Racialized (Im)mobilities: The Pandemic and Sinophobia in Australia

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted countries all over the world, not only in relation to public health responses, but on multiple other societal levels. The pandemic has uncovered structural inequalities within and across societies and highlighted how race remains a powerful lens through which public policy responses are constructed and pursued. This paper examines (im)mobilities in Australia in the context of Asian, and more specifically Chinese-Australian citizens and residents, and how these have been framed in racialized discourses that justified exclusionary practices reminiscent of the White Australia ideology. The paper focuses on how Chinese Australians’ mobilities have been (mis)represented and attacked in public and political discourse with particular attention to the situation of Chinese international students’ (im)mobilities. Our conceptual attention in this paper, however, is not only on the racialization of mobilities but also immobilities, underpinned by an understanding of the relationality between Othered ‘migrants’ and hosts, as well as between mobility and immobility. We conclude by discussing future patterns of mobility, how these will impact prospective migrants including international students, and what future forms of mobilities might mean for Australia as a country highly dependent on migrants for its economic, social and cultural development.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19 pandemic
• mobility
• diversity
• race relations
• Sinophobia
• racialization

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sylvia Ang

Dr Sylvia Ang is Alfred Deakin Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalization, Deakin University. She is a sociologist of migration, ethnic relations and social inequalities. Her monograph Contesting Chineseness: Nationality, Class, Gender and New Chinese migrants was recently published (Amsterdam University Press 2022).

Fethi Mansouri

Professor Fethi Mansouri holds an Alfred Deakin Research Chair in migration and intercultural studies at Deakin University. He is a leading scholar nationally and internationally with expertise on cultural diversity, migration, citizenship, intercultural relations, social inclusion, and Muslims in the West.