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This book offers a comprehensive and critical analysis of the tropes employed in the categorisation of international students living and studying in Australia. Establishing the position of migrant students as 'subjects of the border', the author employs various models of emotion in an analysis of the ways in which public debates on migration and education in Australia have categorised international students as objects of national compassion or resentment in relation to other national concerns at the time, such as the country's place in the Asia-Pacific region, its sovereignty, the integrity of its borders and the relative competitiveness of its economy.
List of contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Where I Come From: Emotions, Race and the Border
1. Becoming ‘Illegal’: Compassion, Multicultural Love and Resentment
2. Failing to Be(come) ‘Ideal’: Multiculturalism, Whiteness and the Politics of Resentment
3. Think Before You Travel: Urban Violence, Risk Management and the Territorialisation of the Australian Public Space
4. ‘Is Australia Racist?’: Interpretive Denial and the Politics of Anger
5. Feeling like an International Student: Racial Grief, Compassion and National Sentimentality
Conclusion: Fantasies of Multiculturalism: Whiteness, Emotions and the Border
Index
About the author
Maria Elena Indelicato is Lecturer in the Department of Media and Communication at the Ningbo Institute of Technology, Zhejiang University, China.
Summary
This book offers a comprehensive and critical analysis of the tropes employed in the categorization of international students living and studying in Australia. Establishing the position of migrant students as ’subjects of the border’, the author employs various models of emotion in an analysis of the ways in which public debates on migration and education in Australia have problematised international students as an object of national compassion or resentment in relation to other national concerns at the time, such as the country’s place in the Asia-Pacific region, the integrity of its borders and the relative competitiveness of its economy.
Applying an innovative methodology, which combines the breadth of a diachronic study with the depth afforded by the close analysis of a diverse range of case studies – including the protests staged by Indian international students against a spate of violent attacks, which led to their labelling as ‘soft targets’ in national discourses – Australia’s New Migrants constitutes an important contribution to our understanding of the ways in which emotions shape national collectives’ orientation towards others. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology, cultural studies and education with interests in migration, race and emotion.
Additional text
"Through her close readings of knowledge produced about international student emotions in government and scholarly literatures, and of affective responses to international students among the Australian public, Indelicato convincingly argues that the students are framed in ways that seek the maintenance of Australia’s moral and political authority over time and across shifting economic and geopolitical contexts." - Sharon Stein, Educational Studies
"In placing colonialism and its (dis)continuitity at the heart of her affective discussion of racism, Indelicato has made an important contribution to the body of critical postcolonial studies." - Ivana Prazic, Postcolonial Interventions
