Abstract
In a globalising world, people might be expected to be less nationalistic about their personal consumption decisions. Yet support for Trump-style protectionism and ‘buy national’ campaigns appears to be spreading. How do people talk about such purchasing decisions? Applying thematic content analysis and discourse analysis to qualitative data from 27 focus groups (n = 223) conducted across Australia, this article explores the key features of discussions about ‘buying Australian’, comparing migrant/ethnic minority responses with non-migrant/mainstream responses. Perhaps surprisingly, migrants adopt the taken-for-granted imperative that nationalist consumption is good for the national economy, and articulate this choice as a demonstration of loyalty and reciprocity to their adopted country. Perhaps counter to expectations, mainstream participants are far more ambivalent in the ways they express this nationalist imperative. While nationalist consumption remains the bottom line as the appropriate purchasing orientation, their position as charter group enables them to offer more critical arguments about the authenticity of the ‘Australian-made’ logo and the quality and price of goods. For both, however, the taken-for-granted default position is that consumer nationalism is ‘the right thing to do’. Buying national is thus an instance of what Billig identified as ‘banal nationalism’, where the nation-state, as opposed to other collectives such as ‘workers’ or ‘global citizens’, is reproduced as the appropriate category for identification and collective responsibility.
Keywords
Introduction – Nationalism, cosmopolitanism and consumption
Protectionism has become a political draw card for conservative politicians recently, credited, in part, for Donald Trump’s election, the Brexit decision and, in Australia, the revitalisation of the conservative One Nation party. Partly a backlash against processes of globalisation, these changes suggest a reversal in the trend towards more open borders (for goods and capital, if not people) (Beck, 2006) and a reassertion of nationalism as a political, cultural and discursive project (Fox and Miller-Idriss, 2008; Skey, 2011, 2013). This article asks why the average ‘person in the street’ feels that it is important to buy country-made goods and how this imperative is linked to the practical accomplishment of everyday, banal nationalism that signals and privileges the nation in daily routines, practices and orientations, including consumption (Billig, 1995; Fox and Miller-Idriss, 2008).
Protectionism, or economic nationalism, is defined as ‘discrimination in favour of one’s own nation, carried on as a matter of policy … a zero-sum pursuit of the supposed economic interests of the people of one country without regard for those of other people in other countries’ (Baughn and Yaprak, 1996: 760,763). The term is generally applied to macro-level trade policies that exclude or tax foreign goods and ‘hard’ measures that reduce, or make more expensive, imported products. But there is another ‘soft’ dimension to economic nationalism. At the micro level, this relates to individual purchasing decisions – such as the ‘buycott’ choice that Neilson (2010) contrasts with the ‘boycott’ of products from countries individuals wish to punish for moral or economic reasons. While considerable research exists regarding macro-level protectionist policy, there has been a relative neglect of the rhetoric and practices around individual nationalist-motivated purchasing decisions (Baughn and Yaprak, 1996; Castelló and Mihelj, 2017; Neilson, 2010).
Historians have analysed how economic and political nationalism are fundamentally connected. Major economies such as those of the United States (Frank, 1999), the United Kingdom (Greenfield, 2001), and China (Gerth, 2003), have been built on ‘buy national’ campaigns. The assertion that protecting national industries will protect national jobs, and that this is a good thing, signals this fundamental connection (Baughn and Yaprak, 1996; Helleiner and Pickel, 2005; Pickel, 2003). Indeed, as Gerth (2003) has demonstrated regarding the construction of ‘China’ as a modern nation-state, ‘consumerism played a fundamental role in defining nationalism, and nationalism in defining consumerism’ (p. 3).
Campaigns such as ‘Shop Canadian’, ‘Buy American’, or ‘Buy German Produce’, popular in the 1980s and 1990s, and more recent developments such as the post–global financial crisis (GFC) ‘I insist on [buying] Greek’ campaign, expose this link. Such campaigns sought to convince consumers to buy country-produced products and to see their identities as citizens as grounded in such consumption. Arguments were framed in terms of the supposed superior quality of such products, but more importantly, the need to protect local industry and jobs. This rhetoric is back with a vengeance, with Trump’s claims that protectionism will ‘make America great again’, and a similar political rhetoric evident globally.
Nationalist consumption rhetoric and policies generated by political leaders are sometimes framed as ‘hot’ nationalism, explicit, exclusionary and affective, for example, in the ‘Our country is getting ripped off ’ Trump soundbytes. But oftentimes, it is manifested in the quiet, understated, taken-for-granted instances of subtle nationalist signalling identified by Billig (1995) as ‘banal nationalism’, in this case ‘consumer choices driven by nationalist beliefs … as a means of expressing one’s national belonging [and] of rejecting foreign nations’ (Castelló and Mihelj, 2017: 8).
At the micro level, the type of political consumerism known as ‘consumer ethnocentrism’, i.e., ‘beliefs held … about the appropriateness, indeed morality, of purchasing foreign-made products’ (Shimp and Sharma, 1987: 280), or ‘consumer nationalism’, i.e., consumers’ use of national identities as motivations in purchasing choices (Castelló and Mihelj, 2017: 3–4), is a form of practical or everyday nationalism. It is based on preferencing one’s nation and its people over others, in one’s purchasing decisions. While protectionist economic policies are a way of maintaining the idea of the nation-state from above, as Fox and Miller-Idriss (2008) have pointed out, the nation is ‘simultaneously the practical accomplishment of ordinary people engaging in routine activities’ (p. 537). As such, it cannot be understood without analysing the ways in which the nation is negotiated and reproduced (and occasionally challenged – see Emontspool and Woodward, 2018) ‘from below’. The nation is talked about, chosen, performed and, importantly for our purposes, consumed, in everyday life by everyday people (Fox and Miller-Idriss, 2008). It is the ways in which this consumption is articulated that is the focus of this article.
Consumer nationalism is a moral orientation, providing a sense of identity and belonging. It sees purchasing imported products as wrong because it damages the domestic economy, causes domestic job losses and is unpatriotic (Shimp and Sharma, 1987). It is an individual act done for collective effect – promoting the interests of one’s nation and demonstrating one’s membership of it (Castelló and Mihelj, 2017). Such an approach can be contrasted with consumer cosmopolitanism, a motivation for consumption choices based on concern for the welfare of those beyond the nation-state (Fozdar, 2018). But cosmopolitanism and nationalism may not always be distinct or incompatible, as Appiah (2006) has argued in his recognition of ‘rooted cosmopolitanism’ and ‘cosmopolitan patriots’, and apparently cosmopolitan discourses around consumption often have a nationalist edge and vice versa (Fozdar, 2018). This is why examining the ways people actually talk about and rationalise their purchasing decisions is so important.
Using social identity theory, Baughn and Yaprak (1996) developed a scale to measure personal orientations to economic nationalism. They found that support for a range of economic nationalist practices is associated with certain individual characteristics including ‘personal job insecurity, authoritarianism, and intolerance of ambiguity [and] negatively related to individual cosmopolitanism’ (Baughn and Yaprak, 1996: 759). In addition, they found perception of economic threat is related to economic nationalism, possibly through the intermediary of personal job insecurity. This sense of threat is exacerbated at times of instability. These rationales have been used to explain Trump’s success, as his support base tends to be those at the lower end of the employment market whose jobs have been threatened as a result of the global financial crisis and factory closures; those concerned about the risk of terrorism and related instability; and those suspicious of the rise of international powers such as China and Russia. The growth in economic nationalist rhetoric is thus related to the apparent economic and cultural threats generated by globalisation processes.
Elsewhere I have demonstrated how difficult, and rare, it is for consumers to talk about making purchasing decisions based on cosmopolitan orientations to the globe and its people, and how ‘buying national’ is the ubiquitous position taken in discussions (Fozdar, 2018). Here, engaging Castelló and Mihelj’s (2017: 13) call for research that ‘discern[s] the patterns of meanings enacted through processes of nationalist consumption’, I am interested in how consumption decisions are articulated in the Australian context, particularly the differences in the ways migrants and non-migrants discuss these decisions, given that they might be expected to be less nationalistic, due to recency of arrival, and more cosmopolitan, due to transnational ties, and therefore have less affinity with national products and workers.
Economic nationalism in the Australian context
Australia is a settler nation with a comparatively high proportion of its population being migrants (one in four is a migrant, half are migrants themselves or with a migrant parent). Due to the White Australia Policy, a set of policies and practices that from 1901 to 1973 sought to keep Australia White, the population is often conceptually divided along the lines of White/European background/mainstream and migrant or ‘ethnic’, often ‘visibly different’. The mainstream population holds the position of charter group (Halikiopoulou et al., 2013), with a taken-for-granted right to be recognised as Australian. The visibly different, on the other hand, must work at it (Hage, 1998).
Australia has been through a number of periods where aggressive campaigns have been conducted encouraging nationalistic consumption, with significant political support. Economic nationalism was common in Australia in the 1960s and 1970s, responding to a perceived threat from transnational corporations. In the mid-1980s this became less a concern about external threats, with a greater focus on the ability of industry to plan and provide for Australia’s future (Bryan, 1991). In 1986 the ‘Australian-made’ campaign, complete with iconic green and gold kangaroo logo, was launched, in response to increased import penetration (Fischer and Byron, 1997). Its goal was to encourage Australians to buy Australian-made products. The campaign maintains an active presence on social and other media.
The 1996 federal election campaign saw a return to protectionist rhetoric more generally. This was generated by conservative marginal parties and independents but was taken up more widely, partly as a backlash against dramatic changes designed to open up the country to international trade. According to Capling (1997:1) this had generated a deep sense of unease, particularly among those who saw the changes as coming at great cost – to themselves, their families and communities, to their sense of national identity, and finally, to their version of the Australian ‘way of life'.
These concerns were reinforced by other changes – the growing diversity of the population, greater immigration, and a leader (Paul Keating, Prime Minister from 1991–1996) with a liberalising agenda that included developing greater ties with Asia, becoming a republic and recognising the rights of the Indigenous peoples.
This sense of unease is evident in attitudinal data about foreign products and investment from the time. Using data from the mid-1990s, Bean (2002) reports that Australians have rather parochial attitudes in relation to the economy. The majority (75%) of his sample agreed that Australia should limit the import of foreign products in order to protect its national economy, and 36% agreed that ‘foreigners should not be allowed to buy land in Australia’. The 2003 data show a slight drop (although still a significant majority) in agreement with the first question (65%), but a rise regarding negativity to foreign land ownership (42%) (Marsh et al., 2005: 243). And almost half (49%) agreed that ‘Opening up Australia’s economy to foreign competition has a bad effect on job security in this country’. Marsh et al. (2005: 254–255) conclude that in comparison with other nations, on a range of measures of openness ‘Australians remain protectionist, both culturally and economically’.
Updating these results with the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes (AuSSA) survey data (2013–14), the figure for the first question is 70%, a slight rise on the 2003 data, and a significant majority; with 53% in agreement with the second, continuing the upwards trend. Around 69% agreed that ‘Large international companies are doing more and more damage to local businesses in Australia’. Thus economic nationalism appears to be on the rise.
Australian companies regularly continue to use nationalism to sell their products or raise their profile, flaunting ‘nationalist credentials’ in their advertising (Prideaux, 2009). It is likely that in addition to general post-GFC trends, marketing campaigns have played a part in Australians’ apparent negativity to foreign products, companies and ownership.
In 2016, the federal government made ‘country of origin’ labelling mandatory, and one poll suggests 90% of Australians report being more likely to buy food labelled ‘Australian-made’ (The Sydney Morning Herald, 2016). While the recent Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was much more of a ‘free trade’ advocate than many previous political leaders, he recognised the sources of concern for the Australian public but remained critical about the rapid rise of protectionist policies globally. In a talk to the Business Council of Australia he argued ‘… we must make the case to increase global economic integration …’ (Masola, 2016).
This message from the political leadership has had little effect on the general public however, who seem more attuned to Trump-style economic nationalism.
The broad-brush patterns from quantitative data such as those outlined offer a limited understanding of the patterns of, and rationale behind, consumer nationalism. In this article, I am interested in how consumption decisions are talked about, as a window to understanding the relationship between nationalism, identity and consumption. First, what are the key themes in discussions about nationalist consumption and what sorts of rationales are used to justify it? Second, are there differences between migrants’ and mainstream attitudes? Specifically, given the strong nationalist sentiment of Australians, to what extent do migrants and ethnic minorities adopt this approach when talking about consumption practices, or are lower levels of consumer nationalism demonstrated due to a lower commitment to their adopted nation?
Method
Data are drawn from 27 focus groups (n = 223) undertaken across Australia as part of a larger project exploring conceptions of Australian, transnational and postnational identities. As a method, focus groups are particularly useful in eliciting information about controversial topics (Munday, 2006), exposing collective discourses and meta-narratives and, particularly, the binary nature of such discourses (Munday, 2006; Skrbis and Woodward, 2007).
The focus group discussions were conducted among pre-existing groups in four major capital cities in Australia, Brisbane, Perth, Melbourne, Sydney and the smaller regional town of Launceston. Half were ethno-specific, migrant or multicultural groups (participant n = 111), identified here as ‘migrant/ethnic minority’ groups, representing a mix of the more visible or culturally different migrants as well as more established groups. The other half were collectives based on some shared interest (n = 112). They are characterised as ‘non-migrant/mainstream’ groups, as their collectivity, for the purposes of the research, was not based around ethnicity or migration status, but some other shared interest or characteristic. Some of these groups included one or two members not born in Australia. Of course, as noted, the majority of Australia’s population are migrants of one or two generations; hence, the term ‘non-migrant’ is used loosely to characterise the groups of mostly White/mainstream Australians who formed a collective not based on ethnicity or migrant status but on some other shared interest. Focus groups consisted of the following: migrant/ethnicity-based collectives – three multicultural groups, Arabic young men and Arabic women, two groups from migrant and refugee housing estates, an English language class, Chinese, Greek, Dutch, Polish and Italian groups; non-migrant/mainstream collectives – a wildlife preservation group, a grief support group, a historical society, three sporting groups, Vietnam veterans, young Christians, a sewing group, inner-city university students and postgraduate students, a local bushfire volunteer group, a group of librarians, and a parents and citizens group. The rationale for selecting existing collectives was that individuals would be more likely to feel comfortable discussing issues of identity and nationalism among people known to them. Participants ranged from 18 to over 80 (average age 43) years. Representativeness is not claimed – the goal was to generate interchanges between participants which reflect the sorts of discussions going on around dinner tables, workplace lunch rooms, and pubs around Australia, thus accessing standard discourses.
Rather than the usual series of questions, a set of still images was used, applying the photo-elicitation technique used by Skrbis and Woodward (2007). The images were selected to trigger conversations about ethnic, religious, national and supranational identities and relationships, orientations to the globe, values and visions for the future. The data presented here are responses to an image of the ‘Australian-made’ and ‘buy Australian’ logos. The point of including this image was to generate discussion about nationalist versus cosmopolitan consumption. As with all the images used, facilitators asked participants how the images made them feel about their identities and place in the world. Very little prompting was required – the beauty of the focus group as a method, particularly among friends, is that discussion flows naturally. Facilitators did occasionally press participants on why they felt a responsibility to compatriots rather than workers around the world, but most of the discussion was triggered simply by the image.
Transcripts were analysed inductively for emergent themes, and a content analysis was undertaken to identify which themes were most common. This quantitative analysis offers a basis from which to undertake discursive analysis of precisely what is said and how it is said (Edwards and Potter, 1992; Fairclough, 2013; Van Dijk, 1987; Wetherell and Potter, 1992). Discourse analysis (DA) takes as one of its topics rhetorical structures used in argument (Van Dijk, 1987). The approach is inductive, using categories and concepts made relevant in conversation by participants and is interested in broader level discourses, as well as conversation-interactional aspects. Critical DA explores the ways that ‘dominant structures stabilize conventions and naturalize them, [noting how] the effects of power and ideology in the production of meaning are obscured and acquire stable and natural forms: they are taken as ‘given’’ (Wodak, 2001: 3). It is the ‘taken as given-ness’ of buying national, and particularly, because of its counter-intuitiveness, how this is articulated by migrant and ethnic minority communities, which is the main focus here.
Quantitative content analysis of themes – Non-migrant/mainstream versus migrant/ethnic minority
Comparison of non-migrant/mainstream (NM/M) and migrant/ethnic minority (M/E) focus groups’ responses to the ‘Australian-made’ and ‘Buy Australian’ logos image.
NM/M: non-migrant/mainstream; M/E: migrant/ethnic minority.
The first point worth noting is that, as the totals suggest, mainstream focus groups spent considerably more time and were more varied in their discussion of the logo image than the migrant/ethnic minority groups. This is evident in the greater frequency across almost all themes, as well as the greater length of transcripts, with the mainstream groups’ discussions almost twice as long as the migrant/ethnic minority groups’. This is not simply a matter of facility with language – migrant groups’ discussions were not necessarily shorter overall. This simple quantitative analysis therefore suggests that non-migrants/mainstream had much more to say about buying Australian-made. However, this was not simply extended, overtly nationalistic, discussion, as perhaps one might expect from the mainstream group, but (also) articulation of a range of concerns, discussed briefly below.
Non-migrant/mainstream ambivalence
If the actual topics of discussion are noted, it is clear that the mainstream groups were more likely to articulate concerns around the ‘Buy Australian’ and ‘Australian-made’ logos. The most common themes were negative, specifically that ‘Australian-made’ products are not actually Australian-made (25 instances) and that they are more expensive (23 instances) (both findings of Fischer and Byron (1997)). There was also a general cynicism or scepticism towards the imperative (22 instances, compared to 3 among migrant groups), with participants suggesting it was being used for self-interested ends or that consumers were being manipulated. As a result, the tone of the discussion was quite different from that of the migrant/ethnic minority groups. For example, the use of the symbol was seen as ‘fake’, ‘a joke’ and ‘manipulation’. There was a general lack of trust in the logo: ‘I don’t trust any sign, I don’t trust any Australian-made thing, like sign, [ ] they all rort the system anyway so …’ (Triathlon sporting group); ‘It makes me want to turn it over and see if it was really made in China’ (Christian group). Incidentally, China was the common butt of criticisms of cheap labour and inferior products but also of fears about the selling of Australian land and the growing power of their economy compared to Australia (Fozdar, 2016).
Much of the cynicism was around the manipulation of the logo such that imported components or produce were often included in the final product: ‘Worst thing is, when you see it, it says “product of Australia, grown in China”, or something’; ‘Product of Australia, made of imported products’; ‘Problem with that Australian-made symbol, you can bring in … the raw materials from overseas and manufacture them into something and it’s called Australian-made’ (all extracts from the Bushfire defence group). Profits were also seen as potentially going offshore, making buying Australian-made products of overseas-owned companies suspect: ‘Well it doesn’t necessarily mean that the profits are going to stay in Australia’ (Triathlon sporting group). This lack of trust in the symbol was sometimes framed within a discourse of sadness and loss: Tail light (participants selected pseudonyms): It’s almost dead. [ ] Chardonnay: Yeah, it’s a shame Tail light: Yep, there is not too much left made in Australia [ ] They’re always promoting buy Australian but there’s very little left … (Silence) … and even when you see things like that, you can’t be sure it’s 100 percent Australian. (Triathlon sporting group)
Therefore, while there was an overriding nationalist presumption that buying Australian-made was best (Fozdar, 2018), there were immediate and extensive critiques associated with the actual veracity of the labels, producing a strongly ambivalent tone to the discussions. These themes were less common among the migrant/ethnic minority groups.
The ‘Economics’ and ‘Globalisation’ themes focussed on the economics of purchasing decisions in a globalising world. One argument was around the impracticality of demanding Australian production in a context of globalisation – global markets offer cheaper products, and under principles of neoliberalism, it makes sense to buy the cheapest product, regardless of origin, forcing countries to reconfigure their manufacturing to specialise only in areas of production in which they have a competitive advantage. As one participant put it, ‘it just makes no economic sense’ to buy Australian. However, this argument was seldom made and generally not supported. For example, when a participant self-identified as having studied economics and tried to explain the principle of competitive advantage to the others, suggesting ‘I see that [the Australian-made logo] as propaganda, and I just see it as something that’s encouraging people to be more racist and to not promote a more global economy’ (Sewing group), other participants simply disagreed with her, offering no argument apart from the need ‘to support Australian jobs’. Thus, counter-normative arguments were generally rejected.
Cost was seen as a significant barrier to buying Australian-made: ‘The average person won’t because if something’s cheaper they’ll buy that, I’m afraid’ (Historical Society group). But as this quote suggests, with the phrase ‘I’m afraid’, the bottom line is clearly that buying Australian-made is the normative, or ‘correct’, position. This was framed as being necessary to protect Australian industry: ‘I think it’s really important to support your own industry and support your own country. I think … If you don’t, then what choice have the manufacturers got but to go offshore, if you don’t support them?’ (Library staff group); and Australian jobs: ‘all our jobs are being exported … I worry about Australian jobs, especially youth. I talk to young people now that can’t get work because everything’s going overseas. And this is a big worry’ (Historical Society group). The notion of support for other Australians and Australian industry more generally was a key element in these framings – a moral obligation to support one’s own, defined in nationalist terms.
Yet interestingly, the non-migrant/mainstream groups were also more likely than the migrant/ethnic minority groups to discuss the ethical dimensions of buying overseas-made products, both in terms of responsibility to support those overseas, and buying ‘fair trade’ and in relation to concerns over exploitation of overseas workers with low wages and poor working conditions: ‘No. I don’t like the exploitation of the workers overseas who can make their products cheaper’ (Grief support group). They were also more likely to voice concerns over the environment, and to support ‘buy local’ from a desire to reduce their carbon footprint. These were not common arguments across the focus groups, however, and tended to cluster within a few of the more-educated groups.
Elsewhere I have analysed the dilemmatic quality of these discussions, demonstrating that despite the apparent ambivalence and greater level of discursive engagement by the mainstream groups, the default position across all groups was that buying Australian, in order to ‘look after our own’, is a fundamental ethical responsibility (Fozdar, 2018).
The discursive construction of migrant/ethnic minority consumer nationalism
I want to now focus on the specific ways migrant and ethnic minority groups discussed the question of the appropriateness of buying Australian. One might expect the issue to be more contentious among migrants and ethnic minorities given potential transnational loyalties and experiences of national exclusion, but in fact the opposite was found. As seen in Table 1, there was almost none of the ambivalence expressed in the mainstream focus groups. Instead, a taken-for-granted nationalism was evident. This contrasts with the findings of Poon et al. (2010), who found that Asian-born Australian migrants reported significantly lower levels of consumer ethnocentrism, although he also found the longer migrants had lived in Australia, the more ethnocentric they were likely to be, suggesting consumer ethnocentrism can be learned. In my data, regardless of whether they were from newer or more established migrant or ethnic groups, participants saw the imperative to buy Australian as a given, requiring little discussion. The following section, which takes a more detailed discursive approach to analysis than that above, points out some of the features of this consumer nationalism, particularly its taken-for-grantedness, relationship to loyalty, and reciprocity.
Taken-for-grantedness
The response to the image among the migrant and ethnic minority focus groups often took the following form: Facilitator: The next image [is] the ‘Buy Australian’ campaign logo. Ni: Yeah I think that’s good. Fann: We should support that. Ni: Yeah we should. Fann: Definitely. (Chinese group)
The migrant/ethnic focus groups tended to offer this style of definitive, affirmative response to the image, only elaborating when pushed by the facilitator: Liza: I like seeing that Facilitator: You like it? Liza: Because it’s … you know, ‘cause most of the things you see are not Australian-made, like clothing and stuff. And seeing that, you know, they’re made locally and probably supported jobs as well, [ ] it’s more authentic, like, more legit. (Polish group)
This straightforward and whole-hearted agreement appears to reflect what Billig (1995: 38) identified as everyday or banal nationalism, nationalist action that is ‘embedded in the routines of life’ that operate un-consciously. The signalling of the product as national, and the automatic support for such purchasing, reinforces the nation-state as the appropriate object of identification, belonging, loyalty and responsibility.
Reciprocity and support
This style of uncomplicated support was framed as a reciprocal responsibility based on loyalty, after participants were prompted for further elaboration. Examples extracted from five quite different focus groups demonstrate the ubiquity of this response: Facilitator: Yeah? Do you, do you think that our obligation to Australians is more important than our obligation to workers overseas? In terms of buying products? Abdul: It’s a two-way … again, there’s two sides of the thing. Everyone’s human; it’s a humanitarian thing, but our obligation to Australia, being, being your home … and it’s something, something that I think, we are all Muslims here [in the focus group], something that we learn in Islam as well, you support your home first. So Australia’s our home country; if I was to donate money to a charity it would be to Australia, or to a needy person, it would be to someone that’s in Australia, before someone … [ ] We do identify with Australia as our home and we’d support it regardless. (Arabic Young Men’s Group) Facilitator: Do you think your obligation to Australia is more important than your obligation to other workers overseas? Father Peter: [ ] this is the country that I live in, [ ] that supports me, that’s been supporting me from a little baby, so this is the country that I need to serve. (Greek Welfare Group) Facilitator: [ ] do you think our obligation to Australians is more important than our obligation to workers overseas? Various: Of course, of course. Yes, we live here, in Australia. Facilitator: Why do you think that? Why do you … Nadia: Because we are here. Unidentified: We are here, we’re in Australia now. Foziah: We should encourage Australia and … [ ] Facilitator: Why do you think we should encourage it? Tina: Because the job doesn’t go overseas, they stay here. Facilitator: So the job doesn’t go overseas? Tina: It’s our country, it’s our country. (Arabic Women’s group) Sanaa: We encourage that. We support that. [ ] We prefer to buy anything Australian-made. That’s why, maybe we love Australia or we love the life here … (Public housing estate residents of refugee background) Garry: I mean you want to buy an Australian-made or everything to keep the economy alive and jobs and everything like that. (Dutch group)
The language used suggests both ethno (or ‘hot’) nationalism, (‘home’, ‘supporting me from a little baby’ and ‘love’) and civic (or ‘cool’) nationalism (‘support’, ‘we live here’ and ‘we are here’) as proposed by Gellner (2008) and Skey (2011), suggesting that loyalty is both affective and instrumental.
For those who offered reasons for buying Australian-made, these were predominantly around the need to support Australian jobs and ‘local industry’. Like the non-migrant/mainstream groups, this was sometimes framed in terms of a threat from overseas competitors. In the following quote, the fact that ‘this little country’ is ‘still hanging on somehow’ against these more efficient competitors, is a matter of pride: Fiona: And it’s becoming very difficult to sustain this, Australian, the Australian-made symbol, because, you know, countries like China and … they’re just taking over because they’re a lot larger in the manufacturing industry. So anything that has this symbol on it, I’m very proud of. Because it means that we’re still hanging on somehow, this little country that we are …. (Greek group)
This sense of obligation was so strong that where migrants and ethnic minority groups did not simply accept the ‘buy Australian’ imperative, their rejection was framed apologetically, as demonstrated in bold in the following quotes: Boubou: Bella: To be honest
The generally unqualified expression of loyalty, and apologetic tone if challenging the ‘buy Australian’ imperative, suggests something about migrants’ and ethnic minorities’ position. Given Warde’s (1994) argument that the degree of anxiety associated with purchasing consumer items depends on the relative cultural authority of the consumer, and Woodward’s (2006) findings about the use of symbolic codes associated with consumption and their relationship to relative structural locations, migrants’ definitive support for buying Australian-made may partly be a product of their structural location. As migrants, their loyalty must constantly be demonstrated (Hage, 1998; Kabir, 2004), unlike those who form the ‘charter group’ (whose affiliation is not in question). In these assertions of loyalty in purchasing decisions, they are affiliating with their adopted nation, by preferencing its peoples when considering to whom a duty of care is owed. Their discursive performance demonstrates that their interests coalesce with those of ‘the nation’. Such a performance of loyalty is not required from the ‘charter group’, whose hegemonic position actually enables their nationalism to be taken-as-given, allowing critique without raising suspicion about their loyalties.
The phrasing in the quotes above is significant – the term ‘support’ recurs, suggesting not an economic impulse, but a humanitarian one. So for these migrants a sense of loyalty to Australia, solidarity with other Australian workers, and concern for the success of the economy in order to ensure a bright future for its people, appear paramount, regardless of personal economic circumstances. This is why such responses were coded as ‘loyalty to Australia’ rather than ‘patriotism’.
Conclusion
The findings demonstrate discursively that consumer nationalism reflects a moral orientation motivated by a belief that purchasing country-produced products is ‘the right thing to do’, because it is assumed to strengthen the domestic economy, protect domestic jobs, and to be patriotic. It is an internalisation of ‘economic nationalism’, that sees the value and legitimacy of consumption as deriving from its contribution to the national economy (Castelló and Mihelj, 2017), seeing alternatives as unpatriotic and even threatening. As such, it is fundamentally tied to national identity and an example of nationalism as ‘the practical accomplishment of ordinary people engaging in mundane activities in their everyday lives’ (Fox and Miller-Idriss, 2008: 554).
But what is evident from the data is a slightly different tone in the expression of consumer nationalism between migrant and mainstream groups. In contrast to Poon et al.’s (2010) quantitative findings that migrants report significantly lower levels of consumer ethnocentrism, my data suggest that at least when talking about purchasing choices, migrants and ethnic minorities are in fact more likely to explicitly and unambiguously endorse buying Australian than their mainstream counterparts. This warrants some consideration. Consumption is a means of collective identity construction (Bourdieu, 1984), and discussions of purchasing choices generate and reproduce in-group and out-group categories (Baughn and Yaprak, 1996). The data suggest that migrants and ethnic minorities align themselves with an Australian identity by supporting the taken-for-granted imperative to buy Australian-made products, and do so with less nuancing and cynicism than the ‘charter group’. The fact that migrants and ethnic minorities were more likely to adopt this stance uncritically reinforces the importance of the nation-state in the imagining of (their) belonging and responsibility (Calhoun, 2007; Skey, 2013), and suggests migration does not necessarily weaken, but can in fact strengthen, this sense of responsibility. The analysis suggests that this is related to a sense of reciprocity – a desire to support and give back to an adopted country that the migrants and ethnic minorities see as having provided for them.
However, this is not to say that the mainstream groups did not demonstrate banal nationalism in their responses. Cohen and Taylor (1992: 87) talk of master scripts that offer a ‘common cultural resource’ which can be tapped into when talking, for example, about the nation. These include shared values, norms and beliefs which can be drawn upon to present oneself as a competent and valuable member of society (Van Gorp, 2007). Clearly the non-migrant/mainstream participants based their critiques of ‘buy Australian’, and ambivalence towards it, from within the master script that consumer nationalism is best, embedded in their articulations of the value of tradition, nostalgia for a more ‘pure’ past, desire for profits to remain in country, valuing of local employment, assumptions of national superiority in quality and morality (we make (made) things better), concerns about threat and so on. Their apparent ambivalence and critique is done in a way that reinforces their hegemonic position – they can criticise and challenge because these certainties are given, and, as the charter group, their loyalty is not questioned. Their hegemonic position entitles them to play around with the imperative in ways the migrant groups could not.
Evidence provided here suggests that migrants and ethnic minorities also tap into this cultural stock, accepting the need for nationalist consumption choices less problematically than the mainstream groups. It was argued that this apparently reflects loyalty and reciprocity to their adopted country, but the possibility must be left open that the data may also reflect a performance of such loyalty, as migrants are often required to demonstrate commitment to the nation in a way country-born (and those not ‘visibly different’ from the mainstream) are not (Hage, 1998). Thus, this response may alternatively be explained as either the result of a social desirability effect (or as conversation analysts put it, ‘recipient design’ (Schegloff, 2007) resulting from the focus group situation, or alternatively as genuine, but prompted by a desire to be the ‘good’ migrants/‘ethnics’.
There was little evidence of politically motivated consumption oriented to more universalist or cosmopolitan values across samples. Rather, nationalism was paramount. This supports the prediction of Castelló and Mihelj (2017) that a cosmopolitan commitment in consumption choices requires more deliberate action, perhaps linked to explicit objectives focussed around movements for social justice, fair trade, or environmental causes (Holzer, 2006). And while these authors argue that consumer nationalism is marked by ‘ongoing contestation over what it means to belong to a nation’ (Castelló and Mihelj, 2017: 9), for migrant and non-migrant participants alike in this study, there was a consensus that the appropriate way to be in the world, is to be Australian, and the appropriate way to be Australian, is to buy Australian.
It must be acknowledged that there are a number of limitations to the study. As qualitative research, using a convenience sample of existing collectives, claims to generalisability would be inappropriate. However, given the key focus was on the discursive construction of the ‘buy national’ imperative, the large body of discursive data generated is sufficient to offer some suggestive commentary. Second, what has been analysed are reports of purchasing orientations, not actual purchasing practices. Future research into actual consumption practices would demonstrate whether, and how, the apparent difference between migrant/ethnic minority and mainstream orientations plays out in practice. Finally, as this was qualitative focus group data, it was not possible to undertake an analysis of the relationship between socio-economic status or level of education and orientations to consumption. This would also be a valuable direction for future research.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The author would like to acknowledge the research assistants who facilitated the focus groups and Brian Spittles who assisted with data management. This paper benefitted from the insightful comments of two reviewers, whose contribution is much appreciated.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Australian Research Council Future Fellowship scheme (grant no. FT100100432).