Research agendas for Australian cultural diversity

It is certainly a difficult task to narrow the enormous range of research interests and needs to just two topics …

1. Intercultural relations – I’d second Amanda’s thoughts and add a few of my own. Currently the most common approaches to community relations and antiracism work focus on dialogue and are highly dependent on the participation, generosity and often the volunteer labour of Australians who are subjected to racism and prejudice. The demands of cross-cultural education, Interfaith dialogue, cultural awareness training etc place much of the burden of responding to racism and building better community relations on the very communities experiencing racism – in particular Muslim communities and organisations during the ‘war on terror’. These are also strategies which overestimate the importance of individual prejudice and underestimate structural or institutional racism. We need to develop more innovative approaches which distribute the hard work and responsibility of antiracism work more widely and which can tackle difficult questions and uncomfortable conversations beyond ‘harmony’ and the celebration of diversity.

2. Media and cultural diversity

Media provide some of our most widely shared cultural resources for understanding places we will never go to and people we will never meet. Images and information circulated through media also shape our understandings of our own neighbourhoods, and debates around Australian culture, values etc. While much media research focuses on identifying media ‘problems’ – stereotyping, misrepresentations, inflaming intercommunal tensions – we need to much better understand the role of media in everyday negotiations of cultural diversity. How do media shape our understandings of proximity and strangeness, connections and conflicts? How does media facilitate or constrain capacities to listen across differences? How can media contribute to social justice and processes of conflict transformation?

3. Multiculturalism and Indigenous sovereignty

The bifurcation in research, policy and programs around multiculturalism and Indigenous affairs continues largely unchanged – for very understandable reasons. Nevertheless, there is a need for research which can underpin more integrated approaches beyond simply ‘including’ Indigenous Australians in understandings of multiculturalism which have been developed with with a focus on migration, rather than Indigenous sovereignty. Recent research which identifies the shared use of public spaces (parks, beaches, shopping strips etc) as a catalyst for intercommunal tensions offers a possibility for innovative work. Research into place-sharing, neighbourliness and belonging must engage with the disspossession of Indigenous people and questions of land/place, otherwise we reproduce the logic of ‘terra nullius’ and develop strategies which again leave Indigenous Australians to negotiate a place within relationships of belonging developed by those who have benefited from their dispossession.

Like Amanda I find it difficult to nominate 2 issues, but for the sake of this discussion:

1. Religion, secularism & culture – since 2001, intercultural relations have often been reframed as interfaith relations, as seen in the spectacular rise of interfaith dialogue initiatives. The obvious subtext here is anxiety about Islam and Muslims in ’secular’ Western societies (that are nonetheless founded on Christian traditions). This desecularisation of multiculturalism has received virtually no critical analysis. To criticise interfaith dialogue seems akin to criticising motherhood or friendship. But are cultural tensions in Australia based on religious differences? What is achieved by interfaith dialogue and what is left out of the discussion? And how should secular societies respond to the growing political assertiveness of religious groups – both Muslim & Christian?

2. Government multicultural policy – there seems a need for scholars to more actively engage in the processes of policy development & analysis around cultural diversity, particularly with the end of the long dark Howard era. The Rudd Government has already made some interesting decisions, e.g. abolishing TPVs, and appears to be reviewing some of its predecessors’ agendas, e.g. the citizenship test & the ‘Living in Harmony’ program. What changes are possible in this new era?

Research on migration and multiculturalism has been so underfunded in the last ten years I think its almost impossible to narrow the research ‘need’ down to just two areas. There are a myriad of areas that desperately need research attention.

In terms of my own interests, then the two areas I’d select if I have to are:

1) INTERCULTURAL RELATIONS / COMMUNITY RELATIONS
We need to understand more about how to improve intercommunal relations in Multicultural Australia. This presupposes a basic commitment to cultural diversity and multiculturalism as the guiding framework. However I think we’ve not done enough research on how we might tackle racism, build better relations across cultural and religious difference, and in particular engage everyday working class Anglo-Australians in the ‘multicultural conversation’.

2) In 2007/8  the number of migrants arriving in Australia on Temporary visas (eg 457 Visas) numerically overtook those arriving as permanent migrants. Temporary migration is the major new phenomena in Australia’s migration program  however little research has been done so far in this area. I am thinking particularly about research from the migrant point of view – issues of exploitation, workplace experiences, settlement, social inclusion etc.

2a) If could cheat and add a ‘2a’ – the related phenomena of international students in the workforce – both working while studying, and transitioning to permanent residency is a further issue of research significance. Again, workplace experiences, exploitation, post-PR access to the job market, exploitation by employers, agents and private education operators etc.

In your post please identify two research issues that you would like to see prioritised in a national research agenda on cultural diversity. Please then tag your post with the keywords from the title. Also if you want to keep your post private among participants, please ensure you password protect it with “CDR”.

Multicultural education: education in and for a culturally diverse society requires national attention. Key research questions are: identifying and defining the range of issues regarding values, competencies and world views; the role of the school community in ensuring students’ capacity to operate in a culturally diverse society, and the effect of privatised schooling; the role of language pluralism as the basis for cross-cultural communication confidence.

Cultural diversity and the arts: the creative cities/creative nation/ economic development nexus is becoming increasingly apparent. As nations compete for high quality/ value adding immigrants, the quality of cultural life and the capacity of cities and regions to offer deep cultural support and creativity will become an increasingly improtant part of their “pull”, their attraction for potential immigrants. Australia has a very poorly developed sense of this important role and national arts policy barely notices its implications. An arts research agenda that documents the issues and the potential strategies for building a more creative culturally complex society is now of major importance.

The role of DIAC’s Multicultural Affairs as a driver in partnerships with Education and the Arts is central in building such a set of research agendas.

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