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Uncertain Lives Uncertain Lives: Culture, Race and Neoliberalism in Australia By Jon Stratton (Curtin University, Australia) Uncertain Lives: Culture, Race and Neoliberalism in Australia, by Jon Stratton This book first published 2011 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2011 by Jon Stratton All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-3301-0, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-3301-1 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements ................................................................................... vii Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 The Neoliberal Exclusionary Order in Australia: Race, Religion and Incarceration Chapter One............................................................................................... 29 Two Rescues, One History: Everyday Racism in Australia Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 55 The Murderous State: The Naturalisation of Violence and Exclusion in the Films of Neoliberal Australia Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 79 Non-Citizens in the Exclusionary State: Citizenship, Mitigated Exclusion and the Cronulla Riots Chapter Four............................................................................................ 103 Dying to Come to Australia: Asylum Seekers, Tourists and Death Chapter Five ............................................................................................ 131 Uncertain Lives: Migration, the Border and Neoliberalism in Australia Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 151 “Welcome to Paradise”: Asylum Seekers, Neoliberalism, Nostalgia and Lucky Miles Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 169 Trouble with Zombies: Muselmänner , Bare Life and Displaced People Chapter Eight........................................................................................... 197 Preserving White Hegemony: Skilled Migration, “Asians” and Middle Class Assimilation vi Table of Contents Endnotes .................................................................................................. 223 Bibliography............................................................................................ 229 Index........................................................................................................ 253 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The essays that comprise this book were written between 2006 and 2010. They were attempts to make sense of changes that were taking place in Australian society as a consequence directly or indirectly of policies being implemented by John Howard’s coalition governments. I had recently completed a term as Head of the Department of Communication and Cultural Studies at Curtin University, a position which I had held for three years and which had consumed most of the time that should have been available to research and write. In the following years my situation altered dramatically and research and writing became my primary focus. For this change of circumstance I would like to thank Colin Brown, then Dean of the Faculty of Media, Communication and Culture, also David Wood, then Pro-Vice Chancellor of the Division of Humanities. More recently, and after a restructure, I need to thank Ron Blaber, who replaced me as Head of the Department of Communication and Cultural Studies, and Steve Mickler who became the inaugural Head of the School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts. Steve has been especially concerned with supporting research in the School at a time of increasing neoliberal rationalisation and corporatisation and his recognition of the importance of research needs to be recognised and admired. I would also like to thank Suvendrini Perera, colleague and friend, who has kindly read and commented on all the essays in this book. Often I have taken her advice, a few times I haven’t—something that I may likely regret in the future. In 2009 Suvendrini and I coedited an issue of Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies which was an intervention in the Australian discussion about asylum seekers. Panizza Allmark, Olivia Khoo, Karl Neuenfeld, Kristen Phillips and Sophie Sunderland have each critically engaged with various of the essays and I thank them for their contributions and support. The book is better for their suggestions and advice. In her role as an editor of Continuum , Panizza has been particularly helpful within, it should go without saying, the limits imposed by her editorial position on a peer-reviewed journal. Thanks also to Mar Bucknell for his work proofing and copyediting this book. Many of these essays have appeared in similar form in various peer-reviewed journals. I thank all the referees of these journals for their insightful and helpful suggestions. viii Acknowledgements I should also acknowledge and thank Curtin’s Faculty of Humanities which provided funds for much of the work entailed in converting the original essays into this book. Kristen Phillips acted as my research assistant on many of these essays and I owe much to her careful contributions. Claire Trevenen, along with Kristen, converted the essays into the style required by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Helen Mumme keyed in some of these essays with her usual speed and expertise. I thank all three for their help. —Jon Stratton, Professor of Cultural Studies, Curtin University. “Two Rescues, One History: Everyday Racism in Australia” appeared in Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture , vol. 12, no. 6, 2006, pp. 657–681. “Dying to Come to Australia: Asylum Seekers, Tourists and Death” appeared in Suvendrini Perera ed. Our Patch: Enacting Australian Sovereignty Post-2001 , Network Books, 2007, pp. 167–96. “The Murderous State: The Naturalisation of Violence and Exclusion in the Films of Neo-Liberal Australia” appeared in Cultural Studies Review , vol. 15, no. 1, 2009, pp. 11–32. “Uncertain Lives: Migration, the Border and Neoliberalism in Australia” appeared in Social Identities , vol. 15, no. 5, 2009, pp. 677–92. “‘Welcome to Paradise’: Asylum Seekers, Nostalgia and Lucky Miles ” appeared in Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies , vol. 23, no. 5, 2009, pp. 629–45. “Preserving White Hegemony: Skilled Migration, ‘Asians’ and Middle- Class Assimilation” appeared in borderlands , vol. 8, no. 3, 2009, http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol8no3_2009/stratton_hegemony.htm. The chapter here titled “Trouble with Zombies: Muselmänner , Bare Life and Displaced People” appeared in different forms as “Trouble with Zombies: Bare Life, Muselmänner and Displaced People” in Somatechnics , vol. 1, no. 1, 2011, pp. 188–208 and “Zombie Trouble: Zombie Texts, Bare Life and Displaced People” in the European Journal of Cultural Studies , vol. 14, no. 3, 2011, pp. 265–82. I thank all these journals for permission to republish this material. INTRODUCTION THE NEOLIBERAL EXCLUSIONARY ORDER IN AUSTRALIA : RACE , RELIGION AND INCARCERATION This book brings together my essays principally concerned with the cultural effects of neoliberalism on matters related to race, ethnicity, Australia’s border, and the political management of the state’s populations. Almost all were written during the fourth term of John Howard’s Liberal– National coalition government between 2004 and 2007. It was during this time that the cultural impact on Australian society of the coalition’s neoliberal policies became most apparent. The social impact began much earlier. Many of these essays lift off from changes in the treatment of those people most commonly these days called asylum seekers that began under the Labor governments of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. Since the mid-1970s the political management of the Australian population had been achieved through the rhetoric and practice associated with multiculturalism. In Australia multiculturalism was the liberal solution to the problem of migrant cultural diversity. As the Howard governments struggled to transform Australian society into an aggregation of competitive individuals in a marketised environment so multiculturalism, like all policies that emphasised social groups, became increasingly attenuated. It needs to be added here that there was a contradiction in the Howard governments’ attitude to neoliberalism. While on the one hand Howard wanted to marketise all institutional processes, on the other hand, he also set about actively reasserting an Australian national identity based on Australia’s British origins. The gradual termination of policies that supported ethnic groups, such as multiculturalism, was matched by a reassertion of assimilation as the basis for the reformation of a unitary Australian culture. I discuss the program of neoliberalism, and the Howard government’s peculiar inflections of it, in many of the essays in this book. Here I will provide a brief definition of the broad sense of the ideology taken from an 2 Introduction article written by Suvendrini Perera and myself,