Belonging and exclusion: national identity and citizenship, immigration and multiculturalism.

In 1788, the First Fleet arrived in a country where the population comprised about 600 different social groups speaking about 200 distinct languages. The new arrivals themselves were far from homogeneous. Over 4,000 of the convicts sent to NSW were not Anglo-Celtic, 900 of them were non-whites and about a thousand were Jews. The Gold Rushes of the 1850s attracted about 117,000 immigrants from Europe, China, the USA, Canada, New Zealand and the South Pacific. Add to these the 62,000 Pacific Islanders brought to Queensland between 1863 and 1904 and it becomes clear that Australia at Federation was far from being a homogeneous society. ^[1]

Federation was, to a considerable extent, designed to correct this situation and to ensure that future Australians would be white and Anglo-Celtic. The Commonwealth Parliament moved swiftly to prevent the further entry of non-Europeans (even those who were fellow British subjects) by means of the Immigration Restriction Act 1901 with its South African-inspired dictation test. The Pacific Island Labourers Act 1901 successfully removed most of the Pacific Islanders, and Aborigines were excluded from the Commonwealth’s responsibility by Section 51(xxvi) of the Constitution, until its amendment following the 1967 Referendum.

All Australia’s attempts to recruit immigrants before 1947 targeted British migrants only, as only they could reinforce our conception of our identity as a nation of essentially British culture and ethnicity.

National Identity

National identity can most usefully thought about as the ‘imagined community’ of the nation. ^[2]  Australians have long attempted to imagine what it was to be an Australian as opposed to a transplanted Briton. Most of the images of ‘the typical Australian’ have been male, white and able bodied - for example the bushman image promoted by the Bulletin from the late nineteenth century; the ANZAC soldier as conceived by the First World War historian C.E.W. Bean and subsequently preserved and promoted by the Australian War Memorial which he founded. Posters depicting the Bondi lifesaver were later used to lure tourists and immigrants to Australia.These images became rooted in Australian popular literature and were preserved and promoted by powerful community organisations.

Australian national identity was conceived of in a way which presumed a shared culture and common political interests. This marginalised sections of society which did not fit into this imagined community. Some groups - women, Aboriginal Australians, the aged and people with a disability - were regarded as dependent members of society whose interests were seen to be best represented by those on whom they depended. Non-European residents were considered unworthy by reason of their race, to ever become citizens.

Citizenship

Citizenship defines who belongs, and who does not, in our society. Until very recently, however, Australians have not thought much about what it means. This is not surprising as the framers of our Constitution, the foundation of our entire legal and governmental system, chose not to mention citizenship of Australia. Citizenship is not a constitutional concept, so we get no guidance there.

Nor can we look for information on citizenship rights from Australia’s citizenship legislation. Until the Nationality and Citizenship Act 1948, Australians were solely British subjects with ‘duties and privileges’ as subjects of the Queen. The introduction of a distinct Australian citizenship was not the result of any particular nationalistic pressure. It was imposed on an almost entirely indifferent Australian population from above, as a consequence of Canada’s moves to create a separate Canadian citizenship. From 1949 until 1987, Australians were both British subjects and Australian citizens, but the meaning of the latter was unclear. This Act sets out who is entitled to Australian citizenship, gives the legal definition of who is and is not a citizen, but it does not deal directly with the consequences of citizenship, nor the substantive nature of citizenship.

It is not surprising that most Australians regard citizenship as a legal status bestowed on foreigners. This was an almost inevitable result of the Government’s giving to the Department of Immigration portfolio responsibility for administering the Nationality and Citizenship Act. Officers in that Department, like their fellow Australians, had no conception of what being an Australian citizen as distinct from a British subject actually meant. For most of the twentieth century the prevailing conception of citizenship was a culturally normative one - it was conceptualised in relation to British culture and ethnicity, not in terms of the rights and responsibilities of the citizens of an autonomous state. The Department saw the attainment of Australian citizenship as the final step in the process of assimilation of alien migrants, and closely monitored citizenship statistics as the only measurable indicators of the success of their settlement programs. None of its many citizenship promotion campaigns targeted the British, who were the least likely group of migrant to apply for Australian citizenship. ^[3]

It is only fairly recently that thinking on citizenship in Australia has been influenced by the seminal work of T. H. Marshall, although he first published on the topic in 1950. ^[4]  He introduced a much broader concept of citizenship than just legal status. He defined ‘citizenship’ as a status bestowed on those who are full members of a community - expanding it to include social rights as well as political and civil rights. For Marshall, social citizenship covered basic living standards such as health care and education.

To discover these broader, more practical legal consequences of the status of citizenship, and what they reflect about the meaning of citizenship in Australia, it is not enough to look at the Australian Citizenship Act 1948 and the myriad pieces of legislation that discriminate on the basis of some form of membership. It is also necessary to include the common law developments that impact upon membership of the community. Kim Rubenstein recently undertook the mammoth task of analysing all High Court judgments with bearing on the rights and responsibilities of Australian citizens, only to find that these issues are still unclear. She found that the High Court did not restrict itself to discussing the rights and responsibilities of common law citizens, but incorporated a notion of the state as responsible for enforcing the rule of law and protecting human rights. This normative view of citizenship is reflected in its use of the word ‘citizen’ to represent a person deserving the protection of the state and equality of treatment, regardless of whether he or she is a citizen, permanent resident or temporary resident. ^[5]

The distinction between the legal and social consequences of citizenship is clearly demonstrated by the different treatment of Indigenous and migrant Australians. Prior to 1921, Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders who were denied citizenship under colony or State law, had to apply to become naturalised British subjects in Australia in the same way as aliens. Under the Commonwealth Nationality Act 1920, those born after January 1921 were declared to be British subjects. Thus they automatically became Australian Citizens in 1949. Citizenship, however, was a mere formality for them as they did not have access to any of the rights and responsibilities granted to other Australian citizens by Commonwealth legislation. ^[6]

On the other hand, the Commonwealth wanted alien migrants to become absorbed into Australian society and its economy. They were regarded as proto-citizens and granted access to most of the social benefits available to Australian citizens. Thus immigrants without formal citizenship were not socially disadvantaged.

Multiculturalism

Multiculturalism reflects a new way of imagining the community of the nation. It redefines our national identity to reflect the diversity of those who make up our society. It developed in response to the diversity of immigrants, not to the existing diversity of our population which was, for most of the twentieth century, successfully ignored and repressed.

From 1947 to 1952, Australia accepted large numbers of refugees from many parts of Europe, then added to this diversity through a series of migration agreements with a range of other countries. At first aliens were expected to assimilate - to conform to our British culture. By 1962, the Department of Immigration accepted that this was an unrealistic expectation and dropped the term ‘assimilation’ in favour of ‘integration’.

The Australian government was determined that these newcomers settle permanently in Australia and become Australian citizens. It recognised their differences and special needs much more clearly and quickly than those of native-born Australians. For example the telephone interpreter service introduced in 1973 to help non-English speaking migrants access services to which they were entitled, was not extended to non-English speaking Aborigines until the 1990s.

Although, until 1972, the government always officially referred to Australia as a ‘homogeneous society’, by the 1960s this conception was becoming increasingly inappropriate with the gradual erosion of the ‘White Australia’ policy during the 1960s. In 1964 the government began admitting ‘mixed race’ immigrants, from 1966 it offered permanent residence to skilled non-Europeans, and following a migration agreement with Turkey in 1967, it admitted large numbers of non-Christian migrants for the first time.

When the Whitlam government redefined Australia as a ‘multicultural’ society’ in 1973, it borrowed the term from Canada but interpreted it in a very different way.In Canada multiculturalism was intended to preserve and promote the separate cultures and rights of its distinct cultural groups. In Australia the term served to acknowledge the irreversible cultural pluralism brought to Australia by thirty years of migration, and to ensure equality. In December 1973 the Minister for Immigration, A.J. Grassby, described Australian society as one ‘in which equal opportunity is accompanied by cultural diversity in an atmosphere of acceptance and tolerance’. ^[7]  The multicultural policies developed under the Fraser and subsequent governments, aimed to ensure the equal participation of migrants in society, while acknowledging their right to preserve their cultural differences. In 1989, the National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia provided the first authoritative statement of the rights and responsibilities of Australians in a multicultural society.

Belonging and exclusion in the twenty-first century.

What sort of country do we want to be in the twenty-first century?

Firstly, one which acknowledges and celebrates the fact that it has a culturally and ethnically diverse population [B1].

Secondly, one in which government policies are designed to preserve and maintain social harmony - policies that are designed to achieve equality and social justice, and to avoid the creation of disadvantaged and marginalised minorities. It is of considerable concern to many Australians that current policies granting only temporary residence to those found to be genuine refugees are creating quite the opposite effect. Refugee families granted only temporary protection are denied the opportunity to reconstruct their shattered lives in our community, are denied all but minimal social services, are living under the constant threat of deportation, and are forever denied the possibility of citizenship.

Thirdly, Australians should understand their citizenship rights and obligations. A bill of rights entrenched in the Constitution would be the most appropriate framework for this. However, the existing rights of non-citizens living in our community should not be negated by such a bill.

Fourthly, Australia in the twenty-first century should be a country which respects human rights as defined by international law. International law provides a framework in which we can assess legislation that discriminates on the basis of citizenship. The various international conventions to which we are a signatory, permit discrimination between nationals and non-nationals in relation to democratic rights, such as the right to vote, to stand for Parliament or to be employed in various government positions. They do not permit discrimination in relation to fundamental human rights. ^[8]  The treatment of asylum seekers in Australian detention centres is clearly contrary to a number of these conventions.

Current trends suggest that none of these goals will be attained easily.

Bibliography.

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Verso, London,1991.

Ann-Mari Jordens, Redefining Immigration, Citizenship and National Identity, Hale and Iremonger, Sydney 1995.

Ann-Mari Jordens, Alien to Citizen. Settling Migrants in Australia 1947-75, Allen and Unwin with Australian Archives , Sydney 1997.

James Jupp (ed), The Australian People. An Encyclopaedia of the Nation, Its People and Their Origins, Cambridge UniversityPress, 2001.

T. Marshall, Citizenship and Social Class, and Other Essays ,Cambridgez University Press, 1950.

Kim Rubenstein, Australian Citizenship Law in Context, Lawbook Co., Sydney 2002.