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.
This paper compares media coverage to violent events in Australia and the Netherlands: the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam in November 2004 and the "Sydney siege", a hostage-taking ...crisis in Sydney in December 2014. Both events were associated with Muslim perpetrators. We analyse media coverage by three high-circulation newspapers in each country in the week after the events. Our focus is on the public representation of Muslims in the news media, as well as the broader representation of multiculturalism. We find significant differences between the public reactions in two countries. Media reporting was more nuanced in Australia than in The Netherlands, where more negative reporting on Muslims could be found.
Recently proposed Anti-Racism Strategy established within a framework of the Australian Government's multicultural policy, People of Australia, identifies 'youth engagement' as one of the key areas ...that needs to be promoted and supported. Young people have been invited to join youth councils and youth forums and work with national, state and local policy-makers. Some have taken up this challenge and became public faces and active members of anti-racism campaigns. Others, however, either remained silent about the discrimination they face, or organised their own grassroots youth-based and youth-led initiatives. This paper discusses individual and collective responses to racism among young people in Australia, focusing on Melbourne, and examines possibilities in which racism, as a common experience among migrant youth, can be utilised to form alternative spaces for political action, challenging not only interpersonal, but also systemic forms of racism. By drawing attention towards institutional and systemic forms of racism, and the historical perpetuation of racist practices, these youth initiatives rely on legal measures, and argue that racism should be discussed in the context of the broader Australian society, not only in relation to minority groups.
This paper analyses collective sentiment in media responses to the event known as the 'Sydney Siege' (December 2014), focusing on the everyday narratives about nationhood and belonging. The aim of ...the article is to analyse how a hostage-taking situation, represented as a terrorist act, served to reinforce the boundaries of a national community in relation to Australian Muslims. The theoretical framework draws from Ahmed's ('The Organization of Hate', in Emotions: A Cultural Studies Reader, edited by J. Harding and E. D. Pribram, 251-267 (London and New York: Routledge, 2009)) concept of 'affective economies' and focuses on the inclusion/exclusion dynamic working through the lens of emotions. The paper analyses data collected from three high-circulation Australian daily newspapers (The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian and The Daily Telegraph) and one prime-time current affairs television program (ABC's 7.30 Report), as well as government press releases. A qualitative thematic discourse analysis of 151 articles, mediated by NVivo software, provided insight into the ways in which collective sentiment was (trans)formative to narratives about nationhood, belonging and the Muslim 'Other'. We argue that the outpouring of collective sentiments of fear, compassion/solidarity and grief during the 'Sydney Siege' made the everyday experience of the Muslim presence in Australia visible in a public space as well as in the public debate.
This article explores public reactions to an event dubbed the 'Sydney siege', through an analysis of its media coverage. The event, where a Muslim man held 18 hostages in a Sydney café, was closely ...followed during its 22 hour duration and triggered an avalanche of public commentary. We analyse media articles, political leaders' media statements and transcripts of press conferences published within the week of the siege. Using NVivo software, we code the key themes arising from the data and employ in-depth textual and discourse analyses of the most prominent themes: multiculturalism, Islam/Muslims and 'community/solidarity'. Using the theoretical framework of the nation as an imagined community which needs its 'Others', we find that the 'Sydney siege' lead to emphasising hegemonic ideas of the Australian national identity and values that mark the boundaries of nationhood, community belonging and solidarity. Such ideas placed Muslims precariously at the national margin, applying a simplistic binary of the 'good ones' worthy of inclusion into the 'good nation' and the 'bad ones' to be excluded. We conclude that the public discourse following the Sydney siege affirmed Australian multiculturalism in a broad sense but also strongly implied the Otherness of Muslims.
Ljubljana Asylum Home, or Azilni dom as it is officially called, is operated by the Slovenian Interior Ministry, and asylum seekers who ask for international protection in Slovenia are required to ...live there while their applications are being processed. This Home was moved from an inner suburb of Ljubljana to the very fringe of the city in 2004. With this move, basic living conditions for asylum seekers improved, but the sense of distance and displacement increased.
This chapter discusses ‘otherizing’ as a spatial process and examines the contradictory nature of the concept of home. I talk about the body of
Slovenia is, like many other countries, especially small ones, dependent on exports and imports of goods and services. European countries are Slovenia’s main trade partners, together accounting for ...almost 90 per cent of the value of Slovenia’s trade in goods. There are various reasons for this, such as the relatively short distance between Slovenia and other European countries. If Slovenia wants to increase the value of its trade with non-European countries, it should adopt a number of measures, such as increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of its trade promotion. In this paper the authors discuss opportunities to increase the value of Slovenia’s trade in goods with the Pacific Rim countries by focusing on the specific case of Australia.
This article introduces the conceptual distinctions between “mediated” and “immediate” Islamophobia. “Mediated” Islamophobia refers to the fact that most people who express Islamophobic sentiment do ...not know (m)any Muslims and know little about Islam; their knowledge about Islam and Muslims, and any Islamophobic sentiment they may have, come from the exposure to traditional and/or social media. Given the documented Islamophobic bias of many “Western” media, “mediated” Islamophobia may be on the rise. On the other hand, research has shown that what we call “immediate” Islamophobia is less of a problem: People who know Muslims personally, live close to them and are better informed about Islam, are less likely to be Islamophobic. This article uses empirical data to contribute to the discussion of immediate, face‐to‐face experiences of residents in two Muslim‐concentration areas in Melbourne, Australia, with a reference to the “contact theory.” We analyze residents’ perceptions of Muslims and Islam based on everyday encounters with their (Muslim) neighbors, and Muslims’ perceptions and direct experiences of Islamophobia. We use data collected through a survey and follow‐up interviews to support our conceptual argument.
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