Afghan Hazara Refugees in Australia: Constructing Australian Citizens

Abstract

This paper explores the construction of Australian citizenship, in particular contestations over membership in the community, through the interactions between two groups of people who live and work in a regional town in Australia: volunteer English language tutors and Afghan Hazara refugees who were granted temporary protection visas (TPVs). The paper examines the power relations which operate between the two groups and other relevant institutions. Of particular interest is the way the tutors and other groups tend to infantalise the Hazara through their efforts to ‘protect’ them and the way the Hazara in turn attempt to deal with and resist this treatment. In contrast to the mostly negative media images of Afghan refugees in the Australian media, the English language tutors construct and represent the Hazara using a discourse of citizenship, couched in terms of their membership in and economic contribution to the community. This membership is contested by certain groups when the Hazara are seen as not being adequately grateful for the help given to them by the community.

Notes

1. Migrants must have permanent resident status and have lived in Australia for at least two years before they are eligible to become Australian citizens.

2. This is a term used by the Department of Immigration, Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA, 2003) to describe, among other things, the entry of asylum seekers who did not have their status determined by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in their country of first asylum.

3. The authors would like to thank both those we interviewed and those who made comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

4. In July 2006 the Department changed its name to the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (DIMA). We use DIMIA in this paper as that was the Department's name when we conducted our research.

5. In Australia there are three tiers of government: federal, state and local. Local governments have jurisdiction over services and facilities on a locality based system.

6. We were told by one of our informants that Afghani is the name for the currency used in Afghanistan and that Afghan should be used to refer to the people of Afghanistan.