Boundaries of Belonging: Misrecognition and Challenges of Representation

Abstract

In the wake of mediatised ‘moral panics’ regarding the supposed criminality of African migrants, claims about their inability to ‘integrate’ successfully into Australian society have frequently been summoned to rationalise and explain their exclusion from mainstream Australia. Drawing particularly on theories of representation and belonging, this chapter offers a theorisation of how experiences of exclusion, racial indignity and misrecognition impact Black Africans in Australia. The chapter surveys existing literature highlighting how mediatised moral panics perpetually construct Black Africans as ‘strangers’ who do not belong in Australia. We examine how the ‘single story’ of Africans created by these dominant discourses leads to widely shared misunderstandings of Blackness and Africanness translated through language. The chapter also examines how these discourses operationalise representational discourses that justify ‘moral panics’ and institutionalise the ‘misrecognition’ of Black bodies.