Race lines and spaces of political action among migrant youth

Abstract

Recently proposed Anti-Racism Strategy established within a framework of the Australian Government's multicultural policy, People of Australia, identifies ‘youth engagement’ as one of the key areas that needs to be promoted and supported. Young people have been invited to join youth councils and youth forums and work with national, state and local policy-makers. Some have taken up this challenge and became public faces and active members of anti-racism campaigns. Others, however, either remained silent about the discrimination they face, or organised their own grassroots youth-based and youth-led initiatives. This paper discusses individual and collective responses to racism among young people in Australia, focusing on Melbourne, and examines possibilities in which racism, as a common experience among migrant youth, can be utilised to form alternative spaces for political action, challenging not only interpersonal, but also systemic forms of racism. By drawing attention towards institutional and systemic forms of racism, and the historical perpetuation of racist practices, these youth initiatives rely on legal measures, and argue that racism should be discussed in the context of the broader Australian society, not only in relation to minority groups.

Keywords:

• migrant youth
• political participation
• alternative counter-publics
• youth-led initiatives

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to acknowledge the input of project co-investigator Zlatko Skrbiš and the whole research team for their valuable contributions in organising data collection activities, conducting interviews and initial compilation of research data.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. According to Victoria Police, ‘field contact’ is a term which refers to ‘times where an officer approaches someone and requests details because the circumstances appear suspicious, or they have contact with an individual as a result of or in a specifically identified situation’ (Victoria Police 2013, 5). Victoria Police distinguishes between ‘field contacts’ and ‘public contacts’; the latter referring to talking to people in public not with the aim of suspicion but community engagement (Victoria Police 2013). One of the recommendations of ‘Smart Justice for Young People’ submission to Victoria Police in the context of the out-of-court settlement agreements (to undertake community consultations) was that the distinction between ‘field’ and ‘public’ contact should be removed, because it is artificial and not apparent to young people in their everyday lives (SJFYP 2013, 10).

2. IMARA Advocacy is a youth-led lobby group, which was founded in Melbourne after the death of a young Ethiopian-Australian man in Melbourne's inner west in 2011.

3. SJFYP is a broad coalition made up of youth advocates from community legal centres, youth services, peak bodies and other community organisations interested in the legal and justice issues of young people, which was launched in Melbourne in 2011.

4. For the purposes of anonymity and privacy, all the participants’ names in this paper have been removed and replaced by fictitious names.

5. Over 80% of participants from various non-Anglo-Australian backgrounds reported being subjected to some form of racism. However, also 54.6% of Anglo-Australians reported they had been subjected to a form of racism.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council [grant number LP0989182] and financial contributions from the CMY and the ARC.