Negotiating national (non)belongings: Vietnamese Australians in ethno/multicultural Australia

ABSTRACT

Many immigrant-receiving countries are characterised by increasing multigenerational ethnocultural diversity, with associated policies and discourses of inclusion. Yet they often simultaneously resist relinquishing narratives and practices grounded in idealised notions of ethnocultural homogeneity. This results in the circulation of multiple, often competing, ideas of the nation, with significant implications for national (non)belonging among migrants and their descendants. Based on interviews with members of seven Vietnamese Australian families, this article explores their discursive navigation of two competing ideas of Australia: as ethnocultural and multicultural. Applying a conceptual framework of belonging that attends to the relation between the personal and the political, this article demonstrates that, for migrants and their descendants, national (non)belonging is a dynamic and dialogic process of negotiating multiple national spheres, each governed by different politics and offering different possibilities for belonging. The multigenerational interview cohort additionally provides insights into the role of migration generation in mediating this process.

KEYWORDS:

• National belonging
• migration generations
• Vietnamese Australian
• multicultural
• ethnocultural
• migrant

Acknowledgements

Caitlin Nunn thanks the interviewees for generously sharing their ideas and experiences. Thanks also to Dr Sara Wills and Dr Raelene Wilding for their feedback and advice.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. While the focus of this article is on the interaction between migrants and their descendants and the majority community, contestations over national belonging also frequently involve the autochthonic claims of colonised groups, such as indigenous Australians.

2. An additional participant, the non-Vietnamese adoptive sister of one of the artists, was part of the broader project but is not included in the analysis for this article.

3. While family member interpreting is not widely used in research, it is an everyday practice in many migrant families. This mode of ‘natural translation’ (Harris and Sherwood (1978), quoted in Orellana, Dorner, and Pulido 2003) provides a range of opportunities and benefits for research, albeit with concomitant challenges. See Nunn (2012) for further discussion of this practice.

4. Skippy is the titular character of the 1960s Australian television programme Skippy the Bush Kangaroo. Colloquially, the term refers to Anglo-Australians.