Abstract
This paper focuses on how migrant youth in Melbourne with experience of direct or indirect migration negotiate cross-cultural engagements and tensions between family, community and the greater society in which they are supposed to participate as political subjects. It examines whether the meaning and interpretation of citizenship in Australia allows migrant youth to act as full and active citizens with all the contradictions and difficulties inherent in acting as “a bridge between two worlds”. By voicing the personalised journeys of young people dealing with uneasy questions of displacement, identity and belonging, this paper examines the complex ways through which migrant youth negotiate and in some cases bridge intercultural tensions within a multicultural society.
Highlights
A number of policy initiatives in Australia have sought to improve the societal conditions of young people in general and migrant youth in particular
This can be seen in a number of recent reports by Government agencies that all focus on young people, including: “Investing in Australia’s young people” (Australian Office for Youth, 2009); the “State of Australia’s Young People” (Muir et al, 2009); the “National Strategy for Young Australians” (Australian Government, 2010); or the “Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians” (MCEETYA, 2008)
The paper draws on a small section of a large pool of data gathered as a part of an Australian Research Council Linkage research project which examined social networks, issues of belonging and active citizenship among migrant youth in Melbourne and Brisbane (2009 2012)
Summary
A number of policy initiatives in Australia have sought to improve the societal conditions of young people in general and migrant youth in particular. The traditional migration that has shaped Melbourne and Australia for many decades has witnessed a demographic shift in more recent times with the arrival of African entrants, most of whom are from war-torn countries in the Horn of Africa region This new cohort of migrants has posed new challenges for youth programs and settlement service providers; during their early stages of settlement in Australia. Against this highly diverse cultural setting, this paper examines the networking practices of migrant youth: the way they create and sustain connections between their homes/families/communities on the one hand, and the socio-political sphere of Australian multicultural society, as articulated through policies, on the other. It examines empirically and conceptually specific ways through which migrant youth become “everyday makers” (Bang, 2005) and “actors of citizenship” (Isin, 2009; Isin & Nielsen, 2008)
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