Incorporating Injustice: Immigrant Vulnerability and Latin Americans in Multicultural Australia

Abstract

The article focuses on the emotional connections that bind migrants in Australia with their former homes. More specifically, it analyses how Australian migrants respond to perceptions of continuing injustice in their countries of birth. The article is based on a study of Latin American Australians, a group whose diversity offers conceptual spaces through which to explore emotional connections and transference between groups in Latin America and Australia. I focus on emotion and activist engagement, arguing that it is indicative of migrants’ response to vulnerability and injustice in contemporary multiculturalism. As such, Latin American Australians offer an important example of Australia’s changing experience of multicultural and transnational connectivity, the significance of which extends beyond the particular community.

Keywords:

• Migration
• Multiculturalism
• Transnationalism
• Migrant activism
• Latin American migrants
• Australia