Centring settler colonialism in rural Australian multicultures: race, place and local identities

Abstract

In the current age of rural mobilities and economic restructuring, the ethnic and racial compositions of rural towns across Anglosphere nations of the Global North have significantly transformed. As a result of these changes, the conditions which support rural multicultures are increasingly relevant to scholarship and policymaking. 'Everyday multiculturalism' and 'convivialities' have become key approaches within such research in rural environments. These perspectives offer important insights into understanding complex social relationships, reciprocities and circumstances of belonging in rural places. However, as UK-based critiques argue, a focus on 'everyday multiculturalism' and 'convivialities' may also risk obscuring how colonial legacies have shaped and informed racialised and classed hierarchies of belonging in distinct contexts. In this paper we turn these critiques to settler colonial Australia and its increasingly diverse rural towns. We bring together emerging literature in the study of rural migration with scholarship from Indigenous studies and anthropology on Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal rural social relations. Working at the intersection of these bodies of works, we argue that the histories and structures of settler colonialism be centred in research on rural multicultures, as these legacies and ongoing conditions shape social relationships in contemporary rural Australia.

The Regional Migration-Development Nexus in Australia: What Migration? Whose Development?

“…Regional and rural Australia is where all the mentioned categories of migrants are in high demand and where government policies have aimed to direct them. In a settler colonial country, overseas migration to regional locations goes back to Australia’s initial colonization ( Butler and Ben, 2020 ). Migrants and migrant labor in particular have shaped regional Australia long before the more recent targeted regional migration policies, from the long presence of Chinese migrants in regional Victoria to the forced farm labor of Pacific Islanders from the 1860s in Queensland, known as “blackbirding” ( Stead and Altman, 2019 ) to different waves of seasonal workers in the 20th century across Australia.…”

“…Scholars in Europe and Australia have highlighted the interconnectedness of rural places with others through the concept “translocalism” ( De Lima, 2012 ) and “multi-local settlement” ( Boese et al 2020 ). Building on early research on rural racism ( Chakraborti and Garland, 2004 ), researchers have explored the experiences of minority ethnic and racialized groups in rural locations through notions of visibility ( Galligan et al, 2014 ), “intercultural encounters” and “everyday otherness” ( Radford, 2016 , Radford, 2017 ), and, importantly in Australia, the embedding of “local hierarchies of racialised and classed belonging and exclusion” in settler colonialism ( Butler and Ben, 2020 ).…”

“…Two key insights that emerge repeatedly from these critical analyses are the challenge of limited employment opportunities for skilled migrants and refugees (for example; Johnston et al, 2009 ; Schech, 2014 ; Curry et al, 2018 ) and the persistent exploitation of those who find work, in particular those on temporary visas and those working in the horticultural sector (for example Underhill and Rimmer, 2016 ; Reilly et al, 2018 ; Howe et al, 2020 ). Recent scholarship has also stressed the historical embedding of labor market-based inequalities and exploitation ( Butler and Ben, 2020 ). These analyses highlight the need to unpack the nexus between migration and regional development further.…”

Interrogating race, unsettling whiteness: concepts of transitions, enterprise and mobilities in Australian youth studies

“…As Butler and Ben (2020) argue, citing the works of Ramzan, Pini, and Bryant (2009), Moreton- Robinson (2015), Carlson (2016) and others, Indigenous histories and mobilities are rarely discussed in analyses of the anonymous rural towns of Australian youth studies. Nor are subsequent ethnic and racial demographics and their complex migration histories.…”

Becoming a Settler Descendant: Critical Engagements with Inherited Family Narratives of Indigeneity, Agriculture and Land in a (Post)Colonial Context

“…Recent scholarship and activism-linking Palestinian with Aboriginal people is one exampledemonstrates the solidarities possible across boundaries of states and identities. Nevertheless, in Australia, as in other (post)colonial nations, it has been White settler identities that have historically dominated and continued to do so (Ahluwalia 2001;Butler and Ben 2020). In this article, I use memories and stories drawn from my own family history to focus on the foundations of settler descendant belonging in Australia.…”