Cultural Citizenship and Refugee Integration: The Case of African Youth in Australia

Introduction

We live in a time of mass displacement (IOM, 2020; UNHCR, 2020). The latest UN Refugee Agency’s report shows that by the end of 2019, there were 79.5 million forcibly displaced people worldwide, including 45.7 million internally displaced persons and 26 million refugees (UNHCR, 2020). The luckiest ones have been resettled in economically advanced and politically stable countries. In 2019, 26 countries admitted 107,800 refugees (UNHCR, 2020). As part of the resettlement effort, there have been international efforts to meet the complexity of the economic, social, and educational needs of refugees. In 2016, all 193 Member States of the United Nations unanimously adopted the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants (UN, 2016). The Declaration specifically aims at widening refugees’ access to social and economic opportunities. Signatory governments (including Australia) expressed their commitment to widening educational opportunities for refugee children and youth. Further, under the Global Compact on Refugees, the United Nations General Assembly emphasises that integration necessitates “preparedness on the part of refugees to adapt to the host society” as well as “a corresponding readiness on the part of host communities and public institutions to welcome refugees and to meet the needs of a diverse population” (UNGA, 2018, para.98). Likewise, the 2018 Kolkata Declaration (YU, 2018) on the State of the Global Protection System for Refugees and Migrants states that any humanitarian protection framework ‘must combat discrimination based on race, religion, caste, ability, sexuality, gender and class that affect rights and dignity of all human beings’.

Anderson (2010) defines integration as an intergroup cooperation “on terms of equality and mutual regard in all institutions of civil society” (p.95, emphasis added). Genuine integration is reciprocal—both new arrivals and hosting societies should make efforts toward cultural adaptation. For refugees, integration is a preferred acculturation strategy because it allows them to maintain their cultural identities, to stay in touch with their past and tradition while fully interacting with society. The notion of integration underscores the fact that it is impossible for an adult refugee to completely detached herself from the past, from her origin, her tradition. But, as Berry (1992) notes, integration “depends on the policies and attitudes held by the dominant society, and whether acculturating individuals prefer strategies that correspond to these views in the larger society” (p.74).

This chapter deals with the representation of refugee-background Africans in Australia. Although the presence of Black Africans in Australia traces back to the arrival of the First Fleet in January 1788 (Pybus, 2006), the first substantial number of African refugees (106 in total, including 96 Ethiopians) arrived on humanitarian visas and settled in Melbourne in 1984 (RCA, 2016). Starting from the second half of the 1990s, the settlement of African refugees increased considerably. In the first decade of the century alone, more than 48,000 Africans were settled in Australia under the humanitarian program and Africa remained one of the three regions targeted as priorities by DIAC (DIAC, 2010, p.10). However, the integration of the community remains a critical public issue. Refugee integration is a reciprocal process. As much as refugees have to adapt to the shared values without losing their own, destination societies need to offer necessary opportunities for the refugees to re-establish their lives. Although multicultural societies such as Australia usually offer an ideal condition for refugee integration and there exist a range of government and non-government initiatives that aim to support refugee resettlement and integration (Australian Government, 2019), Africans in remain largely on the margin (Molla, 2020). Conservative politicians and media personalities routinely accuse the groups of failing to ‘fit in’.