Negotiating and Performing “Jewish Australian” identity in South-East Queensland’s Jewish community: Creolization, national identity and power1 Jennifer Creese, School of Social Science, The University of Queensland, Australia. Email:
[email protected] Published in the Journal of International Migration & Integration (2019), First Online 12 November 2019, https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-019-00714-8 Conflict of Interest: The author declares that they have no conflict of interest. Compliance with Ethical Standards: The anthropological work of this study complies with the Code of Ethics of the Australian Anthropological Society, and has been approved by their institution’s Human Research Ethics Committee. Abstract The Jewish community of South-East Queensland, Australia, has always been in constant negotiation with the mainstream Queensland society around it regarding its relationship with dominant Australian national identity. This results in two different forms of identity – a compartmentalized identity, where Australianness and Jewishness are experienced and expressed separately within their own discrete situations, and a creolized identity, where elements of both Australianness and Jewishness are taken and blended into a distinctive new cultural form. Using ethnographic data, this article explores the negotiation between Jewishness and Australianness in group identity. Rather than compartmentalising Jewishness 1 The author wishes to thank Professor David Trigger and Dr Gerhard Hoffstaedter of the School of Social Science, University of Queensland, for their comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this work. This research was made possible with the assistance of an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship from the University of Queensland Graduate School. 1 away from Australianness, a creolized performative “Jewish Australian” identity is given collective expression by the community.