Australia's New Migrants: International Students’ History of Affective Encounters with the Border

204 Pages·2018·1.59 MB·English

by  Maria Elena Indelicato

Australia’s New Migrants
This book offers a comprehensive and critical analysis of the tropes employed
in the categorisation of international students living and studying in Australia.
Establishing the position of migrant students as ‘subjects of the border’, the
author employs various models of emotion in an analysis of the ways in which
public debates on migration and education in Australia have problematised inter-
national students as an object of national compassion or resentment in relation to
other national concerns at the time, such as the country’s place in the Asia-Pacific
region, the integrity of its borders and the relative competitiveness of its economy.
Applying an innovative methodology, which combines the breadth of a dia-
chronic study with the depth afforded by the close analysis of a diverse range
of case studies – including the protests staged by Indian international students
against a spate of violent attacks, which led to their labelling as ‘soft targets’ in
national discourses – Australia’s New Migrants constitutes an important contribu-
tion to our understanding of the ways in which emotions shape national collec-
tives’ orientation towards others. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology,
cultural studies and education with interests in migration, race and emotion.
Maria Elena Indelicato is Lecturer in the Department of Media and Communica-
tion at the Ningbo Institute of Technology, Zhejiang University, China.
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25 Australia’s New Migrants
International Students’ History of Affective Encounters with the Border
Maria Elena Indelicato
Australia’s New Migrants
International Students’ History
of Affective Encounters with
the Border
Maria Elena Indelicato
First published 2018
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2018 Maria Elena Indelicato
The right of Maria Elena Indelicato to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
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ISBN: 978-1-4724-8048-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-56836-2 (ebk)
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To my extended family

Contents
Acknowledgments viii
List of figures xi
Introduction: where I come from: emotions, race
and the border 1
1 Becoming ‘illegal’: compassion, multicultural love
and resentment 21
2 Failing to be(come) ‘ideal’: multiculturalism, whiteness
and the politics of resentment 53
3 ‘Think Before You Travel’: urban violence, risk
management and the territorialisation of the Australian
public space 91
4 ‘Is Australia racist?’: interpretive denial and the politics
of anger 126
5 Feeling like an international student: racial grief,
compassion and national sentimentality 155
Conclusion: fantasies of multiculturalism: whiteness,
emotions and the border 180
Index 185
Acknowledgments
Having started working on this project in the form of a doctoral thesis in a country
and language other than mine as far back as 2009, I like thinking of this book
as the result of a long chain of events, the scale of which varies in quantity and
quality, but that ultimately all contributed to the shaping of this book as it stands
now. It was indeed a long journey, which involved innumerable encounters of
many kinds. The solely textual included: Norma Alcorcón, bell hooks, Audre
Lorde, Sara Ahmed, Suvendrini Perera, Maria Giannacopoulos, Lauren Berlant,
Sue Campbell, Elizabeth Spelman and Ann Alin Cheng, to cite only the most
important. I have them to thank for equipping me with the knowledge and lan-
guage necessary to understand the making of multiple forms of oppression and
the excruciating complexity of everyday life. To all of them, I express my deepest
gratitude.
Of the same importance were the encounters I made either purposely or acci-
dentally – many of them arising from a combination of the two. Knowing nothing
about Australia when I first arrived in Sydney, firstly, I want to thank Jackie Jarrett
for introducing me to the history of violent dispossession of Aboriginal people
while I was working for her on a research project at the Mudgin-Gal centre in
Redfern. I would also like to acknowledge the Italian migrants who came to Aus-
tralia in the aftermath of World War II whose stories I had the privilege of listen-
ing to while working on a research project for Francesco Ricatti. The stories about
their lives in a time so relevant in terms of race politics in Australia were not only
incredibly rich but also instructive to understand my own position as a Southern
Italian and temporary migrant. My gratitude goes also to Francesco Ricatti for our
many conversations about race and emotions in Australia, but also for the sup-
port he gave to me throughout my PhD. Likewise, I would like to thank Victoria
Grieves for sharing with me her immense knowledge about the histories of Abo-
riginal families. Witnessing her retrieve and put together the most disparate array
of historical information and theories most definitely improved my archival skills.
Colleagues from the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at the Univer-
sity of Sydney were equally important. Among them, I want first to thank Hong-
wei Bao and Zitong Qiu for walking me out of academic isolation and mentoring
me. To them, I owe a great deal of gratitude, as they were the very first to include
me in their lives and nurture me both intellectually and emotionally. On a similar
Acknowledgments ix
note, I would like to acknowledge the influence that my many conversations with
Sarah Cefai on her doctoral thesis on the singularity of feelings had on shaping my
understanding of how affective subjectivities are bestowed through discourses.
Our exchanges on matters related to critical feelings and what we were reading
truly helped me to formulate the theoretical framework employed in this study.
My gratitude goes also to Jessica Kean for pointing out how the Australian gov-
ernmental response to the attacks against Indian international students resembled
safety discourses concerning women when I presented an earlier version of Chap-
ter 3. Lastly, I would like to thank Remy Low for giving me the thing I needed
most to get through the many downs of completing a doctoral thesis while being
positioned as a ‘subject at risk’ in neoliberal academia, which is serenity.
From the Department, I want also to thank Natalya Lusty for having supported
my work when many others doubted it and my associate supervisor Guy Redden
for his insightful advice on theoretical matters but also for his brilliant use of met-
aphors to explain the process of writing and revising. My deepest gratitude goes
also to my PhD supervisor Jane Park for introducing me to African-American
and Chicana feminist literature and for teaching me to channel my anger into my
writing. As she said to me once, writing on international students was going to be
therapeutic. And it was.
This study significantly benefited from the thorough feedback Sara Ahmed,
Catriona Elder and Alana Lentin provided me with on my doctoral thesis. Their
comments and suggestions guided me through the process of developing the the-
sis into this book but, most importantly, enriched it through their nuanced read-
ings. Special mention goes to Alana Lentin, whose meticulous engagement greatly
encouraged me to pursue this book project while adding further depth to the analy-
sis originally conducted. I sincerely hope this book measures up to her generosity.
On a similar note, I would like to thank, once again, Jane Park and Victoria
Grieves alongside Gregory Noble, Ben Silverstein and Stuart Rollo for reading
through several drafts of the proposal of this book. Their comments greatly helped
me to sharpen the research questions pursued in the following pages while provid-
ing much-needed support. In the same vein, my gratitude goes also to the pub-
lisher’s editor Neil Jordan and editorial assistants Shannon Kneis and Alice Salt
for their patience and guidance, which were both fundamental to completing the
manuscript. I have also to thank Ellena Savage, whose editing skills were crucial
to the overall clarity of the text while her generosity in comments and persis-
tent enthusiasm for the project contributed significantly to get me through a few
writer’s blocks.
For the love and support which sustained me throughout the entire journey,
I must thank my extended family of relatives, colleagues, students and friends
across several national borders. In chronological order: Liliana Indelicato, Franc-
esco Rumori, Raffaele Impagnatiello, Ambra Malagola, Ana Maria Forero Angel
Abdulkarim Alsaleh, Estella Carpi, Gennaro Gervasio, Rachel Hebrard, Johanna
Rolere, Mike Griffiths, Wendy Lee, James Booty, Kate O’Halloran, Tilsa Guima
Chinen, Jennifer Germon, Salim Noorzai, Sameer Noorzai, Haneen Khoshaba,
Mucahid Bayrak, Nathalee Tiufino, Daniel Storer, Sukhmani Khorana, Xiufu Le,