Pragmatic Belonging: Migrant Young People Making Claims on the Nation

Rimi Khan.

Journal of Intercultural Studies, Vol42(2), pp.127-142.

2021

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/07256868.2021.1884054

Multicultural Youth Australia is a national ‘census’ of migrant youth in Australia aimed at tracking their social, cultural and economic status. The findings from this study highlight strong feelings of national belonging among migrant young people, despite significant experiences of racism. This article unpacks this paradox. It asks what migrant youth mean when they say they belong in the face of persistent racialised exclusion. In Hage's account of liberal multiculturalism, these feelings of belonging despite national rejection are explained as an acquiescence to the structures of white nationhood. This article develops an alternative analysis by drawing on place-based, reflexive accounts of youth belonging and scholarship on everyday multiculturalism. It extends these approaches by proposing a pragmatic analytics of belonging, foregrounding the practical and political contexts in which migrant young people's statements of belonging are put to work. It understands these belonging claims as practices of provisional citizenship, and aligns these claims with Arendt's notion of ‘action’ to highlight their potential as open-ended, critical engagements with the nation.

This work was supported by Australian Research Council Linkage Project grant (LP150100219, 2016-2018).