For the summary you will need to provide a brief statement of the author’s argument, or what is sometimes referred to as the author’s thesis position, and the key points that support this in your own words. This means that you must identity the main point/s that the author is communicating through the reading and the key pieces of information that support this main point. You will need to be very concise in the summary as you only have 400 words to summarise the essence of the reading.
Structure of the summary
It is important that you set out your summary of the author’s views in an easy to follow way. The recommended structure is:
Introduction - a brief outline of what you will be covering in your summary
- The main topic - what is this reading about?
- The author’s thesis - what is the author’s position on the main topic?
- Key points – what are the 3 main arguments the author presents that demonstrate this position?
Body – discussion of these 3 key points
- Author’s arguments
- Evidence and examples provided to support the arguments
- Author’s conclusion
55D. Bretherton and N. Balvin (eds.), Peace Psychology in Australia, Peace Psychology Book Series, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-1403-2_4, © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012 I was born in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne Australia – sometimes known as the green belt, other times the white belt. By the time I was old enough to develop some kind of memorable social understanding I recall hearing that Greeks or Italians were sometimes referred to as Wogs. We would watch Acropolis Now, an Australian sitcom created by the writers of a hit stage show Wogs out of Work. Little did I know at the time that the term ‘Wog’ historically referred to an illness, insects or grubs and that it had been a derogatory label applied to Australian immigrants from Southern and South-Eastern Europe, a term that had been successfully reclaimed and was now owned by the very communities that it once targeted. Some years before watching Acropolis Now, I vaguely recall visiting a Vietnamese refugee centre in Nunawading Victoria. We met a family whom we had been matched with to help them adjust to Australian culture. I remember they were all sick at the time from the boat trip to Australia. Not long after, the term ‘Asian Invasion’ became a popularised response to immigration from South East Asia. In 1996 Pauline Hanson pushed this agenda further claiming we were being ‘swamped by Asians’. Apparently, to Hanson, multiculturalism was a failed ideology and we could never really live with other races in peace and harmony. Now in the twenty- fi rst century as Australia builds stronger economic links to Asia, Asian Australians are considered no less Australian than anyone else and the Pauline Hanson’s of this world have re-targeted their concerns onto Muslims and refugees from the Horn of Africa. Over the past 200 years Australia has moved from its early immigration of white European settlers to incorporate new waves of immigrant groups (see http://www. immi.gov.au/media/publications/statistics/federation/ for historical immigration trends; see also Chap. 8 , Pederson, Fozdar and Kenny in this volume). Each one has created a splash, a period of adjustment. But each one has fi nally found a way to the B. Bastian (*) School of Psychology , University of Queensland , Brisbane , QLD , Australia e-mail:
[email protected] Chapter 4 Immigration, Multiculturalism and the Changing Face of Australia Brock Bastian http://www.immi.gov.au/media/publications/statistics/federation/ http://www.immi.gov.au/media/publications/statistics/federation/ 56 B. Bastian very interior of Australian society and Australian culture. Once limited to the humble meat pie or fi sh and chips, Australian fusion cooking is now world-renowned. Take-away generally consists of pizza, souvlaki and Thai or Indian curries, and there’s nothing quite like the fl avoursome chili goodness of a steaming bowl of Vietnamese soup noodles. Australia is now the destination of choice, housing some of the most live- able cities in the world and with immigration continuing to fuel strong cultural and economic growth. The changing face of Australia is both a personal experience for many as well as an object of social and political contestation. As Australia opens its boarders to an increasingly diverse population, this also requires that Australians themselves open their minds to include new and diverse lifestyles, foods, cultural traditions and val- ues. Barriers to change not only exist within policy, but also within individual responses to change. In this chapter I focus on both the micro and macro level of analysis to explore the various factors that have facilitated as well as inhibited the integration and acculturation of various immigrant groups to Australia’s shores. One factor on which I focus is how the Australian identity is understood. Identity is a multifaceted term and one which may be understood from many different per- spectives (see Chap. 6 , Louis, Barlow and Greenaway in this volume). I restrict my analysis of identity to how a particular social category is represented cognitively. That is, when someone says ‘I am Australian’ what do they think Australian means and who does it include? I review research that addresses these issues both from the perspective of immi- grant groups themselves as well as from that of the host culture, providing for refl ec- tion on future directions for multiculturalism within Australia. First, I refl ect on the question of who is Australian, highlighting different ways that this identity is defi ned, restricted and extended. Second, I review research on immigration and acculturation refl ecting on the process of becoming Australian and its implications for multicultur- alism. Third, with the aim of drawing attention to the delicate balance needed to build a functioning multiculturalism, I review research that highlights when perceived dif- ferences between groups may become problematic. Fourth, I consider the opposite problem, when similarities are emphasised at the expense of distinctiveness. Fifth, I review work on intergroup contact, highlighting what factors might allow different groups to ‘meet in the middle’. Finally, I outline what appear to be the necessary components for a functioning multiculturalism and how these apply to the Australian context. In doing so I also give reasons why I believe Australia is in a unique position to become an example of multiculturalism to the rest of the world, and why it is important to respect and understand the fragility of this position. 4.1 Who Is Australian? The phrase ‘spot the Aussie’ has been regularly used within Australia to describe areas of high ethnic diversity, and perhaps more accurately, low-white representation. One does not need to refer to the White Australia policy (a policy lasting from 1901 574 Immigration, Multiculturalism and the Changing Face of Australia to 1973 restricting ‘non-white’ immigration to Australia) to know that Australian=White . A recent study by Sibley and Barlow ( 2009 ) highlights that implicit within many Australians’ thinking is the association between Australian and White, compared to a probably more accurate association of Australian and Aboriginal. As part of this study the same implicit associations were also tested in New Zealand, but the effect was not replicated. This is indicative of better cultural representation of Māori peoples within New Zealand society and that being a New Zealander and non-white is an easier feat. The commonly held belief that White Europeans are truly defi ning of the Australian identity highlights two important points. First, had the early White European settlers formed better relations with Indigenous Australians, the Australian=White associa- tion would probably be weaker, allowing for greater diversity under the banner of what it means to be Australian. Arguably, this is an illustration of how Australia’s treatment of its Indigenous peoples carries over into its problems accommodating new immigrants today (see also Chap. 3 , Mellor, and Chap. 13 , Leask and Philpot in this volume). Second, the fact that we can easily associate White Australians with their European Heritage underscores the point that Australia is still a very young nation- state. There are few Australians today (Indigenous peoples aside) who have totally lost touch with their ‘other’ cultural heritages. Even fourth and fi fth generations can still easily trace their family tree back to other ethnic roots. This sets Australia apart from nations which are defi ned by long genetic and cultural heritages, such as, for example, England, Spain or China. Power-elites may attempt to draw boundaries around any nation-state in terms of who is truly representative; however, when there are few genetic or cultural foundations on which to stake exclusivist claims, such enterprises are all the more fragile. Even so, in the case of young nation-states such as Australia, there are many factors that may lead to more restrictive understandings. One factor is the extent to which the psychological representation of the nation-state – the national identity – is racialised. When particular groups are held up as exemplars of the Australian identity it has the effect of likening it to notions of race. Another factor is the extent to which the national identity is represented by those in power as open to a broad spectrum of values and beliefs. This is, even when a national identity is not thought of like a race, it may still be constructed in ways that exclude particular values, beliefs or practices. I briefl y outline how these concerns relate to the Australian identity below. One prominent factor that promotes the Australian=White association and there- fore acts to racialise the Australian identity is the current Australian fl ag. This sym- bol acts as a reminder that to be Australian one must have an affi liation with Great Britain. Of course this is true for the White European settlers who arrived from those very shores, but what of the Italian and Greek and post World War 11 diverse European refugee population who came to Australia or families from Vietnam, Malaysia and more recently Somali and Ethiopia. They don’t necessarily identify with Britain but do identify themselves as Australian. The inclusion of the union jack on the Australian fl ag suggests that Australians who can trace their family origins back to Britain are the ‘original Australians’. 58 B. Bastian Research within psychology demonstrates that people regularly view the differences between races in the same way that they view the difference between species (Hirschfeld, 1996 ; Rothbart & Taylor, 1992 ) . That is one ethnic group may be seen as different from another ethnic group in the same way that tigers are different from lions. This thinking is largely erroneous as the mappings between genetic clusters and racial identities are far from accurate. However, people do tend to think about race in these ways and when they do differences between races are seen as deep, meaningful and generally unchanging. Explicitly linking Australia to its British heritage has the effect