I am my own culture: the ‘individual migrant’ and the ‘migrant community’, a Latin American case study in Australia

Abstract

This paper explores the implications of the multicultural doxa in Australia of presenting migrants as members of clearly defined ‘ethnic/migrant communities’. By presenting the category of the ‘individual migrant’ the paper brings an example of the ways individuated case studies should and may be contextualised by the generic term of the ‘migrant community’. Due to multicultural constructions and governmental funding schemes the ‘community’ emerges as an important site of struggle and negotiation of identities yet, as the individualised example I provide illustrates, the ‘community’ social reality is far from the celebratory image found within official multiculturalism. The paper discusses the complex relationship that Paulina, a Chilean political refugee in Adelaide, has with the local ‘migrant community’ in light of her experience and understanding of her Chilean identity and the migratory movement. The sociological significance of this individualised example lies in the attempt to capture the complexity of the ways in which subjective experiences may challenge but also contribute to our understanding of the notion of the ‘migrant community’. Such a personal account should not be read as an objectified or generalised statement about the ‘migrant community’ but it reveals the many different ways in which subjective migratory experiences may lead to the emergence of new subjectivities that are embedded in the migratory movement and life in a new place.

Notes

The term ‘culturalism’ according to Stratton and Ang (1998, p. 13) typifies the new racism, which Pauline Hanson promotes in Australia. The assumption is that some cultures are considered incompatible with what is claimed to be Australia's national culture. ‘In this thinking, culture is not reduced to race, race works as a signifier of it and, as a consequence, as Hanson insists, small numbers of racially different people can be allowed into the country provided that they actively acculturate to Australian culture’ (Stratton & Ang, 1998, p. 14).

The majority of these migrants and refugees are Chileans and El Salvadorans but there are also smaller groups of Latin Americans from other counties such as Peru, Uruguay and Colombia. Most Latin Americans arrived in Australia during the 1970s and 1980s as refugees or under the Humanitarian Program, as well as on family reunion visas. According to the Settlement Data Bulletin from November 1997, there are 3148 Spanish‐speaking people in South Australia.

An interesting case study is research conducted by Kay (1987) who studied exiled Chileans in Glasgow and found striking distinctions between the way men and women recount their experiences of the 3 years prior to the military coup in Chile. ‘These men and women spoke a different language, had different experiences of loss and gain from social change and their reconstruction of the past bore little similarity. Dates which were engraved in the men's memories as marking decisive battles in the class struggle did not form part of the women's memories at all. Their version of history was marked by key dates in the family calendar’ (Kay, 1987, p. 4).

The desire to integrate in the new place was often seen by some Latin Americans as a good thing that should be encouraged. Individual migrants and social groups who promoted and guarded particularistic identities were often criticised as living within a cultural ghetto.

‘Guachacas’ is one of the derogatory terms for poor people in Chile. The term is derived from the word guacho, which is the son of a sole parent (usually a mother). It was used mainly for children who were born to poor women who gave birth to the illegal sons of their patron.

All these are rich or upper‐middle‐class suburbs in Santiago, Chile.

Bourdieu (1990, p. 55) speaks about habitus as the ‘art of inventing’ as ‘what makes it possible to produce an infinite number of practices that are relatively unpredictable but also limited in their diversity’.

‘Truth and Justice’ is a pseudonym for a local Chilean solidarity organisation that was established by left‐wing Chilean refugees in Adelaide.

Interestingly amongst Salvadoran refugees in Adelaide the issue of torture and the sufferings of the civil war in El Salvador were hardly ever talked about publicly. This was maybe because many of the Salvadoran refugees, in contrast to some of the Chileans, did not see themselves as ‘political’ and avoided any discussions about subjects considered divisive to the ‘community’. For the Salvadoran refugees as with the case of the Chileans, torture was seen as divisive because it had originally been part of a ‘political’ system. As such it was evoked mainly by the political victims of this system and could never be divorced from the political context in which it occurred.

The quotation is taken from the play Konfidenz by Dorfman (1995b).