Work

Exclusive and inclusive constructions of ‘Australia’ in the Australian parliament

Year: 2013
Type: article
Abstract: Due to the way racism is now hidden behind discourses of ‘cultural difference’ rather than relying on beliefs of biological inferiority, capturing instances of racism has now become a difficult task. The discourse of ‘difference’ in recent times has strongly manifested itself as exclusion from a discursively constructed nation: borders of the nation are redrawn along cultural essentialist lines so that undesirable ‘others’ are always excluded. Taking data from Australian parliamentary debates on immigration and citizenship during 2006-2007, this paper uses critical discourse analysis to explore how politicians discursively (re)construct borders of ‘Australia’ to either exclude or include immigrants. This paper argues that exclusion and inclusion in national constructions are more conducive ways of seeing how racism and anti-racism towards immigrants are enacted.
Language: English
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W2750846994
FWCI:
Cites: 28
Cited by: 6
Related to: 10