Citizenship and voting

This week I am giving a lecture on the changing meanings of citizenship, so I was struck by an article in The New York Times that reports on a controversial new measure on Missouri that requires people to show proof of citizenship in order to register to vote. This measure is aimed at preventing illegal immigrants from voting, but it is criticised for excluding from the vote poor Americans who cannot furnish proof of citizenship because they don’t have passports.

This is another reminder of three facts: (1) that though the United States is a young country, its political system, among those existing, is almost uniquely old; (2) that despite 9/11, despite Guantanamo, in some important ways civil liberties have been taken less; and that (3) despite America often being identified with globalization, its citizens are less internationally mobile than those of many other rich countries.

In Europe, the mere idea that an illegal immigrant would vote is absurd. In most countries, illegal immigrants don’t even dare to go into the streets, lest they be apprehended by the next police officer and sent into detention. In the US, despite the spread of immigration detention (the NYT recently ran a story on the death of a man in immigration detention), the idea that ordinary police should join immigration agents in ferreting out illegal migrants is still widely rejected. In Europe, it simply goes without saying. The idea that ordinary citizens may not possess proof of their citizenship is similarly bewildering; every state except Britain has long made internal identity cards compulsory, and Britain has recently joined.

‘Exploitation’ of foreign students

In a recent post I mentioned an article by a psychiatrist about the often poor levels of mental health found among international students in Australia.  Now The Australian has just published a piece in which it is claimed that many foreign students in Australia are being exploited.  A study done by researchers at Monash and Melbourne Universities is highly critical of an ‘industry’ that treats foreign students as ‘cash cows’.

Particularly striking for me was the revelation that a recent study by the Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee on student welfare did not include overseas students in its scope.  This kind of exclusion accords with other structural impediments for overseas students, for example the fact that they do not qualify for student concessions.  In essence, international students are on their own — expected to be self-sufficient and not needing to avail themselves to the support of the state.  Dare I say that they are highly ‘neoliberalised’ subjects, existing in a much purer version of the ‘free market’ than domestic students would be expected to endure.

The full text of the article follows:

CONTRARY to their image as cashed-up BMW drivers, many overseas students cannot afford to eat, are paid well below the minimum wage and are among those most vulnerable to exploitation in this country, new research says.

More than one-third of overseas students struggle financially and about 60 per cent are paid less than the legal minimum wage, according to the research.

The alarming findings come as education overtakes tourism as the nation’s biggest services export, increasing by a huge 21 per cent in 2007 to $12.5 billion. The number of international student enrolments rose 18 per cent on the previous year to more than 450,000, the latest figures show.

The authors of the joint Monash University and University of Melbourne studies slammed universities for treating foreign students like “cash cows”, and criticised the Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee (now known as Universities Australia) for failing to include overseas students in a recent student welfare study.

They wrote that “many internationals are disadvantaged by their relative deficit of language and cultural skills, they are crowded into a narrower range of jobs than is available to their domestic peers, and they commonly offset these disadvantages by working for less than the legal (minimum)”.

The two papers, one on international students in the workforce and the other on the financial difficulties faced by overseas students, were based on interviews with 200 students at nine universities across Australia.

The researchers found that almost 60 per cent of students earned below the minimum wage and 37per cent had experienced financial hardship, including not having enough money to travel to university or even eat.

“I had a very hard time finding a job. (For the) first two months I was unemployed,” one 36-year-old Indian student told researchers. “My rent is very high - it’s $120 a week - and other than that you have travelling, eating, everything.

“So I starved.”

The researchers discovered 70 per cent of international students worked at some stage during their studies in Australia and a number admitted to working more than the maximum 20 hours allowed by their study visas.

“Of the students who reported their hourly rate, 58 per cent earned between $7 and $15 per hour at a time when the legal minimum for a casual waiter was $16.08 an hour and the rate for a casual shop assistant was $17.97 per hour,” the study states.

Conducted by Simon Marginson, Chris Nyland, Erlenawati Sawir, Gaby Ramia and Helen Forbes-Mewett, the research also found foreign students were more likely to be exploited because of their lack of English skills and ignorance of workplace rights. The researchers called for urgent action by governments and universities.

They urged better education for international students about their workplace rights and better investigations by workplace authorities to expose the injustices experienced by working overseas students.

Professor Nyland and his colleagues wrote that the decision by UA not to include overseas students in its finances study “sadly lends credence to the much repeated claim that Australian university managers view international students primarily as customers who exist to be milked”.

But UA chief executive Glenn Withers rejected the claim that tertiary institutions treated international students like cash cows and don’t care about their welfare.

He defended the decision not to include international students in their student finances survey, saying that that survey was targeted at the federal government to try to improve income support for domestic students.

Dr Withers said universities were helping overseas students where they could by providing support services and going into public-private partnerships to construct accommodation for students close to campuses.

“The biggest problems are the exchange rate - and universities cannot control that - and expensive housing, and universities cannot control that either,” he said.

See also: International study, mental health, and migration in Australia

International study, mental health, and migration in Australia

I’ve been very quiet of late as I’ve been on holidays after submitting my thesis in December.  I decided to give myself a break from all thinking for that period, which has been blissful.  I’m now back in the department and will start posting to CM again.  First off, an article in the Herald I noticed today which provides a commentary on the experience of many international students who come to Australia to feed its $11.3 billion “export industry”, the country’s fourth largest.  Although the view from the USA and elsewhere in “the West” might be that study in Australia provides a “beaches and beer” holiday, many poor students from Bangladesh, India and China are intent on gaining permanent residency.  The article’s author Tanveer Ahmed, a psychiatrist, writes about one of the less obvious dimensions of this “industry” the consequences the mental health of students who are often betting their family’s wealth on gaining PR:

Some universities have been the target of allegations that their degrees are little more than extended migration schemes, with the qualifications useful for only the points on the residency application but almost worthless in the employment marketplace.

But what is less commented upon is that overseas students are fast becoming one of the most vulnerable groups in our society. Working in mental health, I see more and more each month and their situations are often horrendous. Suicide attempts, self harm or drug overdoses are the most common way they present, usually in relation to financial and study pressures. It is complicated further by language and cultural difficulties and lack of adequate health insurance.

A 2004 study by the University of Queensland found their international students were three times more likely to suffer depression than local students through the course of their study.

Only this month a house fire in suburban Melbourne killed three Indian students. It emerged that they were sharing the one room in bunk beds and would sleep in shifts while the others were working part time jobs. Overcrowding and difficult living conditions may have contributed to the accident.

Overseas students are the new refugees, living on the edges of Australian society under the weight of visa difficulties, imminent deportation and reduced access to social services. They inhabit that ill defined landscape of unbelonging.

A psychiatrist’s perspective is welcome here.  I have also thought that the “international student experience” is something worthy of ethnographic study.  For an enormous “industry” the social dimension of international studentdom in Australia is poorly understood.  It’s perhaps not surprising that universities aren’t all that interested in knowing too much about this subject as it might raise uncomfortable questions about the largely financial, rather than academic, motivations which are driving ever increasing international student numbers.  In my opinion, it is also something of an open secret in the university “industry” that migration, rather than education, is the primary reason for many international students coming to Australia.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/no-spin-needed-on-desperation-for-residency/2008/01/24/1201157558750.html?page=fullpage

I have signed up to Australian values!

I have been following with interest the “integrationist” turn in global immigration politics: it is remarkable that a self-described immigrant society like Australia is explicitly following, among others, the example of such a self-described non-immigrant society as Holland in introducing citizenship testing and value statements. It is no less fascinating that when European governments, and now Australia, have felt that they needed to come up with a set of values for the purposes of (symbolic) immigration controls, they have invariably emerged with tolerance, equality (specifically of women and sexual minorities), and freedom of religion — rather than the alternative set of Christian values. This was so even though in many places the tests were spearheaded by conservative parties such as the Christian Democrats in the Netherlands and the German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, whose constituencies probably include significant numbers of people who would not pass the test. (E.g. the Baden test, later scrapped, included questions like “Your adult son declares that he is homosexual and would like to live with another man. What do you do?”)

Well, now I am applying for permanent residence in Australia, and to do so, I need to sign an “Australian values declaration.” (If I don’t, I can’t keep my job after my business visa expires.) I am able to do so in quite good faith, as I indeed value individual freedoms, equality of opportunity and “fair play” as well as acknowledge the English language as a “unifying element of Australian society.” (”Multiculturalism” or “diversity” is not mentioned as a value, but non-discrimination is.) Despite having mixed feelings about the introduction of such tests and pledges, I think this is quite a good statement, because it doesn’t place limits on individuals but rather seems to focus on expanding everyone’s freedoms.

Another film on human trafficking

After the recent success of The Jammed, an independent Australian feature, a new Hollywood film on human trafficking, Trade, is being released worldwide. The production, endorsed by Amnesty International and UNESCO, highlights two trends: the engagement of Hollywood filmmakers in publicizing causes championed by international NGOs (Blood Diamonds is a case in point) and, specifically, the broad appeal of the fight against “trafficking” that reaches from the Christian right to the feminist left.

The problem is that the global anti-trafficking movement, by conflating different forms of irregular migration into a single category that seems unquestionably evil (since it involves illegal profiteering, exploitation, rape and death) makes all of them seem suspect and plays into the hands of governments wishing to eliminate it at all costs. By recasting a diverse array of people — ranging from girls and boys kidnapped and held against their will to economic migrants as well as refugees willingly entering a transaction with migration brokers — as a homogeneous mass of victims of an “evil trade,” it ironically helps to justify their repression and such brutal measures as indefinite detention, denial of due process, or outright deportation to third countries.

Not only Western governments but also states like Thailand and China borrow the rhetoric of “human trafficking” to justify the forced repatriation of Hmongs (to Laos) and North Koreans, despite claims by the former to fleeing from oppression. (The latter have no chance to claim anything, but it is believed that they are punished after being returned to North Korea.)

The trafficking discourse portrays illegal migration as a highly organized “evil trade” (Tony Blair) firmly controlled by transnational crime syndicates. But my own research among illegal Chinese migrants in Europe (Transnational Chinese, Stanford University Press, 2004) shows that most of them rely on an informal and loose network of migration brokers, some of whom perform legal services (such as applying for a passport or visa) and others illegal ones (such as smuggling a person across a border or falsifying a passport). The process is more like the airline industry, with many contractors and subcontractors, than like a mafia plot. As Sverre Molland shows in his research on Lao prostitutes in Thailand, the assumptions of the trafficking model do not work here either: recruitment back in the villages is most often done by friends of the new recruits; the girls are rarely forced or sequestered, and most know they type of work they are going to perform.

I do not doubt that there are workers, among them Chinese in Europe and Lao women in Thailand, who are genuine victims of violence, deception, and false imprisonment. Indeed, a number of such cases have been documented in England alone. But most of those Chinese I spoke to who had been mistreated see it as cases of bad luck with unscrupulous service providers. Scotland Yard officers in charge of London’s Chinatown I spoke to described people smuggling as “disorganised crime”, and the most-cited expert on the issue, Ko-lin Chin, has conceded that, against his earlier position, the involvement of organised crime in illegal Chinese migration cannot be documented.

The fundamental problem with the proposition that all illegal migration is produced by this invisible global criminal network is that, like the story about global networks of terrors, is — as Sverre remarked — unfalsifiable: if individuals deny the involvement of such a network, that only appears to confirm their cunning to those who believe in the conspiracy. Ironically, people are much less likely to challenge “experts” on the subjects of terror and crime than on the subjects of science or the environment (where specialist knowledge is in fact much less accessible to the layman), because they accept that the source of the information must be kept secret. This is particularly so today, when governments can justifies sweeping policies by referring to security needs. Yet it often turns out that such “insider” information is based on unsubstantiated media reports. Once in the early 2000s, a visiting Scotland Yard official informed his audience of Hungarian police officers that there were 40 thousand illegal Chinese migrants in Hungary, waiting to go on to the West. This caused great consternation. Later it turned out that the figure had come from a 1994 article by an American author who had quoted a 1993 Hungarian media report, which had in turn cited … me. Except what I said referred to legal migrants and to 1991!

The Jammed

The Jammed, an “independent thriller” about the trafficking of women into sex work in Australia, is having unexpected box-office success. It opened this week in Sydney’s Palace Cinemas. The film’s success highlights a curious phenomenon: combatting “human trafficking,” dubbed the world’s largest business, is an issue that everyone from left-wing feminists to the Christian Right agrees on. Yet is it really as organised an evil as it is described to be?

Research by Sverre Molland at Macquarie University’s anthropology on Lao sex workers in Thailand suggests that while there is undoubtedly coercion and deceit in the migration of sex workers, much of the migration is voluntary, many “traffickers” are sex workers who recruit their friends, and the business is very rarely connected to “transnational organised crime.” My own previous research on illegal Chinese migrants to Europe has suggested that migration brokers work more like the airline industry - everyone specializing in a particular service and in loose touch with those at other stages of the migration process - than as a crime syndicate. I suspect that the hype about “human trafficking” is connected to the general criminalization of migration in today’s “securitized” world.

Sverre found an interesting comment on the film’s website:

I’m a sex worker in Kings Cross, close friends with thai sex workers
happily on contract (ie “trafficked”). I am insulted by the ridiculous
mythologies so easily believed by those who want to paint us all as
victims. Margaret and David, you’ve dealt a cruel blow to asian sex
workers in Australia by getting sucked into this discriminatory and
racist narrative. The “help the trafficked” sector is an industry in
itself, and is much more harmful and dangerous to sex workers than sex
work itself. They only want to hear stories of woe, and to make money
by stereotyping us.

See the rest of the comments here.

Social cohesion symposium at Macquarie

Here are the details of an upcoming symposium to be held at Macquarie.

National Social Cohesion Symposium:
Australian Muslims - Growing Together or Apart

29 June 7pm Macquarie University

As a framework for living with cultural diversity the ideal of
multiculturalism has come under increasing attack in recent years both
in Australia and overseas. In the last two years a subtle shift in
policy and discourse has begun to take place involving a greater
emphasis on notions such as ‘integration’ and ’social cohesion’. This
shift in debate comes at a time of increased concern in some circles
over the ability of certain ethnic communities, especially Muslims, to
integrate into Australian society, despite Australia’s reputation as a
nation committed to the notion of a ‘fair go’. This symposium will
provide a platform for informed debate on these current trends in
Australian multiculturalism.

New film on young Australian Muslims

I just receive an announcment about a new film called Temple of Dreams, about young Australian Muslims in Sydney’s west. Directed by Tom Zubrycki, it will be premiering in the Sydney Film Festival on Saturday 16 June at the State Theatre. Here is the description of the film from the brochure:

Fadi Rahman is one of a new breed of Australian Muslim leaders. Young, charismatic and politically ambitious, he runs a youth centre/gymnasium in Sydney’s west in what was once a Masonic Temple. The Centre struggles in the face of council planning regulations and funding shortfalls. Fadi sets out to solve all their problems with the help of three determined but often argumentative young women – Alyah, Amna and Zouhour. First up to raise funds he flies out former rap star, turned born-again Muslim, Napoleon. Next, he and his trusty team organise a youth conference to discuss the problems young Muslims face in Australia. This event is much bigger than anything they’ve attempted before, and the stress is taking it’s toll. Meanwhile the Council deadline is looming, with the threat of closure imminent. Will the Conference succeed? Will the Centre survive? This is a story told from the inside revealing Muslim Australians in a way that dispels stereotypes of a vilified and victimised minority.

Click here more info on the film and the Sydney Film Festival.

Australian Citizenship Test

     In his book Wasted Lives: Modernity and Its Outcasts, the prominent sociologist Zygmunt Bauman says ‘Human vulnerability and uncertainty are the principal raison d’etre of all political power’. Since September 11, the political power in the West and all over the world has been fed on ‘the official fear’ of terrorism, which involves so much uncertainty and also threatens human vulnerability. Bauman points out that since the terrorist attacks in the US, migrants and especially refugees, mainly the ones from Muslim background, have been turned into objects of ‘official fear’ and social anxiety in relation to terrorism. There has been so much talk about ‘the European values’ and some people have been anxious that these values will be lost and the societies in Europe might fall apart due to multiculturalism.              

     Similar issues have been also raised in Australia since September 11. In Australia, Cronulla riots in 2005 became another turning point which has strengthened the political power against multiculturalism, and since then migrants and refugees have been continuously reminded of ‘the Australian values’ and ‘Australian way of life’.             

     Recently the government has announced that it will introduce a Citizenship test for the potential Australian citizens. The test will be in English and consist of 20 questions about Australian history, politics, sports, plants, and animals etc in Australia, which are randomly selected out of 200 questions. I think the citizenship test is discriminatory against migrants with limited English and limited literacy. Some of the sample questions from the test are below: (http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21752187-2,00.html?CMP=KNC-google)  

 1. Which colours are represented on the Australian flag?
a. Green and yellow
b. Red, black and yellow
c. Blue, red and white
d.Orange and purple

 2. Indigenous people have lived in Australia for …
a. At least 40,000 years
b. About 8000 years
c. About 800 years
d. Less that 400 years

3. Australia’s national flower is the …
a. Rose
b. Wattle
c. Kangaroo paw
d. Banksia

4. Which is a popular sport in Australia?
a. Ice hockey
b. Water polo
c. Cricket
d. Table tennis 5. Australia’s political system is a …
a. Parliamentary democracy
b. Monarchy
c. Dictatorship
d. Socialist state

6. The Capital of Australia is…
a. Sydney
b. Melbourne
c. Hobart
d.Canberra

7. Which animals are on the Australian Coat of Arms?
a. Wombat and echidna
b. Kangaroo and emu
c. Kangaroo and dingo
d. Lion and unicorn

8. Where did the first European settlers to Australia come from?
a. Spain
b. France
c. England
d.Ireland

9. Who is Australia’s head of state?
a. Prime Minister John Howard
b. Queen Elizabeth II
c. Governor General Michael Jeffery
d. Premier Steve Bracks

10. Who was the first Prime Minister of Australia?
a. Sir Edmund Barton
b. Sir Henry Parkes
c. John Curtin
d. Sir Robert Menzies

11. What song is Australia’s national anthem?
a. God Save the Queen
b. Star Spangled Banner
c. Advance Australia Fair
d. Waltzing Matilda

12. What do you call the elected head of a state government?
a. Governor
b. Premier
c. Mayor
d. Prime Minister

13. Which federal political party or parties are in power?
a. Australian Labor Party
b. Australian Democrats and the Australian Greens
c. National Party
d. Liberal Party and National Party

14. Which of the following are Australian values?
a. Men and women are equal
b. `A fair go’
c. Mateship
d. All of the above

15. Australia’s values are based on the …
a. Teachings of the Koran
b. The Judaeo-Christian tradition
c. Catholicism
d. Secularism

16. What does Anzac Day commemorate?
a. The Gallipoli landing
b. Armistice Day
c. The Battle of the Somme
d. Victory in the Pacific

17. In what year did the first European settlers arrive?
a. 1801
b. 1770
c. 1788
d. 1505

18. How many states are there in Australia?
a. 5
b. 6
c. 7
d. 8

19. Australian soldiers fought in …
a. World War I and World War II
b. Korean War
c. Vietnam War
d. All of the above

20. What is Australia’s biggest river system?
a. The Murray Darling
b. The Murrumbidgee
c The Yarra
d. The Mississippi

Answers:
1) C, 2) A, 3) B, 4) C, 5) A, 6) D, 7) B, 8 ) C, 9) B, 10) A, 11) C, 12) B, 13) D, 14) D, 15) B, 16) A, 17) C, 1 B, 19) D, 20) A

Migration Heritage Centre

A place that is doing very interesting work on Australia’s migration history is the Migration Heritage Centre operating out of the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney. I haven’tvisited the physical exhibitions but they are providing an enormous amount of beautifully constructed online exhibitions. Recent content includes the following:

BELONGINGS: POST-WORLD WAR 2 MIGRATION MEMORIES AND JOURNEYS

Meet HANK RUNEMAN and see the marquetry picture made by his grandfather in Holland:

OBJECTS THROUGH TIME

Discover the dugout canoe made by German World War One internees at Berrima in 1917. The canoe is made from Australian hardwood, most likely a eucalyptus or gum tree from the internees’ camp site at Berrima Gaol NSW:

Our New home ‘Meie uus Kodu’: Estonian-Australian Stories

Australia is home to a small but thriving community from the northern European country of Estonia. At the end of World War II, over 6500 Estonians left behind the familiar northern lights of Estonian skies to make their home beneath the Southern Cross in Australia.

Today four out of every ten Australians are either migrants or the children of migrants. Most, like the Estonians, arrived in the decades following World War II.

This exhibition explores harrowing stories of invasion, dispossession and flight from Europe. It also reveals what settlement in Australia has meant to generations of Estonian-Australians. Watch interviews in mini-documentaries.