The paradox of Whiteness: Neoliberal multiculturalism and the case of Chinese international students in Australia

Abstract

Since its formal inception in the 1970s, Australian (ethno-) ‘multiculturalism’ has been a source of debate over the nation’s imagined trajectory. This internal or national discourse has, inter alia, critiqued the unchanging racialised power relations between groups, where ethnocultural plurality becomes subsumed under a predominant White governmentality. In this article, however, we consider a particular difficulty in sustaining a ‘truly’ multicultural narrative of contemporary Australian society from an extra-national perspective. To do so, we draw from in-depth interviews with 28 Chinese international students (CIS) in Australia to examine how a White Australia is constructed and normalised from outside the state. We utilise these perspectives to argue for the importance of considering extra-national factors in maintaining this racialised imaginary of Australia as a White nation. This argument also foregrounds the challenge of Australia’s neoliberal multiculturalism project in capitalising on a normative multiculturalism on the international stage, highlighting an extra-national difficulty to fully commit to a multicultural re-imagining of the nation that is divorced from a racialist narrative. This further presents a conundrum for the Australian state racialised as White. That is, the need to relinquish a White face to engender better social cohesion amongst its ethnoculturally diverse populations paradoxically exists in tandem with the need to maintain a White face for the attraction of more diversity, at least for economic benefits in this globalised, neoliberal era.

Keywords

Australia Chinese international students multiculturalism neoliberalism racism Whiteness

Introduction

The Australian nation-state, as a settler-colonial project (Wolfe, 2006), has undergone various shifts in the socio-political understanding of its national imaginary. Although archaeological evidence suggests that trade relations between the Aboriginal communities and parts of Asia existed for at least two centuries before British colonisation in 1788 (Choo, 1995), and the earliest established record of pre-federation migration of, in particular, the Chinese to Australia were in the mid-19th century (Ang, 2016), the rhetoric of European ‘discovery’ has had a hegemonic monopoly on Australian historicity (Smith, 1999). As such, the passing of the inaugural racialist and racist legislation of the Immigration Restriction Act 1901 (Cth), informally known as the ‘White Australia’ policy, served to reify the state specifically as a White nation both internally, and on the international stage. This was, in part, a mechanism of coloniality to manage the already existing Indigenous population and other non-White racialised groups within the nation. For instance, as a racialised group, the Chinese were already seen as an internal threat to a nation that imagined itself as White (Walker, 2002). Further supplementary institutionalisation of racist polices was crafted as part of a solution to the belief of colonial officials of a growing coloured population of so-called ‘degenerates’, characterised by the offspring of Aboriginal–Asian unions. This was seen as a threat to the survival of a White Australia (Balint, 2012).

Following the post-Second World War period, however, Australia’s racialist policies became difficult to sustain on the international stage. This is so for several reasons. The first is often attributed to the development of a changing moral consciousness in western societies. This has been attributed to the changing scientific developments and ideas about biological human races in western thought, and the atrocities of Nazism committed due to a belief in White racial superiority (cf. Goldberg, 2006), an ideological pillar upon which the Australian nation-state was founded. Second, the shifting socio-political zeitgeist has also been attributed to the requirement for international migration in many western developed countries as a catalyst to rebuild its economies. The need for the nation to build up its numbers for survival of a settler-society/federated colony fuelled imperatives for wider immigration policies (Stratton and Ang, 1994). The White nation-building mechanism was forced to expand its definition of who could be racialised as White when it was realised that British (that is, ethnically Anglo-Celtic) migrants were in short supply. Ethnic Northern/Western Europeans were preferred initially, then gradually the definition of Whiteness had to expand to include the ‘not exactly White but White-enough’ ethnic Southern Europeans. But this was also deemed to not be enough to sustain a growing colony. As such, in order to maintain the continuation of its settler-colonial project, the nation slowly altered its trajectory toward state recognition of its already existing ethno-cultural plurality. This discourse of multiculturalism aimed to, at least theoretically, elevate its ethno-cultural diversity to one that was more representative of its national culture, and was made official in the 1970s (Kizekova, 2013). Third, the reorientation of Australia, often thought of as a far-flung outpost of Europe (Mackay, 1981), had to re-situate itself within the geopolitical region following the decolonising movements in South-East Asia and other post-colonies from the 1960s onwards (Goldberg, 2006). This reimagining of the nation and the associated revision of its immigration programmes allowed for two primary outcomes as part of a settler-colonial project. First, the gradual erasure of the Indigenous population as the primary colonial subjects of the Australian continent (Wolfe, 2006). Second, it allowed the management of the attraction of new (non-White) migrants from the surrounding region, including temporary entrants in the forms of skilled migrant workers and international students (Colic-Peisker, 2011). This globalised brand of multiculturalism was marked by its ‘productive diversity’, wherein the state, along with various other western developed nations, could economically capitalise on its existing and growing ethno-cultural plurality (Hage, 1998: 128).

In Australia, the influx of various types of migrants over the past decades has significantly revamped the country’s demographic fabric. In 2019, almost 30% of its population were born overseas (Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), 2020), compared with 18% in 1966 (ABS, 2017). There has also been a substantial increase of migrants from Asia since the 1970s, resulting in growing ethno-cultural diversity of the Australian population. Today, six of the top 10 ethno-cultural populations born overseas are from geographically Asian countries (ABS, 2017). Whilst the above dynamics can be read as creating the conditions for a more ‘inclusive’ society at least in ethno-cultural terms, it is the state’s economic dividends that have often been centralised in public rhetoric to justify the requirement of non-White migrants. Such an economic logic, as Ang (1996: 47) has persuasively argued, ‘might be precisely a sign that “Asians” (and, we add, other non-White racialised groups), no matter how desired, can still not quite be imagined as integral to the national self’. Importantly, however, as can be seen above, scholarship on Australian immigration and multiculturalism has largely favoured an internal or intra-national discourse that critiqued the unchanging racialised power relations between groups, where ethno-cultural plurality becomes subsumed under a predominant White governmentality (see also Balint, 2010; Hage, 1998). Less attention is given to the international or, rather, extra-national constructions or understandings of Australia’s national and cultural image; that is, how people from outside Australia understand the country’s ethno-cultural composition and power relations. This article, therefore, provides an alternative account of the national Australian narrative against its renewed multiculturalist reimagining from the perspective of a group of newly arrived migrants. In particular, we examine Chinese international students’ (CIS) narratives and experiences of intercultural interactions and relationships in Australia. In this sense, we aim to utilise these perspectives to articulate the importance of considering extra-national factors in maintaining this racialised imaginary of Australia as a White nation, alongside the existing and oft-discussed intra-national factors.

To do so, we will first consider the growing presence of CIS within, and as consumers of, Australia’s educational system. Subsequently, we articulate how this neoliberalisation and marketisation of its education is inevitably intertwined with its racialised international posturing as a predominantly White nation. Then, by utilising the narratives of CIS from a larger study, we specifically examine how a White Australia has been perpetuated extra-nationally; the inculcated imaginary of Australia as a predominantly White space, and the subsequent desire to acquire forms of Whiteness. We then conclude with a considered discussion on how extra-national factors may simultaneously be important alongside an already existing internal discourse on altering Australia’s multicultural narrative to one more socially, politically, and economically representative of its ethno-cultural diversity.

Neoliberalisation of Australian education and Chinese student mobility

Today, Australia has become the second largest host of tertiary-level CIS (UNESCO, 2018). The fast growth and large amount of Chinese student migration to Australia over the past two decades witnessed the transition of the nation into one of the world’s major international education providers. Up until the 1980s, Australia’s international education scheme had been oriented towards assisting the economic and social developments of Asian, non-Communist developing countries by sponsoring and funding selected students from these countries to study in Australia and to contribute to the construction of their own countries upon their return (Harman, 2004). In 1984, comprehensive reviews were conducted by two separate committees to re-assess the overseas student aid scheme. Despite contrasting conclusions, the Australian government adopted the policy recommendation ‘that the education industry be deregulated so Australian institutions could compete against institutions in North America and the United Kingdom for the education dollar’ (Kendall, 2004: 25).

Consequently, Australia has transformed its overseas student education ‘from a taxpayer-subsidized activity to a highly successful export industry’ (Adams, 2007: 411). The number of onshore international students in Australia has increased from less than 300,000 in 2002 to more than 950,000 in 2019 (Department of Education Skills and Employment, 2020). The economic benefits have been substantial. Today, education has become Australia’s most profitable service export, contributing $37.6 billion to the national economy (Department of Education, 2019). This neoliberalisation of Australia’s international education programmes in the late 1980s coincided with China’s governmental policy to encourage Chinese students to be educated overseas, contributing to the growth in number of CIS in Australia at this time (Gao, 2013: 6). Since then, more self-financing students have left China to pursue studying a variety of Australian courses. As such, it was not long before CIS statistically dominated Australia’s international education landscape. By the end of 2018, according to Australia’s Department of Education and Training (2018), the number of enrolments from China across all education sectors had reached over 250,000. This accounted for more than 29% (the largest portion) of Australia’s total international student population.

This is, in part, reflective of how more people from China have contemporarily become internationally mobile. Processes of cultural globalisation have encouraged increasingly rapid and convergent flows of people, information, technologies, capital, and images (Appadurai, 1996). In China, such ‘work of the imagination’ (Appadurai, 1996: 4) has allowed for the emergence of transnational subjectivities and the ‘imaginary construction of foreign and unknown places’ which ‘precedes [their] actual arrival in these places’ (Sun, 2002: 5). This transformation highlights the interplays between the varied globalising processes and the growing neoliberal ‘consumer desire and subjective awareness of global opportunities’ (Rizvi, 2009: 269) among the contemporary Chinese population. In this sense, the idea of ‘international education’ is far more complex than merely access to ‘foreign’ teaching and curricula, but must be understood in the context of an intercultural discourse. Such a discourse has spurred research that attends to the intercultural component of international education. However, as Marginson and Sawir (2012) have critically pointed out, the intercultural discourse in this body of work largely pivots on an ‘ethnocentrism’ that ‘indicates a deep-seated unexamined belief that Western education and Western ways of life are always inherently superior’ (21). Such an ethnocentric understanding of intercultural relations, according to Marginson and Sawir, is reproduced by the scholarship in cross-cultural psychology that reinforces an essentialist and assimilationist notion of ‘adjustment’ of international students in host countries. In light of this critical insight, we further explore how this marketed (White) ethnocentrism is internalised and normalised in CIS’s narratives and lived experiences. As we will elaborate in the following analysis, such a racialised imaginary of Australia’s educational opportunities can be explained via an understanding of Australia as a White nation, even in the contemporary zeitgeist.

The rise of neoliberal multiculturalism and the international racialisation of Australia

The dismantling of the White Australia policy in the 1960s and the subsequent passing of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth) demonstrated the nation’s self-professed desire to disown its racist historical exclusion of difference to an inclusionary one of diversity, embodied in the rhetoric of ‘multiculturalism’ (Kizekova, 2013). This narrative has been challenged most prominently by Ghassan Hage’s (1998) revisionist interpretation of Australian multiculturalism which he terms White multiculturalism. This form of normative multiculturalism spanning approximately the 1970s to the mid-1990s, what can be seen as the liberal multiculturalist era, represented a convergent interest that White Australia afforded itself in embracing the rhetoric of multiculturalism to redefine itself insofar as this inclusion of difference can be managed under the watchful eyes of the dominant White culture (Hage, 1998). This period of intense change and development can be characterised by a deep incongruence in policy and practice. The desire to connect politically and economically with Asia became a point of unease within its racialised nationhood within the dominant White imaginary. On the one hand, it had to re-assess the potential economic benefits of Australia’s geographic location to the growing Asian region. On the other hand, it simultaneously needed to manage its (colonial) anxieties of a possible ‘Asianisation’ of the nation through an active rejection of its cultural influence (Perera and Pugliese, 1997; Walker, 2002).

The gradual dismantling of the White Australia policy in the mid-1960s, and the institutionalisation of a multicultural Australia in 1973 as official government policy (Kizekova, 2013) can thus be viewed as a strategy of containment of cultural difference. The need to alleviate White anxiety could theoretically be achieved through positioning Whites as arbiters of acceptance given the drastic changes in its (racialised and cultural) demographic (ABS, 2020). Hage (1998) argues that in the liberal era of White multiculturalism, ostensible valuing of migrant cultures exists for the benefit of the dominant White culture, which seeks to reshape itself as accepting and tolerant. This latter rhetoric of toleration has been debated by multiple scholars (i.e. Ang, 1996; Balint, 2010; Goldberg, 2006; Hage, 1998), highlighting the relations of power implicit in such an ideology. The dominant White group is expected to tolerate the difference of the racialised non-White populations, thereby evoking a sense of racio-cultural paternalism amongst members of the dominant group as managers of the national space.

However, the maintenance of a White Australia was soon to be susceptible to internal and external forces, requiring a transition to its current neoliberal multicultural form. It is Ang’s (1996: 38) contention that: ‘The driving force behind the change has been primarily economic, relating to Australia’s recent realization that it should exploit its geographical closeness to the booming ‘dragons’ and ‘tigers’ of the Asian region more aggressively.’ For conceptual purposes, we can understand liberal multiculturalism as distinct from the next period of development. The liberal multiculturalist era can be marked, inter alia, by the discourse of toleration between the White Australian subject and its racialised other (Balint, 2010). In what can be termed the neoliberal era in the 1990s, however, it can be seen as much more about the extrapolation of the economic benefits from an existing (descriptive) multiculturalism (Hage, 1998). It is where a normative multiculturalist ideology became utilised intentionally as a reconstruction of the nation’s image for socio-political economic relations with a growing globalised community. It is particularly salient to introduce a shift in the zeitgeist of this period since it impacts the way in which non-Whites became racialised through the neoliberal framework of economic instrumentalisation.

As a salient example, the orientalising of Chinatown and Chinese culture as an economic resource paved the path for the commodification of ethnic culture, a similar effect of multiculturalism’s tendency to ‘essentialise and fetishise ethnicity’ (Ang, 2016: 262). If racialised groups in the White Australia era were seen as the threatening other, in the liberal multicultural era they are the accepted other, then, in the neoliberal era, they can be seen as the profitable/instrumentalised other. It is important to recognise here that the White imaginary and relations of power within the nation remain constant dynamics across these shifting zeitgeists. One of the main reasons for the neoliberal shift in multiculturalist ideology can be attributed to the higher numbers of skilled Asian migration to the Australian continent. Instead of being marked predominantly by political refugee migration in the liberal multiculturalist era, migration from the mid-90s was marked by highly skilled Asian professionals (Stratton, 2009). This factor drastically altered the perception of Asian racialisation within the dominant White imaginary.

Hage (1996) provides a useful conceptualisation here in what the idea of a White nation does for the subjects empowered by this imaginary. White Australians who conceptualise the Australian national space through this racialised imaginary do not only feel like they belong to the nation, but also that they, in turn, possess the nation. Hage terms this a sense of governmental belonging, in which the White subject comes to believe that they represent the nation, and have a (greater) say in its management. Here, it is non-Whites who are conceptualised more as objects that should be instrumentalised for the benefit of a White nation. In the neoliberal era, we can see this benefit as a predominantly economic one. The practical suggestion, therefore, is the need to divorce Australia from a racialist narrative which originates from its British colonial legacy. Doing so, in Hage’s (1996) terms, would remove the higher amount of governmental belonging over national space at least from factors of racialisation. Whiteness, or perhaps a racialist frame more generally, would thus not be a predominating marker of Australian nationhood. This would serve to continue the transformation of Australia away from an ethno-nationalist imaginary, to a more ‘inclusive’ and diverse cosmopolitan society. Achieving this would perhaps be aligned with a change that results in the lack of any one particular ethno-cultural dominance (and the groups that represent it) over the national narrative.

Yet, despite the prolific studies on the incongruence between the various discursive claims of Australia’s multiculturalisation projects and their tangible outcomes, an extra-national perspective has been importantly left out of consideration. In order to reveal a racialised construction of the Australian nation on the international level, Hage’s (1996) notion of sovereign belonging provides a useful conceptual distinction from the above. Whilst connected to the notion of governmental belonging, its primary aim is to ‘secure the cohesion of the wilful communal body and the control of the territory’, not to internally govern but as ‘turned towards other nations’ (Hage, 1996: 469). It is this dynamic of nationhood wherein ‘the nation’s international existence is expressed’ (Hage, 1996: 469). Through this conceptualisation, then, Australia’s imaginary and racialist narrative as a (contested) White nation internally also becomes projected outwards, externally onto the international stage. To clarify, whilst debates on Australia’s multiculturalism and the need to shift its predominating White monopoly are often located internally to the nation (i.e. considerations to governmental belonging), it is often silent on how its Whiteness is maintained extra-nationally (i.e. considerations to sovereign belonging).

Following this line of inquiry, we adopt an extra-national lens to examine how Australia’s internal White imaginary is sustained. We specifically unpack the racialised dynamics that underlie CIS’s ‘global’ outlook for international education in Australia. We consider, in this article, how Australia’s international posture as a White nation is perceived and, importantly, naturalised by CIS. In the next section, we detail how we drew specifically on the experiences of CIS to examine this consideration.

Methodology

The data analysed in this article were drawn from in-depth interviews with 28 CIS participants as a part of the second author’s ethnographic study that explored the everyday and digital experiences of CIS in Melbourne, Australia. All interviews were conducted by the second author, henceforth referred to as the interviewer. While the wider project collected observational and interview data, it is the interviews that have formed the basis for analysis in this article. Interviews were conducted between February and July 2017. Interviewees were either enrolled undergraduate and postgraduate students, at the time of the interview, or recent graduates who stayed to work and live in Australia. On average, each interview lasted for around an hour. Interviews were audio recorded and later transcribed. Mandarin was the language adopted in most of the interviews, unless specifically requested otherwise by the interviewees. Being aware of the key role that language plays in mediating the expression of meanings, the authors used pinyin (Chinese phonetics) for words or expressions that have no direct English translations, followed by the English explanations in brackets; or the other way around. In particular, we have decided to keep the term rongru because the meanings of this term, as exemplified in CIS’s narratives, are more complex than and different from any existing English concepts (e.g. assimilation, integration or incorporation). We follow Qi (2013, 2014) and Singh and Meng (2013), among others, to argue for the intellectual competence and applicability of non-Western concepts and notions in advancing globalised knowledge production and flows. In this way, we hope to self-identify as what Qi (2013) has referred to as ‘intellectual entrepreneurs’, who facilitate cross-cultural diffusion and transformation of ‘foreign’ concepts and ideas into receiving contexts.

Interviewees were recruited through three methods. First, potential participants were approached during the ethnographic fieldwork, at various events and locations. Second, recruiting advertisements were shared in social media groups to gain greater entry into the CIS cohort. Finally, snowball sampling was used by encouraging recruited participants to invite their contacts and friends to participate in the study. The interviewees were aged between 18 and 25 and most of them were the only child of their middle-class families. All of them were in some way financially supported by their parents during their overseas education. Sixteen were female and 12 were male, ranging from undergraduate, postgraduate, and recently graduated students. A written consent form was given to each interviewee to explain the aims and scope of the project and to state clearly the expectations and rights pertaining to participation in the study. Identifiable information such as names, universities and course information were pseudonymised or removed to protect the confidentiality of participants.

During interviews, the interviewer’s identity as a Chinese doctoral international student equipped him with an insider perspective into the complexity of CIS’s everyday lived experiences. As Kanuha (2000: 444) argued, ‘being an insider researcher enhances the depth and breadth of understanding a population that may not be accessible to a nonnative scientist’. Being both ethnically and nationally Chinese thus eased the interviewer’s access into the CIS community. The absence of a linguistic barrier created a relatively comfortable space where the interviewer interacted with the other Chinese international students. Nevertheless, the label of being a CIS also created challenges. During the interviews, for example, a recurrent response received from participants was ‘You know that’ (ni zhidao de). Treating the interviewer as part of the in-group, the participants sometimes took for granted the interviewer’s knowledge of Chinese-related matters. To avoid misrepresentation and to ensure data validity, the interviewer requested further explanations from the participants regarding the seemingly self-evident phenomena. By doing so, the interviewer strived to keep his insider perspective and personal assumptions from jeopardising the scholarly interpretations of the empirical data by maintaining a fresh eye on what emerged from the interviews. This dual positionality, according to Dwyer and Buckle (2009), creates a ‘space between’ which transcends a binary understanding of being an insider or outsider researcher.

Given the wider scope of the original project, interview questions covered a spectrum of themes relating to the migrant life of CIS, including for example, transnational family, work experiences, diasporic engagement, and intercultural relations. For this article’s specific focus, we have only drawn upon interview data about the last theme. The relevant interview data were then processed and thematically analysed for their emphasis on revealing ‘subjective experiences’ (Joffe, 2012: 220). Interview transcripts were coded in a descriptive manner to identify the emerging themes that speak to the research questions. At this stage, we focused on ‘inductive codes grounded in the content of the data’ (Joffe, 2012: 215), such as ‘local’, ‘White’, ‘Australian’, and others. Following this, we linked these descriptive codes with ‘theoretically driven codes inspired by past research in the area’ (Joffe, 2012: 215), such as, for the purposes of this article, ‘Whiteness’, ‘race’, ‘multiculturalism’, ‘cultures’. This drew on, inter alia, Hage’s (1998) White Nation thesis as articulated in the previous section. We sought to identify what racialised processes were invisibilised from the perspectives and motivations of CIS in Australia, one which we conceptualised as being internationally recognised as (predominantly) a White nation. The purpose of this process was to understand how this study spoke to the extant, broader scholarship in order to analytically grasp the significance of these emerging themes.

It is important to highlight, before we discuss the findings, that the analysis was based on data collected from CIS located in Melbourne, Australia’s second largest metropolitan area. As such, their narratives may, or may not, be different from CIS located in other areas of Australia or international students of other nationalities.

Racialised perceptions of Australia amongst CIS

Most of the CIS participants in this research expressed a strong expectation and intention of intercultural encounters and friendships. To them, intercultural encounters in everyday spaces and the subsequent development of intercultural friendships were an obvious aspect and outcome of an overseas educational journey. This sentiment is shared by most interviewees who argued for the importance of having non-Chinese friends in Australia. For example, the process of studying abroad (chuguo liuxue), according to Yi (23, male), is expected to involve encounters with what participants often referred to as ‘local’ cultures, or else it would be no different from ‘going to universities in China’. Spending a few years abroad to study is often depicted by the Chinese media as not only a venture for educational qualifications, but more importantly, a golden opportunity for enhancing intercultural competencies and building cross-cultural relationships. Indeed, amongst CIS, the discourses of chuguo and liuxue have been linked with an expectation of intercultural mixing. What is important to notice here is the implicit understanding of what these intercultural encounters should consist of, within the context of Australia, for CIS.

As such, in this section, we examine a racialist undertone within participants’ discourses of interculturality as part of their expectations of everyday life in Australia. Specifically, we examine how Australia is viewed through a racialised lens by the CIS through an imagination of White Australians as ‘real’ Australians, and the more general perception of Australia as a White space (cf. Hage, 1998).

Racialised perceptions of the ‘local’ Australian

CIS often colloquially categorised groups that were perceived as different from them as ‘foreigners’ (waiguo ren). These were further categorised into two types: the ‘internationals’ and the ‘locals’. Importantly to our argument, however, is the presence of racialised undertones embedded in the utilisation of these terms. The category of ‘internationals’ (or sometimes, ‘non-Australians’) referred to people who were born in countries other than China or Australia, or non-Whites more generally. In contrast, with ‘locals’ (dandi ren), often simply referred to as ‘Australians’, they tended to refer to ‘Caucasian’ or ‘White’ people. For instance, many participants often utilised the term guilao (a Cantonese term for White people) when referring to the ‘real’ host populations of Australia. As such, the intercultural encounters that CIS participants aimed to experience were, more often than not, based upon an essentialised notion of a ‘White’ culture, and with the authentic White subjects who could, in their eyes, best represent it. This finding resonates with Gomes’ (2017: 168) research which points to international students’ perceptions of Australia as a White nation.

The White face of ‘local’ Australians is a perception clearly exemplified, for instance, in Karen’s (24, female, original quote) clarifications of how she understands the term ‘Aussie’: ‘When I say Aussie, I actually mean the local people. The White people. Because they will be the people who have been typically influenced by an Australian lifestyle.’ While Karen did not explain what the supposed typical ‘Australian lifestyle’ entailed, her words highlighted the exclusive racialised nature of the term ‘local’, pressed into the service of perceiving Australian-ness as White in essence. This is also highlighted in the conversations with Catherine (24, female), who shared her perception of the differences between the Australian born Chinese (ABC) and ‘local’ Australians:

Interviewer: For example, for Asian Australians who were born in Australia, will you define them as Australians?

Catherine: No. … But I think we need to further categorise the ABC. It has something to do with their family backgrounds. Some of my ABC friends, I think it’s because their families are still largely involved in the Chinese communities and they speak Chinese at home. So even if they grew up in Australia, their mindset [siwei] is still Chinese. For some others, their families are not like that. … So, their mindset becomes more complex.

To Catherine, ABC are not the typical ‘Australians’ because they may still be ‘culturally’ Chinese. In other words, the cultural similarity of ABC is constructed in contrast to the Australianness that is supposed to be unfamiliar and remote, or more specifically, White. As such, for many of the participants, attempting to navigate the cultural landscape of Australia seems to evoke a perception of its national culture that is conflated with an ethno-racialised conceptualisation of it as White in essence.

Importantly, this should not be read as a claim that participants do not recognise Australia as a ‘multicultural’ society, one which consists of people from different ethno-cultural backgrounds. Indeed, the recognition of Australia’s multicultural composition aligns with the ‘selling [of] a multicultural imaginary [which] remains an important part of Australian education marketing’ (Sidhu, 2006: 192). To many of the participants, this provides great opportunities to meet a diverse range of people and cultures. However, this does not obscure how Australia is widely considered by the participants as a predominantly White society, despite its internal attempts to reimagine the national space as culturally plural and racially de-centralised. As Yun (24, female) sharply remarked: ‘What is Australian mainstream society? It’s White-centred! Multiculturalism … is fake. [There is a difference between] the multiculturalism on the policy level and whether they can actually [added emphasis] achieve multiculturalism. Aren’t Asian Australians still marginalised? Aren’t Indigenous Australians still marginalised?’.

The idea of a White society which has multiculturality (in the form of non-Whites) instead of being multicultural, as described by Yun, is the very embodiment of Hage’s (1998) notion of the White nation. This provides a theoretical explanation for why it is this White segment into which CIS desire to tap, for a supposedly more authentic Australian experience. According to Gomes (2017), it is the Whiteness associated with Australianness rather than its ethno-cultural diversity that has attracted ‘students who interpret studying in a Western (white) nation as adding to their social capital’ (168). As such, international students often valorise and expect interactions with Whites, in particular, when they embark on their educational journeys in Australia.

As such, the perception of ‘local’ as White by participants, highlights an important extra-national factor in the maintenance and continuation of the Australian settler-colonial project, through the reinforcing of its White national imaginary. In particular, racialised perceptions of ‘real’ Australians as White reinforces the invisibilisation of Indigenous and other non-White populations. This highlights the nation’s ability to contain/manage its ethno-cultural composition internally through its racialised international presentation as a White nation. Next, we explore how this racialised perception of the White local translates to the perception of Australian space more generally, through examining discourses about the labour market.

Racialised perceptions of Australian space: Whiteness of the labour market

The perceived domination of Whiteness in Australian society is also seen in CIS’ racialisation of the Australian labour market. We discovered that many interviewees categorised it into two parallel types, similar to their approaches towards the demography: the ‘local’ and the ‘ethnic’. By ethnic labour market, they refer to the job opportunities available within the locally based non-White spaces, such as Chinese-owned restaurants, gift stores, and discount shops. However, these job opportunities are often considered to be ‘low-status’ and an inferior option by CIS in this study. For instance, Jian (24, male), a postgraduate student, observed:

Most part-time jobs that Chinese students could find in Australia are in the hospitality industry. You need to serve others. … Also, you can’t actually learn anything from the so-called part-time jobs. Most of them just work as waiters or waitresses in Chinese restaurants. It’s meaningless.

Therefore, being confined to the ‘ethnic’ workplaces is believed by participants to be hindering them from accumulating relevant work experience that is necessary for future career development. This is amplified by a general perception that many of the available ‘ethnic’ jobs are considered under-paid, exploiting the cheap labour of CIS outside the legal framework (Martin, 2017). As a result, this job market was rendered a relatively lesser status in the eyes of CIS. Instead, they preferred to work in the ‘local’ labour market.

To reiterate, by ‘local’ or ‘mainstream’, participants generally referred to Australian businesses that are owned and operated by non-Chinese, but in particular, White Australians. That is, CIS’ job preference is predicated upon a conceptualisation of Australian mainstream society as White. Such a differentiation within the local/ethnic dichotomy is explained by Karen (24, female) when asked about her current working status:

I’m working for a Chinese company and working with Chinese people, so … it’s just the environment is different. Like, actually I’m in Australia, but I’m not working in an Australian company. Still I don’t know how the Australian, I mean the economic world, company system is going. (Original quote)

Despite the fact that Karen was technically working in an Australia-based company, she did not perceive this as working in an ‘Australian’ (read: White) company because the company was owned by an ethnically Chinese employer and her colleagues were mainly ethnically Chinese. In this sense, the Chinese ethnic economic sector is seen, at least by this participant, as only a part of the Australian labour market, rather than also being representative of it.

Accepting the constructions of Australian society as predominantly a White space has had inadvertent impacts upon CIS’ socio-cultural trajectories in Australia. As can be expected, this racialised perception inadvertently shapes the desires and expectations of participants in their overseas sojourns. More specifically, we shift the focus in the next section to how CIS imagine their relationships with the ‘mainstream’ Australian society, through the notion of rongru.

Narratives of rongru: The lure of Whiteness

Rongru is a Mandarin term that roughly translates to a process of integration or assimilation. In what follows, we first identify what seem like participants’ desire for Whiteness in the process of rongru. We then examine the mode in how it is specifically desired; that is, how such desirability is marked by an instrumental level of interaction and contact, rather than one that necessitates a more ‘complete’ cultural level of assimilation.

Desirability of Whiteness in intercultural encounters

In the eyes of the CIS in this study, rongru is a process that seems to implicitly involve an acquisition of (forms of) Whiteness. Jay (25, male), for example, when asked whether he thought rongru is necessary for him, immediately replied: ‘Of course, it’s a must!’ Jay planned to stay in Australia after graduation and provided his definition of rongru as follows:

With rongru, I think firstly there should be no barriers in verbal communication. Then it’s about culture. I need to be familiar with their [White Australian] culture. Then I would be able to know what they are talking about and to freely express myself. Finally, it’s about lifestyle. I need to rongru in terms of everyday lives. There must be frequent contacts with them.

The ‘them’ that is recurrently referred to in Jay’s definition is the dominant, White Australian population. As Jay further explained: ‘My English was not good so I had to rongru into the Chinese communities here. I couldn’t rongru into the local [White] Australian communities (laowai quan)’. Here, Jay was not satisfied with his rongru into the Australian society because he mostly engaged with Chinese communities in Melbourne. To ‘really’ rongru, Jay expected more connections and interactions with White Australian communities. Whilst rongru as a sociocultural process does not necessarily require a racialised dimension, it seemed that to rongru specifically with White Australians was considered to be an important and desirable outcome of CIS’ own overseas sojourns in Australia. Indeed, such a racialised hierarchy of rongru is captured in Hage’s (1998) notion of White multiculturalism, wherein that which is White is relationally accorded higher valuation.

Whilst rongru was seen as an essential process for Jay to adopt, Sandy (20, female) provides a different perspective on the importance of such assimilatory practices:

I have so many friends who after graduation, found jobs in [Chinese] real estate companies or immigration agencies. You don’t need to rongru at all. You can just spend time with your Chinese colleagues, speaking Chinese. … But if this is not what you are after, for instance, if you go to a guilao [White/local] company and to live a life of a White person, then I think rongru is really [important].

Although there are differences placed on the importance of rongru between the two participants, their narratives suggest a similar understanding of rongru, one invested with a racialised quality. Whilst Jay considers rongru into the Chinese communities as a less desirable form of rongru, Sandy does not see this as a form of rongru at all. As such, the similarity across these perspectives is the prioritisation of Whiteness as a more (indeed, in Sandy’s case, only) worthy form of rongru.

Whilst the pairing of Whiteness within the process of rongru can be glimpsed through the above examples, it does not demonstrate how participants in the study relate to such an underlying racialised dimension. By further interrogating the data, in the next section we suggest how the racialised hierarchy of rongru can be further understood through its recognised instrumentality, one that emphasises ‘contact’ with Whites for potential migration trajectories.

The instrumentality of rongru and the utility of Whiteness

As extant international student literature has found, international students in Australia are provided with migration pathways which make them not only student sojourners, but also potential (permanent) migrants (Baas, 2010; Robertson, 2013). Among the 28 interviewees, 21 expressed their intention to stay in Australia after graduation, either to work or to acquire permanent residency (PR). Conversations with CIS during the fieldwork often began with a brief discussion of their preparation progress for the upcoming English proficiency exam. This highlighted a particularly important concern for the participants, who discussed the requirement of attaining a particular grade for the purpose of PR eligibility. The desirability of rongru is thus closely associated with their future migration plans and seen as a prerequisite for economic integration into the ‘mainstream’ labour market. As seen from above, this drive to maximise their socio-economic outcomes through integrating into the labour market is inherently intertwined with a perception of Australia as predominantly a White space, and therefore to seek out (social, economic, etc.) opportunities with its archetypal representatives in the form of White Australians themselves.

As can be seen from Jay’s earlier reported understanding, what also underlies the instrumental expectation of rongru is English proficiency. This link between English proficiency and better socio-economic mobility in Australia is exemplified by other participants in the study. Helen (23, female), for example, explained how she utilised group assignments in order to better attain this linguistic ability for her future career:

When I look for people to do group assignments [in class], I normally don’t look for Chinese. … It could be intentional I think, because I believe if I want to stay [after graduation], my working environment will be in English. If I can’t even handle the class activities in English, how could I have a good career in the future?

For the purposes of our argument, it is important to highlight how Helen aims to achieve a better English linguistic proficiency. This is done through the selection of group assignment partners, which for Helen, is specifically not to work with those who are ethnically Chinese. Yet, there is clearly an ambivalence in Helen’s non-selection of co-ethnic peers to acquire better English proficiency, specifically regarding who she would prefer to work with. In order to understand this dynamic amongst CIS, we turn to the broader context of interviews with other participants, which seem to suggest a racialised dynamic within their conceptualisation of learning English.

Wenting (25, female), for example, recalled how she was ‘really upset that there was barely any communication with locals [White Australians]’ when she first arrived in Australia and, as such, desired more opportunities with White Australians to learn English. Similarly, Sam (25, male), who, at the time of the interview had graduated five months ago, recounted how he worked hard during his first year in Melbourne to improve his English so he could ‘connect to the Australian or local [White] networks, such as chatting with them, dining out together or just joking around’. We suggest that these examples demonstrate several dynamics. First, there is a general, implicit perception amongst (at least most of the) CIS participants that the English language is racialised, specifically as White. Second, the ability to learn this language is therefore most authentically derived from being able to communicate and learn from White subjects. Third, it is an important linguistic skill to muster insofar as to rongru with White Australians themselves, perceived either as more authentic Australians, and/or as better contacts for greater socio-economic mobility.

Forms of attractive Whiteness, such as the racialisation of the English language in the cases presented above, are related to by CIS in the form of an understated instrumentality, specifically for socio-economic purposes. And yet, whilst Whiteness is valorised in the local context, there seems to be a significant difference in why such a dynamic occurs for CIS participants in the study, when compared to reasons proffered by contemporary scholarship. We thus consider this potential and important difference in the final section of the analysis.

The impossibility and non-necessity of ‘complete’ rongru

Contemporary scholarship often focuses on a globalised valuation of Whiteness in terms of its superiority in essence. For instance, connecting the valuation of Whiteness to a postcolonial dynamic, Filipino-American historian Roland Sintos Coloma (2008: 17) remarked upon his experiences the Philippines where his ‘American-ness and cultural whiteness, signalled by [his] citizenship, education, appearance and language, differentiated and elevated [him] to a higher status’. Asante (2016) reiterates this through what he calls glocalised Whiteness, which signifies an accepted global valuation of Whiteness, but one translated differently on a localised (i.e. national) level. For instance, Asante (2016) highlights how the coveting of lighter skin complexion in the context of Ghana is an example of how Whiteness, historically symbolising a White European phenotype, became translated contemporarily through the nation’s sociocultural zeitgeist. In this sense, then, the attraction of Whiteness can be attributed to a conflation of the dynamic of universality, with a racialised representation of it in the form of a postcolonial and globalising Whiteness. Held against this understanding, we consider how participants seem to deviate from this understanding of why Whiteness is valorised, specifically within the Australian context.

Whilst there is an absence of an explicitly clear and unified definition of what a complete rongru is among CIS in the study, their narratives of this process allude to the idea of a ‘deeper’ cultural level of change, one that is closer to the idea of assimilation. This is highlighted, for example, with Bill’s (25, male) comments on the cultural incompatibility between the Chinese and Australian cultures, which impedes a complete rongru:

With rongru, I think it’s about knowing their [White Australians’] history and culture, and their attitudes or what they think. … But I think for those who come from a different country, such as an Asian country, it’s impossible to completely rongru. This is because the way you think is still different. So, you need to change your original ways of thinking [if you want to completely rongru]. … This is very difficult. (added emphasis)

The requirement of ‘change’, as Bill has emphasised, implies the importance of substantial boundary crossing which goes beyond acquiring intercultural contacts (with Whites) per se. Rather, for him, a ‘complete’ rongru signifies a recognised requirement to adopt an alternative racialised cultural ontological, axiological, and epistemological predisposition, one more closely aligned with the ‘true’ [read: White] Australians, one he believes is ‘impossible’. While Bill has emphasised the impossibility of a complete rongru, others have talked about in terms of non-necessity. As Helen explained:

But here, since people from different parts of the world can have a good life in Australia, I think it’s relatively easier to rongru. But it depends on whether you are talking about the cultural level, or the daily life level. I think they are separate. You can live a good life here … as long as you can speak proper English. That’s also a kind of rongru. But if you want to rongru [change] into their culture, I don’t think it’s necessary.

On the one hand, Helen insisted on the importance of rongru on an interpersonal (or instrumental) level; that is, to be able to live a good life by speaking proper English. On the other hand, she highlighted the perceived non-necessity of becoming ‘Australian’. As she further clarified, the reason for such non-necessity is because ‘the Chinese are a majority group … and every industry or service [in the Australian mainstream society] will have a Chinese replacement’. It is important to note here that Helen’s utilisation of the term ‘majority’ does not refer to mainstream or dominant (identified by its Whiteness), but is rather indicative of her perception that Chinese communities are a relatively strong minoritised group (in the socio-economic and transnational cultural sense). Seen through this lens, the unnecessity of a complete rongru is premised on the sufficiency of intra-community resources in sustaining the basic needs of daily life.

Whether described as ‘unnecessary’ or ‘impossible’, we suggest that both Bill’s and Helen’s perspectives are representative of a particular mode of relating to Whiteness for participants in the study. Instead of coveting markers of Whiteness through a framework of globalised superiority, its attractiveness here relates to its specific utility for the participants. This is specifically articulated as a socio-economic utility within the context of Australian national space, one that seems to be a priori perceived, as we have alluded to earlier, a White space. At least for the CIS in this study, this may serve to problematise the contemporary scholarship which focuses on a globalised White superiority. This may be due to the specific socio-cultural context in which CIS emerge (i.e. China), one that is not governed by a history of Western European (White) colonialism. Indeed, at the time of the interviews, many CIS participants in the study did not seem to valorise Whiteness specifically as a globalised (and/or racialised) ideal, and instead draw on (non-White) ethnocentric, or other non-racialised discourses when framing their understandings of navigating the global landscape. When asked how they felt about Australia when they first arrived, most of the participants recalled the inconvenience of public transport, limited entertainment, and the lack of modern facilities and services. For instance, the most common neologisms used by the CIS to refer to Australia and Melbourne respectively are tu’ao and mocun, literally translated as ‘rustic Australia’ and ‘Melbourne village’, indicating how they found Australia to be unexpectedly ‘underdeveloped’.

This may demonstrate that the desirability of Whiteness amongst CIS participants, whilst present in their narratives and mode of conducting their daily lives in Australia, are not necessarily beholden to a globalised White ideal contemporarily. We include this aspect of the analysis as it may help to further understandings of potential global power shifts and efforts in decentring Whiteness from within a transnational discourse. Held against this recognition, however, and to continue with our central argument, we posit that CIS’ affirmation of Australia as a predominantly White space still serves to reinforce its racialised dynamics. Indeed, whilst their opinion of Australia as a White nation does not prevent them from finding it unexpectedly underdeveloped, this may also imply a certain expectation of what a White nation should be like. It is this seeming internalisation of a globalised valuation of Whiteness prior to embarking on their overseas journeys that we focus on in the final section.

Conclusion: On the extra-national maintenance of White multiculturalism

Despite the important disjuncture with contemporary scholarship in how CIS relate to Whiteness per se, what the previous analysis importantly demonstrates, for our argument, is that the extra-national construction of Australian society as a White space (cf. Hage, 1996) does, in fact, affect CIS’ perceptions of the outlets for further socio-economic mobility within Australia. In recognising the international posture of Australia as a White nation, striving for higher socio-economic mobility within its borders becomes inevitably infused with a localised and racialised White ideal. Through inhabiting such a conceptualisation of racialised space that which is deemed White inevitably becomes reified as of higher value. As seen from the data, there exists a wide array of potential markers of acquiring Whiteness that can range from the acquisition of White Australian interpersonal contacts (racialised), occupational spaces, and higher English linguistic proficiency. Inadvertently, this drive to accumulate various racialised capitals reinforces the structural dominance and importance of Australian Whiteness.

Indeed, the participants’ discourse of rongru highlights how Australian society is perceived predominantly as a culturally homogeneous and distinct entity, rather than a ‘truly’ multicultural society. For them, the racialised (as White) perception of Australian national space prevents any form of Asian/Chinese-ness (or indeed, any non-Whiteness) from being a part of its ‘true’ national fabric. As such, despite the internal efforts at dismantling a White monopoly over national space, this suggests how the international project of constructing Australia’s sovereign belonging (Hage, 1996) can still serve to uphold White Australians as ‘true’ managers over the national space, once internalised and embodied by transnational subjects. However, this analysis should not be read simplistically as rendering CIS culpable in sustaining a White Australia. Rather, our intention is to draw from their perspectives to foreground the existence of an extra-national discourse that runs against the internal discourses of decentring Whiteness as a dominant racialised construct within Australian national space. Indeed, CIS’ embodiment of such an essentialist understanding of Australian culture and society epitomises how a White multiculturalist imaginary can be embodied, perpetuated, and normalised extra-nationally.

For the purposes of our argument, what is important here is to recognise not only a demand for (forms of) Whiteness amongst CIS within Australia, but also the failure of Australia’s neoliberal multiculturalism project in capitalising upon a normative ‘multicultural Australia’ image on the international stage. Based on our analysis above, the CIS in the study were not particularly attracted to Australia because of its perceived multiculturality, but rather through its international presentation as a White nation. This is demonstrated through how CIS participants preferred to seek out forms of acquiring Whiteness as social capital, even if only as a form of socio-economic instrumentality, as part of their intercultural encounters within Australia. Our findings resonate with Martin’s (2020) research on female CIS in Australia, wherein she highlights how their ‘conflation [of “Australian-ness” with “Whiteness”] draws on a Chinese racialized imaginary of “the west” as the location of idealized whiteness, which is itself part of the same racialized global imaginary’ (907). Such a dynamic highlights an extra-national difficulty to fully commit to a multicultural re-imagining of the nation that is divorced from a racialist narrative. We argue that the White national imaginary is thus maintained, not only through internal dynamics, but one that is also continuously reinforced from without. By understanding the desires of the CIS presented here, we suggest that the international presentation of Australia as White nation is importantly also sustained as a globalised neoliberal incentive. It is a marketisation of Whiteness that is wielded by the state, perhaps unintentionally, to garner economic benefits. This suggests that, alongside neoliberal multiculturalism’s economic instrumentalisation of its ethno-culturally minoritised groups, the neoliberalisation of Whiteness also acts as a profitable commodity for the Australian state. This, then, presents a conundrum for the Australian state racialised as White. That is, the need to relinquish a White face to engender better social cohesion amongst its ethnoculturally diverse populations paradoxically exists in tandem with the need to maintain a White face for the attraction of more diversity, at least for economic benefits in this globalised neoliberal era. Seen through this, we reiterate here the central purpose of the article, in recognising the important work that has been, and continues to be, produced to dismantle the monopoly of a White nation narrative over Australia’s socio-historical trajectory internally, that is, for the sake of the diverse ethno-cultural composition that characterises its citizenry (Ang, 2016; Balint, 2010; Hage, 1998). What our paper does is to draw to the foreground the extra-national considerations that may also contribute to this dominating narrative, highlighting the impact that perspectives external to the nation (as seen through CIS) can have upon the state in a neoliberalised era.

Whilst this recognition of a neoliberalised Whiteness may purport, for some, the ability of the state to equalise a ‘truly’ egalitarian multiculturalism (in terms of racialisation) through its marketisation, the valuation by which Whiteness is marked, we suggest, differs significantly from that which is non-White. Marketisation of non-dominant ethno-cultural groups are often marked by the economic instrumentalisation of what Sleeter and Grant (1999) have referred to as the four F’s (i.e. fairs, festivals, food, and folk tales). Within this conceptualisation, ‘culture’ is reified against a normalised backdrop of Whiteness (i.e. ‘normal’ food as opposed to ‘Asian’ food), and subsequently essentialised through narrow and clichéd understandings. On the other hand, as the international face of Australia is presented as a White or specifically Anglo-Celtic one, it is the national space (understood as a White space) as a whole as a space of viability, that makes the economic instrumentalisation of Australian Whiteness possible. As such, whilst the instrumentalisation of a racialised Australian multiculturalism as mobilised through a neoliberal framework may, indeed, be economically beneficial to the state, this globalised dynamic does have severe implications. That is, it inadvertently serves to reinforce localised power differentials between racialised groups, and to strengthen the settler-colonial narrative via the further erasure of Indigenous Australians from the White national narrative. As can be seen, the persistent spectre of a White Australia is maintained not only from within the national discourse on how its multiculturality should be practised, but is made additionally resistant to reform by the dynamics of a globalised and racialised neoliberalism. What this suggests is the importance for scholars to consider how both intra and extra-national dynamics work in tandem to reinforce the dominant imaginary of contemporary Australian society as a White nation.

Footnotes

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank the editor(s) for coordinating the peer review process and the three anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions which have significantly contributed to improving the paper.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs

Adam Z Seet

Xinyu Zhao

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