and November, 2006, which

runs to four pages and lists crimes ranging from robbery, common

assault, escape from penal institution, kidnap, assault with intent

to avoid arrest, threats to kill and cause grievous bodily harm,

assault with a stabbing or cutting instrument, escape from

custody, theft of motor vehicles and burglary. (ST, Oct 2008,

Akerman)

The way in which the article explicitly lists the individual crimes committed in this case highlights the supposed extreme deviance of this person, assisting in the myth making of a ‘menace’. The discourse of deviance is again exemplified in public concerns about the ‘threat’ of third country migration to Australia via New

Zealand:

Massive growth in non-New Zealand born migrants to Australia

has revealed growing use of the “backdoor” entry into Australia.

Kiwis can freely migrate to Australia but in the past decade the

number of non-NZ born migrants has risen from 11.5 percent of

the yearly total to 30.8 percent. Immigration records show the

bulk of these migrants come from "high risk" countries - Kiwis

born in the Middle East, and Pacific Island countries who wait

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their five years in NZ before moving here. (DT, Nov 2000,

unknown)

In response to this threat of ‘high risk’ migrants, the Australian Government is discursively constructed as having the responsibility to protect the border. As such, the Federal Government is reported as taking necessary steps to “impose some controls on the movement of people across the Tasman Sea” (SMH, Aug 1992,

Millet) in an effort to stem the flow of migrants abusing the Trans-Tasman Travel

Arrangement to enter Australia. Although an expected solution would be to tighten borders and restrict migration, some media articles suggest the idea of a joint

‘border’:

A common border around Australia and New Zealand would cut

immigration costs and prevent shonky migrants using New

Zealand as a back door, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer says.

The shared border, with a single immigration policy, joint migrant

intake and no customs or passport controls across the Tasman,

was endorsed as an urgent priority at the weekend by the

inaugural Australia New Zealand Leadership Forum, a

government-commissioned summit of 70 top ANZAC business,

arts and academic figures. (TA, May 2004, Harvey)

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In contrast to the previous discourse, where the act of joining ranks with New

Zealand would further cultural similarities, the linking of borders is instead advocated here by trans-Tasman ‘leaders’ as a practical solution to, or at least an attempt to diminish, the threat of unwanted migrants from across the Tasman Sea.

Although this is a possible pathway forward, the likelihood of Australia willingly joining borders with New Zealand is highly unlikely, as noted in discourse 1.

The idea of deviance is furthered by the racialisation of Māori and Pacific Island people, as a sub-group of the New Zealand population. Signifiers including ‘black’,

‘white’ and ‘difference’ are articulated together, to create a further logic of difference between Māori and, by extension Pacific Islanders and ‘white’

Australians. There is an attempt within this discourse to represent Māori and

Pacific Islander people as the ‘black’ other, largely imagined in relation to their physicality and supposed inherent/biologically derived aggressive nature, through racialisation (Brah, 1999; Phoenix, 2009; Wall, 1997). Stereotypes of Māori, for instance, which draw on colonial imaginings of the ‘primitive native’ assist in the contemporary imagining of Māori as aggressive criminals:

A young man is dead and two others are fighting for their lives

after a brutal late night street brawl broke out between local

Maori and Aborigines in one of Perth's toughest neighbourhoods.

Police have three men and one teenage boy in custody following

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the violent fight, which involved as many as 20 rival Aborigines

and Maori allegedly bashing each other with baseball bats, bricks,

metal bars and garden gnomes. (TA, Nov 2007, Gosch)

This assumed racially derived aggressive nature is understood to be inherent to

Māori, particularly males. Interestingly, the above excerpt explicitly discusses a supposed rivalry between Aboriginal and Māori, drawing racialised parallels between the two groups. Thus, in this discourse, I suggest Aboriginal and Māori are largely imagined and articulated as equivalent, based on their racialised difference to the ‘white’ majority (which is in contrast to Discourse 3).

The characterisation of the ‘Māori warrior’ further highlights this process of myth making based on assumed biological antecedents. This is exemplified in the following excerpt:

New Zealand Maori carry a "warrior" gene which has been linked

to violence, criminal acts and risky behaviour, a scientist has

controversially claimed. Maori men have a "striking over-

representation" of monoamine oxidase - dubbed the "warrior

gene" - which [New Zealand scientists] say is strongly associated

with aggressive behaviour. (DT, Aug 2006, anon)

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This representation of Māori, as naturally aggressive in nature, supported by references to characterisations within New Zealand literature and film that draw on, and perpetuate, certain narratives of Māori. For instance, the following is an excerpt from a media article reviewing Alan Duff’s book, later turned film, entitled

‘Once Were Warriors’:

He threw down a challenge to the Maori people, turned their

problems back on themselves, told them to stop bleating and

blaming white people. He has used an out-of-control family to

expose a tribal culture of endemic domestic violence and

alcoholism, for too long covered up. (SMH, Jan 1995, Chenery)

Through the use of the term ‘tribal culture’, there is a characterisation of Māori as inherently aggressive, who are argued in this excerpt to not take responsibility for their actions, in turn placing the blame on “white people”. Here, the racialisation of the ‘black’ other is clearly articulated as deviant in contrast to the “white people”, who represent Pākehā (European New Zealanders) in this instance. The use of the term ‘bleating’ also conjures the notion that Māori are akin to sheep, which are often symbolised as followers, not leaders. Thus, whilst Māori, in this discourse, are thought to be ‘aggressive’, there is a further notion of Māori being inferior to

“white people”.

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This idea of deviance, and inferiority, extends to the broader classification of all

‘Polynesian’ people - an ambiguous category considering the diversity of those from a Polynesian background who live in New Zealand and Australia. Despite this ambiguity, the social category of Polynesian is operationalised within the discourse of deviance to elucidate a similar racialisation of the ‘black’ other:

Two men stepped out of the shadows, punched him in the face,

breaking his nose, and kicked him as he hit the ground. Twice he

struggled to his feet only to be bashed to the ground each time

before they bound his hands and feet. The men - possibly of Pacific

Islander descent and heavyset - stole the hard drive from Mr Lal's

computer, his wallet and some other office equipment. (ST, Oct

2002, Watson)

Part of this ambiguity may be linked to the assumption that the ‘white’ New

Zealand population, who in Discourse 1 were constructed as culturally aligned with ‘white’ Australians, are different to the ‘others’ within the New Zealand population who immigrate to Australia.

But most will stay on, especially those Polynesians who can rely

on extended family or communities. A proportion of these non-

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permanent Kiwis will turn to crime, or the black economy. (SMH,

March 2001, Mcdonald)

As demonstrated in the above excerpt, through the classification of Polynesians as

“non-permanent Kiwis”, the majority ‘white’ New Zealand immigrant population, who are deemed to be generally ‘good guests’ are differentiated from the ‘deviant’

‘black’ others. There is a sense of foreboding articulated within the media coverage, in terms of what the increasing presence of Pacific Islanders may mean for

Australians in the future:

While Australians view the Pacific as out there, growing numbers

live here, including many who have come via New Zealand. There

are plenty in Australian jails, for instance. (TA, July 2010, Callick)

Indeed the notion that Pacific Islanders are coming via New Zealand, just to end up in Australian jails, highlights the lack of value placed on Pacific Island immigrants.

This is a clear contrast to the positioning of ‘white’ New Zealanders in the previous discourse, who were considered to be generally welcomed, obedient and productive guests.

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Reference is also made, as seen within the two excerpts below, to New Zealand migrants who over-step what is deemed acceptable behaviour of a guest and, how in extreme circumstances, this leads to deportation:

It’s official - Kiwis are the worst-behaved Australian visitors.

Department of Immigration statistics show that over a recent

three-year period more New Zealanders were deported or

"forcibly removed" from Australia than guests from any other

nation (DT, Feb 2007, unknown)

Australia is set to dump a record number of convicted criminals

and others of “bad character'' on other countries this year,

including paedophiles and drug dealers (DT, June 2008, Bissett)

The ability of the Australian Government to deport those of “bad character” back to

New Zealand reinforces the prevailing subject position of Australia as a ‘host’ in this discourse. In turn, the fact that those who knowingly ‘take advantage of the system’ and over-step what is acceptable of a guest, will endure the consequences, serves to shore up the superiority and authority of Australia as a nation-state.

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Discussion relating to ongoing sporting rivalries between Australia and New

Zealand, specifically with regard to rugby, is common within this discourse. Whilst such comments are seemingly surface level and jovial, there is an undercurrent within the discussion relating to the potential ‘threat’ New Zealand poses to the national sporting identity of Australia. In the following example, the performance of the haka by New Zealand rugby players is described:

So far, to deal with the ritual pre-battle intimidation of the haka in

which the All Blacks roll their eyes and shout "Ka mate, Ka mate"

("It is death, it is death"), the Australians have variously tried

fronting up bravely, poking tongues out and hanging about in a

corner pretending it is not happening. Lately, they have taken to a

huddle which is supposed to foreshadow their strategy in the

game ahead, along with Waltzing Matilda, the song about sheep-

stealing meant to inspire the crowd to join in. (SMH, Sept 1999,

Jobson)

The haka, as a Māori cultural practice, is generally regarded with respect within the New Zealand context. In the discourse of deviance, however, this cultural practice, when associated with sport, is used to operationalise the stereotype of

New Zealand rugby players as ‘barbarians’ through the act of engaging in what is perceived as a primitive or tribal Māori cultural activity. This characterisation

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aligns with the abovementioned conceptualisation of the aggressive ‘Māori warrior’. In addition, within this article there are elements of belittling and a lack of regard of Māori culture. Even though the New Zealand rugby team is perceived as rivals to Australia, effort is made to diminish the legitimacy of this threat, by drawing frontier lines, and create a logic of difference, between the primitive, irrational acts of the New Zealand rugby players, and the strategic, calculated and more respectable acts of the Australian rugby team.

Within this discourse of ‘social deviant’, the ‘New Zealand’ identity serves as the constitutive outside to what it means to be ‘Australian’. Key events within this discourse include the tightening of immigration and social security restrictions for

New Zealand citizens, fraudulent and disorderly and criminal activity, often involving Māori and Pacific Island people, as well as sporting rivalries.

Similar to Discourse 1 of the ‘good guest, younger cousin’, there is an underlying notion of ‘conditional hospitality’ on the part of Australia. In the ‘good guest’ discourse, the New Zealander is characterised as an obedient guest, who follows the rules and regulations imposed on them as foreigners. In contrast, in this discourse of ‘social deviant’, the ‘New Zealander’ is seen to challenge the hospitality of Australia by ‘abusing the system’ and not behaving within the constraints of what is deemed acceptable, such as engaging in fraudulent and risky activity. As I have mentioned, Derrida’s (2000) concept of conditional hospitality

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requires the subordination of the other/outsider. This is evident in the racialised aspect of the discourse concerning the inherent social deviance of Māori and

Pacific Islander people and how they differ in ‘behaviour’ to other ‘white’ New

Zealand citizens in Australia. There are also parallels between the myth making in

Discourse 1, around New Zealanders as the ‘underdog’, and Discourse 2, insofar as both attempt to construct the subject position of the ‘New Zealander’ as of a subordinate or of lesser rank to ‘Australia’. Unlike the previous discourse, however, this is in relation to a perceived legitimate ‘threat’ New Zealand poses to the

Australian identity.

Discourse 3: ‘Strong, exotic Māori’

The third discourse identified during analysis relates to the notion of Māori as a strong and exotic race. Unlike the previously discussed discourses, this is a much more subtle discourse. Nevertheless, it appears consistently throughout the media coverage. Overall, emphasis is place on the idea of Māori as the strong indigenous peoples of New Zealand, which is in turn directly compared with the weaker, less politically engaged or powerful Aboriginal people. The signifiers, including ‘black’,

‘white’, and ‘culture’ are used in combination to highlight the issues facing

Indigenous people in both contexts, and expose the fact that New Zealand is ‘doing it better’ than Australia. Moreover, this racialised discourse (Brah, 1999; Phoenix,

2009; Wall, 1997) attempts to construct essentialised representations of Māori and

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Aboriginal people, which are linked to stereotypical imaginaries of each

Indigenous population, embedded in colonial constructions.

On the one hand, New Zealand’s race relations are regarded as the ‘gold standard’ for the treatment of Indigenous people. An important aspect of this myth making is the Treaty of Waitangi, which is viewed as the basis for positive race relations, and the subsequent Waitangi Tribunal settlements. For example, the following excerpt identified the many domains Māori, through the Tribunal process, are able to submit claims over:

Maori claims over native plants, animals and cultural icons such as

the haka are being aired in a landmark tribunal hearing in New

Zealand. Maori people should have guardianship over native flora

and fauna and intellectual property rights over their culture, a

Maori group said in its claim before the Waitangi Tribunal. (TA,

Sept 1997, Dunbar)

Within the media narratives, there is a common perception that Māori are able to access and actively engage in legal and political processes, which are supported by the New Zealand Government. Through this representation, New Zealand is considered to provide a benchmark for race relations in Australia. This is further

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demonstrated by reference to the supposedly strong presence of Māori people and their cultural heritage in the political and social arenas in New Zealand:

Maoris have always had their own political representation in the

NZ Parliament. A number of schools take in only Maori students.

Places in the professional faculties at the universities are kept

for Maoris. There are Maori bursaries, grants for housing, loans

for farms, quotas in broadcasting, special facilities for teaching

the Maori language and a high-powered tribunal to decide claims

arising out of the Treaty of Waitangi. (SMH, April 1988, unknown)

This myth of the ‘strong Māori’ and New Zealand as ‘doing it better’ for race- relations is contrasted with Australia not measuring up in relation to its treatment of Aboriginal people. For instance in the below excerpt, the supposed lack of a commitment to address Aboriginal health in Australia is directly contrasted with the situation in New Zealand:

It is time we put an end to the myth that the Aboriginal health

problem is too hard to solve and that additional resources would

not produce measurable outcomes. The crisis in indigenous health

in Australia can be overcome with leadership and commitment, as

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we found during our recent visit to New Zealand, where

indigenous health has undergone a revolution. (TA, Sept 1997,

Woollard)

Aboriginal people, in this discourse, are represented as an inherently or biologically weaker ‘race’; a stark contrast to the ‘warrior’-like image afforded to

Māori. As a result, Aboriginal people are assumed to require assistance by the

Australian government, whereas Māori in New Zealand are supposedly capable of engaging in the political sphere in order to address inequalities and injustices.

One such issue, which is contrasted between New Zealand and Australia, concerns the establishment of Indigenous language schools:

The case for an Aboriginal school rests on the total failure of the

present system... Aboriginal schools in Western Australia,

Queensland, South Australia (at Elizabeth) and at Miriwinni

Gardens near Tamworth (a Seventh Day Adventist school) are

successful. If this is not good enough evidence, the Education

Minister could look at the success of Maori schools in New

Zealand. (SMH, May 1988, unknown)

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In this excerpt, the Australian Education Minister is explicitly requested to look to the example of New Zealand to see how they have ‘successfully’ implemented Te

Reo, or Māori language schools.

In addition to the power-imbalance experienced by Aboriginal people in Australia compared to Māori in New Zealand, is the myth that Aboriginal people are a less integrated population group in Australian ‘multicultural’ society. This is considered in reference to New Zealand as a ‘bicultural’ nation, which through the

Treaty of Waitangi, emphasises a relationship between Māori and the Crown, alluding to the notion that Māori have a significant and recognised role in New

Zealand society.

The narratives employed within the media articles also suggest that despite alternative characterisations of being ‘deviant’, as outlined in discourse 2, some

Māori immigrants have been able to settle successfully as a minority group in

Australian society:

A lot of Australians have got the impression that all Kiwis, and in

particular Maoris, are bludgers and thugs. The fact is that most of

the Maori community here is well integrated into Australian

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society. They love it here. Many are working hard, paying off

homes and contributing to Australia. (SMH, Oct 1989, Horrigan)

Furthermore, in the media coverage there is mention of the contribution Māori make to Australian life through what is constructed as their ‘exotic’ culture. In turn,

Māori are noted as being accepted in Australia, more so than in New Zealand, because of the value multiculturalism places on ‘culture’:

Maoris say that they are not discriminated against in Australia, a

fact that most of them attribute to multiculturalism. More than

one leader commented on the irony that Maori culture was

tolerated more readily by Australians than Aboriginal culture.

(SMH, Sept 1991, Cameron)

There is also mention within this same article of the fear some Māori have regarding the loss of cultural connection by Māori migrants from New Zealand:

Mr Poata is an embodiment of the conflict that confronts every

Maori who comes to Australia. Although he left New Zealand and

came to Sydney, Mr Poata continues to wrestle with the meaning

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of his ancient inheritance - a culture that has ordered the lives of

every one of his ancestors. (SMH, Sept 1991, Cameron)

In the context of this discourse, this statement functions to create a sense of urgency around the protection of this ‘exotic’ culture. This is due to the perception that Māori are able to productively contribute to multicultural Australia through their unique culture.

The contribution of Māori culture also extends to the international stage, where in a profile article on Australian model Megan Gale, explicit reference was made to the value of her ‘exotic’ Māori heritage:

Gale's olive skin, voluptuous body and glossy, dark hair remind

Italians of their beloved Sophia Loren... But Gale also offers an

exotic appeal to the Italians, who seem fascinated by her Maori

heritage (on her mother's side) and her feline green eyes (from

her father). (TA, March 2001, Bita)

The above excerpt indicates how, in this instance, the models supposed ‘exotic’

Maori culture, is a valuable asset. This was further referenced in a second article in

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2006, which noted that her ‘stardom’ in Italy, “is in fact a credit to her Polynesian heritage” (DT, Aug 2006, Brynes).

Ideas around the ‘value’ of Māori culture lend to the commodification of this culture, for the benefit of Australia. This is extended to the increasing influence of

‘Polynesian’ culture in Australia, as demonstrated by the following excerpt:

When Gowings - the big, conservative Sydney clothing store -

starts stocking Hawaiian shirts and sandals, you know the

Polynesian trickle is turning into a torrent. The giveaway is that

these shirts aren't being worn tucked-in like an accountant on

holiday, but on the outside as they do in Apia and Auckland. (TA,

March 1998, Abernethy)

The article then goes on to cite the proliferation of ‘Polynesian’ influences in

Australian entertainment, including music and food, as well as the increase popularity of Samoan and Māori tattooing. Within the broader discourse of multiculturalism, which promotes ideas of ‘tolerance’ and ‘enrichment’, migrant cultural items are often positioned as consumables for, and by, the ‘white’

Australian majority, and in turn symbolise ‘integration’ and ‘majority acceptance’

(Hage, 1998). In this discourse, the increasing presence of Pacific Islander culture

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is considered to be of value as it promotes a vision of Australia as a diverse, accepting multicultural nation.

In this discourse of the ‘strong, exotic’ Māori, the seemingly strong position Māori occupy in both New Zealand and Australian societies is rendered visible.

Additionally this discourse fuels insecurity about the performance of Australia in terms of race relations and the poor socio-economic outcomes of Aboriginal people.

Waitangi day ‘celebrations’ in New Zealand and by Māori migrants in Australia reinforce the partnership embodied in the Treaty of Waitangi. Polynesian cultural motifs and events across Australia showcasing this ‘exotic’ culture propel an associated stereotype of Māori as the exotic native. Whilst this process of othering perpetuates colonialist notions and the racialisation of Māori, it also provides a basis for viewing Māori migrants in an alternative fashion, where their culture is seen to contribute to the ‘multiculturalism’ strived for in Australia.

Chapter summary

In this chapter I sought to examine the discursive construction of New Zealand and its citizens in Australian print media between 1985 and 2010. Applying a

Discourse Theoretical Analysis to the corpus of texts, I identified three overarching narratives, namely, ‘the good guest’, ‘the social deviant’ and ‘the exotic, strong

Māori’. In the ‘good guest’ discourse the New Zealand immigrant is characterised

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as an obedient individual, who follows the rules and regulations imposed on them as a ‘visitor’ to Australia. In the discourse of the ‘deviant’ guest, the New Zealand immigrant is seen to challenge the hospitality of Australia by ‘abusing the system’ and not behaving within the constraints of what is deemed ‘acceptable’. The discourse of the ‘strong, exotic Māori’ draws upon a subtle, yet constant alternative racialised construction of Māori as the ‘strong’ indigenous people of New Zealand.

The identification and examination of these competing discourses reveals the articulation of the New Zealand immigrant positioned as the inferior other, functioning as a constitutive outside to the Australian ‘host’. This is structured and normalised through myths of cultural sameness drawn along lines of whiteness,

New Zealand being the weaker nation, and racialised notions, such as that of the aggressive ‘Māori warrior’, which serve to articulate New Zealand migrants as a foreign menace and thus unwelcome visitors in Australia. Overall, the discourses identified through this analysis point to the highly dynamic, contradictory and often ambiguous subject position of New Zealand immigrants in Australia.

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Chapter 7 Second generation immigrant narratives of identity and belonging

Overview of thesis

Introduction

In the previous chapters I examined the discursive terrain that has shaped the development of trans-Tasman migration policies and influenced the way in which

New Zealand immigrants have been constructed in the collective social imaginary

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of Australia. I did this through a genealogical analysis and by examining the prevailing media discourses relating to the subject position of New Zealand immigrants in Australia. In this chapter, drawing on a series of in-depth interviews with Australian-born young adults, I consider the lived experiences of second generation immigrants of New Zealand descent as they negotiate their identity(s) and belonging within the confines of this discursive terrain.

As I proposed in Chapter Two, current research tends to portray an essentialised and static notion of second generation immigrant identity and experience. This is most commonly characterised by a ‘culturally conflicted’ stage between one’s migrant family, community and the wider ‘host’ society (Jayasinha, 2011). In this chapter I attend to this challenge by drawing on Laclau and Mouffe’s (1985) political identity theory to explore the way in which the participants assert their subjectivity across local, national and transnational landscapes.

Subject positions can be understood as those discursively constructed positions that subjects occupy, within the discursive field, at any given time. As Howarth and

Stavrakakis (2000, p. 20) articulate “…rather than a homogenous subject with particular interests, this means that any ‘concrete individual’ can have a number of different subject positions”. One example is the position of being simultaneously a woman, second generation immigrant, and a citizen of the country in which one lives. I suggest this conceptualisation draws parallels to intersectionality theory. It

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acknowledges the multiple ‘social’ positions that an individual subject may occupy, thus providing a critique of identity politics, which tends to focus on one dimension of identity at a given point (Brah and Phoenix, 2004; Phoenix, 2006).

From this theoretical vantage point, the way in which certain positions gain salience in relation to others within specific politicised spatio-temporal discourses can be examined (Howarth and Stavrakakis, 2000).

Laclau has further developed the notion of political subjectivity to encompass both how subject positions are structured by discourse as well as the political subjects that actively constitute structures (Howarth, 2004; Laclau, 1990). Here, dislocationary moments, which represent an antagonistic mechanism that prevent the subject from attaining its ‘identity’, allows for the disruption of certain identities to occur. This threatens the supposed stability of that ‘identity’ and reveals a lack in the discourse (Howarth and Stavrakakis, 2000). This is where the individual is thus engaged in a process of negotiation to counter the ‘failure’ of the discursive structure and re-affirm her/his subjectivity, or actively identify with other available social constructions in an attempt to close the ‘lack’ (Jorgenson and

Phillips, 2002). Through this act of identification, certain political subjectivities are rendered visible and once “… formed and stabilised they become those subject positions which ‘produce’ individuals with certain characteristics and attributes”

(Howarth and Stavrakakis, 2000, p. 20).

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In this chapter I draw on this conceptualisation of identity to explore how participants occupy seemingly ‘normalised’ or ‘objective’ subject positions. I then present an analysis of the points at which these subject positions are rendered unstable and disrupted, due to dislocationary moments, and the ways in which participants negotiated these to assert their political subjectivity. I begin with an analysis of the participants’ re-construction of their parent(s)’ migration experiences as a mechanism of how they make sense of their own origins. I then discuss how the participants negotiate their subject positions in relation to different places and social interactions. Through this analysis I demonstrate how the participants are bound to their parents’ trans-Tasman migration, understood through stories told by significant others, as well as personal observations of New

Zealand, developed during childhood. Personal experiences, including navigating everyday places, encounters with New Zealand as their parents’ country of birth and processes of othering (based along lines of social class and racialised difference), coupled with their re-construction of their parent(s)’ migration, collectively inform the participants’ situated attachments to place and sense of belonging in relation to their shifting subject positioning. As I examine in the latter part of this chapter, these varied lived experiences contributed to a relational construction of national identity, drawn along conflicting and fluctuating lines of allegiance, ambivalence and displacement.

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Re-imagining parent(s) migration experiences

Participants’ accounts of their parent(s)’ migration and settlement experiences had been built on the stories of significant others, such as their parents, siblings and extended family members based in Australia and New Zealand. These stories had been shared with the participants as a means of conveying historical and familial knowledge. Understanding of their parents’ migration was presented as reconstructed narratives of these collective stories, based on a compilation of reasons for their parents’ decision to leave, the process of migration, and early settlement experiences in Australia.

A number of participants reflected on why their parents had initially decided to immigrate to Australia. Most parents had immigrated to Australia in their early twenties during the 1970s and 1980s. One common reason given for parents’ immigration to Australia was that it held “better opportunities” compared to those available at the time in New Zealand. For example, one participant’s mother moved to Australia to further her education opportunities:

She didn’t finish high school, but she went on to university to do

music at the conservatorium in the city when she was 17. I guess

she figured you know she wasn’t going to do something sort of

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scholarly. So she figured, cut your losses, go for a bigger dream, I

guess. (Megan)

As identified in previous chapters, this is consistent with the ‘traditional’ trans-

Tasman economic emigration from New Zealand (Carmichael, 1993) and the idea of ‘cutting ones losses’ and aiming for something ‘bigger and better’. Brooke, for instance, explained that her father had just wanted to “get out of small town New

Zealand” where there were little opportunities.

The parents of some participants had also made the decision to move based on marriage or relationships. One participant explained that his mother moved to

Australia to ‘follow’ her husband, believing that it would be a temporary move:

But yeah, she moved across with the perceived agreement that

one day they would move back to New Zealand and they lived in

Adelaide for a long time, and that was pretty tough for her when

she realised they weren’t moving back. (Matt)

Other participants described how their parents move to Australia was a less

‘conscious’ decision. The following participant noted how he had been told his father’s move and subsequent settlement in Australia, almost ‘just happened’:

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It was one of those spontaneous things, because he’s got eight

siblings. So they were everywhere. They are pretty much spread

over New Zealand and Australia. He went over [to Australia] like

once or twice too, with his brothers and sister. Then like one time,

he just went over to visit and just ended up staying. (Jake)

Jake’s father was able to seek the support of existing family in Australia to facilitate the move. This was echoed by Kate who mentioned that her mother was able to access support when she initially moved over from a few different family members:

My uncle was already living here, her cousin. Yeah. So, he was

over here and then she came over to stay with him, my uncle, and

then my cousin, I think. (Kate)

For the majority of the parents of participants, the emigration process occurred when trans-Tasman migration was ‘open’, in that New Zealand citizens did not require a passport or visa to emigrate (Poot, 2009), meaning there were relatively few restrictions compared to other countries at the time. In the following quote,

Anna noted how easy it was for her mum to leave New Zealand:

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[Mum] was working at a hostel and, it was back in the day, she

said she came to Australia without a passport, on a ticket with

someone else’s name on it. Someone was staying at the hostel, and

they had a return ticket to Australia, and they’d come and were

staying at the hostel and had got offered a job or something had

happened in New Zealand, they didn’t want to go back to Australia

any more, they sold the ticket to my mum, she said for something

like five dollars. (Anna)

This ability to travel ‘freely’ between Australia and New Zealand had an obvious influence on the way in which the parents had perceived travelling to Australia.

Crossing the Tasman Sea for that generation was not necessarily equated with the process of migration. Instead, movement to Australia was arguably viewed by many of the parents with a sort of banal attitude and not imagined as the act of crossing the territorial boundaries of another nation-state. For instance, as the above quote attests, Anna considered her mother’s move to Australia as an almost dismissive, spur of the moment act, captured by the possibility of being able to purchase a ticket to enter another country for five dollars without any formal documentation.

Many of the participants had segmented knowledge of their parent’s settlement experiences in Australia. Their narratives would often contain fragments, which

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they would then piece together with other narratives they had gathered from other family members living in Australia and New Zealand. Stories had been told and re- told by various people and thus the participants were often in the position of having to construct a narrative from these fragments. For instance, Kate indicated that her mother had not really conveyed the specifics behind her reason for leaving:

The recollection, all I can get from my mum, ‘cause she doesn’t

really talk about it, is pretty much that she didn’t like New Zealand

anymore and I think she left when she was 19. And she was like,

“okay that’s it I’ve had enough, I want to go to Sydney”. (Kate)

For another participant, her understanding of her mother’s reason to move was based on her own assumptions about the “better job opportunities and lifestyle” she assumed Australia had to offer in comparison to New Zealand, as they had never talked about this experience directly:

It's not like I’d be like, “So why did you move?” Yeah I guess I’ll ask

her one day, when the time is right. (Nicole)

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Often a story would have been revisited by the same person, or re-told by another person, giving the participants different pieces of information from which to construct a ‘fuller’ narrative. Alternatively, aspects of a story often remained un- told, leaving the participants to their own devices in terms of creating meaning around their parents’ migration experiences. This was often the case in relation to stories about negative experiences in New Zealand. For instance, a few participants noted how they had heard fragmented stories from other family members that their parents’ had had negative experiences in New Zealand which had resulted in them leaving. This is exemplified by the quote below:

My younger brother said-, [dad] spoke to my brothers more than

to me, [he said] that dad moved over from New Zealand because

he was trying to get away from Hell’s Angels (biker gang in New

Zealand0. (Isabella)

Some participants were able to further reflect on the possible negative experiences that had occurred by making inferences based on observations of other family members. Particularly, the push factor of “getting away from family” was a commonly cited reason. One participant had learnt from their grandmother that their mother had been sexually abused in New Zealand and the family had relocated her to Australia to protect her from further violence. Chris also noted

‘family tensions’ as a strong factor in his mother’s move to Australia:

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At that time my mum had quite a few family problems that she

was working through. She didn’t get on very well with her father

and her mother, my grandmother and grandfather. (Chris)

Nicole was able to piece together that life for her extended family members in New

Zealand may have been difficult. She based this conclusion on the ‘absence’ of disclosure about life in New Zealand:

I did know that my mum was saying when they grew up it was

sort of like rough in New Zealand. I guess like actually it’s like that

with a lot of [older family members], they don’t really talk about

how they were brought up, so I'm thinking there could be stories

behind it. (Nicole)

The literature tends to favour the argument that New Zealand migrants predominantly move for ‘economic’ reasons (Bedford et al., 2003). From the participants’ varied narratives, however, while for some parents their reason for moving was primarily to seek out better opportunities, there was the further narrative of parents feeling the need to escape New Zealand, due to negative family or personal experiences.

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Further, contrary to the bulk of the published literature that suggests New Zealand

‘migrants’ are likely to be ‘short-term’ visitors, all parents of interviewees had continued to live and set down ‘roots’ in Australia. The participants’ perceptions of their parents’ settlement and ‘assimilation’ experiences, whilst not directly discussed, often emerged in their narratives of their own childhood and observing their parents while growing up. Having existing family connections was an important aspect in the ability of some of the participants’ parents to settle in

Australia. This was not universal, however. Access to limited social and economic support was also evident. Anna, for instance, noted:

I remember growing up thinking, “do mum and dad not have any

friends?” I’ve asked her [mother] about it and she’s like “Oh, you

know we lived on a farm so we weren’t all that mobile”… And I

think it was a little bit limited by their financial situation. (Anna)

Participants’ understandings of their parents’ settlement experiences were often based on their own observations of their parents’ interactions with various people.

Matt was acutely aware of the difficulties his mother had experienced while trying to “fit in” to Australia during his childhood:

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She has definitely felt a lot of anti-, well she takes stuff to heart

also, but a lot of anti-Kiwi sentiment in her time in both Adelaide

and Melbourne. More so in Melbourne through the, the sort of

other parents that she met through my school. Which I always

found quite interesting because I didn’t ever think, I think

generally speaking Australians and Kiwis share a kind of friendly

rivalry that, I just, you’d be pretty high pressed to put it down as

racism or anything. I think it was just more jokes. (Matt)

The participants presented varied re-constructed narratives of their parents’ emigration experience, based on an array of fragmented stories and observations.

The ‘free’ migration between Australia and New Zealand during the 1970s and

1980s had an impact on the way the participants’ parents viewed moving to

Australia as ‘temporary’ travel rather than permanent migration. Moreover, participants were able to reflect on the diverse settlement experiences of their parents, including varied social and economic support and differing levels of connection to family in New Zealand, based on conversations with their parents as well as their own observations during their childhood. As I explore in the following sections, these factors influenced the way in which the participants viewed themselves in relation to Australia and New Zealand and navigated their various subject positions.

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Navigating everyday places

From their narratives of growing up and living in Australia, there was a clear indication that the participants identified with specific everyday places, which in turn influenced their subject position in relation to those places and to others.

‘Place’ has been a central construct in the discipline of human geography

(Cresswell, 2005; Kearns and Andrews, 2005; Wiles et al., 2009). The concept has been conceptualised in two ways; the traditional notion of a physical, static location or ‘space’ and, the more nuanced notion of ‘place’ (Cresswell, 2005; Wiles et al.,

2009). The first definition of a physical space as an objective concept relates to physical dimensions of space (Cresswell, 2005). In this sense, space is almost regarded as an ‘empty container’ in which events and processes take place (Wiles et al., 2009). On the other hand, place represents the transformation of the ‘empty container’ into a socially constructed phenomenon, imbued with feelings, meaning and history (Cresswell, 2005; Kearns and Andrews, 2005; Wiles and Jayasinha,

2013). Tuan (1977) aptly captures this notion of the transformation from space to place: “Abstract space becomes concrete place, filled with meaning” (p. 199). Place can thus be understood as a bi-directional relationship, insofar as it influences the meaning people allocate to a specific space through social and cultural experiences of that location, and is also shaped and reconstructed through these processes

(Altman and Low, 1992).

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An important associated term within this idea of place is ‘sense of place’, which alludes to the subjective emotions and meanings infused within a place (Cresswell,

2005). Rose (1995) observes that sense of place is a significant concept to the study of place as it captures the idea of place as the “focus of personal feelings” because sense of place is derived “from every aspect of [an] individual‘s life experience” (p. 88). Sense of place is therefore used with specific reference to the infusion of emotions within certain places. However, as argued by Eyles (1985), sense of place is not merely derived from sets of experiences, but also is shaped by the “structures, mechanisms and forces beyond immediate observation” (p. 5).

Thus sense of place can be understood as the accumulation of experiences and emotions within certain spaces, which is influenced by the social and political structures that shape our everyday environment. Accordingly senses of place can arise at different geographical scales, including the local, regional and global spheres, all of which intersect and consequently may be experienced in combination (Rose, 1995).

A further concept is place attachment, which broadly refers to the affective links between people and places, including the function of place as a setting for personal interactions and connections to the past (Altman and Low, 1992; Hidalgo and

Hernandez, 2001). Place attachment is seen as “a process that provides personal and group identity, fostering security and comfort with one‘s immediate surroundings” (Sugihara and Evans, 2000,p. 401). In this sense, place attachment

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fosters not only a connection to the past, but also acts as a foundation for people to gain a sense of security and negotiate their identities (Wiles et al., 2009). As part of inquiry into the role of place in identification and experiences of belonging, I suggest that the overlapping concepts of sense of place and place attachment prove useful in exploring the meaning participants attribute to everyday places as well as the attachments they have to those places.

In the interviews the participants frequently commented on their memories and experiences of engaging with localised places such as their childhood neighbourhood or suburb. For instance, one participant reflected on her quintessential Australian ‘up-bringing’ in the costal suburbs of Sydney:

I mean it was gorgeous living in Bondi [eastern suburb], I was so

spoiled to be able to go to the beach every day and I was

swimming before I could walk, and actually when I was really

young, we had a house up in the bush, off the North shore area

and so we used to go up there as much as possible and swim up

there and then I’d come back and swim here. I guess it was a

pretty typical Australian childhood, life was pretty easy. (Brooke)

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The spatial tropes of the beach and the natural landscape of the bush were central to Brooke’s sense of connection to the physical landscape of her local childhood neighbourhood. Moreover, this unique physicality related more broadly to her construction of what it ‘means’ to have an ‘Australian childhood’ and the construction of her upbringing in this context. For another participant her experiences of growing up centered on her connection to a specific suburb of

Sydney:

I’ve lived here in Blacktown my entire life. Like I grew up in a

house, like on [name] Street, and went to the local public high

school so you know constant memories of walking around here.

First library I signed up to was the Blacktown Library. So,

everything started here. (Isabella)

Similar to Brooke, Isabella drew on particular physical motifs of her local streets, high school and library, as key symbols imbued with meaning to articulate a sense of attachment to her local suburb. This attachment was particularly temporal as it shaped her sense of where she had ‘started’ her life, grew up and continued to live.

Linking into this idea of localised sense of attachment, Megan discussed how she did not ‘relate’ to any particular social or cultural group, and instead felt a strong affiliation to her local geographical area:

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I’m not particularly religious. I am too jittery to stay in one activity

for too long. I don’t really subscribe to an ethnic group because I

am not really strongly enough myself to really do that but I guess

I’m very much an eastern suburbs gal. That’s the only way that I

can put that in context. (Megan)

The localised subject positioning the participants assumed also lent to their own perceptions of other parts of Sydney and the people who occupied those places.

Many of the participants expressed awareness of the specific social and economic differences between certain spatial areas of Sydney. Nicole, who had grown up in a relatively mid to high socio-economic suburb located in the Northern region of

Sydney, discussed her perceived safety of her local area compared to other parts of

Sydney:

I think I’ve always had a safe home and safe surrounding and I

think where I live is probably one of the safest places you know

compared to out west. When you hear about all those shootings

and stuff it's all so crazy. I’ve been pretty happy, I’ve never been

around violence. I’ve seen violence of course, I mean you know,

but I’ve been really very safe where I live you know. So, yeah I’ve

been happy living here, it's the best spot. (Nicole)

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Some participants were aware of how their subject positioning in relation to spatial areas of Sydney may impact on how others may have perceived them. I suggest these self-identifications and the categorisation of ‘others’ reflect the participants’ engagement in the highly politicised spatial divisions of Sydney, drawn along lines of historical, social, economic and social class differences

(McNeill, Dowling, and Fagan, 2005; Mee and Dowling, 2000; Powell, 1993; Waitt,

2003). Participants were acutely aware of their ‘social’ positioning in terms of the specific district of Sydney in which they lived.

As I discussed in Chapter Five, ‘social class’ is not a commonly acknowledged or accepted social division in the Australian cultural context. Sydney, similar to other major cities across Australia, is often discursively constructed in the public imaginary as socio-spatially divided (McNeill et al., 2005), primarily along lines of

‘class’ and ‘socioeconomic status’, with more subtly interwoven aspects of racial difference. These socio-spatial divisions have been articulated through a range of metaphors including the roughly divided eastern, northern, southern and western regions of Sydney, centre (city) versus periphery (suburb) and through stereotypes about the people who live in these specific area (McNeill et al., 2005;

Powell, 1993). Envisioned as a ‘global city’, McNeill and colleagues (2005) suggest that the global Sydney resident (read city, eastern and inner-west dweller) is a

“figure who, equipped with various class and taste capacities, performs

‘worldliness’ through consumption” (p. 938).

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Aligned with the notion of the globalised ‘city’ dweller the areas of inner-city and inner-west Sydney have come to be characterised as “creative”, “bohemian” or

“trendy” in contemporary discourse (Gibson and Homan, 2004). The pattern of settlement throughout the 1960s to 1990s generally involved the initial occupation by artists and students to the area, originally attracted to the low rent within close proximity to the University of Sydney and the central business district, followed by the residential developers and gentrification (Gibson and Homan, 2004). Gibson and Shane (2004) contend that through this gentrification process, the inner-west area increasingly became appealing to the ‘transnational corporate class’, which has grown in response to Sydney development into a globalised city (McNeill et al.,

2005). These newer residents were drawn to the lifestyle the inner-west offered, including close proximity to restaurants, venues and retail outlets (Bridge and

Dowling, 2001; Gibson and Homan, 2004).

This increasing pattern also contributed to what has been considered to be elision of alternative histories and heritage in a ‘whitening’ of the area (Gibson and

Homan, 2004; Shaw, 2004; Taksa, 2003); both in terms of the demographics of the population and through the transformation of places into sites of consumption by what have been conceptualised as “cosmo-multicultural consumers” comprised primarily of the ‘white’ middle-class (Hage, 1997, 1998). As Hage (1998) argues, discourses of ‘tolerance’ and ‘enrichment’ within contemporary multiculturalism have led to aspects of migrant cultures, such as food, music and dance, being

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positioned as consumables for, and by, the (white) majority. These cultural ‘items’, mediated by the (white) majority themselves, come to act as symbols of

‘integration’ and ‘majority acceptance’.

This subject position contrasts with the suburban parts of Sydney, generally viewed as those suburbs located in the western, south-western and north-western regions. In the contemporary public imaginary, western Sydney has come to be characterised as a region of great diversity in terms of culture, language, ethnicity, religion and socioeconomic status. This is in part due to it being largely influenced by immigration of the 1960s and 1970s (McNeill et al., 2005). The region is also demarcated as different from other parts of Sydney due to ‘class’ divisions, with western Sydney having a lower proportion of its residents in the highest skilled- work categories and a higher proportion in the lower income brackets compared to Sydney as a whole (Dunn, 1998; Forrest and Dunn, 2010; Hodge, 1996).

These characteristics contribute to the articulation of western Sydney as a spatial and a cultural signifier of the ‘other’ Sydney (Dunn, 1998; Forrest and Dunn, 2010;

Hodge, 1996). Powell’s (1993) study of media representations of western-Sydney further elucidates the way in which socio-economic disadvantage and class divisions of the region lend to the construction of the other. Specifically, she notes that there is a tendency for more negative coverage of the issues, with stories overwhelmingly related to problems of neglect, disadvantage, crime, violence,

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unemployment and low education rates, and a lack of facilities and services

(Powell, 1993). Despite its diversity and complexity, western Sydney is effectively constructed as homogenous. The negative image and subsequent othering of western Sydney is an active discursive mechanism in the construction of defining what the ‘real’ Sydney is not (Mee and Dowling, 2000; Powell, 1993).

These social class divisions of Sydney featured in the participants’ narratives of identifying with Sydney. For instance, participants drew on logics of difference relating to socio-economic levels and racial differences, as well as myths around safety and violence, to demarcate the regions of Sydney, as outlined in the quotes above.

The participants also discussed the way in which they adopted relational positions to others in local, often mundane places, such as the school and work place. Many participants cited attending ‘multicultural schools’ where diversity was taken as a given amongst their school friends, many of which they identified as also being second generation. Jake, a seemingly visibly European male, explained his active and what he felt was a mutually accepted membership with the clique of Pacific

Islander and Māori students in his year group at the low-socioeconomic high school he attended:

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My dad, I can’t remember in what way, but my dad is a part Māori.

So I always used to get along with the Islanders and all the people

in school. It’s like we usually had the Islanders like, it wasn’t just

like Māoris, New Zealanders, it was like Pacific Islanders all

together, they always hang out in the groups and that stuff. It’s

like there was usually about like 15-20 of us. (Jake)

Navigation of the school setting by Jake, in this sense, was established along a line of equivalence with a visibly different group, built upon a construction of

‘sameness’ due to their shared diverse heritage. Jake further explained how his father’s (and therefore his own) lineage, although distant, had always been a point of similarity in this context, thus providing a source of connection.

In contrast, Chris discussed that while he went to a ‘multicultural school’, he tended to avoid the divisions that came with ethnic group affiliation to which other students aligned themselves:

My high school in [inner-west suburb] was interesting because

there was a very big mixture of cultures and so you had almost

every possible combination you could have in Australia. You

know, Italians Greeks, all flavours of Islanders, we had a few

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Koreans, Chinese, Vietnamese so there was always stuff that was

in the playground or you know “my family versus your family” and

“my cousins versus your cousins” sort of thing. I was lucky enough

to be able to stay kind of away from that growing up and certainly

later on as well cause being from New Zealand made me similar to

the other Aussie kids. So my best mate was English or parents

were English. And the others were like second or third generation

Australian. (Chris)

The above excerpts exemplify, albeit in contrasting ways, the manner in which the participants navigated the varied social divisions of their high schools to assume a subject position of ‘equivalence’. In Jake’s case this was expressed as ‘acceptance’ with an ethnic social group, but in Chris’ case there was a more ‘under the radar’/invisible (read ‘white’) positioning, which enabled him to assume a similar subject position to that of the other students of Anglo-Saxon background. In both cases the participants were able to assume positions of equivalence, thus rendering them seemingly ‘normalised’ within those contexts.

In contrast, a few of the participants identified key situations where they experienced their ‘difference’ based on their ‘second generation status’ rendered visible in everyday places and interactions. These moments of dislocation led to the momentary disruption of their positioning, requiring the participants to re-

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affirm their subject position through various discursive acts. Matt described how he had been picked on within the school setting:

I got bullied and it was just verbal stuff, for being a ‘sheepshagger’.

It was like all “you're a ‘sheepshagger” because they somehow

found out mum was a Kiwi, which is kind of like initially like “ha,

ha, whatever” but it was persistent so it kind of wore me down a

bit. And, it was never anything that I would go and report formally

but it was more just like that I thought you were my friend, but

you are persisting with this. So I would just ignore it until they

moved on to something else, you know. (Matt)

Matt found that when his New Zealand heritage was publicly revealed this became a point of difference to the other Australian children. In order to negotiate this dislocation, Matt suggested that he adopted an “ignore” type attitude until his

“difference” was no longer a point of interest.

Moments of dislocation of one’s subject positioning were also expressed by a few participants who identified as having Māori heritage. Nicole described how she perceived her “dark” appearance to influence the way in which others interacted with her:

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People are scared of me sometimes when they first meet me

because like I think a lot of white people get frightened by dark

people. I think people do get intimidated because you know,

Aboriginals and Māoris, some of them have come from rough

background. And you just have to put up with it. (Nicole)

This was further exemplified by a participant who commented on interactions with other Māori people and the way they often reacted to her based on her appearance:

Yeah, sometimes I do encounter racism from other Māori people

only because of the way that I speak. Because generally, I don’t

know, most Māori people they’re such terrible speakers

sometimes. They’re like, “yeah bro, blah, blah, blah,” and I just

come across as myself and I don’t try and sort of change the level

of language or anything like that. And particularly like if I look a

certain way, they’ll come up and just start talking to me. And then

I’ll talk back just as I am now, just normally. And, I don’t know,

sometimes they’ll be a bit stunned or a bit like, “oh yeah”, that sort

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of thing, give you the look up and down, like I’m a snob or

something. (Kate)

These two excerpts exemplify moments of dislocation that were based on the process of racialised othering (Brah, 1999; Phoenix, 2009; Wall, 1997). In both cases participants perceived their subject position was brought into question based on their visibly different Māori appearance. For Nicole, this was based on racialised notions of Māori and Aboriginal people as aggressive or threatening, which she felt people projected onto her. Kate, on the other hand, felt that other

Māori assumed she was “like them” based on her appearance, however once in conversation, she felt they thought she was a ‘snob’. This links into assumed class differences between groups of Māori living in Sydney. In both situations the participants are drawing on discursive myths of Māori people as either ‘aggressive’ or of a ‘lower class’, which they then utilised in order to rationalise the way in which their subject position was dislocated in certain interactions.

Encounters with New Zealand

The participants’ identification with place extended across national boundaries through encounters with New Zealand. Participants’ identifications with New

Zealand were linked to conceptions of the country as a site of family linkages and a source of heritage, both key in developing or disrupting a sense of belonging. Their

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experiences of New Zealand were generally through travel to visit family although sometimes also simply as a holiday destination. The frequency of travel to New

Zealand varied between participants and tended to be aligned with the strength of their parent(s)’ connection to family in New Zealand.

Some participants’ parents had maintained active ties to family in New Zealand and as a result participants had been able to travel back and forth regularly throughout their childhood and adulthood. As a result they developed their own individual sense of connection to New Zealand. These connections to New Zealand were linked to specific localised places, with participants often recounting their memories of family homes and locations they had visited as points of establishing a sense of familiarity later in life:

When I went back last year, it was after quite a while, and when I

was there I actually starting to remember you know things like my

aunties house, it just looked the same. I remember bits and pieces

of when I was younger, the places I went with cousins and what

we used to get up to as kids. But it’s just a bit hard to recall when

you’re getting older you know. (Danielle)

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The ability to draw on memories of New Zealand, triggered by encounters with specific places, enabled her to develop a sense of familiarity with the country. The idea of visiting family was for some participants linked to notions of obligation.

Kate discussed her sense of duty for visiting family in New Zealand because of the ongoing connection she had maintained with them:

Kate: Probably two years ago was the last time I went [to New

Zealand]. So, not recently, I know I’m supposed to go but…

Interviewer: Why do you feel you’re supposed to go?

Kate: I don’t know, only because I’m supposed to-, well not

supposed to see people. But I know it’s good to catch up with your

relatives and your cousins and spend that Christmas/New Year’s

holiday season with them and we always used to do that every

year when I was younger.

Conversely, some of the participants commented on how they had not encountered

New Zealand till much later in life. For some this was because their parent(s)’ family connections were not strong, while for others this was due to financial limitations on travel. A few of the participants recounted their experience of New

Zealand as a tourist:

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I sort of plug New Zealand as much as I can where it’s appropriate,

whenever people are talking about it. It’s usually along the lines of

skiing. Like if you’re gonna go skiing somewhere, go to New

Zealand cause you get, for the same amount it’s gonna cost you to

come here. Go there and you’ll meet all these really cool people

and be able to get duty free booze and ski and see amazing

wonderful things and if it’s summer go hiking and walking and not

get bitten by anything that’s lethal which is not, I mean, that’s

more than you can say for Australia. (Chris)

In this case, Chris’ perceptions of New Zealand were largely based on these more

‘tourist’ interactions that he had experienced. As such, he had a more surface level engagement with New Zealand, with limited personal connection to this context.

Similarly, Isabella discussed the information she had gathered about New Zealand from a tour she had taken:

I like New Zealand because I believe that like it just has a peace

about it. Like when we went there we went on this tour and

learned heaps about the land and cultural understandings, you

know from a Māori cultural view point. (Isabella)

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In this case, learning information about New Zealand from the perspective of Māori provided Isabella with a basis to develop an understanding of New Zealand linked to its race relations and promotion of Indigenous culture.

In comparison, other participants indicated that they had a distinct desire to visit

New Zealand when they had reached adulthood, often out of curiosity of the landscape and family members living there. This was a purposeful and independent exploration of New Zealand, which they sought to do separate from their parents. For Anna, who had few family connections in Australia outside her immediate family, she was eager to visit New Zealand and connect with extended family living there, and to do it by herself:

I sailed a boat from Sydney to Auckland. And I remember that was

a big thing for me. I was 23 when I did that. And I remember when

I first saw the northern tip of New Zealand, feeling like this

beautiful. It was so nice cause I was like “wow, I made it!” But also,

it was the first time I’d done an open sea passage. I remember

thinking in my head it was like going from one home to another

home, especially because I stayed with my aunt and uncle for a

few months. (Anna)

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Through this physical engagement and subsequent connection with extended family members, Anna developed a distinct vision of New Zealand as another

‘home’ away from her Australian ‘home’. In contrast, other participants were less inclined to visit New Zealand as they did not necessarily see it as a strong source of family connection. Chris noted how his strong family ties in Australia and subsequent lack of family connection in New Zealand influenced his limited desire to visit:

I know that the next time I do go over there's quite a lot for me to

catch up on family wise and so honestly, I’ve been putting it off,

for quite a number of years. It may sound I guess a little bit

callous, but I’ve grown up here and with a very small circle as far

as family goes. I mean most ties is as far as my upbringing goes

seem a lot closer to those in Australia than you know relations in

New Zealand and so I guess it’s kind of difficult for me to associate

family life especially in large groups, as these people who’ve I may

have only met once or twice in a life time sort of thing. (Chris)

The participants’ sense of connection to New Zealand was often based on the level of connection they had to family throughout their childhood. Continuing connections later in life was also factor that either encouraged or diminished the participants desire to encounter New Zealand as adults.

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New Zealand was also figured in some of the participants’ narratives as a site of heritage and thus a potential landscape of ‘belonging’. This idea of heritage was often linked to myths around the similarity between the two countries:

British Empire sort of thing, that kind of makes it easy. And so

New Zealand is so similar to Australia where that matters in terms

of making a move across. (Matt)

Myths surrounding the shared colonial British and military history of the two countries as well as more contemporary references including the privileged position of sport in society and a similar type of racism provided key points of equivalence between the two countries for the participants. Jake identified the symbolic motif of a map to demonstrate how he perceived the two countries:

I don’t know, with a picture in my head I always think, like if I

picture Australia on a map, New Zealand is always there, like as a

mental image. (Jake)

In this case, Jake may have been considering Australia and/or New Zealand incomplete without the visual image of the other nation alongside it, or perceived

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New Zealand and Australia as almost the same and thus automatically visualised the countries side-by-side on a map. In identifying these points of similarity, participants also noted how New Zealand differed from Australia. A commonly cited difference was the idea that New Zealand had a more welcoming and friendly attitude to people compared to Australia:

It’s like Australians find that odd with New Zealanders, so like

everyone you meet that’s a New Zealander, you feel a family

connection to them. With Australians, it’s a friend connection.

Yeah, it’s like one of my Australian mates. It’s like any time he

would call me up, I would be there instantly for helping him, but

he’d wonder why I’d always needed helpful and that, because

growing up with New Zealanders, like, it’s just sort of feel a family

thing to your friends that Australians don’t really get. (Jake)

Another way in which participants contrasted Australia and New Zealand was through the myth of New Zealand as an under-dog to Australia, as exemplified in the following quote:

Yeah my mind jumps to the way in which the two countries act in

the world so it’s a bit like that US, Canada thing where like the USA

has say like armed forces and that type of thing stands up in a kind

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of hard power kind of way, similar to Australia. Whereas Canada

kind of gets to have the security of that, ‘cause they’re like similar

but they can make stands on things that the US would never make.

So New Zealand does make a whole lot of stands on things that

Australia wouldn’t make. (Isabella)

Despite the underdog position, Isabella noted that this allowed New Zealand to

‘take a stand’, an action that a country such as Australia would find harder to do due to having a more prominent international presence. Interestingly, equivalence to the relationship between the United States and Canada, which was perceived to be similar in power dynamics, was used to support the idea of New Zealand as the

‘weaker’ nation. Linked to this, the participants tended to perceive New Zealand as

‘doing things better’ than Australia, particularly in terms of race relations:

I think Māori people are way better off than the Aboriginal people.

Definitely ‘cause at least they still have [Indigenous specific]

media. Aboriginal people do too, but less, they have some shows

on the ABC [Australian Broadcasting Company] and then a couple

of other little things but they don’t, it’s not too permanent like it’s

not seven, nine or ten [mainstream, free to air television channels]

or anything like that, and if it is something, it’s always something

bad. (Kate)

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Race relations always have appeared stronger in New Zealand

because of the history of Māori actually so winning or being able

to gain some autonomy in some respects that never happened

here and for that reason I think some people look to New Zealand

as the next step up. I think there are some admirable race

relations in New Zealand that don't exist here. (Brooke)

New Zealand was constructed as the ‘less’ racist country in comparison to

Australia, in terms of the treatment of its Indigenous populations. This commonly expressed view supported a sense of pride amongst the participants due to their connection, via heritage, to a country with internationally recognised positive race relations.

A sense of heritage was also developed through connections to Māori culture in

New Zealand. Amongst the participants who identified as having Māori ancestry, the level of understanding of their cultural heritage varied considerably. For instance, although citing Māori heritage, when asked, none of these participants were able to recall the iwi (tribe) their family descended from in New Zealand, as demonstrated below:

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Oh my God I don't know what tribe I’m from right but, I like all my

friends like they’ll be like, “Oh what tribe are you from?” and like

I’m always like, “Oh my God I’ve got to ask my mom,” but I never, I

always forget to ask my mom you know and I feel really bad for

not knowing. (Nicole)

I’m Māori, my mum’s mum was Māori, but they all come from a

tribe and you’re going to kill me, but I don’t know the name of it.

And my aunty drilled this tribe into my head every time I go there-

but I just can’t get the name right. (Danielle)

In New Zealand, iwi affiliation is often a salient point of identification, rather than solely identifying as Māori. Thus, this was a particular point of dislocation for the participants, many of whom asserted that they were somewhat embarrassed that they could not recall their iwi affiliation(s). In reaction to this dislocation, they actively sought to legitimate this lack of knowledge, attributing it to “forgetting” and something that they intend to “follow up on”. In turn, knowing and relating to iwi identifications acted as a point of difference for the participants, insofar as they knew its cultural significance to their family, and felt the burden of needing to understand and engage.

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There was also variation amongst the Māori participants in their level of interest towards their ancestry. Central to this was the level of knowledge their parent’s had passed down to them as a child. For instance Kate noted how her mother had told her limited information about her Māori culture:

I don’t know, growing up with my mum as well, because she’s part

Māori, I don’t know, [Māori culture] wasn’t a major presence in

our upbringing, when we were little. There were elements, such as

words and pictures and mum telling us about a few things, and us

going back to New Zealand, but it wasn’t really a big sort of

element. (Kate)

In response to having limited awareness and knowledge about their Māori culture as children, some participants were curious about exploring their cultural heritage as an adult. Chris, for instance, noted his desire to know more about his Māori heritage, and considered what he had missed out on by not having stronger links to

New Zealand:

I mean I think I have done quite a bit of reading and one of the

biggest regrets I have about living in Australia rather than New

Zealand is not speaking the Māori tongue. It's probably one thing

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that I love to learn and one of the things that I like to pick up as

much as possible when I do go back. So that’s probably my only

regret for not being more exposed more to that side. (Chris)

Chris went on to discuss how he had picked up the didgeridoo, an Aboriginal cultural instrument, initially because of accidental exposure through his workplace.

However, this eventually turned into a substitute for his ‘lack’ of cultural identification:

I think in hindsight it was almost a case of a misplaced cultural

identity once I got started. It's almost like a mistaken cultural

identity because growing up without a lot of exposure to my own

culture was almost like a substitute for a little while. But I mean,

now it's only just an instrument that I play for fun, you know.

(Chris)

In an effort to develop a stronger connection to her Māori cultural heritage, Kate noted how she had recently begun Te Reo (Māori language) classes in Sydney and was hoping that she could use this more when she visited family in New Zealand.

The disconnection to Māori culture was further exemplified when the participants travelled to New Zealand to visit family and took part in cultural practice. Danielle,

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for instance, discussed how she felt a sense of dislocation when she visited her family marae (cultural meeting house) in New Zealand:

Culturally wise my mum does a lot and I don’t really know that

much. One time we were there and we visited the marae and I

tried to sit in the front row and she was like, “get in the back row”,

‘cause I did realise men and women had to sit in different sections.

So I don’t really know what’s going on most of the time cause

they’re all chatting about it and she just says, “don’t do that, you

can’t do that, don’t do that”. (Daniella)

This sense of having a limited connection with New Zealand was also noted by participants when they reflected on their interactions with places that were socio- economically distinct from what they had previously experienced in Australia. For instance, experiences with rural towns in New Zealand provided a contrast to the city lifestyle participants had experienced in Australia:

That’s when I realised I’ve never really been conscious of the

divide of the city, you know the ‘country mouse’ idea, I don’t know

what else you call it. I saw it more intensely I think, in the context

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of Timaru [small town in New Zealand] where my family live and I

couldn't really relate to the people much. (Brooke)

Oh, yeah, where my family is in New Zealand is way different from

Melbourne or Sydney. It’s way different, so you go into the town

and just, there’s like one restaurant and one food bar, like the local

school and that’s it, and there’s nothing else. Is super small and far

away from the city. (Matt)

Visiting family in small town New Zealand triggered a dislocationary moment, insofar as the participants found it difficult to relate to the distinct context disrupting their ability to form a sense of attachment to those places.

A further dislocation noted by the participants occurred when their family members would point out differences about them based on being “Australian”. Jake noted this in relation to instances when family members picked on him for his different accent:

When I was younger, because I don’t speak with the New Zealand

accent, I used to take a lot of shit from all my cousins. They’d be

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like, “say six, say fish and chips”. And I’d be like, “I’m not saying it

wrong, you’re saying it wrong” and sort of thing. (Jake)

Similarly, Megan noted how she had encountered jokes about being from Australia when she was younger from family members in New Zealand:

Oh, yeah I’d always get the typical [jokes], like “do you have koalas

in your backyard?” and “do you ride a kangaroo to school?” You

know, and with my accent, even though I haven’t got a particularly

strong accent, but they always pick on that. (Megan)

This experience of othering in New Zealand was also noted by Danielle in relation to how her Māori family members reacted to her visibly different appearance (read

‘white’) when she would visit them as a child:

Yeah especially when we would go up North, then they were all a

bit, “who’s this girl?”. Because obviously seeing me, I’m so white

and I had dyed my hair blonde and they were like, “she’s a bit of a

princess” or something, I don’t know. (Danielle)

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This feeling of being different was also noted by some in relation to the difficulty they had relating to the lifestyle of their family in New Zealand. One participant recalled memories of family smoking and drinking when she visited them in New

Zealand. Drawing on the myth of this being “stereotypically Māori”, she actively sought to distance herself from such behaviours, describing herself as “healthy and physically active”. Differing levels of attachment and dislocation were experienced by the participants in relation to New Zealand. Lines of equivalence between

Australia and New Zealand in the participants’ narratives were based on myths of historical and cultural similarities. Family connections were found to be a key factor in facilitating or diminishing their ongoing engagement with New Zealand as adults. When encountering New Zealand, the participants’ experienced a range of dislocationary moments related to their perceived ‘Australian-ness’, demarcating them as culturally and socially different.

Patriotism, ambivalence and displacement

In the context of developing a sense of national identity, the participants expressed differing forms of allegiance, ambivalence and displacement towards Australia.

These were based on their imaginary of Australia as a nation as well as their personal notions of what it means to belong within and across boundaries. Often the participants’ perceptions of Australia were linked to ideas about expressions of patriotism. This was particularly salient for one participant who described how he

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had to choose between different national sports teams due to his parents’ split national allegiances:

It was influential especially because like growing up, you have my

mum being very patriotic like Aussie, Aussie, Aussie. And then

there was my dad from New Zealand who was kind of like, “Ah

yeah, you gotta support the All Blacks”. So it’s like always in my

family you have to pick a side between one of the two. (Jake)

When speaking about their perceptions of Australia, some participants discussed their parents and their own experiences on Australia Day, the day of national commemoration. This is also a day of key significance for some Aboriginal and

Torres Strait Islander communities, signifying the colonisation of Australia and ongoing suffering faced by the Indigenous population, otherwise known as

Survival or Invasion Day (McAllister, 2012). For some, Australia Day was marked by the former more nationalistic perspective, which was articulated by Jake, for instance:

Yeah, it’s like on Australia Day every single piece of cloth that

mum wears has the Australian flag on it. She has like a little

fascinator with the Australian flag on it as well. So she is pretty

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patriotic. But I’m like “yeah I’m Australian, but I don’t need to

wave a flag”, you know. (Jake)

Flags, as a symbol, have come to be understood to perpetuate nationalism by providing a source of taken-for-granted national identity and, in the process, establish a frontier between ‘us’ (those who belong) and ‘them’ (those that do not)

(Billig, 1995; Fozdar, Spittles, and Hartley, 2014). On national commemoration days, such as Australia Day and ANZAC Day, the flag can symbolise a certain type of nationalism, which has been suggested to be bound to racialised notions of ‘White

Australia’ (Orr, 2010). Thus while Jake acknowledged his mother’s avid patriotism, he was more comfortable not engaging in such explicit symbolic acts to assert his allegiance to Australia. This notion was demonstrated by one Māori participant who commented on how she previously engaged in similar ‘symbolic’ acts of patriotism on Australia Day, prior to being told about its significance to Aboriginal people:

About two, three years ago, before I started going out with my

[Aboriginal] boyfriend, I was like, “Yeah Australia Day!” you know

I just used that day as a way to you know, get pissed [drunk] as

everyone does. But then I met up with him one time on Australia

Day and he's like, and I had on these Australia Day flags, and he's

like, “What are you doing with all those Australian flags on you?”

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And then he was telling me about Survival Day and how

[Aboriginal people] don't celebrate it because of the invasion. So I

didn’t know at the time and I actually learned something new

about Australia and made me think about not being so obvious

about it anymore. (Nicole)

When Nicole realised the significance of Australia Day for Aboriginal people, she experienced a shift in perception towards Australia and her previously taken-for- granted understanding of what Australia Day signified.

This shifting attitude between taken-for-granted allegiance and questioning what an ‘Australian’ identity represents was further exemplified in some of the participants in their discussions about their citizenship status. A sense of ambiguity towards citizenship was revealed in many of the interviews, as demonstrated in the following excerpt:

Interviewer: So what citizenship do your parents have?

Kate: They're both New Zealand citizens.

Interviewer: And how about you?

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Kate: Well that’s the thing is I actually don’t have an Australian

passport I have a New Zealand one but I was born here, so I don’t

really know how that works. I think I’m supposed to talk to

somebody about that but I don’t really know. But it’s never really

been a problem you know ‘cause I can work in most places, access

health care and travel.

A sense of ambiguity towards their citizenship status was further discussed by some participants, where despite knowing they could access Australia citizenship they opted to keep their New Zealand status. For instance, Nicole stated that she

“got a New Zealand [passport] because it was cheaper than the Australian one”.

As I discussed in Chapter Five, the children of New Zealanders born in Australia before 2001 were automatically assigned their parents’ citizenship status until their 10th birthday at which point they could actively ‘choose’ to naturalise or remain New Zealand citizens (Bedford et al., 2000; Department of Immigration and

Border Protection, 2013), the latter being the more passive option. For many of the participants this ‘choice’ was the responsibility of their parents as they were not yet of an age where they could make the decision themselves. As the laws themselves are not necessarily readily accessible (as suggested in the above excerpt), parents may have not known this was a choice, or left it to their children to decide later in life. This ambiguity of the pathway to Australian citizenship

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coupled with the basic access New Zealand citizens have to employment and health care, resulted in many of the participants not actively seeking Australian citizenship later in life.

A common experience for the majority of participants was being asked, “where do you come from?” in Australia, which functioned as a dislocationary mechanism in this context. In reaction, the participants adopted various strategies to reassert their subjectivities and draw a line of equivalence. Some were able to identify themselves along ‘heritage’ lines. For Isabella:

Well people used to ask me where am I from, and I used to say

New Zealand and Philippines, because I was confused because my

parents always said “I am Filipino”, “I am New Zealander”, and

they would not say, “Oh, I am Australian.” (Isabella)

Whereas, for other participants, such as Megan, they negotiated the question by outlining both their ‘heritage’ and country of birth:

Yeah, I definitely got that question a lot because people are quite

confused with sort of like, I don’t look like an Anglo-Australian,

but I sound like one, but there is something different. So I do get

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that question, but I would say that I was born in Australia but I am

half Kiwi, half Peruvian. (Megan)

For Megan, this was both an act of explaining her visibly different appearance compared to the ‘white’ majority population, as well as drawing a line of equivalence based on her shared country of birth.

In comparison to both these participants, who were visibly different, many of the visibly ‘white’ participants were more likely to link into their assumed equivalent

“Australian” identity as a means of positioning themselves. Anna described a similar dislocationary moment when her positioning as a second generation immigrant was brought into question:

I’ve had the whole “oh she’s half Kiwi, but we’ll forgive her for

that” type saying when people meet me for the first time. I

sometimes wonder whether or not people just said it because

that’s the first thing that came to their head, as that’s a common

comment, or if they actually meant it. I remember not giving too

much thought to it, and I don’t know if that’s because I had the

easy way out which was “well yes, my mum’s Kiwi but I’m actually

Australian”, so I could latch on to that. (Anna)

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This process of resorting to an “on the fence” subject position enabled Anna’s

Australian parentage on her father’s side to give her a point of similarly, and therefore allowed her to re-assert her “equivalence”, suturing the disruption of her subject position.

In each of the above instances, the participants were opting to assert a particular subjectivity, which drew on socially constructed ‘origin’ narratives bound to their country of birth (Australia) and immigrant parents’ ‘homeland(s)’. However, this was often a place riddled with uncertainty as the participants were forced to decide the points of equivalence and/or difference to assert. The difficulty in navigating this type of forced disruption was articulated by Brooke:

Sort of everyone’s questioning of “Where you are from? What's

your family heritage?” is quite redundant in a way, because I

didn’t feel that connect with Australia and I don't feel that I will

spend my life here. I have got this year and then I certainly want

to get out again so, and I think my parents have a very similar

perspective on ‘home’. So I am not sure how I feel about saying I’m

from Australia, even though I’m Australian. I’m more a Sydney-

sider. So I just try to avoid it. (Brooke)

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Brooke avoided the question as it brought to the fore her ambiguity towards what she identified as ‘home’, instead opting for a more localised city-based identification when having to assert an identity within Australia. In comparison, when participants were travelling overseas, they were more inclined to position themselves as ‘Australian’ when questioned on their ‘origin’:

If I’m overseas or something cause it’s a lot easier like if you’re

overseas, you just say “Australian”, that’s it. It’s better than

explaining your whole background to a lot of the strangers. And

then you can move on from it all a lot quicker. (Megan)

The ability to assert ‘Australia’ as an identification, instead of having to explain her

“whole background”, I suggest was a strategic action to reduce the effort involved in traversing her full ancestry. Thus, instead of being a patriotic statement of national identity, it was a tactic to ease social interactions.

Participants who had experienced both internal and international travel demonstrated a fluid sense of belonging, located across multiple boundaries. For participants who had grown up in Sydney, travelled interstate or abroad, and then later returned, the experiences of distancing one’s self from place and then

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navigating a re-engagement facilitated personal reflections on how Sydney as a place had shifted. Danielle for instance, who had grown up in the eastern suburbs of Sydney, and recently returned from studying in Melbourne and previous international travel, reflected on how her perceptions of place had changed:

I think so, maybe Sydney has changed over the years or maybe I

have evolved, I don't know, maybe both. I think I have come to

realise being overseas coming back, living in Australia, the only

thing I missed was the sea. I feel there’s just something a bit

lighter to Sydney. Everyone in Melbourne, they are a bit serious.

They like their irony and sarcasm and it all just gets a bit tiresome.

(Danielle)

The physical trope of the sea, which Danielle linked to being characteristic of coastal Sydney, as well as her positive perception of the attitudes of people from

Sydney, provided key points of attachment to the city for her.

The participants identified the way in which these boundary crossing experiences shaped their positioning, and also the way they re-imagined the places they had left. Chris considered how his experiences abroad had shifted his views of

Australia:

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I don't know after living overseas for that period I don't know if,

and you know traveling abroad and everything else, I don't know

if there's anywhere that I would like to live other than Australia

now I mean I think it's given me a very different perceptive on the

country and sort of certainly makes me feel very lucky for being

able to live here in, in respect to some other places in the world.

(Chris)

Where participants had the opportunity to travel abroad, their perceptions of Australia drew on comparisons to other places they had experienced.

Matt for example, who was an avid traveler, discussed his preference to

‘return’ to Australia due to the unique pace of life:

I always like being able to come back to this part of the world.

There aren’t that many people here and so you still benefit from

the fact there aren’t many people here and there is a lot of space

and access, fairly equitable access to a whole lot of nice things, you

know the parks and beaches and all that type of stuff. (Matt)

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Jake, who had lived all of his life in Sydney and only travelled within Australia and to New Zealand, described a strong physical connection to Australia:

It’s really just a living connection. It’s like, it’s not a heritage,

because heritage is something like you know that’s there but you

don’t know it all, but I know all of Australia, all my Australian

links, I know everything about that. So it’s that connection of

where I live, and not my heritage. (Jake)

Jake went on to discuss how he viewed New Zealand as the site of his heritage due to his family connections. The idea of having different types of connections to

Australia and New Zealand was contrasted by Matt. Instead he did not identify as being closely linked to Australia or New Zealand, which he attributed to having weak social ties in these contexts. This in turn, gave him a more transnational worldview:

So, like where I’m probably weaker in my networks in the place in

which I live, but I probably know more people across the world to

go and visit, I guess which means I travel a lot more than most

people and don't feel that linked into Australia and New Zealand.

(Jake)

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Identifications by the participants drew on contrasting notions of ‘genealogical roots’ and belonging within their country of birth. Instead of asserting a purely

‘Australian’ national identity, the participants’ experienced differing levels of identification to Australia. Dislocationary moments revealed the instability of their

Australian subject position due to their New Zealand heritage. Despite this, participants generally viewed Australia as their place of birth and therefore where

‘they came from’, regardless of their citizenship status.

Chapter summary

The participants re-imagining of their parent’s migration stories shaped the way in which they perceived New Zealand, particularly around their parent(s)’ reasons for leaving and whether they had strong or weak connections to New Zealand, which was compared and contrasted in their narratives to how they later physically encountered New Zealand for themselves. In recounting parents’ settlement experiences, participants inferred some of their perceptions towards

Australia based on how their parents had been treated living in Australia. The participants’ navigation of everyday places and encounters with landscape of New

Zealand provided a key point of identification based on attachment to certain places, family and a sense of belonging constructed through ‘heritage’.

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Moreover, compared to a traditional notion of a ‘national’ identity as stable and fixed, the participants’ interactions across local, national and transnational landscapes led to a fluctuating identification, characterised by differing levels of allegiance, ambiguity and sometimes displacement in Australia. The question of belonging therefore was less bound to their citizenship status, and more to their sense of attachment to localised places, as well as to the meaning they attributed to

Australia and New Zealand as transnational landscapes of family, heritage and family connections.

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Chapter 8 Negotiating the position of the ‘other’ across transnational and localised spaces

Overview of thesis

Introduction

In this chapter I discuss the multiple, layered, situated and historically contingent subject positions negotiated by second generation immigrants of New Zealand decent in Australia and the implications for their sense of belonging within this transnational context. The focus of this thesis was driven by the need for more

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research into the lived experiences of the New Zealand immigrant population, the second largest ‘migrant’ group in Australia, as well as the need for more second generation immigrant research within the contemporary multicultural context of

Australia. This thesis was also inspired by a critical analysis of current approaches to second generation immigrant research, as examined in Chapters Two and Three.

In addressing these multiple research aims, and in an effort to chart potential alternative ways of conceptualising the lived experiences of second generation immigrants, I employed a poststructuralist approach, informed by intersectionality theory and Laclau and Mouffe’s (1990; 1985) Discourse Theory, as discussed in

Chapter Three. Specifically, I sought to address the following questions:

1. How have New Zealand immigrants and their children been constructed in the Australian discursive context?

2. How do second generation people of New Zealand descent negotiate their

identity(s) and what influence does this have on their sense of belonging?

In Chapters Five and Six I provided a genealogical and historical analysis of the discursive constructions of the New Zealand immigrant in Australia by examining the establishment of logics of equivalence and difference between New Zealand and Australia and the shifting nature of these logics in relation to Australia’s national identity. From the genealogical analysis I identified the operation of trans-

Tasman immigration and settlement policies as a key mechanism for establishing a

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series of frontier lines to position New Zealand immigrants as ‘insiders’ or

‘outsiders’ to Australia. This construction was further identified in the media analysis, where I examined the adoption of a ‘host’/’guest’ binary (Derrida, 2000;

Westmoreland, 2008) as a discursive mechanism in the construction of the New

Zealand immigrant in Australia.

In Chapter Seven, through the participants’ narratives I explored second generation immigrant narratives of identity and belonging in relation to their experiences across local, national and transnational places. I examined the way in which seemingly ‘normalised’ or ‘objective’ subject positions were rendered unstable and disrupted, due to dislocationary moments, and the ways in which participants negotiated these in different spatio-temporal moments. It was against this backdrop that the racialised and classed dimensions of the New Zealand second generation immigrant subject position were rendered visible, pointing to role of othering and the intersectionality of identity in this context.

In light of these findings, in the present chapter I posit that the subject position of the New Zealand migrant is consistently figured as the ‘almost similar other’ to the

‘host’ Australia. The operation of logics of equivalence and difference between

Australia and New Zealand, articulated through myths related to historical, cultural, racial and class-based similarities and differences, serve to structure the limits of

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the New Zealand immigrant subject position, and subsequently, the second generation immigrant subject position.

At a broader level, second generation immigrant experiences of ‘belonging’ and identity uncover valuable insights into the shifting role of ‘national’ identifications through participation in transnational social fields. This transnational experience incorporates identifications that intersect across multiple scales and temporal moments, the localised neighbourhood, city, nation-state and transnational space.

In turn, it provides an alternative approach to second generation immigrant research, a field which to date has tended to privilege an immigrant-centred lens to explain the acculturation of second generation immigrants.

The visibility of whiteness and subordination through difference

In this section I consider the historical and contemporary discursive terrain of the trans-Tasman relationship and New Zealand immigrants living in Australia as established in Chapters Five and Six. As was seen in these two chapters, the construction of ‘whiteness’ assists in the discursive construction of cultural

‘sameness’ between the nation-states of Australia and New Zealand (Garner, 2006).

Whiteness acts as normative and hegemonic space, providing the point from which to distinguish difference along racial lines (Dyer, 1997; Green and Sonn, 2005;

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Phoenix and Phoenix, 2012). It has been argued to be an empty space, which gains meaning through its discursive construction against what it is not (Bander

Rasmussen, Klinenberg, Nexica, and Wray, 2001; Britton, 2011; Dyer, 1997;

Frankenberg, 1993; Green and Sonn, 2005). Thus whiteness can be understood as a relational construction, which only exists in the presence of other racialised identities (Britton, 2011; Garner, 2007). Green and Sonn (2005) observe that due to the hegemony of whiteness in countries such as Australia and New Zealand, individuals that are structured as ‘white’ are situated within a position of privilege.

As McIntosh (1988) contends, whiteness functions to enable those rendered ‘white’ to pass through public space unnoticed, unharrassed and ‘unothered’. Thus discourses of whiteness ensure “...the production and reproduction of dominance rather than subordination, normativity rather than marginality and privilege rather than disadvantage” (Frankenberg, 1993, p. 236). In other words, through its hegemony, whiteness assumes the position of being ‘natural’ and ‘unproblematic’; a basis from which all other ‘races’ are constructed as ‘other’ and different (Bander

Rasmussen et al., 2001; Garner, 2007; Green and Sonn, 2005; Moreton-Robinson,

1988).

The implication of this discursive process is such that those who are positioned as

‘white’ are privileged and assume a position of dominance in specific racialised contexts. Green and Sonn (Green and Sonn, 2005, p. 480) note that the discursive operation of whiteness is:

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…multifaceted, specific, and dependent on the context and

historical period in which it is constructed as well as the

intersections between whiteness and other identity markers such

as gender, class and sexuality.

It is thus important that explorations of whiteness and racialised difference account for the specificity of these constructions in relation to the discursive historical context and the relational aspects of this process of othering.

I attended to this in the genealogical analysis in Chapter Five, where I explored the historical discursive context of the trans-Tasman relationship. I found that prior to and during the ‘White Australia’ policy period, legislative processes relating to immigration promoted the drawing of a frontier line to demarcate those inside and outside the nation. This involved the articulation of non-European immigrants as different and thus on the outside of ‘the nation’ and subsequently created a logics of equivalence between Australia and New Zealand. This was witnessed in

Chapters Five and Six through myths related to a shared British colonial heritage.

This myth served to effectively link Australia and New Zealand based on ‘origin’ narratives, racialised notions of ‘whiteness’ and ‘cultural sameness’.

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Alternatively, Australia’s increasing interest in distinguishing itself as distinct from

Britain also lent to positioning New Zealand as an ally; insofar as they were both geographically isolated, ‘pioneering’ colonial nation-states, actively forging independent national identities from the ‘motherland’. The alliance between the two nations was further solidified through the establishment and subsequent legacy of the ANZAC. This partnership relied upon gendered notions of military camaraderie, heroism and service to the British Crown (read masculine) (Inglis,

1965; Motion and Leitch, 2007) and was a further discursive mechanism in shoring up a logic of equivalence between the two nations.

Subsequently, movement from New Zealand across the Tasman Sea was not viewed as a threat but instead supported. This was evidenced by the existence of the relatively relaxed trans-Tasman migration agreement between the two nations that was in operation throughout most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, although only formally enacted in 1973 through the Trans-Tasman Travel

Arrangement. Interestingly Māori were seen to be included within this insider position, despite the active presence of the ‘White’ Australia policy in regard to immigration at the time.

In the contemporary discursive context, as I identified in Chapter Six, the articulation of similarity based on ‘whiteness’ was established in the discursive positioning of New Zealand immigrants in Australia as ‘good, obedient’ guests.

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O’Connor (2010) observes, immigrants who are ‘white’, English speaking, and skilled are assumed to hold high levels of cultural capital in Australia. This, in turn, supposedly enables them to occupy positions of privilege in the majority

Australian host society (Hage, 1998). Based on this construction, New Zealand immigrants were articulated as productive and obedient immigrants who actively contributed to the Australian workforce. The myth of ‘weakness’ further served to articulate the New Zealand immigrant as inferior to the Australian ‘host’. In this case, the New Zealand immigrant was not viewed as a threat to Australia’s national identity. Through these discursive acts, New Zealand immigrants were effectively viewed as situated within the ‘white’ majority and thus occupied the ‘unothered’ public space.

The discursive construction of whiteness and ‘cultural sameness’ whilst seemingly stable, was rendered open to dislocation through the articulation of myths based on classed and racialised differences. I contend that this dislocation lends to the construction of the ‘almost’ aspect of the New Zealand immigrant subject position.

As I discussed in Chapter Five, in the 1970s Australia shifted from immigration policies of assimilation and integration to that favouring multiculturalism. With this shift, Australia’s national attention, in terms of immigration, was focused on determining who would be entitled to enter the country and remain lawfully resident in order to support the new multicultural agenda. This effectively led to the re-evaluation of who would be deemed ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ the nation, in

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order to support the crafting of an international image of Australia as a diverse and progressive nation-state. Although, expanding its immigration policy to encourage immigration from non-European source countries, I contend that Australia expressed an interest in delineating, as the host, who was deemed acceptable to be included within this ‘new’ national identity. This was in part evidenced by the gradual departure from the previous hegemonic construction of equivalence between the Australian ‘host’ society and New Zealand immigrants.

The enactment of the Trans-Tasman Travel Arrangement in 1973 reflected continued support of trans-Tasman travel during the 1970s, which coincided with the initial transition period of the multicultural ideology. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, however, legislative amendments were implemented to progressively limit the access of New Zealanders to citizenship and social security payments

(welfare support). This was in response to growing political and public dissatisfaction regarding the potential impact of ‘back door migration’, involving third country immigrants, as well as the assumed abuse of welfare access by New

Zealand immigrants (Birrell and Rapson, 2001; McMillan, 1989). Due to this shifting construction, New Zealand immigrants were now viewed less a source of favourable population growth and furthering historical and cultural connections to

Britain, and more as a potential threat to the construction of the Australian nation.

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As I identified in Chapter Six, this distancing of Australia from New Zealand relied on the articulation of New Zealand as ‘different’ to Australia. In the ‘good guest’ discourse this involved constructing New Zealand as a weaker nation to the stronger, more heroic neighbouring Australia, who provided support to the ‘Kiwi underdog’. Consequently, the New Zealand immigrant in Australia was characterised as an obedient guest, following the rules and regulations imposed on them as foreigners. This construction also employs gendered notions to enforce the inferiority of the New Zealand immigrant. This is achieved by articulating the

New Zealand nation as weak - read ‘feminine’ - in contrast to the stronger and protective - read ‘masculine’ - Australian nation.

The discourse of ‘social deviant’ further supported the subordination and othering of the New Zealand immigrant in a number of ways. First, the New Zealand immigrant was seen to challenge the hospitality of Australia by ‘abusing the system’, such as engaging in fraudulent and risky activity, and thus not behaving within the constraints of what is deemed acceptable. Second, there was an attempt to position Māori as the ‘black’ other, imagined in relation to their racialised physicality and supposed inherent or biologically derived aggressive nature.

Stereotypes of Māori within the articles, for instance, emphasised colonial notions of the ‘primitive native’ and assisted in the contemporary imagining of Māori as aggressive criminals.

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Within this construction, the racialised masculinity of the aggressive ‘Māori warrior’ operated in contrast to the more feminine construction of the exotic

Polynesian (Wall, 1997). Whiteness, read civilised and powerful, is readily defined by the constitutive outside of racialised difference (Garner, 2007), and what

Morrison (1993) terms ‘nature’, symbolised by savagery, primitiveness and weakness. Together, these alternative constructions provide a basis for the subordination, and importantly othering, of the New Zealand immigrant. The discursive construction of the ‘social deviant’ provided justification for the imposition of regulations that limited the rights of New Zealand immigrants in

Australia.

Alternatively, I found that the third, albeit more subtle discourse of the ‘strong, exotic Māori’, further contributed to the drawing of a line of difference between

Australia and New Zealand. Here, however, New Zealand as a nation was imaged in a more favourable light, due to what was constructed as better race relations with

Māori compared to Aboriginal people in Australia. This construction also lends to the perception that Māori immigrants have been able to settle successfully as a minority group in Australian society compared to Aboriginal peoples. This discourse rendered those from Polynesian background as objects to be admired from afar. Thus they were viewed as an important source of diversity, due to their

‘exotic’ nature, in the effort to build a multicultural society. Despite being an 'other' in this context, Māori are framed in a positive manner, albeit still inferior to the

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host. This construction presented an antagonistic position, partially disrupting the

‘deviant’ image and further inscribing the notion of being ‘almost’ the same; here in relation to the shared efforts towards multiculturalism. These discursive processes,

I posit, function to reveal the visibility of racialised difference of the New Zealand immigrant, disrupting their seemingly equivalent and ‘unothered’ positioning.

It is through these constructions of equivalence and difference along lines of class, race and gender that the ‘almost’ aspect of the New Zealand subject position was realised, as operationalised and reinforced through legislative and regulatory actions to restrict the rights of New Zealand immigrants. For instance, in Chapter

Five, I found that the process of granting the SCV and limiting access to citizenship, compared to the previous pathway, functioned as key discursive mechanisms in the construction of Australia’s national identity. Specifically, the SCV dictates the rules by which New Zealand citizens can ‘reside’ in Australia, but also provides

Australia with the discretion to deport New Zealand citizens who deviate from these rules. This legislative context also means that Australia is able to permit

‘outsiders’ access to some of the rights also accessed by Australian citizens, but exercise the ability to limit access to full citizenship. Through these discursive acts,

I suggest, Australia effectively demarcated who is inside and who is outside of the nation at a given moment, with the New Zealand immigrant interpellated in a position of being ‘almost the same’. As I discuss in the following sections, this discursive landscape structured the available subject positions that the second

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generation participants could occupy within national, transnational and localised spheres.

Navigating the ‘almost similar’ subject position

The discursive construction of ‘almost the same’ position of the New Zealand immigrant influenced the lived experiences of the second generation immigrant participants in Australia. From my analysis in Chapter Seven, it was seen that the participants were aware of the historical and cultural similarities between

Australia and New Zealand, echoing aspects of the discursive terrain established in

Chapters Five and Six. Specifically, myths related to the shared British history and the ANZAC, as well as contemporary links to the British Crown through the

Commonwealth, the importance of sport in both societies and similar types of racism, served to reinforce logics of equivalence between the two countries from the perspective of the participants.

I contend that this discursive landscape served to support many of the participants in occupying the ‘unothered’ public space. This was particularly the case for participants who were visibly ‘white’ and therefore often interprellated into a subject position of assumed sameness, and thus rendered invisible. For instance,

Chris referred to his ability to draw on what he perceived to be his New Zealand

European heritage to align with the Australian majority. This was displayed during

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in his high school years where he was able to by-pass the divisions that came with ethnic group affiliation. Here, whiteness functions as a seemingly normalised source of capital. Having been born and spent the majority of their lives in

Australia, all participants spoke English fluently and had Australian accents. For participants that were visibly ‘white’, their appearance coupled with a non- distinguishable accent supported their ability to be rendered ‘invisible’ within the

Australian social fabric.

On the other hand, similar to the discursive construction of the New Zealand immigrant, the participants’ experiences of being othered along racial and class lines revealed the instability of the construction of ‘whiteness’. In Chapters Five and Six this was seen through constructing New Zealand as the underdog, and the

New Zealand immigrant as a foreign menace due to their assumed deviance and racialised and classed differences. This discursive othering was exposed in everyday spaces and interactions experienced by the participants, where their

‘differences’ were given meaning. As I identified in Chapter Seven, a series of dislocationary moments (Howarth and Stavrakakis, 2000) led to the disruption of the participants’ assumed normalised positioning of ‘sameness’. For instance, Matt found that when his New Zealand heritage was publicly revealed this became a point of difference to the other Australian children. Tactics to re-assert their subjectivity during these moments involved dismissing the dislocation based on an experience that this would be ‘forgotten’, which was based on the assumption that

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their ‘whiteness’/cultural sameness would be reaffirmed or they would find other points of equivalence to strategically assert.

In contrast, participants in this study who were visibly ‘different’ had more difficultly adopting an ‘almost similar’ subject position to reassert their political subjectivity in relation to their Australian identity, despite being Australian-born.

Specifically, participants perceived their subject position was brought into question based on their visibly different Māori appearance. This featured in two ways. On the one hand, some participants felt that they were perceived as dangerous, based on racialised notions of Māori and Aboriginal people as aggressive or threatening, primarily by those occupying the ‘white majority’. This aligns with the discursive constructions identified in the media analysis (Chapter

Six), where racialised notions of Māori participants were articulated through myths characterising Māori as aggressive based on their inherent biological make- up. Alternatively, some participants’ found that other Māori in Sydney assumed similarities about them based on their appearance. Through subsequent interactions that revealed classed divisions, however, the participants felt they were othered.

These moments of dislocation were based on the process of racialised othering

(Brah, 1999; Phoenix, 2009; Wall, 1997). The racialised difference experienced by

Māori participants was similar to previous research on other non-‘white’ second

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generation immigrant groups in Australia who were marked as ‘visibly’ different

(Butcher and Thomas, 2001; Zevallos, 2007, 2008). Similar to this research, the visibly ‘different’ participants’ in this study adopted identities that were highly flexible in that they were able to deal with multiple everyday spaces and adapt to these as needed.

As I identified in Chapter Seven participants who were visibly different, were often asked ‘where you from?’ based on their assumed difference. As I discussed in

Chapter Two, this form of questioning has been identified within previous second generation immigrant research, linked to both a form of gentle curiosity and mechanism of exclusion, on the part of those operating within the mainstream

(Zevallos, 2007). The participants demonstrated the various strategies they deployed to address this dislocation, tending to describe their New Zealand and other immigrant parents’ ancestry coupled with their origin of birth, Australia. I suggest that this discursive act enabled the participants to acknowledge the

‘difference’ brought to light from the questioning, whilst simultaneously dismissing this for the equivalent position of being born in Australia. This latter process signaled an active effort by participants to assert their subjectivity as the ‘same’ as other ‘Australians’. Thus such moments of othering fuelled the participants’ strategic identification with Australia.

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Previous research has suggested that second generation immigrant participants in other comparative contexts often adopt mixed hybrid identities. These have been found to be either based on: an ancestral, immigrant, or national-origin identity; a hyphenated ‘ethnic-host’ country identity; a purely assimilative or ‘host’ country national identity; or a dissimilative racial or pan-ethnic identity (Kiang et al., 2011;

Masuoka, 2006; Rumbaut, 1994; Waters, 1994; Zarate et al., 2005). In contrast to this research, in moments of dislocation when their New Zealand heritage was exposed, both participants who were visibly the ‘same’ and ‘different’ drew on

‘origin’ narratives of Australia as their country of birth. Thus, in reaction to their othered positioning, their identification with Australia as their country of birth and where they had lived for the majority of their lives, served as a strategic source of social and cultural capital, through which they attempted to reassert their ‘insider’ subject position.

This shares some parallels to other second generation immigrant groups, who emphasise their ‘Australian-ness’ to temporarily be perceived as part of the mainstream (Butcher and Thomas, 2001). In this study, participants deployed

‘origin’ narratives and drew on myths of similarity, based on their quintessential

Australian childhoods, to assert their ‘Australian-ness’. Further, for those who could adopt a status of ‘invisibility’ based on their assumed whiteness, they had the added capacity to assert this position to reinforce an ‘insider’ status.

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By virtue of this discursive landscape, identification with an Australian national identity was also characterised by ambiguity. This was demonstrated through the participants’ uncertainty about their legal status and rights in Australia. As outlined in Chapter Five, legislative actions by Australia throughout the 1980s and

1990s gradually restricted the rights of New Zealand immigrants in Australia.

These processes were found to also impact on the participants’ access to and knowledge about their own citizenship status and subsequent rights in Australia.

Citizenship, in a traditional sense, has been argued to be a means of securing community identity and a sense of belonging with the nation-state (Bloemraad,

2004; Bloemradd et al., 2008). Citizenship is also a mechanism for division which demarcates who is inside and outside of the nation (Joppke, 1999). Overall there has been a limited uptake of Australian citizenship by New Zealand-born immigrants. According to 2006 Australian Census data, New Zealand-born people living in Australia were less likely to become Australian citizens compared to other overseas-born Australian residents, with rates of uptake recorded as 37 percent and 71 percent, respectively (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2010). This limited uptake has been attributed to the circular and frequent trans-Tasman movement of New Zealand citizens and their ability to be able to live and work in Australia and access some health benefits, compared to other immigrant groups. I contend that this is also linked to the public ambiguity around the legal status of New

Zealand citizens in Australia, as was seen in the narratives of the participants.

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This context ambiguity around Australian citizenship had implications for second generation immigrants own citizenship status. The policy developments around the SCV and other settlement policies were found to be ambiguous to the participants, which in turn influenced a lack of knowledge and awareness around their citizenship status. For instance, those with two New Zealand citizen parents had New Zealand citizenship and were often not aware of their ‘legal’ status, or the implications of it in terms of living in Australia. In this case, their parents either lacked knowledge and awareness of the implication of their children’s citizenship status. As such, for these participants, under the SCV regulations they had automatically become New Zealand citizens as they were born before 2001. Those within this category indicated a sense of ambivalence towards their citizenship status, preferring to remain New Zealand citizens despite identifying Australia as their place of birth and ‘home’. In comparison, those that had one New Zealand citizen parent and one Australian citizen parent had Australian citizenship. This was not however, a strong point of identification nor did it create a sense of allegiance to Australia for them. At a practical level, this results in the creation of a population group with divergent citizenship status and therefore differential legal rights in their country of birth.

Despite this ambiguity towards Australian citizenship, the participants’ tended to view Australia as a site of belonging drawing on ‘origin’ narratives. From my analysis the participants’ were seen to identify with Australia less in a patriotic

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sense of asserting a nationalistic identity, and more as the site from which they came from. This was seen through narratives around Australia as their place of birth, the setting for their quintessential Australian childhoods, the source of their immediate social ties, and for many, a country they would continue to live in.

Previous literature on New Zealand immigrants indicates the temporary nature of their settlement in Australia, where they are more likely to be circular or ‘return’ migrants (Forrest et al., 2009; Green, 2006; Green and Power, 2006; Hamer, 2007).

Contrary to this, all parents of interviewees had continued to live and set down

‘roots’ in Australia, whilst often maintaining transnational links to New Zealand.

This foundation facilitated a sense of connection to Australia for the participants as their ‘origin’.

Traversing transnational landscapes

From my analysis, the dynamics of the trans-Tasman relationship established a unique discursive transnational social field in which the second generation immigrant participants’ were positioned. The existing research on transnationalism has tended to focus on first generation immigrant experiences, however the theoretical developments in this field have potential transferability to the field of second generation immigrant research. Transitional social fields have been argued to encompass an array of social and physical engagements by individuals that occur across geographic and social borders. By extending

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connections and interactions beyond the boundaries of a single nation-state, ‘a single field of social relations’, or ‘transnational social field’ is created (Basch, Glick

Schiller, and Szanton Blanc, 1994; Faist, 2000; Pries, 2001; Wiles, 2008). As Faist

(2000) suggests, these are not static interactions but instead dynamic social processes. These engagements align with what Yuval-Davis (1997, p. 68) terms a

‘multi-tier’ conceptualisation of citizenship, comprising the ability of people to assert membership across several localities and scales that transcend national borders.

Of note is the role of the unique historical, political, and geographic relationship between Australia and New Zealand in providing a specific discursive context for these transnational engagements. Participants’ understanding of the fluidity of the trans-Tasman migration arrangement was ascertained from their parents’ stories of their migration experiences. Due to the policy context of trans-Tasman migration during the 1970s and 1980s, the parents’ appeared to view their movement to Australia not as the act of crossing the territorial boundaries of another nation-state, but instead as if they were traveling to another part of New

Zealand. This contrasts previous research on more recent New Zealand immigrants, where moving to Australia was viewed as moving to another country and not another part of New Zealand (Green and Power, 2006). I suggest this points to the potential influence of changes in the trans-Tasman relationship on the differential experiences of past and contemporary immigrant groups. Based on their parents’

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narratives, the participants supported the idea of New Zealand functioning in some ways as an extension to Australia instead of existing as an entirely detached nation.

This was aptly captured by Jake’s visual representation of the two countries occurring side-by-side on a map. Again, this points to the operation of a logic of equivalence between Australia and New Zealand from the perspective of the participants.

The construction of fluid national borders influenced the participants’ imaginary of

New Zealand as a site of identification. As I discussed in Chapter Seven, the participants’ perceptions of New Zealand were gathered through myths around the character of New Zealand, their parents’ reasons for leaving New Zealand, and their own encounters with New Zealand as children and adults. There was a tendency for the participants to engage in a comparative dialogue of Australia versus New Zealand, highlighting similarities and differences between the two nations. In these discussions I identified that the participants were aligned with many of the broader discursive constructions of the two nations that were revealed in my genealogical and media analyses (Chapters Five and Six). As I noted in the preceding section, the participants were aware of the colonial British legacy between the two countries and felt that this provided a basis for the shared historical culture of New Zealand and Australia.

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My analysis also revealed that the participants were aware of the differences between the two nations. The participants cited the notion of New Zealand as an under-dog to Australia, based on the ‘weaker’ New Zealand economy and Australia affording New Zealand military protection. These discursive narratives of differences were further supported by the participant’s parents’ reasons for leaving New Zealand. These related to seeking better opportunities and escaping negative situations in New Zealand, which in turned served to reinforce a favourable image of Australia in relation to New Zealand.

The participants also tended to perceive New Zealand as ‘doing things better’ than

Australia. Many participants commented on how New Zealand was, in their opinion, a ‘less’ racist country compared to Australia due to its treatment of its

Indigenous populations. This view reflected the media discourse of the ‘strong, exotic Maori’, where New Zealand was constructed as doing it better in terms of its efforts towards improving the injustices faced by Māori, which was directly contrasted with Australia having a negative image in regards to its efforts with

Aboriginal people. This perception translated in to a sense of pride, insofar as the participants felt they were somewhat connected to a country with globally recognised positive race relations.

Within this discursive frame the trans-Tasman relationship created a mutual space for transfers and engagements by the participants. This was seen in the

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participants varied maintenance of ties to New Zealand, whether this was through ongoing family connections or more tourist type visits.

Family connections, both by the parents and participants, were found to be an important factor in determining the level of connection the participants fostered with New Zealand in later life. For some, developing connections with extended family members in later life enabled the participant to construct New Zealand as a site of belonging, which was aptly captured by Anna in her view of New Zealand as a ‘home’ away from her Australian ‘home’. For others maintaining links to family in

New Zealand was based on a sense of obligation that they felt about keeping ties with their extended family, in part because they had limited family ties in Australia.

In contrast, other participants were less inclined to visit New Zealand, usually as they did not necessarily see it as a strong source of family connection. Chris, for instance discussed how his strong family ties in Australia and subsequent lack of family connection in New Zealand made him less inclined to visit. Having family in

New Zealand, albeit socially distant, provided a basis for conceptualising New

Zealand as a site of their ancestry.

This notion of ancestry was furthered by the participants’ views on the historical linkages between the two countries. Through a shared colonial British legacy and ongoing Commonwealth ties, New Zealand was viewed as culturally similar. I contend this enabled the participants to establish a logic of equivalence between

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their parents’ New Zealand heritage and their own ‘Australian’ identifications based on ‘origins’, as I discussed in the previous section.

For participants who identified as Māori, their indigenous culture provided a further basis for constructing New Zealand as a site of imagined heritage. All the

Māori participants were aware of their Indigenous lineage and their parents’ ongoing engagement with their culture. This was captured in the participants’ experiences of visiting New Zealand and attending Māori cultural events. The level of understanding of their cultural heritage, however, varied considerably. For instance, none of the participants were able to recall the iwi (tribe) their family descended from in New Zealand, and were not fluent in the Māori language Te Reo.

Despite their limited engagement, the idea that they had indigenous cultural links to New Zealand fostered a sense of connection through the construction of ancestry. Moreover, many of the Māori participants mentioned that they were interested in engaging with their Māori culture and language in the future.

Portes (2001) identifies three types of transnationalism, relating to immigrant experiences, namely: economic, political, and socio-cultural. The socio-cultural form of transnationalism involves the maintenance of social connections and links to the immigrants’ cultural heritage (Kivisto, 2001; Portes, 2001). In the current study, the socio-cultural dimension has salience in terms of the way in which many of the participants had ongoing connections with family members in New Zealand

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and regarded New Zealand as a site of cultural ancestry (Kivisto, 2001; Portes,

2001). Previous research on New Zealand first generation immigrants found that these factors facilitated the maintenance of ties in the first generation, however locally-born children of the participants were thought to have a diminished connection to New Zealand (Green and Power, 2006). Building on this research, in this study I found that family and cultural connections functioned to support the parents’ and subsequently many of the participants’ involvement in creating and maintaining transnational links to New Zealand.

While the participants had an imagined sense of connection to New Zealand as a site of heritage, they all described experiences where their subject positioning was disrupted during their encounters with New Zealand. These encounters acted to contradict and bring into question the expectations the participants had of New

Zealand, and in turn their subject positioning in this context. Dislocation occurred in reaction to subtle and sometime unobvious acts, such as jokes about Australia, differences in accents and, in the case of Māori participants, having limited knowledge about their cultural heritage.

Previous research into the language ability of second generation immigrant groups indicates that there are generally high levels of proficiency in English, but there is varying adoption and ongoing proficiency of their immigrant parents’ language overtime (Portes and Schauffler, 1994; Thomas, 2010). Similarly, all the

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participants in this study were fluent in English, which is unsurprising considering that English is the main language in both Australia and New Zealand and thus their parent’s first language. Whilst language was a point of equivalence, the participants also talked about two ways in which language presented a means of positioning them as different in relation to New Zealand.

First involved their distinct Australian accent that would be conceived as a point of difference during interactions with people living in New Zealand. Dislocation occurred when their family members would point out differences about them based on the way they said certain words differently. Although the participants felt this was ‘harmless’ and ‘more a joke’, their accented English in the New Zealand context served to render them as different.

A less common situation involved the participants’ knowledge and engagement with their Māori culture. In this study, they all had a very limited knowledge of the

Māori language, Te Reo. Whilst there has been limited research undertaken, a few researchers have considered the impact of migration on the maintenance of Te Reo across the Tasman. In his thesis on Māori living in Australia, Bergin (1998, p. 190) noted that:

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...there are many difficulties for the Māori migrant in maintaining

and reviving a language which has already faced such a struggle to

survive in its homeland. The socio‐economic goals and other

personal motives which led Māori to leave their homeland often

continue to provide constraints on learning Māori, as a second

language, during their residence in Australia.

In a study of Māori living in Australia based on 2006 data, it was found that while the official number of speakers of Te Reo in Australia had risen from 3,979 in 1986 to 6,617 in 2006 (66 percent increase), the Māori population has officially grown

257 percent over the same period (Hamer, 2010). Thus there has been a significant decrease in Te Reo speakers in Australia. The report concluded that whilst respondents indicating desire to learn Te Reo, even more than when they were living in New Zealand, the use and knowledge of Te Reo had been declining amongst Māori in this context (Hamer, 2010).

Within this context therefore it is not surprising that participants with Māori ancestry had limited knowledge of Te Reo. Whilst not a prominent issue within their daily lives in Australia, when visiting family in New Zealand the lack of bilingualism became a point of difference, reducing their cultural capital in that context. Findings from the abovementioned report indicate that younger speakers

(aged 15‐44) were much less inclined to continue learning Te Reo, at 40.3 percent,

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than older speakers (aged 45 and over), at 67.7 percent (Hamer, 2010). This parallels the experiences of the participants in this study. Whilst they demonstrated an interest in Te Reo, they did not speak the language and despite all of them being interested in potentially learning the language, only one participant had actively taken up Te Reo classes.

These moments of dislocation ruptured the participants’ positioning, disrupting their sense of assumed ‘cultural sameness’, and in turn structured them as

‘outsiders’ in these transnational interactions. In response, they asserted their subjectivity, by aligning themselves with the ‘Australian’ subject position. This presents an interesting discursive act, insofar as their status in Australia is that of the ‘other’, yet when their subject position in relation to New Zealand was called into question, their connection to Australia, via ‘origin’ narratives, was strategically harnessed in an effort to rebalance power.

These findings contribute to the burgeoning literature on transnationalism amongst the second generation. Whilst current research indicates that transnationalism extends beyond the first generation to the second generation, the extent of the engagement with their parent(s)’ country of origin varies considerably in relation to the strength of family links and a sense of allegiance to the ‘homeland’ (Haller and Landolt, 2005; Levitt and Waters, 2002; Rumbaut,

2002; Somerville, 2008). In line with previous research, the transnational ties and

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activities of the participants’ parents influenced those of the second generation immigrants (Alba and Nee, 2003; Kasinitz et al., 2004). Specifically, transnationalism and the desire to maintain links to New Zealand was to a large extent dependent on their parents’ sense of connection to family in New Zealand, whether they had visited New Zealand in their childhood and the level of interest they had maintained in New Zealand as a site of family connections. All participants were to some degree actively engaged in the transnational social field, whether through cross-border communication to maintain existing social ties, engaging with their cultural heritage or visiting New Zealand as a tourist.

Previous research has also indicated that transnational practices vary by geographic distance between the home and host countries, politics in the country of origin, the frequency of visiting and remittances, and language abilities (Kasinitz et al., 2008). Of importance is the geographic proximity between Australia and

New Zealand, and the immigration laws relating to trans-Tasman migration. Both these aspects facilitated the ability of participants to visit New Zealand quite easily, which all of them had done. This is in contrast to other second generation immigrant groups in Australia, for whom their parent’s homeland is of a considerably further distance making it logistically more difficult to travel.

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Localised identification and belonging

The second generation immigrant participants were found to assert their political subjectivity by occupying localised subject positions, established through relational engagements with everyday spaces. My research indicates that the assertion of a localised sense of belonging was a reactionary response by the participants to engage in an alternative space that is not directly linked to national identifications and the act of othering experienced through these subject positions.

Researchers have highlighted that both ‘sense of place’ and ‘place attachment’ play influential roles in identity formation (Manzo, 2003; Pretty, Chipuer, and Bramston,

2003; Rose, 1995). The influence of place on the participants’ shifting subject position was apparent in their sense of place and resulting attachment to the local suburb or region of Sydney in which they had grown up in and/or currently lived in. Within this identification they were acutely aware of the highly politicised spatial divisions of Sydney, similar to other metropolitan cities, drawn along lines of social, economic and class differences (McNeill et al., 2005; Mee and Dowling,

2000; Powell, 1993; Waitt, 2003). As I discussed in Chapter Five, ‘social class’ is not a commonly acknowledged or accepted social division in the Australian cultural context. In the interviews, however, the participants explicitly referenced assumed classed divisions of different regions of Sydney, namely, the eastern, northern, southern and western regions. Specifically, participants drew on logics of difference relating divisions based of socio-economic and racial differences, as well

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as myths around safety and violence, to position themselves in relation to others within the city’s social fabric.

A sense of belonging thus has been seen to support the construction of spatial boundaries, which can be both inclusive to the people establishing the boundary, whilst simultaneously exclusive to those constructed as being outside of the place in question. In this way, boundaries not only help determine who belongs (the insiders), but also establish those who do not belong (the outsiders) (Rose, 1995, p.

99). For the participants, the drawing of frontiers between themselves and others within different everyday places was a strategic act, which allowed them to affirm their positioning in relation to others, and in turn their sense of connection to and social inclusion within those places.

This was seen further in the participants’ interaction with and memories of localised everyday places that they had encountered in New Zealand. Participants referred to their childhood memories of visiting extended family members’ homes and specific places they had spent time with family when they visited in New

Zealand. These memories served as a basis for developing a sense of familiarity later in life when they visited New Zealand as adults. Interactions with specific places in New Zealand, as adults, however often led to dislocationary moments.

This was seen in the case of Danielle who felt a sense of unease due to being rendered an ‘outsider’ during a visit to her family marae (cultural meeting house),

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based on her lack of cultural knowledge. Experiences with rural towns in New

Zealand also provided a contrast to the city lifestyle participants had experienced in Australia, which the participants found difficult to relate to. Whilst the participants’ sense of place in New Zealand hinged on the memories of previous experiences, reencounters in later life did not always align with their imagined sense of connection. As such, they were unable to develop the same level of attachment or sense of belonging they had in relation to their local suburb and city in Australia.

I suggest that these various attachments and interactions point to the participants’ attempt to establish a sense of ‘local belonging’, where the connection between place and identity is created though the myth of ‘being a local’ (Garbutt, 2009;

Myers, 2006). In both contexts, participants’ sense of places informed their identity, whether this was to reaffirm their subject position or dislocate it. Rose (1995) observes that the extent to which people feel they belong in certain places influences their identity associated with that place. In both contexts a sense of belonging (or lack thereof) arose from everyday localised interactions with people and the physical space (Garbutt, 2009; Probyn, 1996; Sicakkan and Lithman, 2005).

Part of this construction of localised belonging is the need to establish a sense of social inclusion: a relational construct that can be conceived as being formed through discursive processes that constructs a state of privilege (for those on the inside), which results in state of disadvantage or social exclusion for others

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(Cameron, 2006; Garbutt, 2009). So social inclusion is as much defined both by what it is and what it is not.

In the case of their attachment to the local neighbourhood in which they grew up and/or lived, a sense of attachment fostered a sense of security and comfort within one‘s immediate surrounding (Sugihara and Evans, 2000). This was signaled by some participants contrasting of the suburb in which they lived and how it was safer than other parts of Sydney. In turn, attachment to local places, such as the neighborhood, facilitated a sense of identity and belonging to these locales (Wiles et al., 2009; Wiles and Jayasinha, 2013). This was demonstrated through the participants’ memories of their local neighbourhood and school, and the function of these memories during adulthood, which enabled them to foster their continued connections with these places. As young adults, most of the participants were still living in the area they had grown up in and strongly identified with their local neighbourhood. This was also the case for participants who had travelled out of

Sydney or Australia and had returned and noted the sense of familiarity they had to these localised places.

Conversely, dislocationary interactions in localised places in the New Zealand context often led to the disruption of the participants’ sense of belonging. During these moments, the lack of belonging participants felt within New Zealand was rendered visible. In turn, New Zealand was established less as a localised and

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tangible site of belonging and more so as an abstract landscape of heritage and culture.

Theoretical developments in transnational studies concerning first generation immigrants demonstrate that transnational processes have contributed to the increasing deterritorialisation of nation-states (Kennedy and Roudometof, 2002;

O'Connor, 2010). This is underscored by the notion that through their ongoing transnational links to their ‘homeland’, whist maintaining their lives in the ‘host’ country, immigrants’ transnationalism has effectively blurred the previously distinct boundaries dividing nations. I propose that this conceptualisation has some explanatory power, insofar as expanding on the transnational experiences of second generation immigrants. From my findings, through their social connections and engagement in localised places in Australia and New Zealand, the second generation participants were seen to participate in the discursive act of blurring the boundaries between Australia and New Zealand. They demonstrated varied identifications that were located across multiple scales of the local neighbourhood,

Australia and the transnational site of New Zealand. As such the participants’ identity and sense of belonging can be understood to transcended borders, insofar as their identity was not restricted to the physical location of the nation-state demarcated by boundaries nor bound purely to their immigrant parents’ country of origin.

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The identity and belonging negotiations by the participants’ were situated within the historical and contemporary discourses relating to the position of the New

Zealand immigrant in Australia. From my analysis of the three data sets the discursive terrain was seen to structure the available subject positions for the second generation immigrants at local, national and transnational scales. An assumed ‘sameness’ was established along a logic of equivalence related to

‘whiteness’ and ‘cultural similarities’ between Australia and New Zealand.

Alternative constructions of racialised and classed difference, based on myths of deviance and the exotic native functioned to antagonistically compete with the discursive construction of ‘similarity’ and indicate a logics of difference. This discursive construction in turn structured the available subject positions New

Zealand second generation immigrants could adopt in the different contexts.

Further, in response to dislocationary moments across the different locales, the participants displayed an ability to strategically assert aspects of their identity, which resulted in various, competing and shifting identifications with(in) Australia and New Zealand.

These findings present a divergent perspective to previous research on second generation immigrant groups in Australia. As I outlined in Chapter Two, Australian second generation immigrant research has mainly focused on the acculturative experiences of second generation immigrants with post-World War Two immigrant parents from European source countries, and more recently those from

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non-European backgrounds. Rather, this study presents an alternative view of second generation immigrant lived experiences, where negotiations of identity and sense of belonging are bound to localised, national and transnational landscapes, undergirded by a historically contingent discursive terrain of shifting equivalences and differences, and processes of othering.

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Chapter 9 Conclusion

This thesis provides an interdisciplinary and historically grounded analysis of the identity and belonging experiences of second generation immigrant young adults of New Zealand descent in Sydney, Australia. Specifically, I sought to explore the shifting and competing nature of the discursive construction of the ‘New Zealand immigrant’ in Australia and how these discursive processes influence on the lived experiences of their locally-born children. The findings from the study uncovered the historical and contingent construction of the ‘New Zealand immigrant’ as either

‘inside the nation’ based on their ‘similarities’ or ‘outside the nation’ based on their

‘differences’, which in turn positioned them as either supporting or threatening the

‘Australian’ identity. From the interviews with second generation immigrant participants, the manner in which this discursive terrain structured the possible subject positions available was revealed. Participants negotiated their interprellated subject position as ‘almost the same’ through a myriad of dislocationary moments, which unveiled the points of difference, and their ultimately othered positioning, in both Australian and New Zealand contexts.

Whilst occupying a somewhat transnational sense of belonging, the participants expressed a strong sense of attachment to, and identification with, local everyday places they interacted within.

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There are several empirical, theoretical and research implications emanating from this study. The value of approaching second generation immigrant research from an approach informed by intersectionality theory and translocational positionality was highlighted in the research. As I have previously posited the prevailing immigrant-centred research agenda discursively constructs the ‘second generation’ as ‘insiders on the outside’. Here, the second generation are perceived as struggling to negotiate the seemingly all-consuming cultural divide between ‘family’,

‘community’ and ‘host’ society (Jayasinha, 2011). This thus closes other possible experiences of identity negotiation and belonging.

This study instead examined the multiplicity and intersectionality of ‘identity’, while at the same time recognising the relational, social and translocational aspects in the process of ‘othering’ and the dislocations this presented to the second generation immigrants’ identity. This was demonstrated by exploring second generation immigrant identity across multiple axes of difference and across various relational and social places and scales. The study presents a novel and alternative viewpoint, emphasising the layered and multiple dynamics of second generation immigrant experiences to the field of second generation research. I actively sought to consider the ‘second generation’ as distinct from that of their first generation immigrant parents in an effort to avoid the simplistic merging of experiences. This allowed for an analysis that was reflexive in approach, explicitly attempted to be non-essentialising and acknowledged the multifarious, spatio-

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temporal, ever-shifting aspects of second generation immigrant identity and experience.

Related to this, and contrary to popularised views of the ‘sameness’ between

Australia and New Zealand, in this study I was able to elucidate the role of historical, racialised and classed constructions in the subordination of New

Zealand in the public and political imaginary. This in turn proved central in demonstrating the impact such social divisions can have not only on the lived experiences of immediate first generation immigrant groups, but also that of their children in shaping the sense of identity and belonging within a nation. By exploring the functionality of race, class and gender in establishing logics of equivalence and difference between New Zealand and Australia, this research contributes to understandings of a multicultural Australian society.

Whilst there is a prevailing discursive construction of Australia as a classless society, this research demonstrates the role of class in establishing power imbalances in a different ways. First, class differentials function to demarcate the

New Zealand immigrant subject position as outside Australia. Second, the second generation immigrants draw on notions of class divisions in order to locate themselves within specific regions of Sydney, and in turn, distinguish themselves from other population groups within Sydney. I suggest that class and race, in combination with other axes of social difference including gender, country of birth,

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and ancestry continue to be salient lines of division within Australian society and should be taken into account in analyses of other second generation immigrant groups in this context.

The third implication of my findings relates to the use of a Discourse Theoretical

Approach as a theoretical frame and methodological guide for the research. To my knowledge, this is the first study to apply Discourse Theory to second generation immigrant research. As I demonstrated, a Discourse Theoretical Approach privileges accounts of identity as firmly located in the discursive terrain, established through the analysis of historical and contemporary discursive developments. Furthermore, this approach privileges the view that identity is itself discursive. Thus, as I presented in Chapters Five and Six understanding the discursive conditions of the trans-Tasman relationship does not merely provide a historical backdrop. Rather, it allows us to deeply consider and understand the situated and contingent nature of second generation immigrant identity constructions.

Additionally, by utlising a variety of qualitative methods, including textual analysis and interviews with second generation immigrant adults, a multi-dimensional understanding of lived experience was presented, that incorporated political and social changes at the macro policy level and micro socio-relational level.

Specifically, this uncovered the seemingly hidden conflicting and ‘othering’

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discursive constructions of New Zealand migrants and how this in turn structures the competing subject position of the second generation with regarding their relational experiences with the nation-state Australia, across transnational social fields relating to New Zealand, and localised spatial identifications.

At a practical level, uncovering the conflicting discursive nature of the trans-

Tasman relationship is of particular importance, considering the ongoing relationship between Australia and New Zealand and their maintenance of closely aligned political, economic and cultural landscapes. In the current context, increasing numbers of New Zealand citizens moving to, and settling in, Australia

(Department of Immigration and Border Protection, 2013) indicates that the movement of New Zealanders will remain constant. Whilst the nature of trans-

Tasman migration arrangement is such that there will be a mix of both short-term and long-term immigrants, I suggest, continual New Zealand immigration will contribute to an increasing second generation immigrant population in Australia.

As identified in this study, there are differential policy impacts for different New

Zealand immigrants depending on date of arrival of immigrants, and depending on date of birth of the second generation. I suggest this creates a ‘migrant’ group with internal divisions due to the way they are categorised in Australia, and external divisions as a result of their ‘othered’ and ‘marginalised’ positioning.

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Furthermore, this is a highly diverse population group. The current study was limited to focus on the experiences of second generation immigrants of Pākehā and

Māori descent, but in reality the New Zealand migrant population comprises a diversity of ethnic groups. Such diversity is aligned with the goals espoused by

Australia’s multicultural policy.

Further research on New Zealand immigrants and their children within Australia that includes those from third country immigrant groups, is thus needed to capture the growing diversity and experiences of this population group. The inclusion of

New Zealand immigrants in official migration data collection would enable researchers to more accurately enumerate the different patterns of movement and settlement in this group, capture the breath of diversity, and provide insight into the demographics of the growing second generation immigrant population. This research agenda could also encompass further in-depth qualitative exploration of the lived experiences New Zealand immigrants and their children relating to their socio-economic and spatial distribution at city, State and national levels, interactions with the political and legal structures in Australia, ethnic and cultural diversity, trans-Tasman immigration patterns and pathways, and transnational connections from the perspective of those living in Australia and New Zealand.

The current restrictive trans-Tasman policy context, undergirded by the processes of othering of New Zealand first and second generation immigrants, has practical

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implications for how they are able to actively engage as members of Australian society. Recently the SCV came under heavy criticism, with claims that it has transformed the status of New Zealand residents in Australia into ‘second-class citizens’ (Ansley, 2013; Gillies, 2013). Through the Social Security Agreement,

Australia was able to severely curtail access of New Zealand citizens to state support, which has had implications in terms of rights to citizenship and also presents the risk of New Zealand citizens ‘falling through the gap’.

This is exemplified by the dispersion of the majority of the New Zealand immigrant population across Sydney’s lower socio-economic western suburbs. According to

2011 Census data, the largest concentrations of New Zealand-born immigrants were in Claymore (8 percent), Emerton (8 percent) and Tregear (6 percent). Half of New Zealanders in Claymore and 42 percent of New Zealanders in Tregear reported having Samoan ancestry (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2014). Claymore and Tregear were also the suburbs with the first and third largest proportion of

Samoan-born migrants in Sydney, pointing to notable third country migrants.

Additionally, there are reportedly an increasing number of New Zealand citizens living in Australia who are allegedly homeless due to an inability to access government welfare and housing support (Dickison and Ansley, 2013; Harper,

2010; Kilgallon, 2013). While these are only two examples, it nonetheless highlights the potential for hidden inequalities for New Zealand citizens in

Australia due to the current legislative structure.

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Moreover, the discursive conditions that influenced the tightening of access to New

Zealand immigrants during the 1990s and early 2000s was, in part, based on the myth of a lack of participation in the workforce and heavy reliance on welfare. This is in contrast to current participation rates of New Zealanders in the Australian workforce. As of July 2012, New Zealand 78.2 percent of the New Zealand-born population were currently employed compared to 68.0 percent of Australian-born, while the New Zealand-born unemployment rate was similar to that of the

Australian-born population (4.8 percent and 4.9 percent, respectively)

(Department of Immigration and Border Protection, 2013). Thus, it can be seen that such myths, whilst having historical relevance, have less explanatory power in the contemporary context regarding the workforce participation of New Zealand immigrants.

Considering the ANZAC and colonial linkages that historically connected Australia and New Zealand, the increasing restrictive legislative direction taken in response to New Zealand immigrants highlights how the symbolic value of these cultural tropes has diminished to some degree. This sentiment was shared by Allan Hawke, which he articulated when he was appointed Australian High Commissioner to

New Zealand in 2003. Reflecting on trans-Tasman ties, he commented that these were now at a crossroads due to weakened ANZAC links, due to differential attitudes between the previous leaders, whose views were forged by the First and

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Second World Wars, and the new generation that was assuming those roles, for whom the ANZAC tradition was deemed to be of lesser value (Harvey, 2003).

Economically, the trans-Tasman relationship is still of significant value to New

Zealand and Australia. This can be seen in terms of trade, with Australia accounting for over 20 percent of both imports and exports, while New Zealand is the third largest market for Australian exports (Hazledine, 2002; Kerr, 2002;

Patman, 2001).

Furthermore, the unique bilateral relationship between Australia and New Zealand continues to be referred to favourably by politicians and members of the public alike. In a recent joint report by the Australian and New Zealand Productivity

Commissions, the trans-Tasman relationship was described as ‘like no other’ and

‘family’ by New Zealand Prime Minister John Key and Former Australian Prime

Minister Julia Gillard (Australian Productivity Commission and New Zealand

Productivity Commission, 2012). This contemporary trans-Tasman context, which will inevitably promote continued trans-Tasman migration, points to the need for further efforts that recognise and support the growing transnational New Zealand immigrant population in Australia. This will in turn foster a bilateral environment that supports both first and second generation immigrants’ transnational lives.

Overall, the findings from this research provide further empirical support for second generation immigrant transnationalism. In turn, this study indicates the

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need for subsequent research to examine similar transnational experiences within other second generation immigrant groups of varying geographic distance in terms of parents’ homeland, and assumed similarities based on politics, language and culture.

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Appendices

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Appendix 1: Leximancer analysis of print media articles

The overall concept map of the media articles is presented here was generated through a data mining process in Leximancer software (figure A). The map presents the key thematic groupings and associated concepts that were identified.

Table A lists the most commonly occurring concepts that were identified.

Figure A. Map of key concepts in print media coverage (1985-2010)

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Where the circles crossover they indicate interrelated content between different thematic groups. For instance, the media coverage on New Zealand and Australia trans-Tasman migration is a major thematic area, and includes content regarding immigration policies and population movement and trends. The overlap with other thematic groups highlights how these concepts are also closely linked to ideas around international markets, the economy, government, and community.

Table A. List of ranked concept

Concept Absolute Relative Concept Absolute Relative Count count (%) Count count (%)

Australia 2386 100% business 308 13%

New Zealand 1681 70% past 300 13%

Australian 1136 48% economic 294 12%

Sydney 688 29% market 291 12%

Australians 587 25% children 290 12%

Maori 561 24% school 290 12%

New 522 22% local 285 12% Zealanders

Aboriginal 363 15% born 282 12%

NZ 315 13% young 271 11%

Kiwis 311 13% public 271 11%

Melbourne 222 09% policy 266 11%

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NSW 217 09% told 262 11%

Kiwi 208 09% social 257 11%

Queensland 207 09% became 255 11%

Aborigines 180 08% yesterday 253 11%

British 159 07% police 251 11%

English 16 01% land 249 10% people 1428 60% white 241 10% year 940 39% house 241 10% country 864 36% city 239 10% work 859 36% during 229 10% time 857 36% overseas 226 09% living 748 31% former 224 09% words 605 25% things 224 09% national 563 24% called 222 09% home 490 21% men 209 09% take 471 20% head 209 09% week 450 19% best 207 09% world 446 19% man 207 09% family 445 19% named 204 09% population 442 19% large 203 09% look 441 18% international 202 08% including 438 18% night 199 08% used 430 18% women 198 08% immigration 422 18% early 194 08%

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group 416 17% fact 193 08% migrants 405 17% book 188 08% community 402 17% history 185 08% life 401 17% money 182 08% culture 388 16% director 181 08% months 364 15% others 171 07% place 358 15% old 170 07% different 347 15% course 163 07% government 346 15% taken 157 07% political 343 14% black 157 07% million 341 14% role 155 06% day 337 14% late 153 06% become 331 14% given 152 06% play 325 14% won 121 05% recent 323 14% known 120 05% indigenous 321 13%

“Australia” and the related concepts of “Sydney”, “Australian”, and “Australians” ranked in the top five concepts. To determine whether the concept clusters would change if the Australian-related concepts were removed, a second concept map

(figure B) was produced that excluded all Australia-related terms. The key concept clusters in second concept map did not differ considerably from the first concept map, indicating the tendency for of the media coverage to draw on Australian-

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centered narratives, such as the nationalistic Australian discourses discussed in the foregoing chapter, when constructing narratives regarding New Zealand and

New Zealand citizens.

Figure B. Map of key concept in print media coverage excluding Australia-related concepts

(1985-2010)

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Appendix 2: Recruitment advertisement

Are you aged between 18 and 30 years?

Were you born in Australia and live in Sydney?

Are at least one of your parents from New Zealand?

We invite you to participate in study about the wellbeing of Australian born young people of New Zealand descent (the second generation) living in Sydney

Researchers from the University of New South Wales are interested in finding out about the different experiences of growing up and/or living in Sydney as a second generation young person of New Zealand descent, particularly as it relates to their social networks and wellbeing.

To reimburse you for your time and any out-of-pocket expenses you will be given a $20 gift voucher or phone credit voucher.

Participation in the study will be kept strictly confidential. No information will be used in any way that reveals the identity of participants.

If you would like more information about the study please feel free to contact Ms Ranmalie Jayasinha: [email protected]

This study has been approved by the UNSW Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC). Reference number HC11383

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Appendix 3: Interview schedule

Introduction: The interviewer will begin the session by telling the participant a bit about themselves and the focus of the project.

Example: This study is about the experiences of growing up and/or living in Sydney as a young person born in Australia of New Zealand heritage. I am interested in how your experiences have been shaped by your connections to New Zealand and what influence you feel being a child of New Zealand immigrant parent(s) has on your life. (If appropriate): Just to tell you a bit about myself, I am originally from New Zealand, I was born and grew up there and only recently moved to Sydney. I am also the child of immigrant parents from Sri Lanka.

At this point the interviewer will ask for consent from the participant to record the interview and advise the participant that at any stage of the interview they can request the recorder to be switched off. Any preliminary questions that the participant has will also be answered.

Topics and questions for discussion: Please note that the following questions are only a guide, so they may be adapted and asked in different order depending on the flow of the interview.

Self and Family Could you tell me about 1) yourself, 2) your family? When did your parents immigrate to Australia? Why did they move to Australia?

Location Where in Sydney do you live/work/go to university? In what way do you think living in Sydney or in different places around Australia has shaped your life experiences?

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What are your experiences of New Zealand? What connections do you feel you have with New Zealand?

Social networks Can you tell me a bit about your friends? Do you feel you belong to a community or communities? How would you define your ‘community’ or communities (i.e. is this peer-based, ethnic or religious etc.) What kind of connection do you have with other New Zealanders in Sydney? How do you connect with people in New Zealand?

Identity How would you define yourself? What aspects of ‘who you are’ do you think are important for this definition? How do you think your New Zealand heritage shapes who you are? If so, in what way and why? What do think the term ‘second generation’ refers to? Do you think this term relates/defines you? How important is it to you that other people know that you have New Zealand parents/heritage, and why? OR Do you avoid/hesitate telling people that you have New Zealand parents, and why? If your parents were originally from another country how strongly would you rate your ties/links/identity with your parents’ country of origin versus New Zealand? Do you know some of the stereotypes of New Zealanders in Australia? Have these stereotypes every affected the way you think about yourself/ your family/ other New Zealanders in Australia? If someone asked you ‘where are you from?’ what would you say, and why? Would the answer to this question change if it was asked by a different person or in a different context, and why/why not? Do you feel a strong sense or connection to an Australian identity? How would you define this? In what way do you think this interacts with the other aspects of who you are?

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Appendix 4: UNSW HREC approval letter

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Appendix 5: Participant Information Sheet, Consent and Revocation of Consent forms

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