Caitlin Nunn

‘I came to this country for a better life’: factors mediating employment trajectories among young people who migrated to Australia as refugees during adolescence

Located at the intersection of two vulnerable groups in the contemporary labour market, young people who migrate as refugees during adolescence face a unique constellation of opportunities and challenges that shape their employment trajectories. Yet, the tendency for research to focus on the early years of refugee settlement means that we have an inadequate understanding of the factors that mediate their employment decisions, experiences and outcomes. Based on interviews with 51 young people, this article explores how aspirations, responsibilities, family, education and networks are understood to influence the employment trajectories of adolescent refugee migrants. While this article draws attention to the complex and dynamic range of challenges and constraints that these young people negotiate in the pursuit of satisfying and sustainable employment, what also emerges is an optimistic and determined cohort who, even as they at times unsuccessfully prepare for and navigate the labour market, maintain high hopes for a better life.

Mobility and security: the perceived benefits of citizenship for resettled young people from refugee backgrounds

ABSTRACT In recent decades, the meaning and value of formal state citizenship has shifted dramatically. In the same period, scholarship on citizenship has drawn attention to the proliferation of alternative forms of sub-, supra- and transnational citizenship, at times obscuring the ongoing importance of formal state citizenship. For refugees, however, formal state citizenship remains a critical and widely shared goal. Drawing on interviews with 51 young people from refugee backgrounds in Melbourne, Australia, this article explores the intersecting themes of mobility and security that were identified by participants as the most important benefits of acquiring formal state citizenship in the country of resettlement. In contrast to the insecurity of forced migration, formal state citizenship provides a privileged mobility that enables refugee-background youth to maintain and create transnational identities and attachments and to be protected while doing so, while also granting a secure status within the nation state and insurance against further displacement in an uncertain future. In offering these forms of mobility and security, formal state citizenship contributes to a sense of ontological security among refugee-background youth, providing an important foundation for building national and transnational futures.

Negotiating national (non)belongings: Vietnamese Australians in ethno/multicultural Australia

ABSTRACT Many immigrant-receiving countries are characterised by increasing multigenerational ethnocultural diversity, with associated policies and discourses of inclusion. Yet they often simultaneously resist relinquishing narratives and practices grounded in idealised notions of ethnocultural homogeneity. This results in the circulation of multiple, often competing, ideas of the nation, with significant implications for national (non)belonging among migrants and their descendants. Based on interviews with members of seven Vietnamese Australian families, this article explores their discursive navigation of two competing ideas of Australia: as ethnocultural and multicultural. Applying a conceptual framework of belonging that attends to the relation between the personal and the political, this article demonstrates that, for migrants and their descendants, national (non)belonging is a dynamic and dialogic process of negotiating multiple national spheres, each governed by different politics and offering different possibilities for belonging. The multigenerational interview cohort additionally provides insights into the role of migration generation in mediating this process.

Translations-Generations: Representing and Producing Migration Generations Through Arts-Based Research

ABSTRACT Migration generations play a central role in structuring and mediating relations in immigrant-background groups and are important conceptual categories for understanding how these groups change over time. Yet, in both research and practice, communicating the complexities of intergenerational relations and generational change can be challenging. Tacit, sensuous, affective and embodied aspects of generations frequently evade capture in conventional research approaches, while generational differences can impede understanding within immigrant-background families and communities. Arts-based research, through its engagement with alternative modes of knowing and understanding, and its capacity to reach beyond the academy and across generations, offers possibilities for addressing both of these challenges. Via an account of a collaborative arts-based research project exploring Vietnamese Australian generations, and focusing on two of the artworks produced, this article demonstrates the potential of arts-based research to contribute to producing and sharing knowledge about intergenerational relations and generational change in immigrant-background communities.

Non-metropolitan productions of multiculturalism: refugee settlement in rural Australia

ABSTRACT In spite of the widespread backlash against multicultural policies, diversity remains a feature of globalized societies, requiring better understandings of how cultural difference is negotiated in rapidly transforming communities. Building on existing studies of multiculturalism in metropolitan contexts, we use interviews and ethnographic research to consider the transformation of a non-metropolitan community from a relatively homogeneous to an increasingly diverse place resulting from recent humanitarian resettlement flows. We argue that the new arrivals and established settlers in this regional city collaborate in the discursive and practical production of a form of multiculturalism that is shaped by the particularities of a rural imaginary, which they assert as distinct from urban experiences of super-diversity. At the same time, the local emphasis on rurality contributes to the reproduction of power inequalities that limit opportunities for eliminating discrimination and social exclusion in spite of evidence of conviviality in formal and informal encounters.