Expanding the Citizen in Multicultural Policymaking

Rimi Khan

In The Citizen in the 21st Century, Edited by James Arvanitakis and Ingrid Matthews, pp.87-95.

2013

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9781848882386_009

Cultural policy rhetoric in Australia increasingly describes the multicultural subject in terms of their role as a ‘citizen.’ This chapter interrogates the notion of citizenship that informs such policies and, more specifically, the forms of civic activity, participation and contribution that it privileges. It does so by looking particularly at Australian multicultural policy and the migrant communities of outer-suburban Melbourne – localities that are amongst the fastest growing and most culturally diverse areas in Australia. The experiences of some of these migrants point to how prevailing understandings of citizenship should be expanded in order to better describe the practices of belonging and commitment in which they participate. While official rhetoric on citizenship aims to enhance belonging by encouraging participation in public life, such policies should not conclude that private or multiple belongings are a diminishment of a shared commitment to Australian society. Rather than being prescriptive about what constitutes citizenship the concept could be read as a range of practices that could result in a more open and dispersed understanding of what constitutes a ‘community,’ and one which accommodates a range of attachments, interrelations and modes of everyday cultural engagement and exchange.

This work was supported by an Australian Research Council Linkage Project Grant (LP110100039).