Andrew Jakubowicz

Cultural Intelligence: My Blogs on SBS

Andrew Jakubowicz — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 00:00:16 +0000

Read background paper to Once Upon a Time in Cabramatta (OUATC)

Andrew Jakubowicz — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 06:25:28 +0000

OUATC was influenced by a paper of mine prepared in the early 2000′s, just after the harshest period of the Cabramatta crisis. To read the paper, click here.

Abstract

The Vietnamese arrival and integration into Australia represents a quintessential case of cultures in collision. In 1975 there was effectively no Vietnamese presence. Over the next twenty five years the community grew to over two hundred thousand members. Before 1975 Vietnam and Australia barely knew each other – except through the prism of the American War. By 2001 Generation 2 were a significant part of Australian political, economic and cultural life. The Vietnamese were used as the trigger for the end of the bi-partisanship on multiculturalism at the end of the 1970s, were implicated in the rising paranoia about unsafe cities in the 1980s, and centrally embroiled in the emergence of a politics of race in the 1990s. They also reflect two trajectories of integration – the anomie associated with marginalization, and the trans-national engagement associated with globalizing elites. This paper explores processes of cultural collision and reconstitution through an examination of four dimensions of the Vietnamese in Australia - the criminal world of the heroin trade; the position of Vietnamese women in the economy of the clothing industry; the rise and fall of criminal and politician Phuong Ngo; and the celebration of Generation 2.

Once Upon a Time in Cabramatta – launches 8 January SBS One

Andrew Jakubowicz — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 02:27:07 +0000

Andrew Jakubowicz commenting in Cabramatta Vietnamese Australia documentary

For more information from key player Thang Ngo see his blog Noodlies

Racism Human Rights Cultural Diversity and ….

Andrew Jakubowicz — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 02:14:56 +0000

For those interested in the growing debates about the new agenda on human rights and anti-racism, see my end-of-year papers:

Andrew Jakubowicz Chinese Walls: Australian Multiculturalism and the Necessity for Human Rights Journal of Intercultural Studies Vol. 32, Iss. 6, 2011) also at http://andrewjakubowicz.com/publications/chinesewalls/

Andrew Jakubowicz Cyber racism (Grey edition)
in Helen Sykes (ed) Free Speech, Democracy and New Media, FutureLeaders, 2012. http://andrewjakubowicz.com/publications/cyber-racism_freedom/

Andrew Jakubowicz Racism, anti-racism campaigns and Australian social research: a case study in recovering socially-useful knowledge http://andrewjakubowicz.com/publications/antiracism1998/

Andrew Jakubowicz Playing the triangle: Cosmopolitanism, Cultural Capital and Social Capital as intersecting scholarly discourses about social inclusion and marginalisation in Australian public policy debates , Cosmopolitan Civil Societies December 2011 http://andrewjakubowicz.com/publications/playing-the-triangle-cosmopolitanism-cultural-capital-and-social-capital-as-intersecting-scholarly-discourses-about-social-inclusion-and-marginalisation-in-australian-public-policy-debates/

International Students:good information crucial to recognising human rights issues

Andrew Jakubowicz — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 03:40:45 +0000

This paper written in collaboration with Dr Devaki Monani, analyses the social science perspectives that can help us understand the past and project the future of the international students situation in Australia. The paper was commissioned by Universities Australia, the Human Rights Commission and the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, to draw on social science research through a human rights lens. The paper does not reflect the views of the commissioning bodies, though the AHRC has a campaign to press the federal government to move forward on human rights issues for international students.

Download the paper here.

International student movement rising, paper warns – Campus Review

International Students flee Indifferent Country – The Australian

Human Rights “lost in action” – UTS News

Introduction

The attraction, retention, well-being and quality of outcomes for international students have become major policy and political issues in Australia and in many of the students’ countries of origin. In Australia the perceived range of environmental and social impacts of a rapidly growing international student presence has stimulated public attention. The economic contribution of international students has also played a critical role in Australia’s survival through the global financial crisis, buffering the Australian dollar and sustaining a higher level of service sector export income than almost any other nation ….

2010 in review

Andrew Jakubowicz — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 22:33:36 +0000

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Fresher than ever.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 9,000 times in 2010. That’s about 22 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 6 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 9 posts. There were 3 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 5mb.

The busiest day of the year was September 29th with 79 views. The most popular post that day was Australia’s migration policies: African dimensions.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were culturaldiversity.net.au, en.wikipedia.org, facebook.com, google.com.au, and search.conduit.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for andrew jakubowicz, professor andrew jakubowicz, jakubowicz, andrew jacubowicz, and social cohesion in australia.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

Australia’s migration policies: African dimensions June 2010

About March 2009
4 comments

Race media and identity in Australia April 2010

Cultural Diversity in the New Australia: a Four Way Street March 2009

The risk of diversity: the meanings of integration in Australian political culture March 2009

Pareto’s menagerie …. election reflection

Andrew Jakubowicz — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 03:36:19 +0000

Link here to original at UTS Newsroom

In summary:

Andrew Jakubowicz reflects on the 2010 federal election and what it means, moving forward, for policy-making and the higher education sector

My Chinese-Australian cab driver in Townsville said it all. Anna Bligh was like a commie, he said, and there was less and less freedom. No way he’d be voting for Gillard.

So the Queensland electorate of Herbert stayed with the Coalition – the Liberal-National Party (LNP) – and real-estate auctioneer, Ewen Jones, is now MP. Jones participated in a panel I’d chaired the day before the election at the International Unity in Diversity Conference, in Townsville, with the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and Greens candidates in a sort of Q and A. The audience quizzed them on issues to do with cultural diversity, ranging from asylum seekers to ageing immigrants, and on to cervical cancer screening.

As the debate that Friday canvassed the issues, it was clear we were in a policy-free zone, at least as far as the local candidates were concerned. A week before I’d posted a query to Facebook – “And if it’s Coalition plus conservative Independents 75, ALP 74, and Greens 1… then what?” That election evening, my query was being rolled out in spades, or so it appeared. And until Rob Oakeshott finally dropped the lotto marble into the box 17 days later, “then what” seemed a reasonable summary of the situation.

Looking back, with all the benefits of hindsight, at the trajectory of the Labor Government and it’s almost (and maybe yet to be) nemesis, the Coalition, I’m reminded of the analysis that Gaetano Mosca, an Italian political scientist, made of the circulation of elites back in the 1890s.

Mosca argued the political class was made up of competing elites, seeking to gain support from the “masses”, and consequently developing the better political organisation skills. While political programs are important as a means of setting organisational goals and evaluating effectiveness, it’s organisational planning, discipline and delivery that underpin successful elites.

Mosca’s compatriot, Vilfredo Pareto, broke apart Machiavelli’s metaphor for the successful Prince – where foxes avoid traps and lions scare off wolves. He envisaged a situation where marginally differentiated factions of the elite pursued strategies of either foxes (capable of experiment and innovation – but lacking fidelity to principles – and inherently unstable) or lions (loyalty to class, patriotism, religious zeal, conservative stability and willingness to use force).

Pareto did not believe in progress, only a constant tipping back and forth, as the unscrupulous but inventive foxes opened up new vistas until the system began to totter and the lions came in, stolid and unimaginative, to reassert order. As society stagnated under the lions, the foxes would once more wriggle into the scene and it would all move right along.

It would be hard to go past Pareto when reflecting on the ALP foxes and the LNP lions. The Greens seem to be a newish animal altogether, given they are for innovation, thinking outside the box (foxes?) but for probity and honesty (lions?).

Perhaps they are a koimanu, which is a lion dog in Japanese mythology that guards temples. In Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens, they all intertwine – “If thou wert the lion, the fox would beguile thee; if thou wert the lamb, the fox would eat thee; if thou wert the fox, the lion would suspect thee…”

So maybe the Greens are the proverbial lambs, though now with fangs and claws – and the Independents are surely Machiavelli’s wolves.

With the parliament now in control of its own business, it’s actually anything goes. A conservative Independent could put up legislation, get Coalition support and other independents on line (say WA National, Tony Crook, pushing a regional funding policy off the back of the mining tax that he hadn’t manage to stop), and the hares would be away.

Let’s take the problem of immigration and population size. Universities around the country are in serious shock in the wake of the cut-back of international student numbers triggered by the Indian student attacks, and the changes to settlement rights associated with student visas.

The new tertiary education minister, Chris Evans, didn’t do much to resolve the Indian students problem in his previous portfolio. In fact he has blocked tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of students who expected to be able to settle here after graduation from any hope of permanence.

Important policy questions will have to be addressed and the Greens will drive them despite the Independents endless lists of ‘wanna have’. In the Northern Territory there was a huge swing against the ALP in the electorate of Lingiari, most of the 13 per cent going to the Greens, a pro-Green independent and an Aboriginal candidate.

In inner urban electorates in Sydney, Albanese was driven to preferences, with a nine per cent swing, most going to the Greens and putting them ahead of the Liberals on first preferences. Plibersek saw a six per cent drift of her primaries, with over half going to the Greens. Laurie Ferguson in Werriwa copped an overall 10 per cent swing.

The ALP hard vote in previous elections – working class migrants and middle class trendies – essentially fragmented. The drivers were anger over missed opportunities, a sense the ALP was ‘anti-immigrant’, failure of environment policy, racism against asylum seekers, and failure on gay marriage. On all of these issues ALP members Albanese, Ferguson and Plibersek were seen as having to subordinate their personal values to Party discipline.

For the UTS community, the future holds some major challenges. One will be developing new ways of recruiting, retaining and servicing international students. Universities need public support for this, and government understanding.

UTS’s commitment to increasing our share of low socio-economic status students has to be further embedded in policy, with effective support services. The research expansion of the university depends on ensuring the now volatile political class remains friendly to universities after the hostility of the Howard years.

Given some in the ALP see universities as the forcing ground for their new bete noire/best friend (the Greens), and the Coalition has history of antagonism to universities in general (except in regional centres), the successful positioning of universities in the public mind as major contributors to national wellbeing, wealth and sustainability could well determine our futures for the next decade and beyond. The Pareto menagerie has come to life.

Byline:

Professor Andrew Jakubowicz, Head of the Social and Political Change Group, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

Multiculturalism and Social Inclusion: notes from a talk to TASA Melbourne 8 July 2010

Andrew Jakubowicz — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 03:02:26 +0000

TASA: Migration, Ethnicity and Multiculturalism (MEM) Thematic Group Melbourne 8 July 2010
(Speakers at Forum: from L, Jenny Semple SEAMRC, VMC chair George Lekakis, SEAMRC workers Neela and Nyadang, and ICD chair UTS Professor Andrew Jakubowicz)

Some thoughts on speaking about Multiculturalism: a recent post
• I find your efforts to destroy any sense of Australian white identity repulsive and racist. By pandering to “diversity” you are committing cultural racial genocide. …It is a slow motion soft holocaust. The only way a white person could do this, is if they are either brain damaged, or..if they were a member of a community which does not see itself as part of that community. ie.. the Jewish community.

• You maintain yourselves in isolation, and seek opportunities of influence.. and then use them (as you are doing) to weaken any sense of identity which might represent a threat to YOUR community. I regard you as an utter racist.. an anti white racist. Whether you see ‘whiteness’ as a social construct or racial one.. the end result of attacking white identity is the same.

• I urge and encourage you to reverse your “Diversity” emphasis and try a different approach “preserving Australian identity and emphasizing assimilation and integration” (David Ross June 2010).

• “Race safety depends upon race discipline, and every unit of society should contribute his or her personal quota…” (Bostock and Nye 1934)

Framing the debate as sociology

• Argues that “society” is real and social effects have real impacts

• Understands cultural diversity from a number of different dimensions – Weber’s Ethnic/status groups; Durkeim’s collective consciousness; Marx’s view of culture/ideology as materially-rooted; Milton Gordon’s cultural and structural pluralism; post-structural identity theories (eg Iris Marion Young, David Theo Goldberg; GhassanHage).

• Draws on Honneth’s sense of reciprocity of recognition

• Sociologies of cultural diversity create “multiculturalism” as something in the realm of culture not in realm of “structure”, allowing multiple frames of meaning within socio-economic boundaries.

• Sociologies of social stratification and social policy create “social inclusion” as a case study in systemic failure: ie society as a mal-functioning system for the allocation of scarce resources

• Together they draw on the “culture of poverty” perspective to implicate mal-adaptive behaviour in inter-generational sub-cultural milieu

Applying sociology

• Cultural pluralism imported into Australia from US/Canadian debates through work of Jerzy Zubzrycki, inflected by studies by Znaniecki of American immigrants and their transformation and Park of contact/conflict/competition; concerned that culture and structure should NOT align

• Key worry was of an “ethnicised” class/status nexus, thus problem seen to be getting immigrant buy-in to the wider social mores, while ensuring immigrant or ethnic status was not a marker of disadvantage or barrier to mobility

• Strong “progressive/conservative” commitment to multiculturalism as demobiliser of class and ethnic based social movements; liberal concern with equality of opportunity; Left concern with racist marginalisation by white unions etc.

Examining multiculturalism

§ Many sets of meanings and everyday behaviours are able to co-exist in open liberal capitalist societies, where market rewards capacity

§ State intervention is necessary to reduce barriers to participation (eg discrimination, qualifications, language acquisition)

§ State intervention is necessary to ensure “social cohesion”, manage conflict, enhance creativity

§ Cosmopolitanism and multilingualism seen as added advantages & benefits of diversity in globalising world

Examining Social Inclusion

§ Locality based interventions reflecting UK and US experiences

§ Shadows of 19^th century social eugenics

§ Focused on dysfunctionality of family and neighbourhood

§ Most extreme version is “Intervention”: Foucauldian surveillance through normalisation/ internalisation of social order

§ Seeks to build “social capital” in a lock step of bonding and bridging

Linking Multiculturalism to Social Inclusion

§ Sustained advocacy from critics, to include cultural diversity in social inclusion (board) discourse: initial resistance, even though SIB identified Indigenous priorities

§ By Jan 2010 SIB recognition of refugee and immigrant presence, signalling that racism was important, noting lack of data (after 15 years of conservative denial) Stronger Fairer (??) Australia

§ People of Australia Report reinforces priority for inclusion of “all Australians” in Inclusion strategies

Human Rights, Multiculturalism & Social Inclusion

§ African Australian human rights links racism directly to social inclusion. Defines cultural maintenance and values as bases for successful social integration. Family health requires cultural affirmation within framework of human rights.

§ Key words in relation to multiculturalism and human rights:

ú Social Justice (Hawke and Keating era)

ú Social Cohesion (Howard era)

ú Social Inclusion (Rudd/Gillard era)

Australian Empire Project

§ Subordinating Indigenous peoples

§ Competing empires: fear of invasion

§ Building a people from diverse populations

Multicultural Policy and the Population Crisis: weaving our way between fear and opportunity

Andrew Jakubowicz — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 05:44:15 +0000

SSWAHS Multicultural Health Service and Health Language Service with the NSW Refugee Health Service
“Walking the tightrope to good health”: a conference on Multiculturalism to promote cultural integrity in quality health care. 23 June 2010 Karitane at Carramarr.

What population crisis?

¡ Too many people

§ For the eco-system; energy use; water; urban crowding; traffic

§ Of the “wrong sort”, too old, too young, wrong colour, ethnicity, religion, skill-set

§ In the wrong place: cities not rural and regional

§ Causing conflict; anger and aggression

§ Generating pollution and land degradation

§ Too many non-White babies

What population crisis?

¡ Too few people

§ We’re getting older

§ Fewer workers supporting more retirees

§ Not enough carers either voluntary or paid

§ Not enough skills to do the jobs we need

§ Rural towns becoming shells, with people moving to regional and urban centres

§ Not enough babies being born

§ Not enough “White” babies being born

§ Too much international competition for the “best” immigrants

Multicultural Policy is…

¡ Governments seeing society as being made up of continuing cultural groups based on common origins, values, and practices

¡ How will this “mix” be managed?

§ Permissively?

§ Education?

§ Regulation?

§ Prohibition?

Possible policies

¡ Assimilation: adapting to and adopting majority values, beliefs and practices

¡ Integration: focus on life in majority society while retaining “private world” of heritage practices

¡ Cultural diversity: cultural groups sustained and operate in wide realm of culture including services, education, communication

¡ Separation: parallel (maybe hierarchy) worlds including economic, most politics etc.

Current policy proposals

¡ “The people of Australia” 10 proposals went to Australian Govt in April 2010 asking that:

¡ 1. All governments endorse cultural diversity

¡ 2. Permanent advisory body

¡ 3.Antiracism strategy, national human rights campaign

¡ 4. Australian education curriculum include focus on civics and languages

¡ 5. Productivity commission should monitor government services

¡ 6. Protocols (eg impact criteria on migrants/ cultural groups) on all policy proposals

¡ 7. Better resourcing of English, training, settlement services

¡ 8. Social Inclusion Agenda to include migrants and refugees

¡ 9. Local resources to foster opportunities

¡ 10. Encourage “overlapping” social participation.

What we* fear about population?

¡ Overwhelming numbers

¡ Too much “difference”

¡ Alien practices

¡ Personal threat

¡ Destruction of environment

¡ Too many strangers

¡ Collapse of community

¡ Isolation and loneliness

Rise of neo-Fascist organisations

Who are the “we” who fear?

What are the opportunities?

¡ Creative frictions

¡ New skills, experience, knowledge

¡ New communities

¡ Learning to manage diversity for productive and creative outcomes

¡ Channeling social behaviour towards sustainability through energy efficiency, economies of scale, cross-communal collaboration

¡ Drawing on different world views to solve shared problems

Continuing issues: where population meets policy

¡ Cultural maintenance and heritage values

¡ Gender relations

¡ Inter-generational conflict and communication

¡ Faith-based communities: freedom or constraint?

¡ Relations between communities, esp. with Indigenous

¡ Media stereotypes

¡ (from AHRC African Australians social inclusion project)

On the beach: selling Australia as a land and as a people

Andrew Jakubowicz — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 02:49:57 +0000

We often hear that Australia stands at a crossroads…. And most of the time whenever we need to take a major decision two different if unclear futures compete for our attention. Yet it‘s rarely the case that two government campaigns launched within weeks of each other so starkly frame different visions and representations of “the nation”.