Positioning young refugees in Australia: media discourse and social exclusion

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article was to examine how media attention affects the social exclusion of young refugees negotiating their way towards settlement in Australia. Emerging stereotypes and prejudices against young male refugees require new ways of understanding the impact of global, national and local issues on their social exclusion. The article brings together the impact of (a) the global politicisation and backlash against refugees, (b) Australians negative perception of refugees and (c) the increased reporting of young African-Australian and Pasifika-Australians as the perpetrators of youth violence. The article recognises the overlapping dimensions of social exclusion for young refugees and considers their ‘spatial’, ‘relational’ and ‘socio-political’ exclusion. The examination of media reporting of a landmark legal case of discrimination and racial profiling reveals a discourse of media attention that has perpetuated the social exclusion of a group of young African-Australian refugees living on a Melbourne public housing estate. The sensationalist and prejudicial media connection of the landmark legal case, youth violence and young African-Australians living on the Flemington Estate demonstrates the challenges young male refugees face in negotiating their settlement in Australia. This article makes a contribution to understanding the multi-dimensional nature of youth exclusion in contemporary times.

KEYWORDS:

• Youth
• social exclusion
• media
• discrimination
• refugees
• gangs

Acknowledgements

I thank Associate Professor Julie White for challenging my thinking for this article. Her support and advice has been invaluable.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Fiona MacDonald is a Research Fellow at The Victoria Institute for Education, Diversity and Lifelong Learning, Victoria University, Melbourne Victoria. Her research interests include the sociology of education, inclusive education, alternative education pathways, middle childhood and girlhood. She is the author of Childhood and Tween Girl Culture: Family, media and locality.

Notes

1 In this article, I have chosen to use the term ‘refugee’ throughout although I acknowledge this term is problematic. The question remains of when people stop being refugees, or when asylum seekers become refugees, for example Phillips (2011).

2 Pasifika youth in this article refers to young people with familial lineage to the three major groups of islands in the Pacific Ocean.

3 Melbourne’s two major newspapers are the Herald Sun (a tabloid publication) and The Age (which is a more respectable broadsheet).