A multicultural success story? Australian integration in comparative focus

Immigrant and ethnic minority political representation

Race, Ethnicity and the Participation Gap tackles an issue that has long been recognised as a critical indicator of integration – that is, the political participation (or lack thereof) of ‘visible’ immigrant and ethnic minorities. Pietsch’s starting point is simple: we can assess the representativeness of national-level institutions by how well they reflect the diversity of their populations. This is especially the case, she argues, in ‘settler and culturally diverse societies’ which ‘ought to mirror their multicultural populations’ in order to be viewed as genuinely representative (p. 3). It is with this normative framework of descriptive representation that she approaches the massive discrepancy between Australian minority populations and minority representatives. While the US and Canada still have not achieved representative parity in their national legislatures and assemblies, both have achieved much higher levels of visible minority participation than Australia has (19.5% and 13.6% respectively in 2015) as well as an upward trajectory in numbers of non-white representatives since 2000. That Australia has not, despite structural societal similarities, would seem to be indicative of either significant social inequalities or a lack of opportunities for immigrant political integration. It also raises serious questions concerning the quality of Australian representative democracy.

Pietsch’s concern is to understand why Australia lags so far behind other countries in the political integration and representation of immigrants. A variety of reasons often cited in the literature for the lack of minority participation in political institutions include immigration and citizenship patterns, political party barriers, socioeconomic status, professional qualifications and language skills, group characteristics such as origin, size and concentration and social factors such as discrimination and exclusion (p. 22). Pietsch examines the validity of these explanations with the use of mixed quantitative and qualitative methods. The book begins with an overview of the historical and legal-institutional contexts of the three countries, before narrowing in on the Australian context. Chapter 4, for instance, makes use of qualitative data from interviews with MPs from immigrant and non-immigrant backgrounds. Interestingly, while the vast majority acknowledged discrimination and racial prejudice as factors in the recruitment, selection and nomination of party members, Pietsch observed a sense of defeatism in relation to party and faction gatekeeping and the consequences of this for immigrant and ethnic minority candidates. Instead, MPs were more likely to attribute responsibility for the lack of participation to immigrant communities themselves, who were variously perceived as ‘politically disengaged, inappropriately strategic, inexperienced and constrained by homeland cultural and political origins’ (p. 101).

Chapters 5, 6 and 7 test these assumptions through use of quantitative data and a focus on Asian-Australians, the minority group with the least proportional representation in national political institutions. Being Asian is the most important predictor of the absence of party identification in Australia (p. 108). Nonetheless, this does not mean that Asian-Australians are not interested in politics. Pietsch shows that Asians in general demonstrate an interest in informal participation in Australian politics as well as home-country politics – however, they have low feelings of political efficacy. Contrary to socioeconomic explanations such as length of stay in Australia, she interprets this as stemming from a general lack of political empowerment relating to structural and social barriers. Chapter 7 shows that Asian immigrants are more likely to have experienced racial discrimination and less likely to enter professional and managerial positions than their European counterparts, even those considered highly skilled. In this regard, Piestch makes a solid case for the significance of low-level discrimination in Asian political disempowerment.

What Pietsch ultimately seems to be arguing for is reform of Australia’s political-legal system – after all, both the US and Canada have white dominant societies and are doing much better with descriptive political representation. The key distinction she isolates is that Australia lacks legal-institutional frameworks that encourage naturalisation and provide symbolic and material support for cultural diversity. In Canada and the US, affirmative action, quotas and funding for minority advocacy groups politicise identity in a way to make it relevant at the top level of politics. The watering down of multicultural policy in Australia, along with residency requirements, the citizenship test and lack of dual or multiple citizenship, has the opposite effect of hindering ethnic and immigrant participation. Pietsch thus places responsibility for the lack of minority political representation squarely back onto Australia’s institutions, which, she argues, are constrained by an understanding of multiculturalism as simply social service provision. This is a provocative interjection, yet it does raise further questions which are perhaps illustrated best by the decision to focus on Asian-Australians. Pietsch notes that pan-ethnic mobilisation is essential to political representation but the question of a pan-Asian political identity in Australia is not clear, something which is amplified by her inclusion of Chinese, Indians, Filipinos and Vietnamese in the category. While she argues that there is some potential for collective mobilisation based on common interests of taxation, the economy and education, as well as a slight preference for the Labor party, this is perhaps counter-intuitive given the dominant logics of identity in Australia, which tend to make sharp distinctions between Asian communities as well as between migration waves (Busbridge, 2017). That Asian identity is a more meaningful category of mobilisation in the US but not Canada, which has a similar immigration history to Australia (p. 112) ought to invite additional engagement on the multiplicity of factors shaping integration.

Broadening the comparative lens

Given that Australian policies, regimes and attitudes towards immigration find parallels in North America and Western Europe, Alba and Foner’s transatlantic study of integration in Strangers No More is a valuable way to broaden comparative scope. All of the countries Alba and Foner deal with in this study – Canada and the US in North America and Britain, France, Germany and the Netherlands in Western Europe – are reckoning with the consequences mass post-war immigration and the challenges presented by this new cultural diversity. Their focus is what they call ‘low-status’ immigrants, that is, those with the lowest levels of education, who are typically marked as ethnically or racially different. In Canada, however, unusually selective immigration makes the category of ‘visible minority’ more apt. Despite different immigration histories and institutional structures, these countries have significant populations of low-status groups, such as Hispanics in the US, Turks in Germany and North Africans in France, all of whom face the ‘greatest barriers’ to integration in the first and second generations (p. 4). Despite higher levels of human capital, Canada’s visible minorities also face similar barriers.

Like Pietsch, Alba and Foner see political representation – that is, the ability to be voted into office – as the ‘paramount indicator’ of social inclusion (p. 143). Interestingly, immigrant groups are least successful in Germany and France but most successful in the Netherlands with 10% representation in national legislatures; Canada and the US rank somewhere in the middle when it comes to the electoral success of visible minorities and Hispanics. In some ways, this is surprising given the Netherlands’ very public turn away from multiculturalism in recent years. However, Alba and Foner emphasise it as a leftover from the comparatively strong multicultural policies the country implemented in the 1980s, which were based on group empowerment and included granting foreigners with five years residence the right to vote in local elections. In this regard, they conclude that ‘countries that seem to have provided most scope for immigrant-origin politicians have been most willing to acknowledge immigrants as ethnic minorities with distinctive needs and cultural rights’ (p. 164). The fact that the Netherlands, even despite its current politics, ranks most highly would seem to provide support for Pietsch’s arguments for a more affirmative approach as well as the power of descriptive representation to broaden the life chances and opportunities of ethnic and immigrant minorities.

One the most valuable contributions of Strangers No More is its foregrounding of integration as a multidimensional, interactional and heterogeneous process. The book explores multiple factors that facilitate or impede integration, such as educational inequality, educational attainment, residential segregation, mixed marriages and religious arrangements. Just as Pietsch confronts common explanations in her book, Alba and Foner tackle grand narratives in theirs, such as the idea certain national models are more amenable to incorporation or that settler societies are more culturally inclusive. In contrast to a strong North American–European divide, Strangers No More demonstrates that ‘there are no clear-cut winners or losers: each society fails or succeeds [at integration] in different ways’ (p. 3). While there are common barriers in the six countries, no single institutional system or model is capable of ensuring parity between ‘immigrants and their descendants’ and the native population (p. 225) – integration is simply too complex for easy answers. In the case of residential segregation, for instance, Alba and Foner emphasise that immigrant neighbourhoods can be both ‘stations of integration or intensifiers of disadvantage’ (chapter 4). Furthermore, good performance on certain indices of integration does not necessarily make for good performance on others, and in fact may work against what would be deemed successful integration on different measures.

Take the issue of political representation. Pietsch notes that representation is best achieved when racial or ethnic minorities are geographically concentrated. In contrast to high levels of immigrant residential concentration in many areas of North America and Western Europe, most Australian electoral districts are mixed, with Anglos the majority population (Pietsch, p. 75). While it may not lend itself to easy ethnic mobilisation, Alba and Foner suggest that residence in mixed areas where members of the native majority live generally implies greater connection to mainstream society (p. 97). Similarly, while Pietsch concludes that discrimination is hindering Asian-Australian political representation, it is pertinent to recognise that discrimination may have the opposite effect of politicising group difference and compelling minority political organisation. This is arguably the case in the US, where a tradition of grassroots organising is grounded in a more laissez faire approach to cultural diversity and a greater reliance on funding from private sources (Alba and Foner, p. 116). Moreover, the ‘paradox of race’ (Alba and Foner, ch. 5) is that the US is strongest at group-specific rights and affirmative action precisely because it has such a deep-seated and troubling racial history. Immigrants in the US benefit from the institutional, political and discursive legacies of the civil rights movement (and often in ways that national minorities like African-Americas do not) and other attempts to redress the injuries of past injustices (p. 109). In this sense, it may be those groups who have suffered significant discrimination, socioeconomic disadvantage and social exclusion that are ‘better poised for electoral success’ (p. 166).

Reassessing integration

Alba and Foner conceptualise integration as the full membership of society, where immigrants have the ‘same educational and work opportunities as long-term native-born citizens’, the same life chances ‘to better their own and their children’s lot’ as well as a sense of dignity and belonging ‘that comes from acceptance and inclusion in a broad range of societal institutions’ (pp. 1–2). Although full parity is perhaps impossible given the historical recency of large-scale immigration, they emphasise integration as a two-way street which requires some changes in mainstream institutions in order to allow immigrants to participate and advance socially and materially. Piestch’s critique is that Australian institutions simply have not been open enough to this type of change, which would require a renewed appreciation for ‘nation-building ideas of inclusive citizenship and identity, cultural diversity, cultural rights, recognition and representation’ (p. 10). Integration is encouraged, but only to the extent that ‘political and economic structures are left intact’ (p. 69).

This critical perspective is the point of departure of Goksel’s Integration of Immigrants and the Theory of Recognition, which argues against placing the burden of integration onto immigrants and instead placing it on institutional problems that halt integration in the first place. Similar to Pietsch, who views the lack of minority political representation in Australia as evidence of a democratic deficit, Goksel maintains that integration should be seen as a democratic justice problem. Viewing integration in these terms opens it to new tools, approaches and modes of interpretation. Goksel’s chosen approach is Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition wherein self-realisation is fostered through social relations. In concentrating on the social pathologies ‘suffered by immigrants in the host country’ (p. 16), she maintains that recognition theory brings into view integration from the perspective of the immigrant, as well as the institutional and social orders of rights, status and esteem of host countries and how they position ethnic minority groups.

The ostensible focus of Integration of Immigrants is the socioeconomic conditions experienced by recent immigrants. Certainly, economic integration is an important indicator of successful immigration policy and there is evidence that minority groups conceptualise integration in socioeconomic terms rather than cultural ones, focusing on things like opportunities for good employment, material wealth and access to quality education (e.g. Hersi, 2016). As Goksel notes in the context of Canada, almost all indicators suggest that visible minority immigrants face economic and social barriers that European ones do not, with higher rates of poverty and employment. However, rather than low-skilled or humanitarian immigrants, who rank most poorly on these measures, she concentrates on highly skilled immigrants who enter with professional permanent visas. As is the case in Australia, skilled immigrants encounter lack of recognition of their overseas qualifications and very rarely find work in the profession in which they are trained and for which they received a visa. The choice of recognition theory in this regard has much to offer, insofar as it allows Goksel to speak to the expectations of such immigrants, which most certainly have a role to play in perceived and actual integration. The strong political theory bent of the book means that she is unable to offer any sustained empirical reflections on this beyond her personal experience, but she nonetheless identifies an important issue for integration in countries with highly selective immigration regimes like Canada and Australia.

Alba and Foner assert that the ‘immigrant bargain’ has always entailed the acceptance of low-level work for improved future economic prospects (p. 47) and there is broad evidence to suggest intergenerational economic integration into the mainstream. Australia, for instance, sees blue collar to white collar social mobility for the third generation, even if the pace of integration is differentiated for Europeans and non-Europeans (Johnston et al., 2015). The question is how does the immigrant bargain hold up for highly skilled immigrants, for whom intergenerational mobility may not suffice for the social acknowledgement, esteem and self-realisation promised by the global capitalist economy? What Goksel is actually flagging is the more subjective dimensions of integration like meaning and emotion, which have a powerful yet underexamined role to play in immigrant experiences. As Jeffrey Alexander (2013: 55) suggests, ‘emotional responses to immigration tell us relatively little about the objective situation, but a great deal about the condition of social solidarity’. Do different categories of immigrants have different expectations and what might be the consequences for integration and political participation? Pietsch notes that the socioeconomic differences associated with high- and low-skilled immigration are a point of differentiation in the Asian-Australian community. How these distinctions feed into pan-ethnic political mobilisation is yet to be fully recognised in the literature, likewise the subjective dynamics that compel immigrant political action.

Conclusion

The three books discussed here raise a number of evocative and politically astute questions for understanding the dynamics of integration in Australia. By bringing the Alba and Foner, and Goksel books into conversation with Pietsch’s Race, Ethnicity and the Participation Gap as the centrepiece, I hope to have flagged some of these or at the very least made a case for the value of comparative scholarship for an enlarged and more robust perspective on Australia’s position as an apparently successful immigration country. Pietsch makes a strong, and I think critical, argument that policy frameworks are less significant for immigrant and ethnic minority political representation than are ‘practical resources and symbolic support to participate as leaders in society and politics’ (p. 77). The focus on policy in much research on Australian integration arguably presents a roadblock to the type of critical work the authors invite us to engage in, redirecting attention and resources from more political questions of immigrant incorporation, participation and representation. It may additionally contribute to the depoliticising of ‘race and persistent inequalities’ (p. 6) in Australia. Of course, there is much to commend in the Australian multicultural success story, but it is ‘a success that demands our vigilance’ (Soutphomasane, 2016). As Pietsch puts to us, and Alba and Foner and Goksel reinforce, this vigilance can only be sustained with a clear-eyed perspective on national dynamics and a willingness to wade into politics.