Australia's post-war immigration : power, identity and resistance

Abstract

Since 1945 Australian immigration policy has led to substantial demographic changes and the emergence of a high degree of ethnic and cultural diversity. Immigration has been accompanied by a constantly evolving series of policies concerned with defining and managing migrant identities and cultures. This thesis is concerned with the changing and contradictory constructions of migrants in Australian power relations. It analyses the relationship between knowledge, power and resistance, and their centrality in the construction of the post World-War II migrant. In order to develop this theme, several theoretical issues are examined. The first relates to the construction of the subject through power relations in a process which forms multiple subject identities such as those of class, gender and ethnicity. The second is concerned with how the process of hegemony operates at the micro-level: it focuses on ambiguous and contradictory mechanisms of social control which provide the basis for struggle and resistance. The third issue is that of consciousness and culture and how these relate to theories of social action and change.The theoretical framework of the thesis is based on the use of three interrelated approaches. Most critical analyses of immigration have been from a marxist perspective and have tended to reduce the problem to the way in which ethnicity is used to mask class relations. More recently, feminist approaches have illustrated the significance of patriarchal power and the sphere of reproduction in determining the situation of migrant women. This thesis critiques and develops these approaches by linking them to the Foucauldian perspective on power, knowledge and resistance. The intention of the analysis is to examine the notions of the subject, ideology, culture and consciousness, hegemony and resistance.The results of this thesis demonstrate how migrants are constructed through discriminatory class, gender, ethnic and state relations, which are often constituted and defined within each other, though frequently in ambiguous ways. But in particular historical contexts, class, gender and ethnicity can also be constructed separately from each other. The issue of primacy is therefore especially important in understanding how not only class, but also gender and ethnic identities and practices are often a source of strength, providing their own specific platforms for struggle. Migrant identities in post-war Australia have been formed through discriminatory power relations, but also through struggles and resistance, such that many hegemonic policies and practices have been modified. For instance, migrants used their 'cultural baggage' to resist assimilation. The failure of assimilation led to a policy of multiculturalism which, despite its inadequacies, provided possibilities for new identities and struggle. The analysis shows that migrant struggles were not always class struggles: the home and the ethnic community, as well as the workplace, have all been sites of resistance and struggle. A major contribution of the thesis is the demonstration of the ways in which class, gender, and ethnic consciousness are handled in cultural terms through struggle and resistance. An important conclusion is that migrant cultural practices have operated not only as mechanisms of adaptation, but as ways of creating alternative means of dealing with hegemonic power relations. The collective reconstruction of culture is a key strategy for dealing with racism and sexism, class and state exploitation.