Abstract
As nationalist ideologies intensify in Australia, so do the experiences of ‘everyday racism’ and exclusion for Black African immigrants. In this article, we utilize critical theories and engage with colonial histories to contextualize Afrodiasporic experiences in Australia, arguing that the conditional acceptance of Black bodies within Australian spaces is contingent upon the status quo of the white hegemony. The tropes and discourses that render the bodies of Black African migrants simultaneously invisible and hyper-visible indicate that immigration is not only a movement of bodies, but also a phenomenon solidly tied to global inequality, power, and the abjection of blackness. Drawing on critical race perspectives and theories of belonging, we highlight through use of literature how Black Africans in Australia are constructed as ‘perpetual strangers’. As moral panics and discourses of hyper-criminality are summoned, the bordering processes are also simultaneously co-opted to reinforce scrutiny and securitization, with significant implications for social cohesion, belonging and public health.
Highlights
Social anxiety in regards to immigration is not a new phenomenon in Australia, a settler-colonial country that has a long history of exclusion and marginalization towardsBlack people and other people of colour
By employing critical race perspectives to understand the subjective experiences of Black African migrants in Australia, we argue that migration is more than just the movement of bodies, it is a phenomenon solidly tied to global inequality, power, and the abjection of Black bodies
The emerging literature on Black African migrant experiences in Australia highlights the precarities of conditional belonging, constant boundary-work and the resulting experiences of battle fatigue that they must contend with on a variety of systemic and quotidian levels, and the variety of strategies of resilience that are employed in response to these challenging circumstances
Summary
Social anxiety in regards to immigration is not a new phenomenon in Australia, a settler-colonial country that has a long history of exclusion and marginalization towards. This paper provides theory-based arguments that elucidate how mainstream immigration attitudes in Australia impact upon Black African migrants through the mediums of mediatized moral panics about Black criminality and acts of everyday racism that construct and enforce their ‘strangerhood’. It explains why research on the movement of Black bodies across boundaries and geographies must incorporate histories of colonialism, racism, marginalization and their impact on the lived experience of Black people in predominantly white countries. While we are careful not to homogenize the experiences of Black Africans in Australia, we acknowledge that bodies that are visibly marked as ‘Black’ and ‘African’ can share some similarities in their experience
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