Australia’s New Migrants

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 problematised inter-
national 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 dia-
chronic 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 contribu-
tion to our understanding of the ways in which emotions shape national collec-
tives’ orientation towards others. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology,
cultural studies and education with interests in migration, race and emotion.

Maria Elena Indelicato is Lecturer in the Department of Media and Communica-

tion at the Ningbo Institute of Technology, Zhejiang University, China.
Routledge Research in Race and Ethnicity
For a full list of titles, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/sociology/series/
RRRE

17 Contemporary African American Families

Achievements, Challenges, and Empowerment Strategies in
the Twenty-First Century
Edited by Dorothy Smith-Ruiz, Sherri Lawson Clark and
Marcia Watson

18 Return Migration and Psychosocial Wellbeing

Edited by Zana Vathi and Russell King

19 Mapping the New African Diaspora in China

Race and the Cultural Politics of Belonging
Shanshan Lan

20 Doing Violence, Making Race

Mattias Smangs

21 Critical Reflections on Migration, ‘Race’ and Multiculturalism

Australia in a Global Context
Edited by Martina Boese, Vince Marotta

22 Mixed Race in Asia

Past, Present and Future
Zarine L. Rocha and Farida Fozdar

23 Lived Experiences of Multiculture

The New Social and Spatial Relations of Diversity
Sarah Neal, Katy Bennett, Allan Cochrane and Giles Mohan

24 The Body, Authenticity and Racism

Lindsey Garratt

25 Australia’s New Migrants

International Students’ History of Affective Encounters with the Border
Maria Elena Indelicato
Australia’s New Migrants
International Students’ History
of Affective Encounters with
the Border

Maria Elena Indelicato

First published 2018
by Routledge
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© 2018 Maria Elena Indelicato
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has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
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To my extended family
Contents

Acknowledgmentsviii
List of figuresxi

Introduction: where I come from: emotions, race

and the border 1

1 Becoming ‘illegal’: compassion, multicultural love

and resentment 21

2 Failing to be(come) ‘ideal’: multiculturalism, whiteness

and the politics of resentment 53

3 ‘Think Before You Travel’: urban violence, risk

management and the territorialisation of the Australian
public space 91

4 ‘Is Australia racist?’: interpretive denial and the politics

of anger 126

5 Feeling like an international student: racial grief,

compassion and national sentimentality 155

Conclusion: fantasies of multiculturalism: whiteness,

emotions and the border 180

Index185
Acknowledgments

Having started working on this project in the form of a doctoral thesis in a country
and language other than mine as far back as 2009, I like thinking of this book
as the result of a long chain of events, the scale of which varies in quantity and
quality, but that ultimately all contributed to the shaping of this book as it stands
now. It was indeed a long journey, which involved innumerable encounters of
many kinds. The solely textual included: Norma Alcorcón, bell hooks, Audre
Lorde, Sara Ahmed, Suvendrini Perera, Maria Giannacopoulos, Lauren Berlant,
Sue Campbell, Elizabeth Spelman and Ann Alin Cheng, to cite only the most
important. I have them to thank for equipping me with the knowledge and lan-
guage necessary to understand the making of multiple forms of oppression and
the excruciating complexity of everyday life. To all of them, I express my deepest
gratitude.
Of the same importance were the encounters I made either purposely or acci-
dentally – many of them arising from a combination of the two. Knowing nothing
about Australia when I first arrived in Sydney, firstly, I want to thank Jackie Jarrett
for introducing me to the history of violent dispossession of Aboriginal people
while I was working for her on a research project at the Mudgin-Gal centre in
Redfern. I would also like to acknowledge the Italian migrants who came to Aus-
tralia in the aftermath of World War II whose stories I had the privilege of listen-
ing to while working on a research project for Francesco Ricatti. The stories about
their lives in a time so relevant in terms of race politics in Australia were not only
incredibly rich but also instructive to understand my own position as a Southern
Italian and temporary migrant. My gratitude goes also to Francesco Ricatti for our
many conversations about race and emotions in Australia, but also for the sup-
port he gave to me throughout my PhD. Likewise, I would like to thank Victoria
Grieves for sharing with me her immense knowledge about the histories of Abo-
riginal families. Witnessing her retrieve and put together the most disparate array
of historical information and theories most definitely improved my archival skills.
Colleagues from the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at the Univer-
sity of Sydney were equally important. Among them, I want first to thank Hong-
wei Bao and Zitong Qiu for walking me out of academic isolation and mentoring
me. To them, I owe a great deal of gratitude, as they were the very first to include
me in their lives and nurture me both intellectually and emotionally. On a similar
 Acknowledgments ix
note, I would like to acknowledge the influence that my many conversations with
Sarah Cefai on her doctoral thesis on the singularity of feelings had on shaping my
understanding of how affective subjectivities are bestowed through discourses.
Our exchanges on matters related to critical feelings and what we were reading
truly helped me to formulate the theoretical framework employed in this study.
My gratitude goes also to Jessica Kean for pointing out how the Australian gov-
ernmental response to the attacks against Indian international students resembled
safety discourses concerning women when I presented an earlier version of Chap-
ter 3. Lastly, I would like to thank Remy Low for giving me the thing I needed
most to get through the many downs of completing a doctoral thesis while being
positioned as a ‘subject at risk’ in neoliberal academia, which is serenity.
From the Department, I want also to thank Natalya Lusty for having supported
my work when many others doubted it and my associate supervisor Guy Redden
for his insightful advice on theoretical matters but also for his brilliant use of met-
aphors to explain the process of writing and revising. My deepest gratitude goes
also to my PhD supervisor Jane Park for introducing me to African-American
and Chicana feminist literature and for teaching me to channel my anger into my
writing. As she said to me once, writing on international students was going to be
therapeutic. And it was.
This study significantly benefited from the thorough feedback Sara Ahmed,
Catriona Elder and Alana Lentin provided me with on my doctoral thesis. Their
comments and suggestions guided me through the process of developing the the-
sis into this book but, most importantly, enriched it through their nuanced read-
ings. Special mention goes to Alana Lentin, whose meticulous engagement greatly
encouraged me to pursue this book project while adding further depth to the analy-
sis originally conducted. I sincerely hope this book measures up to her generosity.
On a similar note, I would like to thank, once again, Jane Park and Victoria
Grieves alongside Gregory Noble, Ben Silverstein and Stuart Rollo for reading
through several drafts of the proposal of this book. Their comments greatly helped
me to sharpen the research questions pursued in the following pages while provid-
ing much-needed support. In the same vein, my gratitude goes also to the pub-
lisher’s editor Neil Jordan and editorial assistants Shannon Kneis and Alice Salt
for their patience and guidance, which were both fundamental to completing the
manuscript. I have also to thank Ellena Savage, whose editing skills were crucial
to the overall clarity of the text while her generosity in comments and persis-
tent enthusiasm for the project contributed significantly to get me through a few
writer’s blocks.
For the love and support which sustained me throughout the entire journey,
I must thank my extended family of relatives, colleagues, students and friends
across several national borders. In chronological order: Liliana Indelicato, Franc-
esco Rumori, Raffaele Impagnatiello, Ambra Malagola, Ana Maria Forero Angel
Abdulkarim Alsaleh, Estella Carpi, Gennaro Gervasio, Rachel Hebrard, Johanna
Rolere, Mike Griffiths, Wendy Lee, James Booty, Kate O’Halloran, Tilsa Guima
Chinen, Jennifer Germon, Salim Noorzai, Sameer Noorzai, Haneen Khoshaba,
Mucahid Bayrak, Nathalee Tiufino, Daniel Storer, Sukhmani Khorana, Xiufu Le,
x Acknowledgments
Clifton Evers, Abdullah Almiqasbi, Christopher Driver, Olivia Khoo, Mu Cong
and Hao Luo. Special mention goes to my acquired sister Yasamin Altaira, who
shouldered all my preoccupations, fears and anxieties without flinching even
once. Lastly, I would like to thank my mother Giuseppina Baimonte, whose wis-
dom guided me through every single step while arming me with extra layers of
patience and resilience. Most importantly, I want to thank her for having taught me
what happiness is about: commitment, integrity and a good dose of imagination.
Excerpts from Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 have been published as follows, and
I must thank the respective publishers for granting their permission to reprint:
‘Australia’s Colombo Plan: the beacon of Western knowledge in the Asia-
Pacific Region’ (2015) Critical Race and Whiteness Studies eJournal, vol.11:1;
‘ “Backdoor Entry”: A genealogy of (post)colonial resentment’ (2015) in Michael
Griffiths (ed.) Biopolitics and Memory in Postcolonial Literature and Culture,
Farnham: Ashgate.
Figures

3.1 The opening sequence of Are You Feeling Lucky? Think Before
You Travel animation. George and two other students chat in
front a university bookshop late at night before saying goodbye. 111
3.2 George with the students appearing at the beginning of Are
You Feeling Lucky? Think Before You Travel. The message
accompanying the above picture states: ‘Whenever possible
travel in groups. Risk is created by travelling alone’. 112
3.3 George walking while listening to his playlist 112
3.4 This frame captures George’s view of the main street before
he turns into the darker secondary street. On the right, the two
young women walk side by side. Another peripheral character,
the train driver, is on the left. 113
3.5 This frame captures the moment in which George ‘luckily’
avoids being assaulted by falling down a manhole. 114
3.6 In this frame George is deciding which carriage of the train to
enter. As the Think Before’s website reports: ‘Outside of peak
times and at night travel in the front carriage of the train with the
driver or sit in the guard’s compartment. Where possible do not
travel in empty carriages’. 114
3.7 George ignores the risk of being assaulted by the two young
men whose swarthy appearance, according to the narrative of
the animation, should alert George of their criminal intentions. 115
3.8 This frame portrays George noticing that something is wrong
thanks to the glance of the young woman walking ahead of him. 116
3.9 This frame portrays George running away from the two potential
assailants to the kebab shop. As Think Before’s website reports,
‘If you feel threatened in any way while walking on the street
go to a shop or a house with its lights on (if at night) and ask for
police to be contacted’. 117
3.10 This frames shows George walking towards the bus stop and the
two young women. The sign for the kebab shop is in the background. 119
Introduction
Where I come from: emotions, race
and the border

Once an affective quality has come to reside in something, it is often assumed as

without history. We need to give this residence a history. One of Michel Foucault’s
definitions of genealogy was precisely this: a way of recording what ‘we tend to
feel without history’, which would, we might add, include a history of the felt.
(Ahmed 2014: 214)

Those who are expecting this study to be about the feelings of international
students I am afraid are to be disappointed; no personal feelings are gathered,
recounted, interpreted and delivered accordingly as the ‘truth’ of the experience of
being an international student. The idea itself that accounts of feelings shed light
on the experience of being an international student is questioned. When feelings
as accounts of experiences are solicited, what conceptual constructs and methods
are mobilised to gather and interpret them? Where and how do they circulate
as ‘testimonies’? What purposes do they serve? When posing these questions,
temporal trajectories emerge as a response: what lines of inquiry or histories of
inquiring do these accounts re-enact to record and interpret feelings as the ‘truth’
of inhabiting institutions, communities and nations as an international student?
In following these trajectories, this study pursues an alternative approach to
the accounts of the feelings of international students. Instead of regarding them
as means to access to the ‘truth’ of their experiences, it employs them as the
entry point for a theoretically informed historical analysis of the ways in which
international students have been problematised as national subjects in the future
tense – that is, yet-to-be (permanent) migrants. The reconciliation of seeming ten-
sions between historically inherited lines of inquiring the affective experiences of
international students and their problemisation as yet-to-be migrants is epitomised
by the figure of the international student as an emotionally distressed subject.
The literature on international students is replete with accounts that reproduce
the feelings of international students as the ‘truth’ of the problems they face when
studying and living overseas. These accounts stand in sharp contrast to the image
of phenotypically diverse smiling faces packaging the offer of pursuing tertiary
education overseas: international students are suffering, victims as they are of ‘cul-
ture shock’, ‘loss’ and ‘loneliness’ (see Chung 1988; Ralston 1994; Arthur 2004;
2 Where I come from
Sawir et al. 2008; Ibrahim 2015). So emotionally burdened, international students
cannot be happy, let alone succeed in their studies, threatening the promise of a
fulfilling learning experience to turn into a nightmarish reality of protracted cul-
tural adjustment and solitude. To counter this threat, host educational institutions,
communities and nations are exhorted into intervening, broadening their inclusion
so that the promise of a happy learning experience can be sustained for students
to come. Feelings as accounts of the experience of being an international student,
then, amount to narratives which encode affective positionings and responses.
As grounded on the suffering of international students, accounts of their experi-
ences are to solicit their inclusion in the form of a compassionate response. The
encoding of this response, in turn, effectively positions international students as
an object of the compassion of those who are so called into action: educational
institutions, local communities and nations as wholes. As we learn from these
accounts, in the event that those who are called into action out of compassion fail
to respond, it is not only the competitiveness of host countries in the global market
of international education that is at stake but also their international reputation as
national collectives ‘open’ to those who are different.
When traced through history, the depiction of international students as emotion-
ally distressed subjects reveals another story. This characterisation stems from the
medical history of the early 1900s in its services to the governance of the United
States’ migration (Ward, Bochner and Furnham 2005: 34). Within this field of
knowledge, comparative studies between native-born people and migrants were
conducted across the UK, Australia, Canada, Germany and South Africa until the
1970s with the objective of refining ‘immigration screening programs’ (34). Ini-
tially pathologised as inherently dysfunctional (35), mentally ill migrants became
subsequently studied as subjects suffering emotionally due to the loss of every-
thing familiar to them: relatives, friends, language and culture (35–36). Follow-
ing this, the experience of migration itself became theorised as a stress-inducing
life event demanding that migrants adjust to the adopted culture as a coping mech-
anism (71–98). In the 1980s, migrants’ adjustment became more pragmatically
conceptualised as a matter of social and communication skills deficit that could
be minimised by means of accumulating culturally relevant social skills (36). In
the field of international education, this tradition of studies has resulted in what
constitutes another common characterisation of international students – that is,
the one of ‘deficient learner’ (see Grimshaw 2011: 705–708). According to this
characterisation, international students are problematised as subjects suffering
emotionally because they lack the cultural and academic skills deemed necessary
to navigate their way through tertiary education and integrate with local students
and communities. In concert with one another, these two depictions reveal how
international students have been problematised in the same light as migrants, but
they also point out how they have been understood as subjects who can be(come)
‘ideal’ migrants.
As Lakshmana Rao’s work testifies, references to international students as
‘ideal’ migrants have circulated since the 1970s in Australia, Europe and North
 Where I come from 3
America, (1976; 1979),1 yet it is only starting from the de-regularisation of migra-
tion in these same geo-political realities in the late 1990s and early 2000s that
international students have become publicly positioned as prospective ‘ideal’
permanent migrants (Chapter 2). Contrary to previous generations of migrants,
international students are understood as having already accumulated all those
culturally relevant social skills that nations competing globally for qualified pro-
fessionals desire by means of education: fluency in the national language and
familiarity with dominant cultural norms. Yet as their concomitant characterisa-
tion as ‘deficient’ learners suggests, not all international students are assumed to
be(come) ‘ideal’ migrants. Rather, it appears that only those students who manage
to develop a new identity – one which is at ‘home’ in the adopted nation – can
aspire to live up to this expectation. This expectation is not devoid of labour. To
become ‘ideal’, yet-to-be migrants have to work towards accumulating all those
culturally relevant social skills that can make them feel or to be felt as if they are
at ‘home’. In considering this expectation, the following question arises: what
happens when international students fail to live up to the ideal of being ‘ideal’?
This study addresses this question by unfolding the history of another common
characterisation of international students – that is, the one of the ‘bogus’ migrant.
Like the ‘ideal’ designation, references to international students as ‘bogus’
migrants have circulated at least since the 1970s (see Chapter 1) but gained wide
public attention from the mid-2000s as a result of visa policies implemented to
facilitate their stay in host countries as either temporary or permanent migrants
(see Chapter 2). The depiction of international students as ‘bogus’ does not con-
tradict their characterisation as ‘ideal’; when the expectation to be ‘ideal’ is set,
so too are the conditions envisioned for international students to live up to this
expectation. To be felt as if they are at ‘home’ international students must first
prove they take their host nation as home – that is, they must satisfy the conditions
of security established against those migrants who seek to take advantage of the
host nation’s ‘openness’. In other words, like the emotionally suffering characteri-
sation, the ‘bogus’ one too entails encoded affective positionings and responses.
As predicated on the fear that ‘openness’ to international students can ‘hurt’ host
nations, any failure by the part of the former to be(come) ‘ideal’ is due to be read
as a breach of the conditions established to protect nations. This reading, in turn,
solicits exclusion in the form of an affective response of resentment: if interna-
tional students are not genuine in their intention, they should not be allowed to
take their host nation as their ‘home’ in the first place.
As the affective narratives embedded in the ‘suffering’ and ‘bogus’ characteri-
sations suggest, this study is concerned not with determining why international
students are positioned as an object of national feelings of compassion and resent-
ment but with revealing what these positionings have done over time. In mak-
ing this concern a priority, this study is inspired and informed by Sara Ahmed’s
work on emotions as ‘cultural politics or world making’ (2004: 12). According to
Ahmed, in spite of being perceived as properties, emotions do not reside ‘in’ either
subjects or objects (6). Objects do not cause emotions that are in turn registered
4 Where I come from
and felt by subjects per se; objects are perceived as causing emotions by means of
attribution (5–8). By attribution, Ahmed means the processes through which sub-
jects appraise contact with objects in light of the history of previous encounters
(7). The history of past encounters might be absent in the present, but it nonethe-
less shapes any new (or even first) contact with objects as though emotions are an
inherent quality of them (7). Emotions can thus be considered forms of ‘affective
value’ that are fetishised into qualities through erasure – that is, by concealing the
history of contact through which emotions have come to be perceived as resid-
ing in objects (11). Cut off from their histories of ‘production’ or ‘making’ (11),
emotions subsequently shape ‘different kinds of actions and orientations’ towards
those objects that are attributed as their sources (13) – for instance, the exclu-
sion of international students who are attributed with being the cause of national
resentment.
Because the focus of this study is on what emotions do instead of what emo-
tions are, it can be situated in the field of feminist cultural studies of emotions and
affect (Ahmed 2004: 2010; Berlant 2000; 2008; 2011; Cvetkovich 2003: 2012;
Probyn 2005). As pursued by Ahmed, this field has revolutionised our understand-
ing of emotions because of its emphasis on providing what is felt with a history
(2004: 5–8; 2014: 211–214). For Ahmed, providing such a history is necessary
to understand how social norms and ideals are sustained by means of affective
investments that ensure their ‘demise’ is felt ‘as a living death’ (2004: 12; see
also 2010: 12–20). In this study, providing a history to the ways Australians, as a
national collective, have felt international students led me to uncover the affective
attachment of the former to the ideality of whiteness while following unexpected
trajectories across geo-political realities as distant as Europe and North America.
For example, taking the ‘deficient learner’ characterisation, I could not expect
to trace such representation to the application of cultural anthropology to the
United States’ management of international affairs in the 1950s (see Chapter 2).
Connections such as this one are abundant and, taken together, they highlight
the transnational quality of the origins and circulation of international students’
most common representations. Likewise, they reveal the reductive nature of the
conceptual premises underpinning the whole field of studies on international stu-
dents and education. Obviously, the heuristic value of such insights is limited
by the specificity of singular nations’ histories. Emotions do different things in
different contexts. For instance, the UK’s legacy as a metropolitan centre of that
same empire wherein Australia only occupied a peripheral position could not but
have played differently in how the former has felt international students. As a
consequence, this study did not pursue any direct comparison between major edu-
cational host nations. In the same vein, its findings cannot be applied straight-
forwardly to any other context. Yet – by demonstrating how the most common
characterisations of international students can be traced to theorisations shared
across multiple disciplinary and national boundaries – it can be used effectively as
a model for a new strand of historically grounded studies which rethinks entirely
the aforementioned field.
 Where I come from 5
Home-leaving
Due to its historical orientation, this study is based on the analysis of a wide
array of educational and migration policy reviews, government inquiries, research
reports and folders and folders of digitalised archival materials. All of these sec-
ondary sources were thoroughly ploughed through in search of any trace of the
ways in which international students have been referred to in letters privately
exchanged between their administrators, official government reports, printed
news articles and video news. It is grounded in the meticulous and theoretically
informed re-construction of the most important debates that punctuated the his-
tory of international students’ presence in Australia, the knowledge accumulated
about their affective experiences of living and studying in the country along-
side the related conceptualisations of their administration and pedagogy. Yet to
a greater extent, this study is based on the experience of having been myself an
international student, of having come to Australia to find myself enmeshed with
the multiple living legacies of the Australian past, the need I had to make sense
of the person I was to become because of these legacies while opening them up
to new perspectives. In this sense, this book can also be read as an account of the
encounters I myself had as a Southern Italian and international doctoral candidate
with the history of Australia, the archive of representations of the affective experi-
ences of international students and the ways in which these representations have
informed public and academic debates on international students and education.
The very first encounter with this history occurred as early as when I arrived
in Australia on a rainy Saturday morning of November 2008. I landed in Sydney
with an offer to undertake a PhD at the University of Sydney on the condition
of passing an academic English as a second language (ESL) test. To satisfy this
condition, two days after my arrival, I began attending eight scheduled weeks of
Academic English classes at the Centre for English Teaching at the University
of Sydney. Alongside preparing students to pass exams such as the International
English Language Testing System (IELTS) and the Test of English as Foreign
Language (TOEFL), courses such as the one I attended are supposed to prepare
students for university life by teaching ‘academic skills’ such as ‘skimming and
scanning’ readings and essay writing. These skills were presented to us as being
fundamental to navigate our way through university, no matter what level of edu-
cation we had at entry, the tradition of pedagogy standing behind us or the degree
level and subjects we were going to undertake. Some of us had lived and worked
in English-speaking countries, while others had already undertaken educational
courses in English or, like me, were already used to studying in English. Nonethe-
less, when we were in class, we were all the same and all assumed to be equally
unprepared for university life. For many of us, this stance was particularly detrac-
tive when practising ‘academic writing’, since this was the ‘skill’ with which most
of us were attempting to translate our own cultural and linguistic identities into
English academic conventions. As such, it was in any attempt of ours to bend
the rigidity of these conventions that our own epistemological subjectivities were
6 Where I come from
more often than not chastised as incorrect and unnecessary, if not completely
inappropriate. Our attempts were not only assessed as diverging from the model
we were taught but also judged as being non-academic. For us, it was then impos-
sible to consider such judgements as limited to our writing skills, as the very
epistemologies underpinning them were also assessed as inadequate by default.
As a result, many of us became disaffected from the learning context. A few
students drifted away. Some, like me, faced each day of class armed with extra
layers of anger. In many regards, it is this anger which set this study in motion.
It motivated me to understand the assumptions underpinning the daily dose of
frustration I endured while studying English. Moved by this anger, I slowly came
to the understanding that the teaching approach I experienced is rooted in the
premise that the linguistic and cultural knowledge of ESL students is ‘deficient’
(e.g. Chalmers and Volet 1997; Benzie 2010). Because of this alleged deficiency,
students of English are thus expected to ‘conform to seemingly immutable and
often implicit norms laid down by the local academy’ without any mutuality
(Ryan and Viete 2009: 303). This approach moreover conflates ‘native-speaker’s
communication skills’ with competence in disciplinary discourses (303), which
contributes to accruing feelings of disengagement from the part of international
students while promoting ‘stereotyped misconceptions and essentialised notions
of students from particular background’ (304).2
The connection drawn between stereotypes and feelings of disengagement
greatly resonated with my experience as an ESL student in Australia. It motivated
me to question its implications in terms of affective responses on the part of stu-
dents and how educational experts and practitioners have, in turn, processed these
responses. The culturalist assumptions underpinning the aforementioned teaching
approach is something I acquired later on in my journey as an international doc-
toral candidate as, at the time of my arrival in Sydney, my research interests lay
far from exploring the pedagogical discourses applied to international students.
Some more encounters with the history of Australia were needed for me to inquire
of such an approach systematically.

Home-coming
By the time I started my doctoral program, I had been in Sydney for eight months.
During this period, both my research interests and myself as a person had changed
rather radically. Nonetheless, I had won a scholarship to conduct a study in the
field of feminist media studies, which made me feel compelled to carry on with the
research project I had originally proposed. At the time, I thought that the tensions
I was experiencing between old and new research interests and life experiences
could be reconciled by making corrective adjustments to my initial theoretical and
methodological approach to post-feminist discourses in American mainstream
media. As part of this resolution, I decided to analyse the intersection of gender
and sexuality with class and race in TV shows in which issues of racial difference
and racism are explicitly brought to the fore and discussed as relevant matters to
their woman audiences. By researching this intersection, I came to understand
 Where I come from 7
how the emotional costs associated with inhabiting a racialised subjectivity are
as consistently displayed as they are depoliticised by their representation as mere
personal attitudes and choices (e.g. Hasinoff 2008; Thompson 2010). This stance
became particularly evident to me when focusing on the interpretation of the anger
of racialised TV shows’ contestants or guests as a matter of a ‘bad’ and ‘defeatist’
attitude rather than as an appropriate affective response to the demands on them to
transcend their lived experience of structural racism and class disadvantage (Cefai
and Indelicato 2011).
By virtue of this focus, I slowly came to realise that anger against racism is
not just any emotion. It is rather a politically informed affective response to it.
It is what Alison M. Jaggar describes as an ‘outlaw emotion’, an emotion that
exceeds, and hence challenges, prescribed codes of socially acceptable affective
responses to social and material arrangements determining racism, homophobia
and sexism (1989: 144). Outlaw emotions are thus subversive feelings on which
we can ground the development of new critical perspectives, perceptions and val-
ues, as well as envision alternative ways of living together (144–145). This insight
became vital to me to understand the multiplicity of ways in which the anger of
racialised minority groups can be either disavowed or dismissed with the purpose
of inhibiting significant political and social change.
In spite of the knowledge gained on the subversive potential of anger, that
research project per se was going nowhere. For more than a year I was stuck with
attempting to formulate research questions that were both relevant to the field
of feminist media studies and feasible in terms of time and knowledge constric-
tions. In hindsight, I can see how I was struggling to find continuity between my
past research experience and knowledge with my new interest in the intersection
of race and emotions in public discourses and the lived experience of minority
groups in Australia. Most importantly, I was struggling with keeping the need
I had to make sense of my personal experience of living and studying in Australia
as an international student separate from my research work. As it was, this strug-
gle would come to an end after undergoing the first annual review of my research
project with a panel of domestic academics.
By the time this panel took place, I had written very little and had no idea where
the project was going, but I knew that part of the problem was the lack of a genu-
ine engagement with the epistemological differences that students like me bring
with them when joining academia as international candidates. There was literally
no room for us to collectively explore these differences and reflect upon the ways
in which they were affecting and shaping our research experiences. This lack of
engagement was furthermore compounded by our supervisors’ assumption that
we would return ‘home’ upon completion of our studies, leaving many of us with
the impression that we were, in general, not considered worthy of longstanding
professional investment in our work as researchers and teachers.
Facing my review panel, I remember attempting to explain the difficulties I was
experiencing in these terms but, framed as such, my account fell short of any sub-
stantial uptake. It did not resonate with the consolidated understanding of inter-
national students as subjects ‘suffering’ from culture shock instead of cultural
8 Where I come from
devaluation and social exclusion. Stemming from the accounts gathered to shed
light on international students’ experiences of academic and emotional disruption
(e.g. Bochner and Wicks 1972; Burke 1989; and Turcic 2008), this understanding
assumes cultural adjustment as being both the source and the solution of the prob-
lems international students face in general (see Chapter 2). As a result, feelings of
loss and loneliness among them have been normalised as an inevitable by-product
of the process of becoming familiar with a new cultural context, leaving very little
room to investigate these feelings otherwise. Sitting in front of the review’s panel-
lists, I found myself facing the consequences of being attributed with an emotional
vulnerability that predetermined any other response as affectively un-intelligible.
This was a frustrating but equally insightful moment. It made me realise that if
I wanted my and other international students’ experiences to be understood on
different terms, I would first have to trace the history that has made the attribution
of emotional vulnerability to international students loom large in any encounter.

Re-orientation
In the wake of this review, I decided to start a new project examining the intersec-
tion of race and emotions in discourses regarding the administration and pedagogy
of international students in Australia. It was also my understanding that to analyse
the attribution of emotional vulnerability I had to start from locating when, where
and under which circumstances it originated, if and how it has changed over time,
as well as whether it has propagated outside discourses regarding the administra-
tion and pedagogy of international students within educational institutions. To
date, no study has ever taken up the task of historicising the most common tropes
employed to talk about and on behalf of international students. Studies in the field
have in fact been synchronic, at best relegating the complex history of interna-
tional students to brief reviews of policies and discourses in introductions and
literature reviews (e.g. Jakubowicz and Monani 2010; Marginson et al. 2010).
A systematic and theoretically informed historical analysis is thus long overdue,
to open the field to new lines of inquiry as well as to show the continuities existing
between past and present ways of problematising international students’ presence
in the nation. Yet by the time I started to work on this project, public and govern-
mental discourses on international students in Australia had shifted as a result of
the protests that Indian international students staged in 2009 and 2010 against a
spate of violent attacks perpetrated against them.
As Indian international students protested also against their economic exploi-
tation by Australian educational agents, landlords and employers, the attacks
swiftly transformed into a prompt for an extensive revision of the status of inter-
national education in the country. News reports on ‘dodgy’ colleges, visa frauds,
overcrowded accommodations and work exploitation quickly became the staple
of Australian media’s daily stock of sensationalism, crystallising the polarisation
of the public into those who regarded international students as ‘profiteers’ and
those who deemed them ‘victims’. Mirroring the characterisations of international
students as ‘bogus’ and ‘suffering’, the former held that international students had
 Where I come from 9
made themselves vulnerable to exploitation by using their student visa as ‘back-
door entry’ to Australia, the latter that international students were made vulner-
able to exploitation because they lacked adequate protection.
The debate accompanying the protests had the merit of bringing to my attention
a few extra points of analysis. Firstly, it made me realise how international stu-
dents have never been exclusively conceived of, and thus regulated, as students.
To avail themselves of the education they pay for, they have to cross national bor-
ders and stay in host countries at least until completion of their studies. As such,
they have always been firstly and most importantly conceived of as aliens, there-
fore systematically subjected to the host nations’ border practice and discourses.
In Australia, the history of its border is replete with instances of racial exclusion
and discrimination against migrants coming from the very same countries many
international students do: Indonesia, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand,
China and India – all nations from which migration was legally forbidden until the
demise of the White Australia policy in 1973. After the repeal of the White Aus-
tralia policy, their presence has grown exponentially, making international educa-
tion the third biggest export industry of Australia, generating billions of dollars in
export income annually alongside supporting thousands of jobs in the education
sector (cfr. Department of Education and Training [DET] 2015). Moreover, with
the creation of ad hoc paths to permanent migration for graduated international
students in 2001 (cfr Koleth 2010a), their economic contribution to Australia as
prospective migrants has become central to any discussion regarding their admin-
istration while refashioning public attitudes towards them vis-à-vis other catego-
ries of temporary and permanent migrants. These changes have also been widely
discussed and incorporated into academic discourses regarding international edu-
cation, migration and population management (e.g. Birrell 2006; Birrell, Healy
and Kinnaird 2007; Rodan 2009), while contemporary studies on the well-being
of international students have more frequently acknowledged their contradictory
status as consumers and migrants (see Deumert et al. 2005; Nyland et al. 2009;
Marginson 2013).
Secondly, the debate made me reflect on the possibility that the attribution of
emotional vulnerability to international students within discourse regarding their
administration and pedagogy could be related to the concomitant positioning of
them as prospective permanent migrants. This relation became evident to me
when observing how both the depiction of international students as ‘profiteers’
and ‘victims’ in media, policy and academic discourses has positioned them as
a group population whose study choices and migration practises solicit from
the Australian public an affective response of either resentment or compassion.
In this perspective, the ‘profiteer’ characterisation can be seen as an attempt to
constitute the Australian public as a resentful collective that is bound to exclude
international students to protect their nation from abuses. Conversely, the ‘victim’
characterisation can be comprehended as an attempt to shape the Australian pub-
lic as a compassionate collective that is willing to include international students
because of its generosity. Either way, public responses to the protests staged by
Indian international students led me to the realisation that their characterisation as
10 Where I come from
both ‘profiteers’ and ‘victims’ are inextricable from the ways in which their pres-
ence as yet-to-be migrants is imagined by its dominant group, thus the necessity
of approaching international students as not so much subjects of pedagogical or
administrative discourses but as subjects of the Australian border.

History of the Felt

The ways in which Australians have imagined their territorial border have
changed throughout history and so too have broader discourses regarding the
nation’s identity and economy. These changes have shaped the conditions upon
which international students have been differently in/excluded from Australia
over time. To grasp the complexity of these relations, this study broadens the
objective of providing a history of the ways international students have been felt
to the task of producing a genealogy3 of their discursive representations in Aus-
tralia. In developing this genealogy, this study provides a critical account of not so
much Australian international education and immigration policies as the special-
ised knowledge(s) that have been employed to develop and modify these policies
over time. Adopting Carol Bacchi’s approach to policy analysis, this study refers
to these knowledge(s) as ‘governing’, to highlight the generative relation between
policies and the knowledge(s) purposely accumulated over time by experts, social
scientists and workers to conceptualise international students and the problems
associated with them as an object of governmental intervention (2009).
Likewise, as Niels Andersen reminds us, humanities in general and social sci-
ences in particular are never neutral. Rather, they always abide by normalising
social projects and establish regimes of knowledge and truth that ‘regulate our
approach to ourselves, each other and our surroundings, respectively’ (2003: 3).
From this perspective, the genealogy undertaken in this study takes into consid-
eration as many policy reviews and government inquiries as it does academic
studies which were produced with the objective of shedding light on the problems
international students face or cause. Moreover, considering the ways in which
governing knowledge(s) have circulated in the Australian media to inform the
public and engender consent, this genealogy approaches contemporary represen-
tations of international students in the media as equally relevant historical sources
of analysis.
As Andersen points out, choosing genealogy as a method of analysis implies
searching for those historical moments of epistemological rupture that have
brought considerable changes in the conception and regulation of a certain
object of analysis, whether this object is an idea, institution, practice or, in the
case of this study, a population category (20). Following Andersen’s suggestion
(20), the genealogy undertaken in this study is anchored to those moments that
have brought considerable changes in the ways in which international students
have been conceived of as an object of governmental intervention throughout the
history of their presence in Australia. These moments can be also referred to as
‘events’ and, as Michel Foucault reminds us, they must be analysed for their sin-
gularity and historical specificity instead of being forced to fit into a teleological
 Where I come from 11
interpretation (1984a: 55–57). When historical analysis is located at the level of
events, it is moreover important ‘to distinguish among events, to differentiate the
networks and levels to which they belong and to reconstitute the lines along which
they are connected and engender one another’ (56). Taking these recommenda-
tions into account, the genealogy undertaken in this study retraces the events that
have shaped the history of international students in Australia and relates them
in ways that shed light on their connections with current understandings of their
presence in the nation.
Due to its focus on Australia, the genealogy so produced cannot be used
straightforwardly to root the ways in which international students are currently
problematised as an object of governmental intervention elsewhere. Yet the events
which have characterised their history in Australia have stemmed from phenom-
ena or trends cutting across geo-political realities as diverse as North America and
Europe. The creation itself of a study scheme for international students in Aus-
tralia in 1951 stands as evidence of their transnationally informed history in the
nation. This scheme was in fact just one of the many that Western nations such as
the United States and Canada alongside supra-national organisations such as the
United Nations (UN) offered to Asian-Pacific countries as a means to counter the
rapid erosion of European colonial powers in the region (Oakman 2010: 5–35).
Likewise, these events were hastened by the reconfiguration of discursive forma-
tions at a level broader than the national one. The adoption of internationalisation
as an education policy in Australia in 1992 amply substantiates this claim. When
it became a national policy in Australia, internationalisation of higher education
had been concomitantly conceptualised by international education scholars such
as Jane Knight and Hans de Wit (cfr. 1995), whose work had greatly shaped the
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) recommen-
dations for higher education at least until the late 1990s (cfr. Knight and Hans de
Wit1997; 1999). Most importantly the genealogy undertaken in this study devel-
ops a critique of education and migration policies which engages directly with the
epistemic tradition and ‘governing’ knowledge(s) used to ground them as legiti-
mated solutions to the problems that international students both pose and face. In
this sense, it offers a methodological approach which can be likewise applied to
any other national context to move beyond the remedy paradigm characterising
current debates on international students’ administration and pedagogy.
In this perspective, Chapter 1 examines the first three events that changed the
way international students were thought of in Australia: the creation of the Over-
seas Students Program in 1951 as part of the Commonwealth humanitarian pro-
gram known as the Colombo Plan; the transformation of the Overseas Student
Program from a form of international aid into an industry in 1985; and the first
crisis faced by the new-born education industry in 1989. In unfolding the history
of these events, this chapter analyses how the attribution of national compassion
and resentment to international students worked as a technology4 of affective truth
to differentiate international students into ‘genuine’ and ‘bogus’. In this chapter,
the tropes of cultural shock, loss and loneliness are introduced to shed light on
how the interrelated characterisation of Colombo Plan students as ‘victims’ had
12 Where I come from
functioned as an affective discursive strategy aiming to elicit their acceptance by
Australians in a time of blunt racial discrimination. This chapter thus comple-
ments the genealogy so far conducted with a close reading of the research report
Exports of Education Services, which was commissioned with the objective of
addressing the problems raised by overstaying Chinese international students in
the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square Uprising (Industry Commission: 1991).
The close reading of this report focuses on the use of the metaphors of ‘backdoor
entry’ and ‘jumping the queue’ to highlight how the circulation of such figures of
speech enabled the conversion of feelings of compassion into resentment, thus
the shaping of a different ‘orientation’ towards overstaying students more broadly
(Ahmed 2004: 13).
Chapter 2 traces the economic and discursive circumstances that led to the
creation of a facilitated pathway to permanent migration for graduated interna-
tional students in 2001. It regards this pathway as another event in the history of
international students in Australia in that it made their characterisation as ‘ideal’
migrants broadly known to the public. This representation, in turn, set the expec-
tation for international students to swiftly join the Australian middle class through
conversion of their educational capital into whiteness. To argue so, this chapter
complements the genealogy of the ‘ideal’ characterisation with a close reading of
the research report that dramatically changed governmental and public attitudes
towards international students in the mid-2000s: Evaluation of the General Skilled
Migration Program (Birrell, Hawthorne and Richardson 2006). In examining this
report, this chapter illustrates how the alleged failure of especially Indian interna-
tional students to become racially invisible was interpreted as a breach of the most
important condition of their permanent inclusion in the nation: assimilation. As a
result, like Chinese students in the late 1980s, Indian students were singled out in
both policy and media discourses as ‘bogus’ migrants profiting from the generos-
ity of the Australian nation. Publicly named as an object of national resentment,
Indian students were subjected to different forms of exclusion, including the spate
of violent attacks against which they staged protests in 2009–2010.
Adding further complexity to the differentiation of international students
into ‘profiteers’ and ‘victims’, the protests went down in Australia’s history for
unleashing an even more incandescent debate on the nature itself of the attacks as
Indian students publicly labelled them racist. This accusation brought a question
at the core of Australia’s identity back to the centre of an international debate: is
Australia still racist (Baas 2009: 37–42)? In Australia, public responses to this
question ranged from outright rejection to acknowledgment that Australia was
still a racist country. On the one end of the spectrum, columnist Andrew Bolt
firmly rejected the accusation of racism on the premise that Australians are not
a ‘redneck mob’ still professing the credo of an ‘old-fashioned white Austral-
ian racism’ (2010). On the other end, journalist David Marr acknowledged the
accusation of racism on the oppositional premise that racism in Australia is not
yet a ‘thing of the past’ (2009). However, the most common response in Australia
was what Gail Mason defined as ‘interpretive denial’, namely the framing of the
attacks as a matter of rampant urban crime (2011: 42). Understood as such, the
 Where I come from 13
attacks were pedagogically explained to the public as motivated by the perception
that Indian students constituted a ‘soft targets’ (cfr. Overland 2009). As the attacks
continued, the debate further flared up with Indian media accusing Australia of
being ‘in denial’ of the evidence that the attacks were racially motivated (‘Unable
to act’ 2010). To this accusation, Australian representatives and media responded
by labelling their Indian counterparts ‘hysterical’ (‘Evans off to India’ 2009).
Due to the multi-layered nature of the international debate and related changes
in educational and migration policies which followed Indian students’ protests,
this study dedicates two chapters to analysing them with the objective of illustrat-
ing how new and old understandings of international students interspersed with
each other to reinforce the myth of their emotionality. Chapter 3 approaches the
protests as an event that led to the problemisation of international students more
broadly as subjects ‘at risk’ – that is a group population inherently physically vul-
nerable to urban violence. It examines state and federal representatives’ responses
to the attacks to show how the solution envisioned to protect international stu-
dents’ safety functioned as a new pedagogy of racial concealment and mobility
restriction. It concludes with a close reading of the multimedia safety media cam-
paign Are You Feeling Lucky? Think Before You Travel (2010), which is relevant
to the study’s overall analysis of the affective othering of international students in
Australia for visualising how the depiction as ‘soft targets’ effectively gendered
their racial differences as feminine.
Chapter 4 approaches the media debate accompanying the protests as a com-
plex system of responses to racism and to the accusation of racism. It unravels the
role played by ‘technique[s] of interpretive dismissal’, namely the accusation of
‘hysteria’, in reproducing the myth of international students’ emotionality. To do
so, this chapter undertakes a close reading of newspaper articles and video news
epitomising the positions of both sides of the international debate while drawing
on two different models of emotions, one cognitive (Spelman 1989), the other
interpretive (Campbell 1997). Following the first model, this chapter reflects on
anger as a political response to racism and the capacity it had to destabilise the
moral authority of the Australian government when Indian students rejected their
characterisation as ‘soft targets’. Following the second model, it demonstrates
how the Indian student representatives’ and media’s anger had to be interpreted
as such by their Australian counterparts to be held morally valid and thus effec-
tive of substantial political change. This chapter concludes by arguing that the
dismissal of Indian students’ and media’s anger as an excessive affective response
to the attacks functioned as an interpretive discursive strategy deployed to protect
Australia’s moral authority in the Asia-Pacific area more broadly.
Chapter 5 returns to the representation of Colombo Plan students’ as ‘victims’
to chart the discursive conditions enabling the conversion of compassion into
resentment. It examines how the tropes of culture shock, loss and loneliness were
used to manufacture a ‘sentimental’ account of Colombo Plan students’ affec-
tive experiences of racism by tracing their emergence in the letters Australian
officials had exchanged in the early 1950s with regard to the well-being of these
students. In reading such exchanges against the grain, this chapter demonstrates
14 Where I come from
how Colombo Plan students’ ‘sorrow’ at being socially excluded was emptied of
the complex history fashioning race relations in the nation and thus naturalised
into an inherent trait of their personality. Lastly it complements this analysis with
a close reading of the most comprehensive study conducted so far on international
students’ experiences of studying and living in Australia: International Student
Security (Marginson et al. 2010). By undertaking this close reading, this chapter
illustrates how the sentimentalisation of the racial grief of international students
has persisted over time as a result of the fantasy that full social inclusion in the
nation can be achieved by means of compassion – that is, without taking racism
into account. It concludes by arguing that it is because of upholding this fantasy
that calls to compassion towards international students have given way to seem-
ingly oppositional feelings of resentment.

Feelings Archive
In engaging with the history of governing representations of the feelings of inter-
national students in Australia, Chapter 5, like each other chapter in this study,
does not solely read an archive for the purpose of showing ‘the very public nature
of emotions, and the emotive nature of the publics’ (Ahmed 2004: 14). Rather,
the close reading of texts undertaken in this study produces this archive by put-
ting together a disparate array of secondary sources: personal correspondence
and speeches of state and federal government officers, newspaper articles and
news reports, governmental research reports and press releases alongside aca-
demic publications. As a consequence, the archive so assembled does not contain
any emotions per se (14), not even my emotions, which have, nonetheless, set
this project in motion and informed it through time. Rather, it traces the history
of how national feelings of compassion and resentment have been engendered
as an ‘effect’ in the texts examined by means of ‘naming’ them as appropriate
responses to the problems international students face or cause (13). It regis-
ters how they have accrued affective values by circulating in several discursive
spheres and accordingly become attached to certain bodies instead of others – that
is, Chinese students in the late 1980s and Indian students in the 2000s (11–12). It
also traces how such emotions have entailed specific ‘orientations’ and ‘actions’
towards those who have been named as their objects (i.e. exclusion by virtue of
visa assessment criteria as well as physical violence; 14). From this perspective,
this archive illustrates how each and all of the borders discussed in this book,
national (1 and 2), socio-cultural (Chapter 3) and geo-political (Chapter 4) have
been shaped through and by the ‘naming’ of international students as an object of
the national compassion and resentment.
It also traces the history of representation of the feelings of international stu-
dents in discourses regarding their administration and pedagogy while registering
the ways in which they have been employed to disguise issues of racial discrimi-
nation as other matters: shortage of appropriate accommodation, lack of confi-
dence or interest, language barriers and urban violence. In this sense, this study
 Where I come from 15
is not about the feelings of international students per se and, as already stated, it
does not aim to unravel the ‘truth’ of their feelings. Rather, it seeks to provide a
solid critique of the discursive modes through which these feelings have been
interpreted to avoid facing the necessity of radical changes in Australian educa-
tional institutions, communities and society. As discussed, this critique is long
overdue to open old and new debates about international students beyond any
seemingly oppositional characterisations of them as ‘victims’ and ‘bogus’. This
explains why, for instance, this study employs a genealogical and textual method
of analysis instead of qualitative research methods such as semi-structured inter-
views or participant observation.
Although this study is not about the feelings of international students per se, it
does speak to my feelings and gives relief to my own anger because it does justice
to my experience. So I hope it will do the same for other international students
whose feelings have been interpreted as symptomatic of epistemic and cultural
deficiency. And I hope it will do so in spite of, or, better, thanks to, the differences
that stand between us, because we are not all the same, and our differences have
never been approached as if we were. The ways in which international students
have been distinguished from each other in terms of inclusion in the territorial
and socio-cultural boundaries of Australia is another important theme discussed
in this study. Suffice to say that for now, through personal experience and work on
this study, I came to realise that the designation ‘international student’ is almost
interchangeable with that of ‘Asian’ in the Australian context. In this regard, this
study could be approached as a history of the affective encounters of ‘Asian’ stu-
dents with the Australian border from 1951 to 2010. Being myself ‘white but not
white enough’, Southern Italian and not ‘Asian’, I ambivalently fit into the cat-
egory of international students as examined in this study. Nonetheless, every time
I emerged as a ‘problem’ within the educational institutions I encountered in my
journey as an international doctoral candidate, my academic and affective expe-
riences were interpreted according to the same tropes of ‘deficient learner’ and
emotionally vulnerable subject which had been originally fabricated for Colombo
Plan students. In this sense, this study speaks also of the instability of racial cat-
egories and how boundaries between racialised group populations can blur and
merge on certain occasions.
Lastly, and in light of the genealogy undertaken in each chapter, this study
concludes by arguing that both those who have named international students
as an object of national resentment and those who have countered such nam-
ing by representing them as ‘victims’ share the ‘white fantasy’ that full social
inclusion in Australia can be achieved without troubling the history of structural
and symbolic racial inequities over-determining its multicultural composition.
As such, the critique developed in this study can also be used as a reference
for studies aiming to decolonise educational discourses in Australia as well as
in other English-speaking nations wherein international education has stemmed
from the colonial legacy of educating the ‘other’ in the manner of the culturally
hegemonic ‘West’.
16 Where I come from
Notes
1 In the 1970s, countries involved in humanitarian study schemes such as the Colombo
Plan began to complain about losing student numbers due to them studying overseas.
Referring to this phenomenon as ‘brain drain’, Rao conducted extensive research on
the push and pull factors motivating international students to seek permanent residency
while illustrating the benefits of their stay to host nations. By no chance, in the 1980s,
discussion about recipient nations’ ‘brain drain’ waned until they completely disappeared
by the early 1990s, when international education started to be framed in terms of ‘mutual
advantage’ and international students’ migration understood as ‘brain gain’ for their host
nations (Nesdale et al. 1995: 77). For further information, see Rao (1976) (1979).
2 The authors here refer, as an example, to Ballard, Brigid and John Clanchy (1991)
Teaching Students from Overseas: A Brief Guide for Lecturers and Students. Longam
Cheshire: Melbourne. For further examples, see also Bradley, David and Maya Brad-
ley (1984) Problems of Asian Students in Australia: Language, Culture and Education.
International Development Program of Australian Universities and Colleges (IDP):
Canberra; Ballard (1987) Academic Adjustment: The other side of the export dollar.
Higher Education Research and Development, vol. 6:2, 109–119; and Ballard (1989)
Overseas students and Australian academics: Learning and teaching styles, in in Bruce
William (ed.) Overseas Students in Australia. Policy and Practice. A Collection of
Invited Papers. International Development Program of Australian Universities and Col-
leges (IDP): Canberra.
3 Friedrich Nietzsche was the first who introduced the term ‘genealogy’ to design a method
of historical analysis (cfr.1998). On the basis of Nietzsche’s distinction between histo-
riography of life and death (Andersen 2003: 19), Michel Foucault took up the term to
refer to an historical analytic which interrogates the conceptual assumptions underpin-
ning discourses and practices in the present (20). For Foucault, and in contrast to other
methods of historical analysis, this method does involve not so much establishing the
birth of social phenomena as tracing their ‘line of descent’ back to the play of historical
conflicts and strategies of control through which they have emerged (Beronius as cited
in Andersen 2003: 20). For further details on Foucault’s conceptualisation of genealogy
as a method of historical analysis, see Foucault 1984b: 76–100; and 1995: 23–31.
4 Foucault was the first to adopt the concept of technique or technology in relation to that
of ‘truth’ to highlight as much the material dimension of knowledge production (Montag
1995) as the enmeshment of knowledge (legal, medical, social and so on) with power
at the level of social practices (Rabinow 1984: 3–7). Foucault, in fact, did not conceive
of ‘truth’ as a priori reality which has to be ‘discovered and accepted’ by means of
detached inquiry. Rather, he approached truth as a ‘thing of this world’ contingently
‘produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint’ (Foucault 1984a: 72–73). Put
more simply, Foucault was not concerned with determining whether universal claims
of truth were truly such or false. Rather, he was interested in shedding light on what
such claims do at level of social practices, that is at the level of their application in
fields such as economics, technology, politics and sociology (Rabinow 1984: 4). In light
of this understanding of truth, Foucault’s pursued the objective – through genealogical
analysis – of finding ‘the point at which these [social] practices became coherent reflec-
tive techniques with definite goals . . . the point at which a particular discourse emerged
from these techniques and came to be seen as true’ (Foucault as cited in Rabinow 1984:
7). Technologies of truth can be thus defined as those strategies, methods, or procedures
employed to achieve specific aims and yet susceptible to engender discourses through
which what is to be deemed true or false come to be established. As Chapter 1 will
demonstrate, the attribution of national compassion and resentment to international stu-
dents in the late 1980s in Australia worked likewise as a technology through which a
regime of truth emerged to distinguish prospective international students into ‘genuine’
and ‘bogus’. For a comprehensive account on the discursive contexts which informed
 Where I come from 17
Foucault’s use of the term ‘technique’ or ‘technology’ and the ways in which his under-
standing of the term changed from his initial studies of psychology to his latest analysis
of the self, see Behrent 2013.

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 Where I come from 19
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20 Where I come from
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1 Becoming ‘illegal’
Compassion, multicultural love
and resentment1

I emphasise that Australia is in a precarious position by reason of the fact that as a

white people we are surrounded by Asiatics. Therefore, we must increase our pop-
ulation as quickly as possible. I believe that if we fail to increase our population to
the maximum within the next twenty years we shall lose this country altogether . . .
It is our duty to welcome migrants and to educate them to the Australian way of life
so that, should the necessity arise, they will be prepared to fight alongside us. We
must get the best people of the world to migrate to this country.
(Grant cited in Stratton 2009b: 2, emphasis added)

To be ‘surrounded’ conveys a spatialised and temporalised feeling of vulnerabil-

ity. As a nation, it amounts to being enclosed in a space with no alternative but
to fight to survive. It conjures a threat that is as pressing as yet to come: if we
fail to fight back in the present, the nation will be lost in the future.2 The feeling
of vulnerability is amplified by the qualitative and quantitative specification of
the threat: ‘a white people’ against many ‘Asiatics’. To be one people against
many others homogeneously marked as different further accrues a feeling of iso-
lation that can only be countered by multiplication: to become more and the same.
Migrants must then be sought, welcomed into the nation and made to become ‘a
white people’ by means of education to ‘a white people’s way of life’. Yet this act
of inclusion is not open to all migrants. Some are pre-emptively designated as the
best people to include, while others – those marked as ‘Asiatics’ for instance – are
excluded from taking the nation as an object of racial identification and pride.
For those who are excluded, only one position is left: that of an enemy that must
be contained, if not defeated. The border is thus construed as an important site to
contain the threat of the other, to manage migration so that one people remain the
same, untainted by threatening differences. To protect the border is to protect the
nation. To protect the nation is to preserve racial homogeneity. Nevertheless, Sen-
ator Grant delivered this speech in 1949, only one year before Australia opened its
border to those same ‘Asiatics’ who were pre-emptively construed as a threat to
the nation (Kendall 2008: 56). In 1950, Percy Spender, then Minister of Foreign
Affairs, announced that students from a variety of South and South-East Asian
countries would be allowed to come and study in Australia as a means to foster
22 Becoming ‘illegal’
goodwill among its neighbouring countries. The inclusion – albeit temporary –
of these students troubles the concomitant projection of the Australian border as
a barrier erected to exclude those deemed threatening or undesirable, highlight-
ing moreover a seeming contradiction in how ‘Asiatics’ were publicly positioned
vis-à-vis ‘Australians’. This chapter addresses such ambiguities by tracing the
most contemporary technologies of international students’ governance back to the
establishment of the Overseas Student Program in 1951.
The first and second sections of this chapter examine the historical circum-
stances leading to the creation of the Overseas Student Program in 1951 and
show how the decision to allow South and South-East Asians to study in Australia
occurred in the context of their positioning as an object of national compassion.
The third and fourth sections analyse the transformation of the Overseas Stu-
dent Program into a ‘trade’ in 1985 alongside the first crisis that hit the new-born
industry of international education in 1989. This analysis demonstrates how these
two events led to the positioning of international students as ‘consumers’ from
whom the nation could benefit financially. The final section traces the construction
of overstaying international students as ‘illegal immigrants’ while examining the
metaphors ‘jump the queue’ and ‘backdoor entry’ as points of affective conver-
sion from compassion to resentment. As articulated within these two metaphors,
resentment is explored as a technology of affective truth and differentiation:
‘genuine’ students who deserve to stay versus ‘bogus’ students who should be
prevented from entering. In the process, this chapter shows how international stu-
dents have been the subject of multiple discourses and economies of value. Sitting
at the crossroads of contradictory national interests and discursive positionings,
the history of the regulation of international students’ presence in Australia exem-
plifies the impossibility of using a single approach to understand the conditions of
their exclusion/inclusion in the territorial and socio-cultural borders of the nation.

‘Back door’ to Australia: ‘Asian’ invasion

and the Colombo Plan
International education has a history predating its commercialisation in English-
speaking countries such as Australia, the UK, Canada and New Zealand. Only
in the 1980s were full-fee payment schemes introduced for students pursuing
their tertiary studies overseas (Chandler 1989: v–xiv). Previously, international
students had largely travelled as scholarship recipients, and the conditions of
their acceptance in sponsoring nations were those of European colonial tutelage
across the world (Harris 2002: 32–35; Walker 2014: 328–334). This movement
increased significantly in the aftermath of World War II, mostly as a consequence
of the implementation of an international aid program by members of the British
Commonwealth in 1951. Popularly known as the Colombo Plan, this program
was born out of the Commonwealth Meeting of Foreign Affairs in the city of
Colombo in 1950. There it was discussed as a proposal for the UK, Australia
and New Zealand to assist war-impoverished South and South-East Asian coun-
tries by means of economic aid and the transfer of technological skills. Further
 Becoming ‘illegal’ 23
elaborated in a successive meeting of the Commonwealth Consultative Commit-
tee on Aid to South and South East Asia in May of the same year in Sydney, this
proposal established two schemes: the Capital Development Program, which was
comprised of economic investments into the development of ‘agriculture, power,
and communications’, and the Technical Co-Operation Scheme, which offered
‘technical equipment, a supply of technical experts, and the training of students
in sponsor countries’ (Auletta 2000: 50). Following, the Australian federal gov-
ernment launched its Overseas Student Program in 1951.3 Through this program,
thousands of students were allowed to enter Australia over the next three decades
to facilitate a transfer of knowledge and technological skills to war-impoverished
countries in the Asia-Pacific. But contrary to the public emphasis on its humani-
tarian aspiration, the program always encompassed two types of international stu-
dents: sponsored students who were entirely funded by the Australian government
and private students who paid reduced fees (Nesdale et al. 1995: 4). Because both
groups were allowed to study in Australia to improve the living conditions of their
countries of origin, they were both considered recipients of Australian humani-
tarian aid (4). Historically, the number of private students who came to study in
Australia under the Colombo Plan was far greater than the number of sponsored
students. For instance, from 1951 to 1967, the number of private students rose
from just over 1,500 to 10,000 (Megarrity 2005: 34). These students were pre-
dominantly ethnic Chinese from Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong and were
mostly enrolled in secondary schools and universities (34).4 Compared to them,
the number of sponsored students and trainees who came to study in Australia
from 1951 to 1965 was less than 5,500, the vast majority from Malaysia, Indone-
sia, India, Pakistan and Ceylon, along with a few from Burma, Brunei, Cambodia,
Korea and Afghanistan (179).
At that time, the Immigration Restriction Act – popularly known as the White
Australia policy – was enforced to prevent non-European migrants from entering
the country. The White Australia policy was introduced in the very first sitting of
the new-born Australian Federal Parliament in 1901,5 yet it was not the first piece
of legislation promulgated to prevent undesirable migrants from entering Australia.
As Myra Willard has documented at length, this policy has a history going back
to the mid-1800s, when the governments of the colonies of Victoria (1855), South
Australia (1857), New South Wales (1861) and Queensland (1877–78) passed leg-
islation aimed to reduce Chinese migration through exceptional restriction and
taxation (1970: 21–33). This was in spite of England’s diplomatic and commer-
cial interests in the ‘East’, as well as China’s opposition (33–36) to the policies.
By 1886, all the Australian colonies had agreed to pass uniform legislation for
the restriction of Chinese migration with the exception of the Northern Territory
(68). In the Northern Territory, Chinese migration was encouraged to help develop
tropical agriculture and settlement by the government of South Australia, which
was then in charge of its management (65–66). By the late 1880s Chinese migra-
tion had decreased throughout the colonies, yet the colonial state governments
decided to move from a policy of restriction to one of virtual exclusion of all
Chinese (69–73) based on the fear that Chinese migration ‘was assuming a new
24 Becoming ‘illegal’
and dangerous form’ (70). That is, the formation of a colony in the only Australian
territory scarcely populated with white settlers: in the Northern Territory in 1888
there were between 5,000 and 6,000 Chinese and only 700 adult Europeans (72).6
To pre-empt this ‘threat’, the government of South Australia was pressured into
‘closing the door’ to Chinese migration, which it did by passing similar restrictions
in 1888 (73), while the rest of the colonies committed to pass legislation that effec-
tively excluded all Chinese from entering Australia (90).7 By the early 1890s, this
commitment was extended from the Chinese to any and all migrants whose race
was deemed ‘coloured’ (99–118). In a bid to avoid diplomatic objections from the
governments of China, Japan and Indian British subjects, the British government
accepted the principle of exclusion provided that the Australian colonies disguised
the racial rationale underpinning their forthcoming legislations. It suggested fol-
lowing the Natal model.8 Accordingly, the colonies introduced the ‘Education
Test’ as an effective measure to reject any migrant deemed undesirable without
specifying either race or class as criteria of exclusion (111–113).9 Thus, by the
beginning of the new century, all the elements of the White Australia policy were
set in motion. Previous colonial technologies of migration regulation (i.e. number
restrictions and ad hoc taxation) had paved the way for this federal legislation that
was as racially exclusive in its effects as it was raceless in its form.
Yet the scope of Australian migration policies had changed drastically in the
decades leading up to the formation of the Australian colonies into a federation in
1901. Up until the late 1880s and 1890s, migration policies were employed firstly
to restrict and subsequently to exclude the entrance of a single ethnic group –
the Chinese – due to the fear of being slowly but implacably either invaded or
drastically altered by their presence. The White Australia policy conveyed more
than a commitment to preserve Australian territorial and cultural integrity. By
extending the principle of exclusion from just the Chinese to all those populations
deemed ‘coloured’, the White Australia policy morphed into a state project of
racial exclusion to create a racially homogenous nation and identity. The use itself
of adjectives such as ‘coloured’ and ‘white’ signals how race had become the cri-
terion according to which exclusion and inclusion in the nation was established in
the new-born Australian Federation. The White Australia policy also represented
a projection of Australia’s imperialist ambitions by means of association with a
new ‘transnational political identification and a subjective sense of the self’ for
the Anglo-European settlers scattered around the world – that is, whiteness (Lake
2005: 229). It is not by chance that as the Federation was born, ‘dreams of an Aus-
tralian sub-empire in the Pacific’ materialised in two requests that Prime Minister
Billy Hughes put to the Paris Peace Conference of 1918 under the guise of national
security concerns. The first was the creation of an Australasian Monroe Doctrine
for the Pacific; the second was the annexation of the formerly German Papua
New Guinea to Australia (Oakman 2010: 6–7). The passage from the exclusion
of a single ethnic group to all those deemed ‘coloured’ thus reveals the ‘racially
configured’ nature of Australia as it became a nation-state independent from Brit-
ish control as well as its aspiration to stand on equal footing with other ‘modern,
competitive, and above all expanding nation-states’ (Lentin 2004: 430).10
 Becoming ‘illegal’ 25
Imperialist aspirations were further advanced in the aftermath of World War
II whereby – with the exception of Japan, which was most feared for its mili-
tary prowess – Asian countries were characterised discursively as an indistinct
and overpopulated whole, whose geographical proximity to Australia was con-
sidered a concrete threat to the integrity of the Australian territory (Burke 2006:
36). Overpopulation and geographical proximity constituted the fundaments of
the infamous rhetoric of ‘Asian invasion’ by which the Australian government
had legitimised the expansion of the migration program to ‘white’ migrants his-
torically deemed less desirable than the Anglo-Celtic ones: Southern and Eastern
Europeans and Levantines (Stratton 2009b: 2). Once again, territorial anxieties
clustered around the Northern Territory, whose bounty of ‘unoccupied’ land lent
itself to renewed fears of settlers’ dispossession at the hands of their ‘Asian’
neighbours. For instance, as news spread that the Northern Territory was suitable
for growing rice, the then-secretary of the Rice Association, Taylor Douglas, con-
veyed popular anxieties thus:

Thoughtful Australians have always been concerned about our great empty
spaces in the North-West. This vulnerable, uninhabited land is a national dan-
ger area. . . . It is certain that the existence of the tremendous rice-growing
areas of the Northern Territory will be headlined in the newspapers of the
East, and especially in the South-West Pacific area. . . . What can be done
to protect the so-called ‘back door of Australia’? There is only one effective
method of protecting it: Fast development.
(1950: 2, emphasis added)

This passage aptly illustrates how the emergence of the metaphor of ‘back door’
of Australia had by this time crystallised past and present settler colonial anxiety
of territorial and racial vulnerability as interspersing in the geographical space of
its natural border with South-East Asia, where white settlement had had a long
history of failure.11 The reference to ‘fast development’ is here ambiguous. On the
one hand, it evokes fears of dispossession by means of reference to the doctrine of
terra nullius – that is the principle in European international law that ‘discovered’
land could be claimed as new dominion when appearing both scarcely populated
and uncultivated.12 In this sense, the suggestion to encourage ‘fast development’
amounted to that of averting the risk of invasion by means of further settlement:
cultivation of the land and transferal of white settlers.13 On the other hand, it ges-
tures towards an acknowledgment that economic development among the nations
looking with envy to Australian ‘uninhabited land’ was to be the only effective
measure to secure Australia’s position in the region. This second stance was not
exclusive to Australian governmental circles but common among the Western
nations involved in the Colombo Plan: UK (1950), New Zealand (1950), Canada
(1950) and the United States (1951).14
Decolonisation and the proclamation of the People’s Republic of China in
1949 had made economic development of the region contingent on containing
the expansion of communism, which was then regarded as the highest threat to
26 Becoming ‘illegal’
the political and economic interests of the Commonwealth nations in the region
(Oakman 2010: 36–72). In this time of rapid political change, Australia saw the
potential to fill the void left by the fading British Empire and to become the new
‘moral’ leader of the region (14–15) while improving diplomatic and trade ties
with Asian-Pacific countries (178–217). That these nations resented the racially
exclusionary migration policies of Australia was a problem the Australian gov-
ernment attempted to resolve by means of soft persuasion – that is, through the
education of the future leaders of Asian-Pacific nations. As William Macmahon
Ball, a professor of political science at the University of Melbourne, stated upon
his return from a goodwill mission to South-East Asia:

Burdened by their newfound independence . . . Asian leaders recognised

their need for outside economic and technical assistance. [. . .] To win the
friendship and goodwill of the students and technicians is to win the goodwill
of people with great political influence . . . Goodwill towards these people
must become a national habit, built on respect for the racial sensibilities and
national aims of our neighbours.
(Macmahon Ball cited in Oakman 2010: 17)

The idea that international education could ‘foster international goodwill and har-
mony’ and, as a result, strengthen diplomatic and trade relations between nations
is as old as the history of students’ mobility. Yet as Colleen Ward, Stephen Boch-
ner and Adrian Furnham have pointed out, it enjoyed a second life in the aftermath
of World War II when it was re-propositioned as a humanitarian intervention by
the nations involved in schemes such as the Colombo Plan (2005: 143–144). At
this time, due to the importance of showing ‘respect for the racial sensibilities’
of emerging or newly independent nations, the quality of international students’
experiences of studying and living in their sponsor nations had become the para-
mount measure of the success of their respective study schemes, making interna-
tional students the object of an intensified governmental scrutiny and intervention.
In the UK, for instance, much attention was given to the problem of racial dis-
crimination faced by so-called ‘colonial students’.15 According to the first surveys
conducted in the 1950s, racial discrimination against international students was
so common that the Colonial Office in charge of their welfare was forced to deal
‘first hand . . . with the grievances and ambitions of colonial people’ (Stockwell
2008: 492–493). In Australia, first attempts to survey Colombo Plan students sys-
tematically focused on their academic progress. The Commonwealth Office of
Education (COE) believed that close scrutiny of their progress could assist them
to ‘pin point reasons for failure, improve [their] own guidance work, and ensure
more effective selection’ (COE cited in Auletta 2000: 56). From this perspec-
tive, Daniel Oakman dwells on the then Department of External Affairs’ (DEA)
response to the case of fourteen Burmese students who had all failed to pass their
exams in engineering and applied science. In commenting on the report written
by one of their teachers, Oakman provides an indirect but significant glimpse on
 Becoming ‘illegal’ 27
how Australian representatives apprehended the difficulties faced by Colombo
Plan students:

Although the DEA blamed the students for their general ‘attitude to the
course’ a closer examination of the reports reveals a more complex picture.
Language difficulties appeared to be the most significant and persistent bar-
rier to their success. The physics teacher, E. F. Palmer, noted that the ‘natural
shyness’ and ‘embarrassing amount of courtesy’ displayed by the students was
in marked contrast to the ‘brusque manners’ of the Australian miners respon-
sible for practical demonstrations in the mines. Teachers and students often
misunderstood each other, and the generally passive and withdrawn nature
of the Burmese students compounded these difficulties. . . . The students –
suffering from sustained exposure to Australian cuisine – escaped to the
rear of the hostel on weekends to cook traditional meals on campfires by the
riverbank.
(187–188, emphasis added)

In this brief commentary, language difficulties are listed as the primary cause of
the academic failure faced by the students in question. However, these issues are
neither listed nor discussed. Language difficulties per se vanish in favour of a
more detailed account of the cultural differences that seemed to compound misun-
derstandings between teachers and students. The students are described as being
‘naturally shy’, displaying an ‘embarrassing amount of courtesy’ and are hindered
by a ‘generally passive and withdrawn nature’. Their teachers are barely described
in terms of cultural attributes, but their qualities emerge by contrast. As their man-
ners are defined as ‘brusque’, it is possible to imagine them as being audacious,
proactive and extroverted. Students’ linguistic difficulties here are also under-
stood to be aggravated by the longing for what they had left at home: food, family
and friends. Stuck between an apparently natural inclination to introversion and
sentimental proneness to feelings of loss and nostalgia, students’ differences from
their teachers were thus construed as an oppositional set of embodied charac-
teristics, further deepened by a divergent gradient of emotionality. As Chapter 2
demonstrates, the description of these students as melancholic subjects is a typical
stance in the apprehension of migrants’ problems when adapting to host cultures,
but it moreover fits with concomitant discourses employed to justify the tempo-
rary inclusion of non-white migrants within the otherwise well-patrolled borders
of the nation.

‘White man’s burden’: Colombo Plan students

and compassion
At a discursive level, Australia’s participation in the plan was couched within the
standing trope of the ‘white man’s burden’, which amounted to the self-positioning
of the nation as an ‘authoritative “master” that has the resources and innate benevolent
28 Becoming ‘illegal’
character to work for the profit of others’ (Laforteza 2007: 4, original emphasis).
As the Australian External Affairs Minister Percy Spender claimed at the con-
ference which led to the creation of the Colombo Plan: ‘Australia was ready to
make her full contribution to those of her neighbours who were threatened with
acute economic distress.’ On this claim, other ministers attending the conference
commented, ‘[They] were obviously impressed at Australia’s vigorous approach
to the whole of the South-East Asian problem. It had not been forced; it came vol-
untarily’ (‘Recognition’ 1950: 2, emphasis added). The trope of the ‘white man’s
burden’, here understood as the duty to ‘ “colonise” and “civilise” non-white
people’ (Laforteza 2007: 3), was hardly a novelty of the Colombo Plan. Rather,
it has had a long history of application in bio-political management, especially of
Australia’s Indigenous populations within the scope of iteratively ‘constructing a
foundational claim for white sovereignty’ (Riggs cited in Laforteza 2007: 3). In
this sense, the extension of the benevolence of white Australians to their Asian
neighbours can be understood as an attempt to secure for itself an ‘authoritative
white ontology of being and belonging’ in both the land it had taken posses-
sion of and its geographic position (Laforteza 2007: 3). In order to achieve this
objective, Australia had to demonstrate itself as not only inherently benevolent
but also a natural custodian of Western knowledge. If, as the then British leader
of the Opposition Clement Attlee once stated: ‘the West has the skills which can
unlock the door to the wealth of the East’ (‘Wealth of Asia’ 1953: 3), Australia
had to first prove that it possessed the ‘skills’ necessary to be counted as part of
the ‘West’. Thus it was required to internationally project a sense of intellec-
tual confidence, which, as Rachel Burke indicates, was epitomised in Austral-
ia’s self-representation as an authoritative ‘educator’ of Colombo Plan students,
who were consequently reduced to the status of Australians’ ‘surrogate children’
(2006: 333–337).
In ‘Construction of Asian International Students’, Burke demonstrates that
Australia’s plans in the Asia-Pacific were accompanied by the emergence of a new
humanitarian rhetoric in public discourse regarding Asian countries and Colombo
Plan students (2006). Australian newspapers provided detailed accounts of the suf-
fering endured by Asian populations and appealed for Australia to alleviate such
suffering by means of humanitarian intervention (335). However, such appeals
were not estranged from the concomitant representation of Asian countries as a
looming threat to the territorial security and integrity of Australia. According to
Burke, the two rhetorics went hand in hand, and together they positioned Australia
as the leader and educator of ‘Asia’ (336–337). The coexistence of such seem-
ingly oppositional rhetorics is exemplified by one of the many comments on the
plan released to the public by Percy Spender:

[O]ur future depends to an ever-increasing degree upon the political stability

of our Asian neighbours, upon the economic well-being of Asian peoples, and
upon the development of understanding and friendly relations between Aus-
tralia and Asia. The rising and menacing tide of communism in the east pre-
sents us with a definite threat . . . to our national existence. . . . Australia must
 Becoming ‘illegal’ 29
develop a dynamic policy towards neighbouring Asian countries whose people
we must live with, and should give leadership to development in that area.
(cited in Burke 2006: 337, emphasis added)

The depiction of Australia as the authoritative ‘leader’ and ‘educator’ of the

Asia-Pacific region was complemented in local metropolitan and rural news-
papers with the one of white Australian citizens as ‘responsible’ parents of the
Colombo Plan students (Burke 2006: 339). Any cursory search in the archive16
will confirm the abundant recourse to parenting metaphors characterising the
era. Under headlines such as ‘Father “acquires” seven children’ (1949: 7) and
‘ “Mother” to 1000’ (Jacoby 1960: 7), the news of the day depicted men and
women in charge of the welfare of Colombo students as attentive caretakers
catering to needs as diverse as ‘financial trouble, romantic trouble, advice on a
course, a desire to change lodgings, a vacation job, homesickness, help in selling
a tape-recorder’ (7). Construed as ‘surrogate children’, the students coming to
study and live in Australia were depicted in the same fora as an undifferentiated
group of grateful, passive and easily impressionable recipients of aid (Burke
2006: 339–346). Colombo Plan students were in fact consistently referred to as
‘having been “brought to Australia” ’ and ‘welcom[ing] aid and responding to
“offers” of scholarship’ (339).17 They were moreover described as ‘smiling’ or
speaking with a ‘grave, soft voice’, furthering the perception of them as passive
and grateful (342–342).18 On the one hand, these depictions bespeak the long-
standing tradition in Australia of representing Asian nations and their popula-
tions monolithically as a passive and homogenous object of knowledge and
intervention (Broinowski 1982: 13–15). As Edward Said magisterially argued
in Orientalism, this tradition eventuated into a discursive regime and set of per-
ceptual practices that define the contours of the subjectivity of the ‘Oriental’
other in such a way as to secure the cultural superiority of the ‘West’ over the
‘East’ (1995: 6–7). In this sense, the depiction of Colombo Plan students as ‘sur-
rogate children’ amounted to a discursive strategy to secure encounters between
‘Asian’ students and their ‘hosts’ as an uneven exchange. It is no coincidence
that, so infantilised, the cultural heritages and knowledge traditions of Colombo
Plan students were at best represented as a matter of ‘anthropological curiosity’
(Burke 2006: 340–341). On the other hand, these depictions signal a shift in
the way in which Australia began to imagine itself as a nation in the aftermath
of World War II. As Burke points out, the representation of Colombo Plan stu-
dents as ‘victims’ in the context of a rising ‘philanthropic sentiment’ in Western
nations yielded two interrelated effects: appealing to the Australian commu-
nity’s sense of moral duty facilitated public acceptance of the program and con-
sequently generated an international image of Australia as a generous, open and
tolerant nation (350–351). But how exactly did the representation of Colombo
Plan students as ‘suffering’ contribute to Australia’s self-representation as both
a generous and open nation vis-à-vis Colombo Plan students? What kind of con-
ditions of acceptance did this representation engender and maintain throughout
the course of the Overseas Student Program?
30 Becoming ‘illegal’
In the Fruits of Sorrow, Elizabeth Spelman explores the ramifications of the
act of framing the suffering of others as an object of compassion (1997: 59–89).
According to her, ‘the injunction to feel compassion is a familiar way in which
we are encouraged to respond to the sufferers who have our attention’ (6). Such
an injunction can very well lead to much-needed help or consolation to those
who are suffering, but it can also reinforce, or create anew, patterns of socio-
cultural, political and economic subordination (7). This reinforcement can occur
because the ways in which the suffering of others is understood are typically over-
determined by how it is signified by those who are called into action. As a result,
appeals to, for instance, citizens of a nation to feel compassion towards those who
are suffering can easily turn into attempts to assert an ‘authoritative interpretation
of the experience of those suffering, to enter into the public record not only that
[others] are suffering but what their sufferings mean, and to announce one’s virtue
by registering one’s feelings about such suffering’ (64). This risk is exemplified
in the case of the Colombo Plan students. Pleas to alleviate the suffering of South
and South East Asian populations had amounted to a justification of Australia’s
political intervention in the Asia-Pacific while making responses to such suffering
a ‘virtue’, one which Australians could claim as evidence of their racial toler-
ance while effectively leaving the object of their compassion with ‘no say in the
presentation of who they are and what they are going through’ (64). Likewise, in
examining appeals to compassion, Ahmed writes,

The over-representation of the pain of the others is significant in that it fixes

the other as the one who ‘has’ pain, and who can overcome that pain only
when the Western subject feels moved enough to give. . . . [G]enerosity
becomes a form of individual and possibly even national character; some-
thing ‘I’ or ‘we’ have, which is ‘shown’ in how we are moved by others.
(2004: 22)

To ‘be moved by others’ thus amounts to an act of feeling which reshapes the
contours of a nation as a collective attuned to the suffering of others, a national
collective that is generous. To ‘be moved by others’ furthermore implicates a
movement towards those others, a movement that, even if temporarily, overturns
distance into a newfound proximity. The act itself of moving towards those who
had previously been considered out of reach lends itself to the attribution of a
second characteristic to a nation: openness. Generosity and openness thus emerge
as national characteristics a collective lays claim to by means of ‘feeling’ com-
passionate towards the suffering of others. In the case of Colombo Plan students,
generosity and openness are characteristics that the Australian collective rhetori-
cally demonstrated in the act of accepting students from the same countries that
were concomitantly construed as threatening the territorial integrity of the nation.
As mentioned earlier, this acceptance was intended to demonstrate that Colombo
Plan students were regarded as equal to Australian citizens in the newly founded
post-colonial geo-political order of the Asia-Pacific region. However, as Ahmed
has noted, relations based on compassion rarely eventuate into equality, as the
 Becoming ‘illegal’ 31
‘aboutness’ of such feelings warrants differentiation (21). In responding to the
suffering of others, those who suffer remain the objects – and not the subjects – of
the feelings of a nation (21). From this perspective, the positioning of Colombo
Plan students as an object of Australian compassion not only reinforced ‘old pat-
terns’ of socio-cultural subordination but also, and more importantly, made their
suffering the condition of their acceptance into the nation.

From ‘aid’ to ‘trade’: international students, security

and the Australian economy
In the decades following the end of World War II, the Overseas Student Pro-
gram occupied a prominent position in the Australian aid program and was well
regarded for its diplomatic and trade outcomes. In light of this regard, the Whit-
lam government enlarged the scope of the plan by increasing the quota of private
students allowed to study in Australia from 6,300 to 10,000, abolished tertiary
fees for all international private students enrolled in any university or college
and authorised students to stay in the country if they were able to satisfy migra-
tion criteria (Sebastian 2009: 79). Nonetheless, the destiny of the program was
to change rapidly in the following decade due to two interrelated global events:
the economic crisis of 1974 and the rapid growth in the demand for international
education. As Eugene Sebastian has observed, international education by the
beginning of the 1980s had become a worldwide phenomenon, with more than
one million people studying abroad. This engendered a dramatic growth in the
demand for education in all the major Western educational destinations. Yet these
nations did not welcome the increase, which they perceived instead as a flow that
was ‘getting out of hand’ (Chandler 1989: 90). The cost of international education
continued to rise against the perception that international students were exacerbat-
ing competition for limited university positions and jobs, bringing inassimilable
cultural differences and inevitably getting involved in broader issues of migration
(90). As Rachel Chandler points out, in light of these perceptions, the major West-
ern nations receiving international students accordingly adopted measures to halt
their enrolments (90). Starting from 1979, the UK introduced a full-fee system,
France tightened its admissions criteria, Germany adopted more restrictive visa
requirements (90) and the United States and Canada substantially increased tui-
tion fees (Sebastian 2009: 82). These changes further increased the demand for
international education in Australia, which had likewise grown notably through
the 1970s (83). For instance, the number of Malaysian students who came to study
in Australia almost doubled (from 3,139 in 1976 to 6,016 in 1983), while the num-
ber of students from Hong Kong more than tripled (from 421 in 1976 to 1,983 in
1983; 82–83).
In this new international scenario, the subsequent governments of Malcolm
Fraser and Bob Hawke questioned the humanitarian and diplomatic priorities
of the Overseas Students Program and opened it up to considerable modifica-
tions. The Fraser government began the process by introducing the Overseas
Student Charge – which was originally fixed at 10 per cent of the real cost of
32 Becoming ‘illegal’
education – while making it compulsory for both sponsored and private interna-
tional students to return to their countries of origin for at least two years before
applying for permanent migration. As in the UK, France, Germany, Canada and
the United States, these changes resulted from both financial and migration con-
cerns as advanced by two opposing standpoints on the program. On the one hand,
the representatives of the then Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs
advocated the introduction of a full-fee system to counter the alleged use of the
Overseas Students Program as a form of ‘backdoor entry’ to Australia, thus ignor-
ing the aid and diplomatic aspect of the program. On the other hand, the rep-
resentatives of the then Department of External Affairs insisted on preserving
the diplomatic objective of the program while suggesting countering its misuses
by enforcing migration regulatory controls (Sebastian 2009: 84–85). During the
Fraser government, the diplomatic value accorded to the Overseas Student Pro-
gram ultimately succeeded in retaining its original humanitarian scope, making
it possible to claim that until his government, international students were still
mostly considered as aid recipients. Yet the hard-line position held by representa-
tives of the Department of Immigration shows that the connection between inter-
national students and abuses of the migration system had already been drawn in
the 1970s, although not as publicly as it would be.
The Hawke government was less compromising than its predecessor and ordered
two inquiries into policy options for the Overseas Student Program: the Goldring
Report (1984) and the Jackson Report (1984). The Goldring Report recommended
retaining the subsidised system for private students and even increasing the num-
ber of private students allowed to study in Australia to augment diplomatic and
trade returns (Nesdale et al. 1995: 6). In contrast, the Jackson report noted that the
Australian educational system could satisfy an unmet demand of education from
Asian countries while retaining its humanitarian objective in the form of targeted
scholarships (6–7). In light of these contradictory recommendations, the Hawke
government warily proceeded to deregulate the tertiary education sector by add-
ing a third tier to the existing sponsored/subsidised system and raising the Over-
seas Student Charge for private subsidised students to 45 per cent in 1986 (7). In
1985, the Federal Cabinet had divided the education industry into a formal and
a non-formal sector to facilitate its commercialisation. The formal sector would
be comprised of public and private secondary schools, universities and colleges
of technical and further education (TAFE) while the non-formal sector would be
comprised of private colleges and institutes that provided unaccredited full cost
university courses. Universities and colleges were also allowed to provide full-
cost courses specifically designed for international students who could not be
accommodated within the quota established for subsidised students (Sebastian
2009: 97). From 1990, providers of higher education were allowed to sell their
courses to overseas students ‘without prejudice to their Commonwealth fund-
ing grant’ (Nesdale et al. 1995: 7). As the Jackson Report suggested, the origi-
nal humanitarian scope of the program was partially retained by simultaneously
introducing merit and equity scholarships as external to the now-unified system
of commercial education. In many regards, this shift in Australian international
 Becoming ‘illegal’ 33
education policy – known as the passage from ‘aid’ to ‘trade’ – was not inconsist-
ent with the previous humanitarian scope of the Overseas Student Program, as
both schemes were primarily motivated by the political and economic self-interest
of the nation. Yet the changes introduced under the Hawke government epito-
mised an important rupture in the history of the nation’s conceptualisation of what
role tertiary education is assumed to play more broadly in the Australian economy.
In ‘Neo-Liberalism and the national economy’, Barry Hindess argues that the
‘extension of market and contractual relationships into areas previously governed
in other ways’ and the ‘persistent governmental efforts to restrain public expendi-
ture’ (1998: 210) constitute two trends brought about by the recent conceptuali-
sation of national economies and security as processes contingent upon changes
occurring at the international level (210). According to him, until the late twen-
tieth century liberal governments had managed their national economies by con-
sidering the state, society and the economy as distinct but interdependent fields of
governmental intervention (211–218). National economies especially were under-
stood as self-regulating systems and as resources in the service of the state and its
citizens. As he explains, this understanding stems from David Ricardo’s theory of
mutual advantage (1817), which is commonly regarded as the foundation of the
modern theory of international trade. As Hindess points out, this theory regards
national economies as discrete units that can profitably interact with each other
provided that governments cooperate to guarantee stable conditions of exchange
to counter currency fluctuations (1988: 215–218). Yet as he argues, this liberal
understanding of national economies and international exchange has been dis-
placed by the intensification of international trade and the adoption of increas-
ingly sophisticated managerial, financial and accounting instruments (219–220).
Consequently, the representation of national economies as largely self-regulating
systems has lost traction in favour of a more negative perception of the interna-
tional economy as a system that punishes those countries that are less competitive
(221). For Hindess, it is because of this perception that it has become common to
think that ‘the only way to avoid becoming a loser – whether as a nation, firm or
individual – is to be as competitive as possible’ (Hirst and Thompson cited in Hin-
dess 1998: 222). As a result, the problem of economic security has become one of
pursuing and promoting ‘competitive economic efficiency’ (Hindess 1998: 223)
by making institutional and personal conduct conform to a generalised ‘enter-
prise culture’ (Burchell cited in Hindess 1998: 223). As boundaries between state,
society and economy have become blurred, market principles and practices have
been extended to the public provision of services that used to be regarded as non-
markets (Hindess 1998: 223) – for example, tertiary education.
It is in the context of this shift from a liberal to a neoliberal model of national
economy management that the Australian government created the export indus-
try of international education alongside deploying market-oriented solutions to
reduce financial pressure on both educational institutions and the government. In
Australia, the market in question was the growing demand for tertiary education
by Asian countries, which had been previously addressed in the form of aid. As
Simon Marginson reminds us, reforms to the tertiary education sector in Australia
34 Becoming ‘illegal’
have relied on the theory of human capital (1997b).19 According to this theory,
the skills and knowledge that individuals possess are a form of capital that can
be accumulated over time and invested to obtain outcomes such as wage, social
mobility and economic wealth (Collin 1991: 43–44). When applied at a national
level, the theory of human capital considers the skills and knowledge possessed
by a population as a whole. Investment in the human capital of a given nation
is thus understood as a means to advance technological progress and stimulate
economic growth. As Marginson has observed, this theory gained traction in the
1960s, when most Western countries were benefiting from an array of positive
economic conjectures, and Keynesian macro-economic instruments were widely
deployed to redistribute wealth and opportunities throughout society (1997b: 218–
220). Governments embraced the idea of a causal relationship between education
and economic growth and invested strongly in education and research (218–220).
In the mid 1980s, the idea of a linear relationship between investment in educa-
tion and economic growth was replaced by the notion that this relationship was
mediated by technological change. Education economists stressed the importance
of investing in education to facilitate technological efficiency and to redistribute
economic resources accordingly (221–222). During the 1990s, the human capital
theory underwent a further conceptual shift. In the new regime of competitive
economic efficiency, the advocates of the theory maintained that education is an
investment in human capital, but they placed the burden of its cost on individuals
rather than on governments (223). The individualisation of the cost of education
has had multiple effects. Besides legitimising governmental cuts in education, it
has facilitated a redistribution of responsibilities among governments, providers
of education and students. Whereas providers of education have become respon-
sible for an increasing number of administrative, marketing and pedagogical
functions, governments have reduced their role in the education field to one of
providing and securing the conditions under which students and their families can
make economically rational decisions (223). Additionally, the individualisation of
the cost of education has relied on an understanding of education ‘not so much as
a social investment with common ends, but as a process of investment in the self’
which should be managed by parents and students themselves to secure for the lat-
ter better career opportunities, higher wages and social status (223). As Marginson
has demonstrated, it is because of this understanding of education that prospective
graduate students are not solely expected to act according to the enterprise culture
aforementioned but also to become ‘entrepreneurs’ of themselves (223; see also
Gordon 1991: 43–44).
Clearly, this expectation was devised to be applied to domestic students and
not their international counterparts, since the latter were mostly considered as a
transient part of the Australian population from both a legal and a cultural point
of view. As international students were meant to leave Australia upon completion
of their studies, the subjective position of students as entrepreneurs of themselves
was not straightforwardly made available to them. Like their Australian counter-
parts, they were held responsible for themselves and their decisions when enroll-
ing in and attending a course, yet their decisions were not valued as investments
 Becoming ‘illegal’ 35
in the future of Australia in terms of accumulation of skills and knowledge. As the
next section will clarify, at the time of the shift from aid to trade and the cultural
reform of universities, international students began to be conceived of more as
consumers of educational services than as entrepreneurs equipped with cultural
and economic capital, for it was assumed that the capital they accumulated would
have been put to profit outside the borders of Australia. This assumption was des-
tined to change radically in the following decade, when in 2001 the Howard gov-
ernment implemented for graduated international students a facilitated pathway to
permanent migration. Chapter 2 will explore this shift as another important event
in the history of the Overseas Student Program. Suffice it to emphasise here that
the emerging neoliberal representation of economic security in terms of competi-
tive efficiency positioned international students as financial resources to compete
for and international education as an export industry capable of strengthening
Australia’s economic position in the Asian-Pacific region. As a result, the 1990s
witnessed the problematisation of international students as a primary resource to
counter the risk of national economic failure in the global market and the meas-
urement of their contribution to the well-being of the nation in terms of financial
costs and benefits, a point that the last section of this chapter further elaborates.

From students to consumers: the Tiananmen Square

uprising and the 1989 crisis
The shift from aid to trade was not the only event that characterised the chaotic
years of the Hawke government. As mentioned earlier, these years were equally
important for the crisis that hit the new-born industry in 1989. This crisis led to
the positioning of international students as consumers of educational services to
such a degree that, as Eugene Sebastian has argued, international students them-
selves began to advocate their rights less as students than as consumers (2009).20
The two events are related to each other due to an initial lack of regulation. The
introduction of a full-fee payment system was in fact not properly prepared; there
was neither a coordinating or regulatory agency nor a code of conduct for pro-
viders of education (Nesdale et al. 1995: 8). Consequently, the experiment of a
wholly deregulated market did not last long. By the end of the 1980s, the fledgling
export industry of education faced its first crisis following the collapse of part of
the non-formal sector of the industry. As soon as deregulation was implemented,
the education industry exploded, especially in its non-formal branch of English
Language Intensive Courses for Overseas Students (ELICOS). The ELICOS sec-
tor registered the most dramatic rise in applicants, from around 2,500 in 1986 to
25,000 in 1990 (Industry Commission 1991: 25). This increase was mostly driven
by Chinese students’ admissions. As mentioned earlier, prior to deregulation of
the educational system, the Overseas Student Program was dominated by pri-
vate students coming from a small number of nation-states: Malaysia, Singapore,
Indonesia and Hong Kong. As Jing Shu and Lesleyanne Hawthorne have pointed
out, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Singapore are all former British colonies ‘char-
acterised by strong education links with Britain and English-based secondary
36 Becoming ‘illegal’
teaching’ (1996: 73). Indonesian students had been coming to study in Australia
since the first years of the Colombo Plan, and the country was increasingly linked
with Australia ‘by education, trade, and technical cooperation’ (74). Altogether,
these countries represented the most significant source of international students
for Australia since the inception of the Overseas Student Program in 1951.
In contrast, prior to 1986, Chinese students were scarcely represented. Their
numbers rose eleven-fold in just three years: from 1,881 in 1986 to 22,547 in 1990
(Industry Commission 1991: 24). These students were mostly enrolled in ELI-
COS schools and came to represent the principal source of income for this indus-
try such that by 1989, 50 per cent of Chinese students studying in Australia were
enrolled in ELICOS courses (Shu and Hawthorne 1996: 78). The rapid increase
of Chinese students in the ELICOS sector engendered an animated debate among
the government departments in charge of overseas students, namely the Depart-
ments of Immigration, Education and Foreign Affairs and Trade (Australian
Department of Employment, Education and Training [DEET] 1991: 383). Quite
rapidly, concerns regarding the overrepresentation of Chinese students across
the total number of overseas students according to their country of origin began
to be compounded by the perception that Chinese students enrolled in ELICOS
courses used their visa for non-educational purposes such as earning an income
or even applying for a change of visa status (Nesdale et al. 1995: 12; Industry
Commission 1991: 50). At the same time, Chinese students were found to be the
largest group of temporary residents overstaying their visa (Nesdale et al. 1995:
13; Industry Commission 1991: 58–62). In light of anecdotal evidence and data
on overstaying, the surge of Chinese applicants in the ELICOS sector came to be
associated with the use of the student visa as ‘backdoor entry’ to Australia. The
metaphor of ‘backdoor entry’ was deployed in the ensuing avalanche of govern-
ment reports investigating overstaying students to describe the alleged threat they
posed to the integrity of the migration program. Framed as such, overstaying had
publicly become a problem of risk regulation in spite of the fact that the vast
majority of international students, Chinese students included, tended to overstay
for only a few months (Industry Commission 1991: 63).
To protect the integrity of the migration program, the Hawke government hast-
ily implemented a host of measures specifically deployed to discourage Chinese
students’ migration in Australia. In 1987, Chinese students enrolled in non-formal
courses were the only national group required to pay tuition and living expenses in
advance.21 Likewise, they were the only cohort of students forbidden from apply-
ing for non-formal courses that lasted less than six months (51). These measures
were justified as a means to secure their genuine intention to come to Australia for
no purpose other than studying. So explained, both up-front payments and mini-
mum length of courses effectively singled out Chinese students as subjects at high
risk of illegal migration and thus paved the way for the implementation of stricter
security conditions ranging from visa restrictions to diminished entitlements. But
while student visa restrictions were devised to discourage Chinese students’ enrol-
ments in short non-formal courses, following the Tiananmen Square uprising in
 Becoming ‘illegal’ 37
June 1989, they unintentionally caused the financial collapse of part of the ELI-
COS (Nesdale et al. 1995: 12).
This uprising caused a great deal of political insecurity in China, and the Aus-
tralian government saw this as a factor that would skyrocket overstaying among
Chinese students (12). To avert this potential crisis, Australia temporarily closed
its embassy’s visa facilities in Beijing, generating a backlog of 26,000 applications
(12). Because of this backlog, Australian educational providers were instructed
not to accept applications from Chinese students until January 1990 (12). At the
same time, the federal government further tightened student visa requirements
and restrictions to regulate the entry of all students who intended to apply for
non-formal courses (Industry Commission 1991: 51–52). As a result, thousands of
Chinese students caught in the backlog were denied entry to Australia, and many
ELICOS providers could not refund the tuition fees and living expenses they had
paid in advance (52–53). Because many ELICOS schools were not financially
sound, part of the sector collapsed, leaving an unspecified number of Chinese and
other international students displaced within Australia and thousands of offshore
students who needed to be refunded (53–54). The financial collapse of the ELI-
COS sector inevitably caused diplomatic tensions with the home governments of
international students and generated considerable bad publicity. It also created
resistance to aggressive Australian marketing strategies and cast doubts on the
ethical standard of Australian educational providers (Nesdale et al. 1995: 13).
As argued earlier, the shift from aid to trade reduced the federal government’s
responsibilities to secure the investment of self-managing students in their edu-
cation. The 1989 crisis affected this investment, and the government was then
obliged to intervene to quell diplomatic tensions and save the fledgling industry
of international education. Prepaid fees were refunded, and stricter conditions of
entrance to the industry for providers were promptly introduced. The Australian
Vice-Chancellors Committee (AVCC) was first to take action against the exces-
sive exploitation of the market by adopting a Code of Ethical Conduct in the
early 1990s. In 1991 the federal government implemented the Education Services
for Overseas Students (henceforth the ESOS Act) (Registration of Providers and
Financial Regulation Act of 1991). As highlighted by the title, the ESOS Act was
designed to secure international students’ investment in education by making
education providers accountable to them in circumstances such as suspension of
pre-paid courses and fee refunds. In 1994 the Ministerial Council of Education,
Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (henceforth MCEETYA) introduced a
Code of Practice in the Provision of International Education and Training Services
at the institutional level. The Code of Practice established compulsory standards
in the provision of appropriate support services but also obliged providers of
education to produce accurate and extensive information regarding courses and
schools for their prospective students. Both the ESOS Act of 1991 and the Code
of Practice of 1994 considered international students as consumers of educational
services, and both sought to secure their investment in education by setting a con-
sumer rights protection standard. At the time of writing, this type of protection is
38 Becoming ‘illegal’
still available to international students although both the ESOS Act 1991 and the
Code of Practice of 1994 have been modified and replaced a number of times.22
A review of the ESOS Act was, for instance, required on the occasion of the
protests that Indian international students staged in 2009 and 2010 to strengthen
international students’ protection from exploitative colleges. As with the crisis in
1989, the ESOS Act was reviewed in concomitance with the revision of the crite-
ria used to assess student visa applications from countries associated with a high
risk of migration, which highlights the understanding of international students as
both (desirable) consumers and (undesirable) migrants.

Becoming ‘illegal’: multicultural love, security

and resentment in Australia
Concerns about international students using their visas as ‘backdoor entry’ to Aus-
tralia were aired as early as the Fraser government. At that time, the metaphor was
used mostly to refer to private international students applying for a change of sta-
tus23 while still studying in Australia, and the metaphor’s circulation was limited
to the small circle of federal agencies involved in the administration of the pro-
gram. In the 1970s, this migration practice was so common that an estimated 75
per cent of private international students obtained permanent residency by doing
so (Goldring Report 1984: 65–66). However, at that time, the then Department of
Immigration and Ethnic Affairs was less concerned with the number of students
applying for a change of status than the possibility that – with the dismantling of
the White Australia policy in 1973 – studying in Australia could be misunderstood
as ‘de facto immigration entry to Australia rather than developing aid’ (Shu and
Hawthorne 1996: 68). In any case, because the diplomatic value attached to the
program was considered more important than the comparatively low number of
private students applying for permanent residency, the Fraser government over-
looked the concerns of the Department of Immigration and limited the number of
international students’ applications for residency to the stream of skilled migra-
tion. When that was done, international students were deprived of the possibility
of applying for permanent residency while still studying in Australia and, most
importantly, they were obliged to wait at least two years before applying. This
decision signals several significant discursive shifts in the way of thinking about
race and justifying migration in general as reflected in the establishment of a dou-
ble regime of governance for international students in Australia: the first as con-
sumers of educational service and the second as prospective permanent migrants.
On the one hand, the ending of the White Australia policy in 1973 and the
adoption of multiculturalism as a set of population-management policies in 1978
had made it virtually impossible to substantiate migration rationales and policies
in blunt racial terms (Stratton 1998: 33).24 On the other hand, the internationalisa-
tion of the Australian economy led succeeding federal governments to promote
migration in terms of its economic potential rather than in terms of maintaining a
culturally homogenous nation. Chapter 2 further elaborates this point when trac-
ing the historical and discursive conditions that led international students to be
 Becoming ‘illegal’ 39
conceived of as ‘ideal migrants’. Here, suffice it to remind readers that trading
with Asian-Pacific countries had become paramount to secure Australia’s eco-
nomic future, making international graduates’ participation in the workforce an
asset to strengthen business and research networks across the region. Moreover,
these students were acquiring knowledge and skills in financial services, new tech-
nologies and science, areas all considered fundamental to Australia’s competitive-
ness at a time of increasing insecurity. If migration by South and South-East Asian
ex-international students came to be appreciated as a valuable contribution to the
Australian economy in general and the Australian labour market in particular, how
can we explain the concomitant representation of overstaying Chinese students
enrolled in ELICOS courses as a threat to the integrity of the migration program?
As discussed earlier, the aftermath of World War II in Australia was character-
ised by a process of gradual opening of the nation to non-white migrants. In the
case of the Colombo Plan, this process had been predicated on students’ posi-
tioning as an object of national compassion. Their temporary inclusion in the
nation must be understood too against the emergence of a supra-national sanc-
tioned commitment to anti-racism. Alana Lentin defines this commitment as the
‘UNESCO “tradition” of anti-racism’ (2004) as it stemmed from organisations
like UNESCO’s effort to eradicate racism problematised as a ‘scientific disci-
pline, grounded in genetics and physical anthropology’ (2004: 435). With this
objective, in 1950 UNESCO put together a ‘world panel of experts’ (geneticists,
psychologists, sociologists and anthropologists such as Claude Lévi-Strauss) who
agreed to replace the by-then scientifically untenable concept of race with that
of culture as means to explain human variation without implicating degrading
references to ‘superiority’ and ‘inferiority’ (436). Different cultures were concep-
tualised as relative to each other, and disparities in the level of progress achieved
by each were explained as a measure of interactions between various cultures
throughout history (436).25 Post-war Western nation-states such as the UK and
Australia largely adopted this view as demonstrated by the unfolding of two asso-
ciated processes. Firstly, in the realm of international affairs, group populations
identified as non-white began to be included ‘in the progress enjoyed by Western
societies’ through admission to the ‘international community and Western-bound
immigration’ (432), exemplified by the Colombo Commonwealth Meeting of
Foreign Affairs. Secondly, in the realm of domestic affairs, assimilationist poli-
cies requiring new immigrants to renounce their ‘cultural specificities in order
to become a seamless part of the national whole’ were employed concomitantly
(432). In Australia, it was through these two processes that members of different
cultural groups – indigenous populations of Australia included – were understood
as capable of developing and progressing.
Likewise, Jon Stratton has observed that the progressive opening of Aus-
tralia to non-white migrants was sustained throughout the 1960s and 1970s by a
broader re-conceptualisation of race from a determinant to a signifier of cultural
differences (Stratton 1998: 40–45). He too traces this shift to the replacement
of the rhetoric of race with that of culture and ethnicity in national discourses
of migration. In the aftermath of World War II, culture and ethnicity gradually
40 Becoming ‘illegal’
became the criteria by which the capacity of any prospective migrant group to
assimilate was established (47–53). Stratton uses the case of Lebanese migrants
arriving in Australia after the war to build on this point. Between 1947 and 1967,
17,000 Christian Lebanese nationals were allowed to migrate to Australia on the
basis of their faith. Christianity is still considered to be the core of Australian
morality, and religious beliefs have been equally held as a test of cultural com-
patibility (46–47). Conversely, different cultural groups were classified in terms
of distance or proximity from what was to be referred to as ‘mainstream’ Aus-
tralian culture, paving the way for what is now popularly known as ‘cultural’
or ‘differentialist’ racism (53–65). While Chapter 2 elaborates on the relevance
of these distinctions, suffice it to note here that the distance between cultural
groups became the rationale according to which racism became apprehended not
as a form of institutional systematic exclusion but as a problem of prejudiced
individuals lacking ‘intercultural knowledge’ (Lentin 2004: 436). On the cusp
of this re-conceptualisation of race and racism, Australia opened itself to accept
‘non-white’ migrants, or, as Stratton has specified, ‘g[ave] them the opportunity
[to assimilate]’ (50) – provided that their number did not ‘exceed the community
capacity for smooth assimilation’ (Immigration Reform Group cited in Stratton
1998: 49). Stratton’s use of the word ‘opportunity’ proximate to ‘assimilation’
reminds us that the possibility of becoming assimilated is contingent on the will-
ingness of a host population to allow such a process to occur and that this process
is bound with conditions. In this sense, assimilation can be understood as a form
of conditional hospitality, in which demands are set from time to time in relation
to broader circumstances, as well as enforced through a panoply of visa assess-
ment criteria and requirements.
Stratton’s analysis of race relations in Australia after World War II resonates
with Sara Ahmed’s analysis of the politics of love in contemporary discourses
about migration and multiculturalism in the UK (2004: 133–143). In her analysis,
Ahmed suggests that the opening of the UK to non-white migrants has been elabo-
rated in public discourses as an extension of the love of the nation to those who are
already ‘recognised as “being different” ’ (133). Because represented as motivated
by love – or compassion, as in the case of Colombo Plan students in the past – this
opening is simultaneously represented as an act of generosity and proneness to
the injury of being taken in by migrants while taking them into the nation (134).
Ahmed argues that the love offered by a nation to its migrants, like its hospital-
ity, is never unconditional (133), rather it requires prospective migrants, whether
temporary or permanent, to return the love extended to them by making the host
nation an object of their love – that is, meeting the ‘conditions’ established to
guarantee its security:

[T]he nation and the national subject can only love incoming others –
‘embrace them’ – if the conditions that enable security are already met. To
love the other requires that the nation is already secured as an object of love,
a security that demands that incoming others meet ‘our’ conditions. Such
conditions require that others ‘contribute’ to the UK through labour, or by
 Becoming ‘illegal’ 41
showing they are not bogus asylum seekers. When such conditions have been
met they will ‘receive the welcome they deserve’.
(136)

For migrants, therefore, taking a nation as an object of their love amounts to proving
they do not pose a threat to its security. If they succeed in this, they will be not only
welcomed but also commended as subjects deserving the love of the nation. Con-
versely, if they fail, they will be not only excluded but also subjected to negative forms
of assessment if not abjection. In this sense, the conditions of security established by a
nation to discriminate ‘deserving’ from ‘undeserving’ migrants can be understood as a
form of moral commitment against which migrants can be held responsible for when
failing to conduct themselves as expected. It is then relevant to investigate why and
how in the early 1990s overstaying Chinese students in Australia were represented as
posing a threat to the security of the nation and the kind of measures taken to discour-
age their entry. To do so, the remainder of this section will analyse the metaphors of
‘jump the queue’ and ‘backdoor entry’ as they circulated in governmental discourses
regarding the regulation of international students’ entry in Australia.
In 1990 the Industry Commission was asked to assess the benefits and costs of
the export industry of international education considering the problem of over-
staying and other forms of visa non-compliance. Because of this mandate, an
entire chapter of their report is dedicated to overstaying Chinese international
students, which highlights the contradictory nature of their status as both consum-
ers and temporary migrants.

Unlike most of Australia’s exports, a large part of education exports occurs

through the buyer coming to Australia and consuming goods and services
here. This process gives temporary immigration policy a major role to play.
Australia’s temporary resident entry policy seeks to facilitate the entry, for
a maximum stay of four years, of people who can contribute to the social,
economic and cultural development of Australia.
(49)

At this stage of the report, the Commission does not clarify how exactly tempo-
rary migrants like international students are expected to contribute to the social,
economic and cultural development of Australia. Yet it is already possible to
extrapolate how international students, like any other category of migrants, are
expected to respect the discriminating objective of the Australian migration pro-
gram in order to be let in:

Concerns about upholding the integrity of Australia’s immigration policy

underpin many of the policy changes affecting the export of education ser-
vices in recent years. Foremost among these concerns is the problem of appli-
cants who are not genuine about wishing to study and who may intend to
overstay their visas or fail to adhere to other visa conditions.
(49)
42 Becoming ‘illegal’
As this passage illustrates, the capacity of the migration program to serve the
best interests of Australia relies on its integrity. If this integrity is diminished for
any reason, so is the security and well-being of the nation in its entirety. In this
sense, the migration program can be understood as a metonymic extension of the
territorial and socio-cultural borders of Australia. By securing its integrity, the
nation itself can be considered secured from the threat of being overwhelmed by
undeserving and uninvited migrants. Infringements on visa conditions are conse-
quently interpreted as divergent from, if not conflicting with, the interests of the
nation. Such divergence in interests is further elaborated as a lack of commitment
to or love for the nation, marking migrants who, for instance, overstay their visa
as ‘bogus’ and ‘illegal’:

The rationale for concern about overstay is that: ‘. . . the Government is not
prepared to allow illegal entrants to undermine the integrity of the migration
program or to allow them to have access to benefits and services to which
they have no entitlement’.
(Hand cited in the Industry Commission 1991: 49, emphasis added)

Construed as failing the very first condition upon which their entry to Australia
was allowed, namely that they are genuine migrants willing to accept the nation
as an object of their love, overstaying students are moreover described as posing
a threat to those prospective migrants who, in contrast, genuinely wish to make
their contribution to Australia:

People who overstay may have deliberately misrepresented their purpose

for entry, and effectively jump the queue for de facto residence in Australia
ahead of legitimate applicants for immigration. . . . Perceptions abroad that
temporary immigration provides an easy avenue for extended stay can be
quickly formed and only slowly eroded. There is a significant danger when
overstay rates rise in the short term that this will generate a rapid decline in
the integrity of the immigration system, as potential entrants with dubious
motives learn of the situation.
(Industry Commission 1991: 57, emphasis added)

As this passage aptly demonstrates, the deployment of the metaphor of ‘jump the
queue’ specifies the risk of overstaying as being double. Firstly, overstaying inter-
national students are represented as a threat to the integrity of the ‘immigration
system’ in that their practices risk damaging prospective migrants who are willing
to abide by the conditions of security and love established by the nation. Sec-
ondly, they are construed as posing a future threat to the integrity of the same sys-
tem in that their illegitimate practices might encourage other ‘potential entrants
with dubious motives’ to avail themselves of the Overseas Student Program for
purposes different from education. As a result, Australia as a nation is depicted
as under the threat of double injury: losing legitimate migrants while attracting
ill-intentioned ones. A narrative of fear is thus deployed to align overstaying
 Becoming ‘illegal’ 43
international students with other migrants who are pre-emptively represented as
deliberately planning to hurt the nation for their own advantage.
As mentioned earlier, overstaying was not a practice spread among all interna-
tional students but mainly undertaken by Chinese students enrolled in ELICOS
courses. Over time, Chinese students’ practice of overstaying became associated
with another breach of the conditions of their student visa, namely working ille-
gally for more hours than their visa conditions allowed. For instance, in a research
paper for the Bureau of Immigration, Multiculturalism and Population Research,
Jing Shu and Lesleyanne Hawthorne emphasised,

Though the ELICOS industry seemed lucrative on paper, many PRC ELICOS
students had perceived enrolment as an opportunity for ‘backdoor migration’
or ‘English for Visa’ as one college instructor wryly put it. Entitled to work
20 hours towards their support, evidence from ELICOS providers suggests
that large numbers of PRC students in fact sought and filled one or more full-
time or part-time jobs, frequently in the untaxed, low paid black labour mar-
ket. Rather than pay for Australian courses with Chinese capital, many PRC
students remitted Australian earning home in order to cover debts incurred
against the amount borrowed to cover cost of fares and tuition.
(1996: 80–81)

This passage clearly illustrates Australia’s expectation for international students

to invest in education and other goods and services in order to be considered
deserving of the love of the nation. However, by not paying taxes on the income
earned while working in Australia and using it to pay debts at home, Chinese
students are represented as infringing the second condition of their entry and stay,
which is to secure the Australian economy at the time of increased international
competitiveness. Again, the employment of the metaphor of ‘backdoor’ migration
or entry further emphasises the vulnerability of the Australian nation as repre-
sented metonymically by its migration program. For causing or just revealing
such proneness to injury, Chinese students were represented as hurting the nation
by misusing the privileges granted to them by their student visas, thus becoming
an object of national resentment.
In Multiculturalism and Resentment, Duncan Ivison argues that resentment can
be conceptualised in two ways with regard to multicultural societies such as Aus-
tralia. The first way is strictly related to Nietzsche’s idea of ressentiment, which
highlights the feeling of powerlessness associated with subordinated people’s
anger and hatred for those groups or classes they perceive as preventing them
from achieving what they need or desire (2008: 129). The second way is a matter
of moral assessment that implies the existence of socially established values and
related rules of conduct:

A second form of resentment is of a more moralised kind, a reactive senti-

ment bound up with holding another morally accountable for their action.
I resent your curtailment of my liberty, for example, just because I believe we
44 Becoming ‘illegal’
share certain moral commitments – for example, a commitment to justify any
such interference in an appropriate way, which you fail to satisfy, and so on.
(129)

Considering that overstaying Chinese students were named as subjects hurting

the entire Australian population, the second definition of resentment is more per-
tinent. Resentment can be then understood as feeling that the community of Aus-
tralian settlers and legitimate migrants were called upon to ‘feel’ as an appropriate
response to Chinese students’ infringement of the conditions established to regu-
late their presence in the nation. Moreover, despite claiming that resentment is a
‘reactive sentiment’, Ivison’s definition draws attention to the unmediated status
of this feeling: to hold somebody morally responsible for her actions, these actions
must first be valued as being wrong or unjust. There must be time to reflect on and
assess them accordingly. Yet this definition runs the risk of reifying resentment as
if it is an object which individuals can claim to possess, pass on or share with oth-
ers. Most importantly, it would not explain why other migrants are not similarly
assessed when infringing the conditions of their entry and stay in Australia. It
seems unlikely that British backpackers would be publicly named as an object of
national resentment for overstaying their visas. In The Cultural Politics of Emo-
tions, Ahmed rejects the theorisation of emotions as a property of either individu-
als or societies and argues in favour of a model which apprehends emotions as
shaping the very bodily and social boundaries of individuals and collectives by
alignment (‘us’ who fear to be overtaken versus ‘them’ who make ‘us’ fear; 2004:
8–12) From this perspective, emotions are shaped by how subjects and objects
engage in contact with each other and, most importantly, by how these contacts
come to be read and assessed by individuals and collectives over time (5–8). The
emotions so produced further accumulate affective value by circulation in dis-
courses such as those regarding population management and multiculturalism.
Yet it is not emotions per se that circulate. What circulate instead are the signs
and objects to which emotions have become attached through histories of previ-
ous contact (see the figure of the ‘bogus migrant’). In this sense, the circulation
of emotions is not free but is rather determined by past associations among signs,
objects and the affective values that are consequently attached to them (11–12).
Bearing Ivison’s definition of resentment and Ahmed’s model of emotions in
mind, we can then understand how Chinese students’ practices per se did not cause
resentment insomuch as resentment was not the affective response following the
breach of visa conditions by default. Rather, it was the reading of them in terms of
a threat that made these practices, and the subjects associated with them, an object
of national resentment. The reading of the breach of visa conditions in terms of a
threat is thus determined by the history of previous contacts between white Austral-
ians and ‘Asian’ migrants, especially the Chinese. As discussed earlier, this history
is replete with negative associations between Chinese migrants and a national fear
of territorial and cultural invasion, which resulted in the virtual exclusion of Chi-
nese migrants from Australia in the years leading to the federation of Australian
colonies in 1901. Yet as this chapter has illustrated, this history has been also open
to new associations, new affective narratives and lines of action. Counter-narratives
 Becoming ‘illegal’ 45
of humanitarian compassion and economic competiveness had been offered as
competing readings of the opening of Australia to ‘Asian’ international students
respectively at the end of World War II and during the creation of the export indus-
try of education in the 1980s. The presence of ‘Asian’ international students in
the nation was valued positively, and educational providers were encouraged to
compete internationally with providers in the United States, the UK and Canada.
These narratives did not contradict each other but were employed simultaneously to
differentiate international students into ‘deserving’ and ‘non-deserving’ migrants.
Such differentiation discursively paved the way for the organisation of a two-
tiered system of selection that aimed to reduce the flow of Chinese international
students whose intentions were construed as a threat. In 1991, two visa categories
were established. As length and cost of courses seemed to guarantee the genuine-
ness of students’ intention to just study, the first category streamlined the pro-
cess of visa application for students applying for formal secondary and tertiary
courses, while the second one placed upon students applying for pre-tertiary and
non-formal courses more conditions of acceptance. Likewise, international stu-
dents’ countries of origin were distinguished from each other according to what is
still known as the ‘risk of migration’ – that is, the risk that international students
will overstay as a result of their non-genuine intention to study. Countries asso-
ciated with a low risk of migration were set apart from those associated with a
higher risk of migration and gazetted in a list. The only Asian nations included in
the low-risk list were Brunei, Japan, Malaysia and Singapore (Industry Commis-
sion 1991: 232). Considering the low number of international students coming
from Brunei and Japan, Malaysia and Singapore were the only two Asian nations
listed as at low risk of illegal migration. Students coming from any other Asian
country were subjected to stricter security conditions: pre-visa assessment,26
age restrictions, higher visa fees and up-front payment of course fees alongside
greater attention from compliance authorities (Nesdale et al. 1995: 13). Students
associated with a higher risk of migration were moreover granted fewer entitle-
ments to further discourage their applications. The dependents of students coming
from non-gazetted countries enrolled in non-formal courses such as the ELICOS
were denied the right to work and contribute to living expenses incurred while
staying in Australia (Industry Commission 1991: 56). At the same time, entry and
stay for students coming from gazetted countries was facilitated, especially if they
were enrolled in postgraduate courses (112–113). The distinction between inter-
national students according to an alleged risk of overstaying throws in sharp relief
the working of resentment as an affective governmental technology of truth,27
one which differentiated ‘Asian’ nationals into genuine and non-genuine students,
deserving and non-deserving migrants, while upholding the multicultural ideal of
Australia as a generous, hospitable and open-to-‘differences’ nation.

Notes
1 ‘Becoming ‘Illegal’: Compassion, Multicultural Love and Resentment’ uses an excerpt
from the chapter ‘Backdoor Entry: A Genealogy of (Post)colonial Resentment’ [63–76]
in Michael R. Griffiths (ed.) Biopolitics and Memory in Postcolonial Literature and
46 Becoming ‘illegal’
Culture originally published by Ashgate in January 2015. This has been reprinted with
the publisher’s permission.
2 For my reading of this citation, I am indebted to Sara Ahmed’s analysis of fear as
anticipation of pain or injury. With regard to the nation, it is the anticipation of its loss
as an object of love that makes borders not to be defended as if they already existed
but to be (re)created as a consequence of the reading of some others as ‘fearsome’. See
Ahmed 2004: 62–81.
3 For further details on the Colombo Plan and the related Overseas Students Program,
see Information Department of the Colombo Plan Bureau 1979; Jackson 1984; and
Lowe 1996.
4 Private students coming from Malaysia, Indonesia, Hong Kong and Singapore were
mostly young Chinese motivated to study in Australia as a consequence of high com-
petition for tertiary places and discrimination in their home countries. For further
details on the diplomatic benefits accrued by the Australian government through the
Overseas Student Program with Malaysia, Indonesia, Hong Kong and Singapore, see
Goldring 1984.
5 In Settler Colonialism, Lorenzo Veracini distinguishes conceptually between ‘settler
colonial’ and ‘colonial’ formations on the basis of a few but significant structural dif-
ferences (2010: 11–15). Among these differences, the most significant pertains to the
bio-political power to manage populations. This power, he writes, is crucial to settlers
to establish their independence from imperial centres, and hence functions as a marker
of ‘substantive sovereignty’ (12–13). By no accident, when the Commonwealth of
Australia Constitution Act came into force on January 1, 1901, the new-born Austral-
ian Federal Parliament was invested with the power ‘to make laws for the peace, order
and good government of the Australian Commonwealth with respect to naturalisation
and aliens; the people of any race, other than the Aboriginal race in any state, for
whom it was deemed necessary to make special laws, emigration; and relations of the
Commonwealth with the Islands of the Pacific’ (cited in Giannacopoulos 2011: 8). The
passing of the Immigration Restriction Act during the very first sitting of the Australian
Federal Parliament reveals the former colonies’ aspiration to complete independence
from Britain, which imperial principles of free intercourse and trade were perceived as
an impediment to Australian settlers’ right to self-determination with regard to migra-
tion and population management (see Willard 1970: 33–36).
6 No data are available describing the population of Aboriginal people living in the
Northern Territory in 1888, but it is possible to deduce that numbers were greater
than Asian migrants and white settlers together on the basis of the 1911 census, which
reveals that in 1911 there were 22,000 Aboriginal people living in the N.T., 2,185
Europeans settlers and 1,305 Asian migrants (NAA: A1, 1911/16191).
7 A few categories of Chinese nationals, such as students, officials and visitors, were
exempt. See Willard 1970: 89–90; 126–127.
8 Natal was a self-governing British colony located in South Africa. For further informa-
tion on Natal and the Natal Act, see Goldberg 2002: 178–179.
9 The ‘Education Test’ consisted of the requirement for prospective migrants to fill in and
sign an application form in any European language chosen by a migration officer (Wil-
lard 1970: 113). In the Immigration Restriction Act, this test was renamed ‘Dictation
Test’ and likewise it required prospective migrants to write under dictation a fifty-word
prescribed passage in any European language chosen by a migration officer (Lake
2005: 226). The test was designed to give migration officers ‘maximum flexibility in
ensuring that all undesirable immigrants would fail’ (Lake 2005: 226). In the essay
‘From Mississippi to Melbourne via Natal’, Marilyn Lake traces the genealogy of the
Dictation Test as a technology of racial exclusion back to legal expedients employed
to prevent African-American citizens from voting in several states and American poli-
cies of racial exclusion in the nineteenth century (209–229). By tracing the origins of
the Dictation Tests back to the afore-mentioned practices, Lake highlights how British
 Becoming ‘illegal’ 47
settler colonies scattered around the world had taken the ‘Great Democracy’ as both
an admonition against ‘multiracial democracy’ (212–214) and a model for all that con-
cerned legal instruments of racial exclusion in the realm of immigration (220–221).
10 In ‘Racial States, Anti-racist Responses’, Alana Lentin critiques mainstream anti-racism
for a lack of engagement with the history of incorporation of racist ideology by Euro-
pean nation-states. She retraces the emergence of both racism and nationalism to their
expansion as imperial powers at the beginning of the twentieth century. See Lentin
2004: 427–433.
11 In Far Country, Alan Powell documents at length successive British and Australian
colonial governments’ attempts at settling the Northern Territory by means of develop-
ing a variety of industries: maritime, tropical agriculture, mining and livestock farm-
ing. None of these attempts proved to be successful over time. See Powell 1996.
12 The history of the doctrine of terra nullius in European international law and its appli-
cation by British settlers in Australia to dispossess Aboriginal populations of their sov-
ereignty is rather complex. For an historical account of this doctrine, I would like to
refer to Alan Frost’s ‘New South Wales as terra nullius: The British denial of Aborigi-
nal land rights’ (1981: 513–523). For a critique of the epistemological and ontological
premises underpinning the doctrine, I would like to suggest Aileen Moreton-Robinson’s
‘White possession: the legacy of Captain Cook’ Choice’ (2009: 27–42).
13 Besides illustrating the many advantages of developing a rice industry in the Northern
Territory by means of comparison with the sugar industry of Queensland, Douglas also
suggests the population group which could undertake the task – Italian migrants, newly
accepted as ‘white’. In his words, ‘Labour is another matter: it will be needed from the
start, and it has been suggested that a likely source of supply might be found amongst
the experienced rice growers of Northern Italy’ (1950: 2).
14 Initially, negotiations involved France and the Netherlands as sponsor nations. Their
official participation in the plan was rejected by several of the recipient nations, but
Japan was accepted as a sponsor nation in 1954. See Oakman 2010: 15–54.
15 In the aftermath of World War II, the category of ‘colonial students’ included stu-
dents from British colonies in the West Indies and West Africa alongside students from
Malaysia. Students from the Indian sub-continent were classified separately, presum-
ably because of their newly achieved independence. As in Australia, international
students were distinguished by whether they were sponsored or privately funded.
According to Anthony J. Stockwell the number of both taken together increased from
500 in 1939 to 10,000 in 1955 to 29,000 in 1959–1960. In 1949, so-called ‘colonial
students’ outnumbered those from the Indian sub-continent, suggesting the number of
the latter was considerable (2008: 491). See Stockwell 2008: 487–507.
16 Here I refer to the biggest digitalised repository of Australian historic newspapers,
Trove. Trove is an online library database aggregator and a free faceted-search engine
hosted by the National Library of Australia in collaboration with numerous content
providers including members of the National and State Libraries of Australasia. For
further details on Trove, see the website at http://trove.nla.gov.au/?q=.
17 In this passage, the author cites from the following newspaper articles: ‘Course for
Asiatics opens Monday’ (1950) The Sydney Morning Herald, 4 February, 2; ‘Colombo
Plan offer of scholarships’ (1959) The Sydney Morning Herald, 2 July, 15.
18 The author takes as the main example the following article: ‘The human side of the
Colombo Plan’ (1951) The Sydney Morning Herald, 16 December, 2.
19 For further details on the changes that occurred in the higher education system during
the eighties and nineties, see Marginson 1991, 1993, 1997; Marginson and Considine
2000; Berman et al. 2003: 252–291.
20 In his doctoral thesis, Sebastian argues that international students succeeded in obtain-
ing educational policy concessions by adopting and reinterpreting the government’s
language of liberalisation. After a few years of modestly successful mobilisation and
campaigning, international students’ collective actions began to be grounded on their
48 Becoming ‘illegal’
increased economic importance to Australia rather than on the political and universal
right to education. See Sebastian 2009.
21 Students from China had to prove that they could financially provide for themselves
during their stay in Australia without working. They were asked to pay in advance both
the total amount of their course fees and a minimum of 100 dollars for each week they
planned to stay in Australia. This measure was introduced as bona fide criteria to assess
the genuineness of the Chinese students’ intention to study in Australia without working.
22 The Code of Practice in the Provision of International Education and Training Services
was replaced by the National Code of Practice for Registration Authorities Providers
of Education and Training to Overseas Students that was established under the ESOS
Act 2000, effective from June 2001.
23 Change of status meant temporary visa holders were able to apply for permanent resi-
dency under certain exceptional circumstances such as marriage with an Australian
citizen or relevance of the job skills possessed by the applicant. For further informa-
tion on this practice during the 1980s, see Secretariat to the Committee to Advise on
Australia’s Immigration Policies 1987.
24 In Race Daze, Jon Stratton chronicles the almost sudden disappearance of the term
itself of race in both Australian official national migration and population-management
discourses in concomitance to three almost simultaneous events: the ending of the
White Australia policy and the passing of the Racial Discrimination Act by the Whit-
lam government, respectively, in 1973 and 1975; and the implementation of multi-
culturalism as a host of national policies aiming to improve migrants’ welfare by the
Fraser government in 1978. See Stratton 1998: 40–45.
25 Lentin points out that UNESCO’s view on cultural differences does not differ sig-
nificantly from what David Theo Goldberg has defined as ‘historicist racism’. For
Goldberg, historicist racism is a set of principles that came to prominence in the mid-
nineteenth century in colonial administrations, which organised on the conviction that
subjugated populations were not inherently inferior but equally capable of ‘civilisa-
tion’ by means of ‘assimilation’ (cited in Lentin 2004: 431–432). Such continuity is
important to highlight how UNESCO’s replacement of ‘race’ with ‘culture’ ‘belies the
fact that racism has always mobilised both “racial” . . . and cultural . . . differences for
its expression’ (Lentin 2004: 435).
26 For further details on pre-visa assessment criteria and risk of migration assessment
levels, see the official website of the Australian government Study in Australia at
www.studyinaustralia.gov.au/en/Courses/Student-Visa-Requirements/Student-visa-re
quirements.
27 The genealogy here traced of the metaphors of ‘backdoor entry’ and ‘jump the queue’
is germane to Australia, and so it is the analysis of the reading of the encounter with
overstaying Chinese international students in the early 1990s as a threat to the security
of the nation. Yet the metaphor of ‘backdoor entry’ in particular has become rather
common in discourses regarding the regulation of international students’ entry and
stay in many English-speaking host countries. In the UK, for instance, the metaphor
has been routinely employed in the 2010s to uphold the government’s commitment
to reduce migration in the country to ‘the tens of thousands’ (see May 2012; Dathan
2015). Used in such a way, the metaphor has likened alleged abuses to the student
visa system to ‘uncontrolled mass immigration’ (May 2012) and therefore positioned
‘bogus’ international students as a threat to the social cohesion of local communities,
availability of public services and jobs for ‘British-born’ nationals (2012). Yet as The-
resa May in her position as Home Secretary explicated in the speech ‘An immigration
system that works in the national interest’ (2012), measures such as the restriction of
the right to work and sponsor dependents (2012) have been introduced not as much to
cut down applicant numbers as to differentiate prospective students into ‘legitimate’
and ‘bogus’ so that the nation can ‘welcome[e] the people we want’ and ‘sto[p] the
 Becoming ‘illegal’ 49
wrong people from coming’ (2012). Like in Australia in the early 1990s, the objective
of differentiating international students into categories of legitimate and bogus has
resulted in the ranking of their countries of origin according to what is known also in
the UK as the risk of illegal migration (UK Border Agency 2010, 20–21) – that is, the
likelihood that students might abuse of their student visa by working more hours than
legally allowed, protracting their stay by enrolling at same-level courses and over-
staying (14–15; 17–18). By virtue of this ranking, prospective students coming from
countries labelled as at high risk of illegal migration (e.g. Pakistan, India, Bangladesh,
Nigeria and China) have been subjected to ever-tightening bona fide assessment crite-
ria such as discretionary interviews and the request to provide documentary evidence
that they possess sufficient funds to cover fees and living costs (20). For further details
on visa application conditions and entitlements currently applied to ‘high-risk’ interna-
tional students in the UK, see Home Office 2016.

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2 Failing to be(come) ‘ideal’
Multiculturalism, whiteness and
the politics of resentment1

The migration program is not some sort of tap that we can turn on and off at
will; . . . So the question is not how do we stop migration, but how do we man-
age it to gain the best outcomes for Australia. The response of the government
of Australia, of this government, is that we should determine the answer to that
question. It is the government, not some sectional interests, or loud intolerant indi-
vidual voices, or ill-defined international interests, or, might I say, the courts that
determines who shall and shall not enter this country, and on what terms. This is
the defining feature of Australia’s migration program. It is not that we shouldn’t
have one.
(Ruddock 1998, emphasis added)

The metaphor of a migration ‘tap’ is a powerful one. It evokes the idea of migra-
tion being like a flow that can swamp the nation. It points at its vulnerability, the
risk – as Ahmed has written – that openness to others makes a nation prone to
injury: to ‘take in’ is to be ‘taken in’ (2004: 2). In the anticipation of such injury,
the nation is required to stop migrants from coming in through simple but firm
acts like turning a tap on and off. Yet in stating that the ‘migration program is not
some sort of tap’ Phillip Ruddock neither denies that migration is like a flow nor
does he suggest that the nation has lost control. Rather, by stating that migration
cannot be simply ‘turn[ed] on and off at will’, he suggests that the tap can none-
theless be turned around, so that to ‘manage’ the flow will ensure ‘the best out-
comes’ for the entire nation. To ‘manage’ entails control, the authority of deciding
what is the best ‘response’ to the threat of injury. It reinstates the power of dictat-
ing the conditions of the entry of migrants against the wishes of parties advocating
more migration or ‘intolerant’ individuals requiring its cessation. To ‘manage’ the
threat of unwanted migration amounts to a performative act of protecting the ideal
of the nation as a collective that is not any less open, generous and diverse because
its borders have been secured.
To ‘manage’ the flow of migration moreover involves the recognition that in the
new global environment of economic competitiveness, Australia as a nation can-
not step away from the international movement of financial investments, skilled
labour, information and technology that come along with migration. In this sense,
54 Failing to be(come) ‘ideal’
the idea of managing the threats and opportunities associated with the opening of
the borders to those who are already ‘recognised as “being different” ’ (Ahmed
2004: 133) signals the emergence of a new conceptualisation of its territorial and
socio-cultural borders: from being an impenetrable barrier against ‘coloured’
migrants to an elastic filter adaptable to the volatile needs of the global econ-
omy (Stratton 2009a). The idea of borders as a filter is here relevant to highlight
the existence of a diversified regime of control deployed to differentiate among
migrants in order to maximise economic opportunities while minimising the risks
associated with ‘illegal’ migration.
This chapter elaborates on the implications of such a change with regard to
international students, who are, by no mere chance, referred to by Ruddock con-
comitantly as both an ‘opportunity’ and a ‘threat’. It illustrates how the filtering
function of the border has reinforced the reproduction of whiteness as a princi-
ple of inclusion in the nation. Two conceptualisations of international students
will be closely examined. The first section analyses how their representation as
‘Asian’ in educational discourses has worked as an injunction to labour towards
whiteness, thus accepting the instrumental value attached to their presence in Aus-
tralia. The second section focuses on the representation of international students
as ‘ideal migrants’ in national discourses on migration to demonstrate the working
of migration policies as technologies of cultural augmentation. The last section
undertakes a close reading of the very first governmental review of international
students’ performance as skilled migrants in Australia to argue that their alleged
failure to be ‘ideal’ was construed as a breach of the most important condition of
their permanent inclusion in the nation: assimilation. In the process, this chapter
contests the idea that the Australian border has become more elastic for interna-
tional students than other categories of migrants by highlighting the existence of
a double regime of governance: one that regulates them as consumers of educa-
tional services, the other as prospective permanent migrants.

Unpacking internationalisation: a genealogy

of ‘cultural distance’ in higher education
The idea of managing migration is not unrelated to the idea of managing cultural
diversity. The policy of multiculturalism passed in 1978 by the Fraser govern-
ment, as Stratton has pointed out, constituted an attempt at managing the cultural
differences of the post-war migrants who had failed to assimilate into the domi-
nant culture (1998: 10). Considering such failure, the policy of multiculturalism
acknowledged the right of migrants to retain their cultural heritages, committed
the nation to respect, in principle, the variety of cultural identities characterising
its society and promoted inter-cultural understanding as means to foster a sense of
community. Accordingly, migrant minorities were incorporated within Australia’s
political system as interest groups (42), providing space for ‘loud intolerant indi-
vidual voices’ to contest migration on the grounds that it posed a threat to the unity
of the nation (53–65).2 However, with the passage from a liberal to a neoliberal
 Failing to be(come) ‘ideal’ 55
national economy, to manage cultural diversity had become as much an issue of
containing minority groups’ desire for effective inclusion in the political and legal
system of the nation as it was a challenge to optimise its economic productivity. It
is in light of this shift that, under the Hawke and Keating governments, the policy
of multiculturalism was coupled with the economic priority of pursuing efficiency
and global competitiveness by effectively employing the skills and the talents of
all Australians regardless of their cultural background (Kolethb 2010: 8).3 The
coupling of these two governmental approaches resulted in the policy of produc-
tive diversity. Officially adopted in 1992, this policy aimed to improve Austral-
ian businesses’ access to both domestic and international markets and increase
its competitiveness by representing cultural diversity more as a strength of the
nation than a threat to its unity. The policy also encouraged Australian firms to
manage the cultural and linguistic diversity characterising their human resources
to achieve ‘increased innovation and creativity, employee retention, increased
understanding of diverse consumer markets and an enhanced community profile’
(Pyke 2005: 2).4
The emphasis on productive diversity and the need to enhance trade and dip-
lomatic relations with Asia-Pacific countries were at the core of the third and
last shift in Australian educational policy that occurred in 1992. Known as the
shift from trade to internationalisation, it was introduced to achieve dual ends.
On the one hand, it sought to launch a new international image for Australia,
which had been compromised severely by the crisis of 1989. On the other hand,
it attempted to contain the commercial excesses of the new education export
industry by emphasising the need for Australian education providers to establish
mutual relationships with overseas students’ governments, research institutes and
other providers of education. As the then-Minister for Employment, Education
and Training, Kim Beazley, stated,

There has been overseas criticism that Australia’s approach was too much
narrowly commercial with insufficient recognition of student needs and of
the benefit of international education. To prevent such problems, to shift
institutions away from narrow economic perspectives and to assist the devel-
opment of Australia’s international education and training community, it is
important to focus on the internationalisation of education.
(1992: 5, emphasis added)

With the passing of this policy, Australia aligned itself to a broader trend in the
North American and European academe, which saw the emergence of internation-
alisation as a distinguished formation from globalisation or international educa-
tion. This distinction is important to appreciate how universities have been called
upon to manage the perception of ‘increased cultural diversity’ inside and outside
national borders. As Jane Knight has pointed out, the relation between interna-
tionalisation and globalisation had been a matter of discussion throughout the first
decade of commercialisation of international education (2003: 3) and ultimately
56 Failing to be(come) ‘ideal’
led to apprehending the former as a ‘proactive’ and an individualised response to
the latter:

Globalisation is the flow of technology, economy, knowledge, people, values,

ideas . . . across borders. Globalisation affects each country in a different way
due to a nation’s individual history, traditions, culture and priorities. Interna-
tionalisation of higher education is one of the ways a country responds to the
impact of globalisation yet, at the same time respects the individuality of the
nation. . . . Globalisation can be thought of as the catalyst while internation-
alisation is the response, albeit a response in a proactive way.
(Knight 1999: 14)

The emphasis on the internationalisation of higher education as a unique response

to the threats and opportunities of globalisation is relevant in that it explicates its
function in managing the flow of globalisation in ways that maximise the eco-
nomic, diplomatic and socio-cultural interests of individual nation-states. The
importance of individual states’ agendas is further highlighted by the distinction
of the concept of internationalisation from that of international:

International is used in the sense of relationships between and among nations,

cultures or countries. But we know that internationalisation is also about
relating to the diversity of cultures that exist within countries, communities,
and institutions.
(Knight 2003: 2)

As this passage suggests, the elaboration of the concept of internationalisation coin-

cided with the acknowledgment that international education had become as much
a matter of inter-state relations in an environment of increased interconnectedness
as it was a question of managing the diversity that arose from growing numbers
of international students within the borders of singular nation-states, communities
and educational institutions. In this sense, the distinction of internationalisation
from international education can be likewise understood as an acknowledgment
of the failure of the assumption that ‘intercultural contact’ between international
and domestic students was sufficient to foster ‘goodwill and harmony’. Contrary
to the diplomatic value attached to overseas student programs around the world,
international students’ own disappointment at not mixing with local students and
communities has been consistently registered in the academic and grey literature
since the 1960s (see Smart, Volet and Ang 2000: 10–16). The problem of social
isolation is an aspect of the experience of international students in Australia that
will be extensively explored in Chapter 5; suffice it to note here that, as Don Smart,
Simone Volet and Grace Ang have observed, the lack of meaningful interactions
between the two groups has usually been approached on the assumption that

[E]ffective social interactions between local and international students are

dependent on international students ‘adjustment’ to the host culture, and that
 Failing to be(come) ‘ideal’ 57
once they have adapted, the two groups will happily interact and mix with
one another.
(2000: 11)

This assumption comes out of the field known as ‘intercultural communication’,

a brief history of which is necessary to shed light on internationalisation as a
technology of diversity management. In the literature, intercultural communica-
tion can be traced back to two distinct knowledge traditions in their service to the
governance of the United States’ international relations and immigration: cultural
anthropology (Leeds-Hurwitz 2010; Moon 2010) and psychiatry (Ward, Bochner
and Furnham 2005). According to the first genealogy, intercultural communica-
tion originated in ‘the midst of World War II’ as an application and subsequent
adaptation of cultural anthropology to international affairs (Moon 2010: 35).5
From anthropology, intercultural communication scholars have inherited the
homogenising conceptualisation of culture as a set of ‘characteristics shared by
all members equally’ (Leeds-Hurwitz 2010: 23), which has subsequently been
adapted to the study of interpersonal interactions as a means to minimise com-
munication failure across national boundaries (Leeds-Hurwitz 1990: 261–282).
Developed as a means to prepare diplomats and businesspeople for their posts
overseas, intercultural communication effectively contributed to a reduced under-
standing of cultural differences to simply ‘communication styles’, and accord-
ingly, conflict among group populations was seen as a lack of knowledge or a
matter of mis-communication, both avoidable by means of training.6 Such an
understanding of cultural differences appears to involve mutuality in that all the
parties involved in intercultural contact are equally assumed to ‘adjust’ by learn-
ing about each other’s communication styles. Yet as the aforementioned passage
shows, when applied within the context of international education, domestic
students’ responsibilities have receded from view, leaving to their international
counterparts the burden of bridging communicational gaps, thus un-blocking an
otherwise happy process of intercultural interaction and mixing (Smart, Volet and
Ang 2000: 11). To explain such contradiction, we must turn to the second but
putatively longer genealogy of intercultural communication.
According to the second genealogy – psychiatry – intercultural communica-
tion can be traced back to the medical history of the early 1900s, whereby the
overrepresentation of migrants in mental health institutions in the United States
had led to a systematic line of studies comparing migrants to native-born subjects
with the aim of establishing ‘immigration screening programs’ (Ward, Bochner
and Furnham 2005: 34). Such studies were likewise conducted in the UK, Aus-
tralia, Canada, Germany and South Africa, and they all shared the assumption
that mental illness was caused by predispositional factors: dysfunctional subjects
were those most likely to emigrate (35). In this sense, it is interesting to remind
the reader of how in Australia first attempts at surveying Colombo Plan students’
academic progress sought to ‘pin point reasons for failure, improve . . . guidance
work, and ensure more effective selection’ (COE cited in Auletta 2000: 56). The
momentum accrued by study programs such as the Colombo Plan in the 1950s led
58 Failing to be(come) ‘ideal’
to international students being intensively studied – although from a less medical
than a psychoanalytical perspective, marking the entrance of feelings into inter-
cultural communication: loss, mourning, anxiety and depression (Ward, Bochner
and Furnham 2005: 35–36). The concept of ‘culture shock’ emerged from this
lineage:

Generally speaking, culture shock is a term which embraces the numerous

phenomena following the impact between a person of a certain cultural back-
ground and a relative strange culture. . . . Culture shock is a stressful, anxiety-
provoking situation, a violent encounter – one which puts the newcomer’s
personality functioning to the test . . . Culture shock is accompanied by a
process of mourning brought about by the individual’s gigantic loss of a vari-
ety of his love objects in the abandoned culture . . . family, friends, language,
music, food and culturally determined values, customs and attitudes. The
coexistence in this emergency situation of two factors, i.e. cultural encounter
plus the painful mourning which follows the massive object loss – the for-
saken culture – causes a serious threat to the newcomer’s identity.
(Garza Guerrero 1974: 409–410, emphasis added)

The application of psychoanalytical concepts such as those of loss and mourning

further our understanding of Colombo Plan students as vulnerable and emotion-
ally distressed subjects in need of help and guidance broached in Chapter 1. Chap-
ter 5 further develops the implications of the attribution of emotionality when
discussing the ways in which racial injuries come to be reified as cultural attrib-
utes by means of naturalisation. Suffice it to unpack here that the medical tradition
focused on the ‘newcomer’ and regarded their adaptation as the development of a
new identity, one which is at home with the host culture. This explains, as a con-
sequence, the expectation on international students to individually work towards
unblocking the process of intercultural mixing.
The use of psychoanalysis in migration studies paved the way for the devel-
opment of the ‘stress and coping model’ in the 1970s, which is still in use. This
model approaches intercultural contact less as a medical condition than it is a
stress-inducing life event demanding the development of coping mechanisms.
The literature produced so far on stress-causing factors and coping mechanisms
is vast but is largely based on quantitative research and oriented to individuat-
ing causes and solutions to psychological distress (Ward, Bochner and Furn-
ham 2005: 71–98). In the 1980s, the psychological approach made room for
the ‘culture learning’ model, which emphasises the socio-cultural dimension of
intercultural contact. Here, intercultural contact is defined as a ‘learning experi-
ence’ which involves a dynamic process of cultural ‘adjustment’ (36). This defi-
nition appears to merge the two traditions so far illustrated, in that – framed in
pedagogical terms, problems of adjustments to a new culture are configured as
a matter of a social and communication skills deficit which can be minimised
by means of ‘preparation, orientation, and the acquisition of culturally relevant
social skills’ (36). The influence of this approach is still far reaching, leading to
 Failing to be(come) ‘ideal’ 59
the consolidation of the already mentioned ‘deficit’ view of international students
(see also Grimshaw 2011: 705–708), alongside the multiplication of ‘remedial’
or ‘front-loading’ programs aimed at equipping international students with the
linguistic and academic skills deemed necessary to navigate their way through
higher education: pre-departure orientation, induction and foundation courses
(Ryan 2011: 638).
In line with the multicultural ethos of recognising and respecting cultural
diversity as a social good, the ideas of international students as both subjects
coping with stress and persons lacking ‘culturally relevant social skills’ are
anchored to another prominent theoretical tenet in intercultural communication
studies: cultural distance. Much like UNESCO’s conceptualisation of cultures
as relative to each other, studies in intercultural communication have seemingly
approached cultural groups not in terms of superiority and inferiority but of how
close or distant they are from each other with regard to a set of interrelated
socio-cultural indicators: individualism versus collectivism, distance to power,
avoidance of uncertainty and masculinity versus femininity (Ward, Bochner
and Furnham 2005: 10–11). According to these indicators, those who belong
to cultural groups deemed collectively oriented are also less independent, com-
petitive, open to change and intolerant of power disparities than those belong-
ing to cultural groups deemed individualist (13–15). Western and non-Western
cultures have been consequently mapped as oppositional to each other (12) and
Western nations further marked with an aggressive masculinity in contrast to a
wide range of feminised others. Distanciation and feminisation of non-Western
cultures plainly reveals the classificatory drive of this cultural measurement’s
exercise. Yet the principle of cultural distance has been uncritically adopted
in the field of international education, making the tenet that cultural distance
exacerbates international students’ adaptation problems self-evident. Distance
has then become the rationale according to which we problematise phenomena
ranging from academic and emotional distress to failure at inter-cultural mixing
and overt hostility (see Ballard 1987; 1995; Volet and Ang 1998) but also the
ground from which we envision solutions: provisions of support services specifi-
cally tailored to international students and cultural-awareness training courses
for university staff (see Smart, Volet and Ang 2000: 36–41) and the promotion
of ‘intercultural knowledge’ by means of study abroad programs, stressing the
importance of learning foreign languages and the inclusion of intercultural com-
munication or interdisciplinary programmes such as area or regional studies in
the curricula (see Rizvi 2007: 391–393). It is not surprising then that the terms
‘intercultural knowledge’ and ‘understanding’ figure predominantly in the most
referred definition of internationalisation:

Internationalization at the national, sector, and institutional levels is defined

as the process of integrating an international, intercultural, or global dimen-
sion into the purpose, functions or delivery of postsecondary education. The
concept of integration is specifically used to denote the process of infusing
or embedding the international and intercultural dimension into policies and
60 Failing to be(come) ‘ideal’
programs to ensure that the international dimension remains central, not mar-
ginal, and is sustainable.
(Knight 2003: 2–3, emphasis added)

The infusion of pedagogical and administrative practices with intercultural ele-

ments such as those listed has been widely critiqued. Trevor Grimshaw and Jan-
ette Ryan have highlighted how this approach has led to the entrenching of the
stereotypical view of ‘Asian’ international students as ‘passive, rote learners, lack-
ing in critical thinking and independent learning skills and prone to plagiarism’
(Grimshaw 2011: 705; Ryan 2011: 637). Glauco De Vita and Peter Case have
argued that this strategy has failed to tackle the fundamental challenges posed by a
multicultural corpus of students because it reduces intercultural learning to an eat-
able educational commodity (2003: 387–389). Fazal Rizvi and Lucas Walsh have
likewise demonstrated how the neo-liberal imperative to educate interculturally
competent students has perpetuated the apprehension of other cultures as static
and harmonious entities that can be simply added on to existing curricula without
altering dominant cultural norms, thus penalising students who either resist or
simply fail to orient themselves within dominant educational discourses (1998:
9–10). Yet none of these critiques has superseded intercultural communication as
the central principle of internationalisation. Considering that most studies have
regarded interculturalism as an effect of the marketisation of higher education,
this failure might be a consequence of the lack of engagement with the history
of its uses as a technology of diversity management – that is, its relevance to
nation-states’ agendas of including those who are already ‘recognised as “being
different” ’ in ways that uphold the structural dominance of one group over oth-
ers. To exemplify this, the following section examines how labelling international
students as ‘Asian’ has worked as an injunction that demands assimilation into a
system that discriminates against them.

(Non) mixing up: ‘Asian’ international students

and the Western will to knowledge
In the years following the policy shift from aid to trade, the International Devel-
opment Program of Australian Universities and Colleges Ltd (IDP)7 organised
workshops on international education to provide a platform for discussing ‘the
challenges and the problems posed by the influx of full-fee students’ (Williams
1989: x). As a result of one of such workshop, international education scholars
and administrators were invited to submit papers for the collection Overseas Stu-
dents: Policy and Practice. Edited by a former vice chancellor of the University
of Sydney, Sir Bruce Williams, this collection epitomises Australian universities’
institutional response to the ‘challenges’ posed by overseas students in terms of
academic performance and learning styles. At the time of this publication, Bryan
Burke was the coordinator of the International Student Centre of the University
of New South Wales, as well as the author of several publications (1986; 1988)
regarding ‘various aspects of the post-arrival experiences of overseas students,
 Failing to be(come) ‘ideal’ 61
not least, academic adjustment and performance’ (Jones 1989: 40). His accounts
of the ‘difficulties commonly experienced by overseas students in Australia’
(Burke 1989: 73) illustrate the way in which representations of ‘Asian’ interna-
tional students morphed from casualties to deficient subjects needing the super-
vision of white Australians via a language of ‘needs’ and ‘support services’. In
his paper ‘Support Services for Overseas Students’, Burke examines both ‘policy
and practical issues’ involved in the provision of such services by discussing in
detail two sets of problems deemed to be specific to international students: lack of
meaningful interactions with domestic students and academic adjustment (73). In
discussing the first set of problems, Burke states:

The failure of visiting students to establish friendship with their hosts has
been widely documented for foreign students in both Western and Asian
countries. Visiting students not only associate almost exclusively with fellow
nationals, but their close relationships are generally limited to their compa-
triots; relationships with host nationals tend to be restricted to formal and
utilitarian contacts.
(77)

The use of neutral adjectives such as ‘foreign’ and ‘visiting’ seems to suggest that
Burke approaches Asian and Western students as equals. As he further suggests in
his paper, both groups of students might tend to forge predominantly formal and
instrumental relationships with their hosts as a defensive mechanism employed
to avoid re-adaptation difficulties upon their return home (Burke 1989: 78). In
this regard, his approach to issues of intercultural contact appears to abide by the
premises that attraction amongst group populations belonging to different cultures
is dictated by the principle of distance, thus the preference for forging meaningful
relationships with compatriots. Nonetheless, this initial appearance of equality is
immediately contradicted by the following passage:

In discussing international education programs, it is generally taken for

granted that studying in another country is an effective way of developing
mutual understanding and fostering good relations. However these values
may be held more strongly by program planners and administrators than by
the student participants. Students from Asian countries tend to have a pre-
dominantly pragmatic view of their educational experience, seeing it pri-
marily as a way to obtain a valuable qualification, improve their English
proficiency, and gain some understanding of Western ways. By contrast,
exchange students or study abroad students from Western countries typically
seek interaction with the locals and want to develop greater awareness of the
host culture.
(78, emphasis added)

As this passage aptly illustrates, the initial use of neutral designations shifts
rather abruptly into the dichotomic distinction ‘Asian’ and ‘Western’, revealing
62 Failing to be(come) ‘ideal’
the orientalist underpinning of the principle of cultural distance when applied to
discourses regarding international students. ‘Asians’’ cultural orientation to edu-
cation is already known to the West and congruently reducible to a prescriptive
explanation: ‘Asian’ students’ indifference to genuine cultural exchange.
This reductive explanation allows Burke to ignore the historical marginalisation
of non-Western knowledge traditions in Australian educational institutions and
enables the author to successfully displace the responsibility of forming meaning-
ful social relationships from Australian educational institutions and students onto
international students. This displacement takes place through a few metonymic
slides. The first metonymic slide occurs when Burke equates an alleged Western
will to interact with and learn from other cultures to the Australian international
education programs’ planners and administrators by simply indicating that visit-
ing ‘Western’ students are ‘typically’ willing to interact with host nationals and
cultures. As a result of this first slide, both Australian educational institutions
and students are uniformly excused from any responsibility for just being ‘West-
ern’, hence culturally determined to establish meaningful relationships with their
international counterparts. Conversely, the second metonymic slide occurs when
Burke associates the failure of visiting students to establish meaningful relation-
ships with their hosts with the alleged ‘Asian’ pragmatic attitude mentioned ear-
lier. Because of this supposed attitude, Burke suggests that ‘Asian’ students are
indifferent to learning about Western culture, thus responsible for frustrating the
Western will to know and mix with other cultures as represented and embodied
by both Australian students and educational programs’ planners and administra-
tors. The metonymic slides from Western to Australian and from international to
Asian are even more evident when the author discusses the second set of problems
affecting international students: academic adjustment.
Drawing on Brigid Ballard’s findings (1980), Burke reports that overseas stu-
dents are commonly disadvantaged by an inadequate level of English proficiency
in both academic writing and participation in class discussion. Such disadvan-
tage, he writes, is compounded by their cultural reticence to question the author-
ity of their teachers (1989: 79). Reticence to question authority is, as mentioned,
an important indicator of cultural distance as well as a tenet of the orientalist
representation of Australia’s neighbours as a homogenous and threatening whole
(Burke 2006: 337–338). Burke’s generalisation does not even register that many
international students come from countries such as Malaysia, Singapore and Hong
Kong, where English is either the first language or the language in which most
schooling is conducted, if not both. In spite of these important distinctions, he
writes,

The language and communication problems of overseas students may be

further compounded by different learning styles and inefficient approaches
to study. . . . Overseas students from countries with distinctively different
cultures need to be alerted to some of the new learning situations to which
they will be exposed in tertiary study. They need to develop listening and
note-taking skills to cope with lectures, to understand and be able to use the
 Failing to be(come) ‘ideal’ 63
library system, to learn more effective and efficient reading techniques, to
learn how to structure essays, reports and other written assignments, to pre-
pare for various forms of assessment and to understand laboratory instruc-
tions and procedures.
(1989: 81, emphasis added)

In this passage, Burke slides from learning styles and traditions to approaches,
skills, techniques, instructions and procedures. The slide from one set of concepts
to another is not devoid of consequences; rather, it furthers the unilateral expec-
tation for international students to ‘adjust’. Conceptually, traditions of learning
cannot be reduced to a host of skills and practices, as differences between epis-
temic systems cannot be translated exclusively in terms of ways of reading, tak-
ing notes or following instructions. Yet it is precisely the slide from one set to
another that allows Burke to refer to international students’ learning practices
and skills as being either deficient or ineffective while upholding the principle of
equality amongst different learning ‘styles’ and cultures – that are, by no chance,
neutrally qualified as being either different or new. Besides securing the appear-
ance of equality, the movement from one set to the other also circumnavigates the
problems related to epistemological translation and accommodation by simply
re-conceptualising the academic skills of international students – like in the model
of intercultural contact as a learning process – as a series of lacks that can be
overcome by means of ‘preparation, orientation, and the acquisition of culturally
relevant social skills’ (Ward, Bochner, and Furnham 2005: 36). In the process of
being positioned as deficient subjects, international students are made unilaterally
responsible for bridging the gaps separating them from domestic students and
teaching staff, whose skills are, by contrast, already qualified as effective and
efficient.
This conclusion, in turn, raises a question: are all international students expected
to do so? In defining international students’ countries of origin as characterised
by ‘distinctively different cultures’, Burke seems to be as inclusive as possible.
In effect, all the populations in the world could be understood as being distinc-
tively different and, hence, possess different traditions of learning and knowledge
production. Nonetheless, it is sufficient to go back a few pages to notice how the
author already narrowed the range of possibilities down to one option:

Differences in the style and traditions of learning between Western and Asian
countries frequently cause difficulty. Overseas students often find it difficult
to master critical analysis, patterns of arguments and principles of relevance.
(75, emphasis added)

The slide from Australian to Western and from international to Asian is thus fully
accomplished, and so is the understanding of their difficulties within an intercul-
tural and orientalist conceptualisation of their cultural differences. Positioned as
bearers of a set of negotiable lacks, ‘Asian’ international students can therefore,
at the best, aspire to acquire those skills which have made Western traditions of
64 Failing to be(come) ‘ideal’
knowledge universal: ‘critical analysis’, ‘patterns of arguments’ and ‘principles
of relevance’. In the absence of such skills, international students have continued
to be – very much like Colombo Plan students in the 1950s – conceived as disad-
vantaged students in need of guidance and support, confirming Rizvi and Walsh’s
observation that – under the current regime of internationalisation – only those
international students who manage the expectation of unilateral cultural adapta-
tion are deemed successful (1998: 9–10). The shift to internationalisation in Aus-
tralian educational policy can be thus considered as a potential but not actualised
event in the history of the Overseas Students Program; it has not provided inter-
national students with any new subjective position from which to claim the sig-
nificance of their epistemological traditions. Yet the importance of the policy of
internationalisation has been situated beyond such provision in that its objective
has been that of managing and not incorporating the differences brought along by
international students within Australian universities and nation.
At this stage of the analysis, it seems obvious to conclude that international
students, at least until the Hawke-Keating governments, were irrevocably under-
stood as being ‘Asian’ and, as such, positioned as being the exclusive bearers
of irreducible differences. Such conclusion would be partially correct in that –
reading through some marginal comments of the author – it emerges that not all
domestic students are understood as fully equipped with ‘effective’ and ‘efficient’
learning skills. For instance, at the beginning of his paper, Burke states that both
local and international students negotiate similar ‘personal’ problems in transi-
tioning from secondary to tertiary studies, albeit the problems of the latter are
aggravated by their status of foreigner and full-fee-payer students (1989: 73–74).
This opening contrast seems to reinforce the impression that he conceives of the
two groups as culturally irreducible to each other. Yet his parsing of the specific
needs of international students with respect to differences within the domestic
student cohort reveals a complexity to the apparent domestic/international student
binary initially set up:

Although overseas students confront similar problems of personal devel-

opment, and experience many of the difficulties encountered by local stu-
dents, there are obvious differences. These need to be given special attention
if overseas students’ academic progress and personal development is to be
maximised and disruption kept to a minimum. (Of course the same applies
to other groups entering our institutions with ‘special’ needs or a different
background such as Aborigines and migrants from non-English speaking
backgrounds.)
(73)

As the passage in parentheses shows quite clearly, not all domestic students are
the same. This parenthetical category is indeed multiple, comprised of both stu-
dents with ‘ “special” needs’ and ‘different background[s]’. The author does not
specify what he means by ‘special needs’; nonetheless, we can safely assume
that he refers to students who are differently abled and to students who come
 Failing to be(come) ‘ideal’ 65
from impoverished socio-economic backgrounds. Likewise, he does not clarify
what he means by ‘migrants from non-English speaking backgrounds’. It is not
clear whether the migrants he refers to are first-generation migrants or their
descendants or whether the former British colonies such as India and Singa-
pore count as English-speaking backgrounds. Fortunately, the author clarifies
these ambiguities when, later in the same paper, he states that a university staff
trained to ‘be sensitive to cultural differences in traditions, values, and expecta-
tions’ of international students would be equally effective in addressing the dif-
ficulties faced by local students coming ‘from a non Anglo-Celtic background’
(76–77). Clarifications like this one reveal how Burke ambiguously oscillates
from indiscriminately contrasting the experience of international students
against domestic students to selectively comparing their academic difficulties
to those supposedly faced by local students who do not have an Anglo-Celtic
background: Aborigines and non-white migrants.8 In turn, this oscillation works
to further define the Australian academic tradition of knowledge as being not
only Western but specifically Anglo-Celtic. This delimitation is not coinciden-
tal but symptomatic of the history of race relations in Australia starting from
its invasion.
As Stratton argues, the category itself of Anglo-Celtic can be regarded as the
result of such history.9 In spite of being a historical fiction, this category has
represented what is still understood as the dominant culture in Australia and,
as such, employed to divide the Australian population into white and ethnic
during and after the adoption of the policy of multiculturalism (Stratton: 1998:
9–20). Elsewhere, Stratton also defines whiteness as ‘a constructed category, the
meaning, and the content, of which have both varied considerably over time’
(1999: 171). This definition aptly emphasises how whiteness itself is the histori-
cal product of economic, cultural and social relations. At the same time, Strat-
ton’s dichotomic distinction of the Australian population into white and ethnic
runs the risk of reducing whiteness to a property, something that can be given
or taken away according to events such as the discursive shift of race from a
determinant to a signifier of cultural differences discussed in the previous chap-
ter. In this regard, Ghassan Hage’s definition of whiteness as a form of cultural
capital that can be accumulated over time by acquiring cultural values, practices
and physical attributes sanctioned as national (1998: 53–54) might assist us in
shedding light on how migrants have never been conceived as being exactly the
same by the state and hence are required to perform different levels of assimila-
tion labour (1998: 53–67).10 For Hage – and in accordance with the principle
of cultural distance outlined earlier – the cultural capital that migrants either
bring with them or are born with in Australia are a priori assessed as being
more or less assimilable to that expected from the ideal ‘Anglo-Celtic’ citizen.11
The effects of such assessment are most tangible in the form of a reminder. By
means of their labour, non-white migrants might become ‘like White Austral-
ians’ but never be ‘naturally White Australians’ (61). For Hage, the power of
such a reminder is not minor. Rather, it enables white Australians to maintain a
position of dominance because of being naturally what it takes to govern any
66 Failing to be(come) ‘ideal’
other in the best interest of all. Hage thus understands whiteness as a spatialised
field of power, whereby the Anglo-Celtic group must maintain their cultural
capital as well as struggle to ‘impose a specific national order in which they
have a dominant position’ (65).
Through the lens of this definition of whiteness, it becomes possible to under-
stand why Burke aligns international students with those domestic ones who have
a ‘different background’. The Anglo-Celtic academic tradition of knowledge can
be very well considered to be a form of cultural capital naturalised as national and,
as such, employed as a technology of governance by means of simply positioning
both international and non-white domestic students as subjects of knowledge who
need to labour towards whiteness to become like their Anglo-Celtic counterparts.
Yet if this is the case, how do we explain Burke’s qualification of Asian students’
academic capital not only as ‘distinctively different’ from the Australian one but
also as ‘ineffective’ and ‘inefficient’? The consistent use of these adjectives to
describe ‘Asian’ students’ learning skills betrays a moralising judgement of infe-
riority. Understandably, Hage’s model of whiteness, focused as it is on national-
istic practices of spatial management – that is, exclusion and inclusion – does not
say much about how cultural capitals deemed different from the national one are
assessed by Australians in terms of value and whether they are ranked accord-
ingly. From this perspective, Suvendrini Perera’s (2005) work on whiteness in
Australia may direct us towards a full understanding of the consequences of the
positioning of international students as ‘Asian’.
In ‘Who will I become? The multiple formations of Australian whiteness’,
Perera unpacks the construction of whiteness to retrieve the multiplicity of racial
groups existing in Australia before and after its birth as a federation in 1901.
Avoiding the simplistic yet common distinction of the Australian non-white
population into migrants and indigenes, she reminds us that any new addition
to the Australian population, whether temporary or permanent, had re-worked a
‘racialised scale of desirability for non-white labour that includes Aboriginal and
Islander people as well as Chinese, Kanak and Indian workers’ (2005: 31–32).
She contends that in Australia whiteness ‘was manifested as a palpable, mate-
rial and eminently quantifiable category against which those to be excluded were
measured, rather than one that has functioned as an implicit structuring presence’
(31). Most importantly, she writes:

The state and the bodies of its citizens were explicitly constructed in and
through their relation to whiteness, establishing a hierarchy of belonging and
entitlement. It is important to note that the definition and the measure of Aus-
tralian whiteness was, from the outset, derived and asserted in relation to
its multiple racial others, rather than to a single reference point [Aboriginal
blackness]. Spatial as well as racial hierarchies came into play in positioning
the subjects of the nation against its asymmetrical non-white others, indi-
genes and aliens.
(31)
 Failing to be(come) ‘ideal’ 67
Perera’s definition of whiteness as a category in which content and value was
‘derived and asserted’ in relation to multiple racial groups assists us in understand-
ing how the positioning of international students as ‘Asian’ cannot be exclusively
understood within the parameters of a unilateral expectation of academic and cul-
tural adaptation. It highlights how this designation has exceeded the performance
of ideals or norms by functioning, more broadly, as a measure of the value attached
to students’ contribution to Australian universities and society: more economic than
epistemic or cultural. Taking Hage and Perera’s definition of whiteness together,
it is then possible to draw a few conclusions on the representation of international
students as ‘Asians’. Firstly, this designation works as an injunction for them to
labour towards whiteness to achieve (differential) inclusion. Secondly, it has posi-
tioned international students in a hierarchy of racialised positions within which the
naturalisation of the Anglo-Celtic tradition as epistemic norm had been already
established in contrast to the many but differently valued epistemic traditions of
non-white migrants and Aboriginal people. In other words, the representation of
international students as ‘Asian’ has functioned as a technology of ‘differential
inclusion’ within a system of racially stratified social relations, the implications of
which can be fully understood only in relation to the prospect of them becoming a
permanent part of the Australian population. The following section examines this
relation.

Be(coming) ‘ideal’: labour power, differential

inclusion and the border
As the previous chapter demonstrated, the metaphor of backdoor entry to Aus-
tralia became prominent in discourse regarding the governance of international
students, particularly in relation to their becoming a permanent part of the Aus-
tralian population. On the occasion of the 1989 crisis, the resentment of the meta-
phor had engendered led overstaying Chinese students to be aligned with other
categories of ‘illegal’ migrants, prompting restrictions on their temporary inclu-
sion in the nation accordingly. Resentment thus operated as a technology of affec-
tive truth: ‘bogus’ international students represented a threat to the well-being of
the nation. This affective reading of overstaying students had, in turn, enabled
the positioning of those who respected the conditions of their visas as a valuable
permanent addition to the nation. It was within this framework that the third event
in the history of the Overseas Student Program took place. In March 2001, the
Howard government announced that graduated international students could apply
for permanent residency onshore. This decision was part and parcel of a broader
government project aimed at reshaping overall patterns of migration: from a focus
on family reunion to skilled migration, from permanent to long-term temporary
migration (Koleth 2010a: 1). This project aimed at more than augmenting the skill
base of the nation; it sought to attune annual intake of migrants to the estimated
skills shortage, thus the shift from a supply to a demand-driven model. Continued
by the following Rudd government, this shift was further implemented in the
68 Failing to be(come) ‘ideal’
aftermath of the economic crisis of 2008 with the stated objective of securing
Australia’s global share of skilled migrants and international students (2–3). In
this context, international students were announced as Australia’s ‘ideal migrants’
(21). As demonstrated earlier, the idea that graduated international students con-
stituted the ideal response to the labour needs of Australia had been advanced for
a long time, yet it was only publicly stated for the first time in 1998:

The policy the Government has been pursuing since 1998 of encouraging
overseas students in Australia who are successful in key skill areas to migrate
is a manifestation of this approach.12 These people are in many ways the
ideal migrants. They are young and speak good English. They are trained in
exactly the skills the Australia of the 21st century will need. Moreover, these
people are trained to Australia’s high educational standards and already have
a good knowledge of living and working in Australia.
(Ruddock 2000, emphasis added)

This proclamation ought to be understood against the backdrop of the ‘dot.com/

new economy boom’ throughout which Australian employers advanced the con-
cern of losing competitiveness because of a national shortage of computing and
accounting professionals (Birrell, Hawthorne and Richardson 2006: 22). Consid-
ering that many international students in Australia were studying computing and
accounting, it seemed logical to encourage them to stay in Australia as a perma-
nent part of its skilled workforce (22). Skill shortages were a matter of concern
beyond the border of Australia, leading most Western countries to deregulate their
migration policies as means to counter the ‘alarming estimates in IT labour short-
age’ in the late 1990s (Biao 2007: 15). In Australia, there was a projected shortage
of 31,550 IT professionals for the year 1999, 89,300 for the years 1999–2002 and
a further shortfall of 180, 200 by 2004 (15). Yet – as Xian Biao pointed out in
his analysis of ‘body-shopping’13 – these dramatic projections were very much
virtual – that is, based on data provided by employers motivated to expand their
business by means of a flexible and cheap reserve of IT labour (15–19). By no
coincidence, the inflation of skill shortages coincided with seemingly opposi-
tional phenomena, such as the estimation in the United States of America of a
shortage of 425,000 IT professionals for the years 2001–2002 at the same time as
redundancies in the IT sector were taking place worldwide (15).
For Stratton, the deregulation of migration signals the intensification of the use
of borders as a filter adaptable to the volatile needs of the global economy (Strat-
ton 2009a: 677–692). This, he suggests, occurred as a result of making borders the
physical space whereby assessments of the economic value of migrant groups are
enacted (2009a: 685) with oppositional outcomes: the inclusion of skilled migrants
and international students and the exclusion of unskilled migrants and asylum
seekers (2009b: 8–10; 10–12). For Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson, this inten-
sification has taken place as a result of using borders as means to regulate the ‘time
and speed’ of the movement of migrants into labour markets (2013: 132). The
filtering function of borders is then understood as an effect of the ‘compression,
 Failing to be(come) ‘ideal’ 69
elongation, and partitioning of time’ enacted by borders in their quest to produce
labour power as a commodity at a pace that suits ‘the real or imaginary economic
and social needs of countries of destinations’ (138). Mezzadra and Neilson refer
to such a phenomenon under the register of the concept of differential inclusion.
This concept has a long history of uses in feminist theory and critical race and
migration studies, whereby it has been differently employed to highlight ‘how
inclusion in a sphere or realm can be subject to varying degrees of subordination,
rule, discrimination and segmentation’ (159). The authors mobilise this concept
to unsettle the common understanding of borders as sites of either inclusion of
skilled migrants or exclusion of unskilled migrants (165), showing instead how
borders suture both migrant groups into national labour markets by means of dif-
ferentiated modalities of inclusion: deportation, detention and points-test system
migration schemes (139). In this study, the concept of differential inclusion is
coupled with that of inclusion contingent upon meeting security conditions dis-
cussed in the previous chapter to highlight how the temporal function of borders
reproduces cultural homogeneity.
As Mezzadra and Neilson note, points-test system migration schemes were
introduced by settler colonial nations such as Australia and Canada as they moved
from ‘more racially based approaches to migration to one that sought to match
labour market needs to emergent social agenda of multiculturalism and integra-
tion’ (139). The authors spend very few words addressing how points-test sys-
tem migration schemes have been exactly employed to match the imperative of
international competition with securing the integration of new migrants into their
societies of destination. Some comments are made towards such clarification in
their analysis of the porous quality of the divide skilled/unskilled, whereby they
observe how points-test system migration schemes have entailed the control of
qualities other than educational qualifications and labour skills: language profi-
ciency, religion and – as they write – ‘even familiarity with national culture and
values’ (139). Mezzadra and Neilson overlook the uses of such requirements as
means to culturally fashion group populations yet to become, interpreting them
instead as demonstrative of how cognitive capitalism has expanded the time of
productive labour to include ‘activities of social relation and reproduction’ (139).
Yet even the most cursory review of the history of points-test system migration
schemes points to a different explanation.
In Australia, the points test was adopted in 1982 as a replacement of the Numer-
ical Multifactor Assessment System (NUMAS) (Committee to Advice on Austral-
ia’s Immigration Policies 1988: 29). NUMAS, in turn, was introduced in 1979 as
a result of three seemingly unrelated events: the slowing down of Australia’s long
economic boom in 1971, the adoption of the principle of non-discrimination in
migration policies in 1973 (Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs
2001: 8–9) and the opening of the first detention centre in Sydney in 1976 as a
response to the arrival in Darwin of several boats of Vietnamese and Indochi-
nese nationals seeking refuge in the 1970s (8–10). Like the NUMAS, the points
test was specifically designed to differentiate among applicants by facilitating the
entry of those who were relatively young and in possession of either professional
70 Failing to be(come) ‘ideal’
or entrepreneurial skills and those who were proficient in English. The emphasis
on proficiency highlights the expectation for prospective migrants to not only
speak any of the many variations of English developed around the world as a
result of colonialism but to speak the ‘national language’ – that is, to use the tone,
syntax and grammar recognised within specific professional circles or wider host
society as ‘legitimate’ (Puwar 2004: 111). As Nirmal Puwar has pointed out, it
is because of this expectation that proficiency plays a decisive role in the selec-
tion processes of ‘outsiders’, making mastery of the language deemed national an
important marker of (prospective) assimilation (112–113).14
Puwar too employs the concept of inclusion, which she defines as differenti-
ated, to emphasise how the pressure to conform to ‘legitimate’ norms of speech
and conduct is exerted more on some subjects than on others because of their
bodies being a priori marked as ‘out of space’ for their race or gender (119–
139). For instance, focusing on the strategies deployed by black civilian servants
in the UK to advance their careers, she demonstrates how the latter resorted to
speaking and behaving socially the same as their white counterparts in order to
‘becom[e] a trusted and respected colleague’ (110). As Puwar has observed, this
implicit request for assimilation is engendered by and concomitantly perpetuates
the ‘ontological denial’ that norms, standards and procedures upheld by states’
liberal intuitions as ‘universal and racially unmarked’ (119) are instead premised
on ‘very specific, historically located, corporealities’ (132).
Compared with Mezzadra and Neilson’s definition, when applied to migration,
Puwar’s has the merit of stressing how the principle of differential inclusion has
become embedded in governmental technologies of migration management as
much to pace and filter through the entry of migrants as to reproduce cultural
hegemony while seeming to uphold the principle of non-racial discrimination.
Likewise, Stratton has emphasised how many international students had been
granted permanent residency on the provision they have to spend at least a period
of eighteen months of ‘cultural and linguistic acculturation into Australian soci-
ety’ (2009b: 6–7). In consideration that most of these students come from Asian
countries (7), he concludes that their inclusion in the nation has relied on two con-
ditions: conforming to Australian socio-cultural objectives and participating in the
professional workforce. Pending the satisfaction of these two conditions, ‘Asian’
international students are granted the status of ‘honorary whiteness’:

Honorary whiteness has been a term that is increasingly used, especially in

the United States, to describe groups who, in particular, usually national, con-
texts are allowed the status of whiteness while there is continuing recognition
that the members of that group are not white.
(17)

Hence, Asian international students – alongside identified Asian migrants more

generally – are excluded from the nation which continues to be imagined as white
but are conditionally included as part of its middle class ‘provided they accept
Australian values and the Australian way of life’ (17). Building on this insight, the
 Failing to be(come) ‘ideal’ 71
next section analyses successive versions of the points test to show how it has also
worked as a technology of assimilation – that is, a variety of techniques aiming
at augmenting the ‘national cultural capital’ of international students before their
entry into the Australian labour market.

Doubling the border: international education and migration

From 1998 to 2007, it is possible to identify two main trends in the overseas edu-
cation and migration policies implemented under the Howard government. On
the one hand, access barriers to international education were consistently lowered
with the objective of stimulating the export industry of international education.
On the other hand, the requirements that international students had to satisfy to
become permanent residents were constantly raised with the rationale of attaining
the skills deemed necessary to join the Australian labour force. The two trends
were coterminous, making the state’s process of shaping Australia’s new migrants
by means of international education double. Access barriers to international edu-
cation were not indiscriminately lowered for every student. Some more than
others still had to prove to be ‘genuine’. For instance, in announcing the latest
changes to the points test, Ruddock stated,

We are also looking closely at the student visa program to ensure the con-
trolled, sustainable growth of Australia’s international education and training
industry. Amongst options I am considering is visa assessment streamlining
for students from emerging markets such as China and India by introducing
an effective partnership with education institutions to ensure that we receive
bona-fide students, and not those wanting to jump the queue and achieve a
migration outcome.
(1998: 9–10, emphasis added)15

Given the recent history of the Overseas Student Program, China could hardly be
seen as an emerging market, suggesting that such a description constituted a mere
attempt to move on and away from the diplomatic and economic consequences
caused by the 1989 crisis. This attempt was clearly fraught with ambivalence, as
the spectre of an ‘Asian invasion’ was once more evoked by means of the ‘jump
the queue’ metaphor to justify the employment of special measures of control and
restriction. These new measures were as much affected by the past construction
of overstaying Chinese students as a threat to the Australian nation as moulded
after the two-tiered system discussed in the previous chapter. The practice of
distinguishing between international students’ countries of origin according to a
perceived risk of migration was not only held in place but also reinforced by the
reintroduction of a ‘genuineness assessment’ for all those students coming from
non-gazetted nations:

Countries whose citizens have a good history of complying with the condi-
tions of their student visas are ‘gazetted’ – that is listed in a special edition
72 Failing to be(come) ‘ideal’
of the Australian Government’s Commonwealth Gazette. Visa applications
by citizens of gazetted countries are subject to streamlined visa processing.
Non-gazetted countries are countries whose citizens have not demonstrated a
good record of complying with student visas. Prospective students from these
countries, except government sponsored students, are required to undergo a
genuineness assessment before confirming their enrolment or paying any tui-
tion fee to education providers.
(Fact Sheet 86: 1)

With regard to the geographic area of Asia, the list of gazetted countries included
the Republic of Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Thailand, Taiwan, Brunei, Singapore,
Hong Kong and Malaysia (1). Both China and India were excluded from the list,
and Chinese students were specifically singled out in relation to the events that
had occurred just a few years back:

Special entry arrangements for students from the People’s Republic of China
(PRC) were introduced in 1992 following concerns about the high number
of students from the PRC who overstayed their visa. Additional genuineness
factors are applied to private students from PRC, including a high level of
English comprehension. These factors are not applied to government spon-
sored students, school students . . . postgraduate students or any dependents.
(1)

The lowering of visa assessment requirements was thus not open to all interna-
tional students but only to those who could meet the conditions of security estab-
lished by the nation through the Overseas Student Program. For these students,
access barriers were moved from proving to be ‘genuine’ students to upholding
the ideal of being the right kind of migrant for the nation. Following the decision
of allowing international students to apply for permanent residency onshore, the
points test deployed to select among them was modified. In May 2002, Ruddock
had announced a rise of five points in the pass mark necessary to achieve perma-
nent residency for all those applying under the category of skilled independent:
from 110 to 115 (Koleth 2010a: 23). By then, international students were exempted
from providing evidence of previous work experience, making the increased pass
mark amount to a request for a higher level of English proficiency and Australian
educational qualifications. In March 2003, after acknowledging the contribution
of the stream of skilled migration to the Australian economy and labour market,
Ruddock announced further changes to the points test to ‘target the upper end of
the overseas student market’: international students were still exempted from pro-
viding evidence of work experience on the provision they had studied in Australia
for at least one year. In July 2003, the one-year criterion was raised to two (25).
Always in July, the points test was modified to grant applicants who had completed
both their undergraduate and postgraduate qualifications in Australia with more
points: from 5 to 10 for those who had obtained a second-class Honours or Mas-
ter’s degree and from 10 to 15 for those who had a Doctorate of Philosophy (25).
 Failing to be(come) ‘ideal’ 73
In November 2003, as the measures deployed to ensure compliance to visa student
conditions proved to be effective, the then-Minister for Immigration, Amanda Van-
stone, announced further changes to the Overseas Student Program. The burden
of financial proof for students coming from ‘high risk of migration’ countries was
eased and international students with lower levels of English were allowed to study
in Australia by undertaking foundation and ESL courses ahead of the commence-
ment of their undergraduate studies (26). By the end of 2003, the nation then was
deemed so secure that these changes were introduced to stimulate the industrial
growth of international education with fewer reservations, yet access to the nation
as a permanent migrant for international students became more and more difficult.
In April 2004, Vanstone announced a further rise in the pass mark, from 115 to
120 (27). Once again, as international students were still exempted from providing
evidence of previous work experience, the expectation for them to have gained
higher qualifications in Australia and to demonstrate English proficiency increased
accordingly, posing the question: why had the pass mark been so often increased
in such a short time?
Data on the number of permanent visas granted in the years following 2001
might provide illumination. As Vanstone had also reported in 2004 on a different
occasion, almost one third of migrants granted permanent residency in 2003–4
were either temporary skilled workers or former international students com-
ing mostly from the UK, China and India (28). Considering that the number of
students coming from the UK has been largely understood as historically irrel-
evant, we can conclude that a considerable number of the 10,188 permanent visas
granted to former international students in 2003–4 were given to students com-
ing from India (2,222), China (2,139) and Indonesia (1,107; Birrell, Hawthorne
and Richardson 2006: 27). In spite of the rise in the pass mark in April 2004, the
total number of permanent visas granted to former students grew considerably in
2005: from 10,188 to 12,978 (27). As in 2003–4, most of these visas were granted
to former Chinese (2,655) and Indian students (2,433), followed by Indonesian
(1,408), Malay (1,113), Hongkongese (863) and Korean students (474) (29). And
2004–5 was also the year in which the total number of permanent visas granted
to former international students (12,978) outnumbered those granted to offshore
independent skilled applicants (11,826), a category of permanent migrants his-
torically dominated by English nationals (see Birrell, Hawthorne and Richardson
2006: 29).16
In light of these few but insightful data, we can conclude that the requirements
established by the Australian nation to become a permanent part of its population
had increased according to the number of international students granted perma-
nent residency – with no reservation for the integrity of the migration program.
That the integrity of the border was not yet a matter of concern is made obvi-
ous by the nature of the application requirements: high educational qualifications
and English proficiency. In both cases, to meet such requirements, international
students had to prolong their stay in Australia to be eligible. The elongation of
time required from them to become ‘ideal’ confirms both uses of the concept of
differential inclusion discussed so far. On the one hand, it corroborates Mezzadra
74 Failing to be(come) ‘ideal’
and Neilson’s definition of the concept as a variety of highly technocratic means
implemented to contrive the tempo-movement of labour power in the labour mar-
ket in accordance to the factual or imagined socio-economic needs of the nation.
On the other hand, it confirms Stratton’s hypothesis that the linking of interna-
tional education with migration has been effectively used by the state as a technol-
ogy of assimilation. Elongation of time in particular, has worked for them as an
injunction to accumulate more national cultural capital as a means to be bestowed
with the honorary status of insider.
Rapid changes in the criteria employed to filter among international students
as both students and prospective permanent migrants moreover suggests the
existence of a double border for them. On the one hand, the border regulating
the entry and stay of international students as students became more elastic,
allowing more and more students to come to study in Australia. Yet this elastic-
ity was underpinned by enhanced control measures of student visa conditions’
compliance, which made students coming from countries deemed at high risk of
migration bound to respect the conditions of security established by the nation
regardless of their intentions. On the other hand, the border regulating interna-
tional students as prospective permanent migrants became less elastic: the more
international students applied for permanent residency the higher the level of
cultural conformity required from them. It is no coincidence that when inter-
national students’ work performance as permanent migrants was ranked lower
than the other categories of skilled migrants in 2006, the solution to reduce their
disadvantage was, once again, to increase their level of acculturation (Koleth
2010a: 31–31).

Failing to be(come) ‘ideal’: employability, honorary

whiteness and the border
Chapter 1 illustrated how the artificial creation of the non-formal sector of inter-
national education in 1985 led to a boom in the enrolment of Chinese students.
Compared to the Singaporean, Taiwanese, Indonesian, Malaysian and Hong-
kongese students who had traditionally come to study in Australia under the
Colombo Plan, Chinese students represented quite a novelty both in terms of
socio-demographic characteristics and patterns of enrolments, which furthered
the representation of those overstaying as a threat to the nation following the 1989
crisis. Like the creation of the non-formal sector in 1985, the inclusion of trade
occupations in the Migration Occupations in Demand List (MODL) in 2005 led to
an exponential growth in the enrolment of Indian students, adding further diver-
sity to the breakdown by nation of international students in Australia. In line with
Mezzadra and Neilson’s description of borders as technologies of time regulation,
the MODL was first introduced as a control mechanism to prioritise permanent
residence applicants who nominated an occupation deemed in national shortage
(Birrell and Healy 2010: 66). Trade occupations such as cooking and hairdressing
do not necessarily require a high level of training to gain entry, and yet their inclu-
sion in the list stimulated a rapid growth in the offer of vocational education and
 Failing to be(come) ‘ideal’ 75
training (VET) courses, often advertised as assured means to permanent residency
(66–68). Between 2002 and 2009, enrolments in such courses more than tripled
(Senate 2009: 4) especially in the private sector, which grew from about a third
of total enrolments in 2004 to half of all enrolments in 2008 (5). From 2005, half
of this dramatic growth was recorded in a small number of fields: cooking, hair-
dressing, hospitality and hospitality management (5). As mentioned, most of the
students enrolled in these courses were Indians, whose number rose dramatically:
from 3,791 in 2005 to 10,091 in 2006, 26,403 in 2007, 51,087 in 2008 and 79,173
in 2009 (Birrell and Healy 2010: 67).
While the number of prospective permanent migrants was rising as a result of
the inclusion of trade occupations in the MODL, the work performance of previ-
ous international students in the Australian job market was assessed as part of a
broader review of the migration program in 2006. As part of this review, academ-
ics Bob Birrell,17 Lesleyanne Hawthorne18 and Sue Richardson19 were commis-
sioned by the Department of Immigration to assess the efficacy of the points test
in selecting permanent migrants under the General Skilled Migration Program
(GSM) against the government objectives of augmenting the skills base of Aus-
tralia and filling emerging skill shortages (Birrell, Hawthorne and Richardson
2006: 6; 10–11). As the authors specify at the beginning of the report,

The terms of reference of this evaluation of the GSM and points test are to:
1. examine the efficiency and effectiveness of the current structure and opera-
tion of the GSM and points test . . . [and] 2. assess how well the GSM and
points test are meeting their objectives as set out above, principally through
an examination of the characteristics and labour market outcomes of GSM
principal applicants.
(7, emphasis added)

In spite of the fact that the review regarded all the migrants accepted in the nation
under the GSM program, former overseas students’ ‘characteristics and labour
market outcomes’ were particularly scrutinised, probably due to the increas-
ing number of permanent visas granted to them in the years following 2001.20
As argued earlier, international students were encouraged to settle in Australia
because they were assumed to be relatively young, proficient in English, trained
in the skills needed by the nation and familiar with the Australian culture. As dis-
cussed, these assumptions are at the core of the entire program of skilled migra-
tion, and all migrants are expected to live up to them by means of their work
performance. In this sense, the skills new migrants bring along with them are
deemed important in so far as they match their capacity to perform the labour the
nation needs to secure its economic well-being:

Migrants who have high-level skills, in areas that have high demand and are
experiencing difficulty in recruiting, are likely to be able to find jobs rapidly
after arrival and to be financially independent. They are also likely to be able
to find jobs that use their skills, and provide a good level of pay. Each of these
76 Failing to be(come) ‘ideal’
is evidence of successful settlement and early contribution to the Australian
economy.
(70, emphasis added)

As this passage illustrates, the conditions upon which skilled migrants are
included in the nation on a permanent basis are more complex than the mere use
of the adjective ‘skilled’ at first suggests. Permanent migrants are expected to find
a job ‘rapidly’ in areas Australia has labour needs in and to earn enough money so
that they can be ‘financially independent’ as quickly as possible. In light of these
expectations, Birrell et al. define the criteria against which they are to judge the
performance of several categories of permanent skilled migrants:

With these objectives of the skilled migration program in mind, we are able to
identify criteria for judging the degree to which migrants selected as skilled
Primary Applicants can be deemed to have been successful. . . . The criteria
that we use to judge the degree of success in the labour market are: the pro-
portion who are employed (including self-employed); the proportion who are
employed fulltime; wages earned; occupation; whether they use their quali-
fications in their job.
(70)

By means of these criteria, ‘the efficiency and effectiveness’ of the GSM pro-
gram become specified as a measure of the capacity of new permanent migrants
to fulfil a string of strictly connected expectations: find a full-time job (79–80),
use the skills they obtained permanent residency for (81–83) and earn wages
commensurate to the level of their skills (84–85). As noted earlier, the GSM
program encompasses a variety of subclasses and purposes which are designed
to complement the agenda of augmenting the skills base of the nation and filling
emerging skill shortages with that of, for instance, addressing the specific skill
needs of individual states and regions (visa subclasses 134, 137, 139, 495 and
882) or supporting family reunions while recruiting skilled migrants (visa sub-
classes 138 and 881). In light of such diversity, the authors clarify that the work
performance of new migrants cannot be compared against each other in any
direct fashion. Rather, the conditions upon which they were selected for perma-
nent inclusion over others must be equally taken into consideration to guarantee
accuracy of assessment. Such conditions are not limited to the purposes of their
inclusion, whether that be filling national or regional shortages, but extended
to cover what the author refers to as the ‘particular characteristics’ of the new
migrants:

We are particularly interested in the differences of outcomes between

migrants selected under different visas, and between migrants with particular
characteristics. These characteristics are chosen to reflect the types of criteria
that can be used as the basis for selection. Examples are age, qualifications,
 Failing to be(come) ‘ideal’ 77
whether experienced in a MODL occupation and whether or not sponsored.
For the most part, we do not focus on criteria that, while observable, are not
acceptable as selection criteria, such as sex, religion or country of origin.
(70)

Interestingly, the authors decide to include age, English proficiency, possession

of qualifications and previous work experience as important characteristics to
assess the work performance of the new migrants; however, socio-demographic
characteristics other than age are intentionally excluded from their analysis. As
the authors observe, data on sex, religion and country of origin were available
but disregarded for not corresponding with the criteria of selection deemed
most salient. Because the GSM program is putatively blind to gender, religion
and nationality, so too is the review of its efficacy with the result of exclud-
ing the possibility that gender-, religion- and race-based discriminations might
have impaired the work performance of new migrants in spite of evidence
proving so.21
Endowed with such a rigid set of attributes, the new migrants were to be
assessed as if they were statistically representative of distinguished group popu-
lations yet to become. This future projection is particularly conspicuous in the
assessment of the work performance of those migrants who were included in
the nation upon similar conditions: offshore independent skilled migrants and
onshore independent international students (respectively visa subclasses 136 and
880). These two visa subclasses were shaped around similar selection criteria
and national aims. Starting from 2001, these were the two visa subclasses under
which most permanent residencies were granted (29). The authors then deemed
a comparison between the two migrant groups crucial to assess the efficacy of
the GSM program:

Both subclasses [136 and 880] are designed to augment Australia’s skill
base and to help to fill skilled labour market vacancies. Visa subclass 880 is
designed to take advantage of the fact that, other things being equal, appli-
cants with Australian qualifications have a greater chance of employment in
Australia.
(21, emphasis added)

The reference to the possession of ‘Australian qualifications’ emphasises the sup-

posed advantage international students held in their pursuit of appropriate employ-
ment over offshore skilled migrants. As a matter of fact, it was on the basis of
this supposition that, unlike offshore independent skilled migrants, international
students were exempted from providing evidence of work experience. From these
premises, Birrell et al. compare and contrast the work performance of the two
groups and conclude that comparable to offshore independent migrants, interna-
tional students were overall able to achieve a high rate of employment soon after
graduation (respectively 83 and 82 per cent; 79). Yet the reader is immediately
78 Failing to be(come) ‘ideal’
reminded that a high rate of employment is not necessarily a satisfactory measure
of settlement success:

One of the key measures of success of the skilled migration program is

whether migrants find employment in skilled occupations. . . . We would
expect skilled migrants to find work in the higher level occupations if the
GSM program is meeting its objectives. If, despite their qualifications, skills
and experience, they end up working in elementary or intermediate level
jobs, then settlement could not at that time be judged a success.
(81)

The work performance of international students is thus further tested against other
criteria: type of work, use of skills in the workplace and income. In the Australian
Standard Classification, jobs available in the nation have been classified on the
basis of the level of skills required to perform them. In it, managerial jobs rank at
the top, followed by professional and associate professional, trade, then interme-
diate and elementary jobs (81). Against the parameters set by this classification,
the authors assess the work performance of international students as unsatisfac-
tory. Only 38 per cent succeeded in obtaining managerial or professional positions
compared with 61 per cent of offshore business-nominated migrants, and 54 per
cent of offshore independent migrants (80–81). According to the authors, interna-
tional students’ performance was moreover disappointing with regard to the level
they used their skills in the workplace. Only 44 per cent of international students
claimed using their qualifications rather often in their job compared to the 63 per
cent of offshore independent migrants (82). Their performance is also reported as
failing the conditions held by Birrell et al. as ‘the best single measure of success-
ful labour market outcome’: income.22

High incomes are systematically linked to high productivity, as employers

are only willing to pay approximately what an employee is worth to their
business. Earnings are a useful summary of the value of the contribution that
a migrant is making to Australia’s economy. They are also important for the
material wellbeing of the migrant her or himself, and as such are an independ-
ent indicator of successful settlement.
(84, emphasis added)

Once again, the authors establish a direct link between the individual successes
of new migrants with the security of the Australian economy, further confirming
economic contribution to the nation as the most important condition upon which
Australia is opened to international students. As shown throughout the analysis of
the review’s premises, the expectation of economic contribution is rather speci-
fied in terms of class attributes: attainment of educational qualifications, entry in
managerial and professional occupations and high incomes. International students
are thus expected to not only contribute economically in any capacity but to join
the Australian upper middle class. This expectation can be read in several ways.
 Failing to be(come) ‘ideal’ 79
Firstly, it affirms the function of the border within a neo-liberal regime of global
economic competitiveness. Secondly, it links socio-economic success among dif-
ferently racialised migrants with that of cultural assimilation, which makes the
attainment of honorary whiteness more a condition than a consequence of their
inclusion in the nation. Either way, the expectation for international students to
be highly acculturated to Australian dominant culture is made obvious by the way
in which reviewers assess the alleged failure of international students to attain
jobs commensurate to their qualifications – that is, the problemisation of them as
subjects who lack necessary cultural and linguistic skills.
In the authors’ explanation, causes and consequences of the relatively low level
of employability of international students go around in a circle and finally over-
lap upon two main factors: a lack of comprehensive education and proficiency
in English. For the authors, the assumption that studying in Australia for at least
two years was sufficient to secure an adequate level of professional prepara-
tion and acculturation led to a concentration of international students enrolling
in Master’s-by-coursework courses. These courses, in turn, according to them,
do not require previous training in the field, nor do they provide the specialised
knowledge required by Australian employers (32). Rather, these courses provide
the minimum level of knowledge and competencies deemed necessary by accred-
iting authorities to gain entry into any profession (32). It must be noted that such
observations are supported neither by any data on international students’ previ-
ous educational experience nor by data on their enrolment practices in Australia.
Nonetheless, they enable the authors to conclude that international students, in
contrast to their domestic counterparts – lack the necessary education to gain the
jobs they are most needed for: computing and accounting. The comparison with
domestic students is here relevant to specify the understanding that the authors
have for ‘comprehensive education’:

[M]ost of the growth in the courses catering for overseas students who are
oriented towards permanent residence has occurred at the Masters by course-
work level. These courses have relatively few local student enrolments. Most
domestic students seeking professional level appointments in computing or
accounting would complete three or four year undergraduate courses . . .
Also, domestic undergraduate students are much more likely to possess the
communication and cultural skills to which employers give a high priority
when making appointments.
(32, emphasis added)

In spite of the emphasis on domestic students allegedly studying longer than their
international counterparts, this passage highlights that according to the authors,
formal education alone cannot make international students become well-sought
employees. No matter how long they study in Australia before becoming perma-
nent residents, they will never become the same as their domestic counterparts,
whose communication and cultural skills are, by contrast, positioned as a natural
possession. The understanding of ‘comprehensive education’ as a combination of
80 Failing to be(come) ‘ideal’
formal education and acculturation is further explicated by the authors’ descrip-
tion of international students as ‘Asian’:

Most of these students come from Asia and are not native speakers of English.
Even those coming from the subcontinent of India, where their first degrees
are usually taught in English, often need further training in English, as well
as familiarity with Australian cultural norms, if they are to meet employers’
communication expectations after graduation.
(33, emphasis added)

The designation of international students as ‘Asian’ in the context of permanent

migration does similar work here as it does in education. On the one hand, it
marks the differences of international students as inassimilable to Australian cul-
tural norms. On the other hand, it positions them as a matter of ‘deficiency’ – that
is a set of lacks that can be bridged by means of extended training. In both cases,
like in Burke’s account, the attribution of Asianness to these new migrants effec-
tively functions as a further injunction for them to labour towards whiteness to
be(come) ‘ideal’. It is not surprising then that the authors conclude their report by
recommending that the federal government improve the employability of inter-
national students by further using visa requirements and assessment criteria as a
technology of acculturation: to raise the English requirement from an IELTS score
from 5 to 6, to allocate extra points to IELTS scores equal or superior to 7 and to
mandate provision of evidence of specific training or work/industrial experience
in Australia (166–167).
The emphasis on cultural competency as a quality of the ‘ideal’ migrant is
relevant to shed light on the seemingly oppositional practice of distinguishing
migrants as skilled and unskilled. As Stratton has demonstrated, this practise has
functioned ‘as a part of a structural transformation of the modern binary distinction
between civilised and primitive, white and coloured’ (2009b: 11–12). For instance,
starting from the Tampa affair in August 2001,23 the positioning of asylum seekers
as a threat to the Australian nation has operated within two interrelated registers:
one cultural, the other economic. On the cultural register, they have been rendered
as ‘Muslims’ – coded as bearers of moral and cultural values incompatible with
the Australian ones (13). On the economic register, they have been classified as
‘unskilled’ – a threat to the economic well-being of the nation (11). In opposition
to them, other categories of migrants have been included in the nation, depend-
ent on their being both culturally assimilable and economically competitive. As
shown throughout the analysis of the review of GSM’s program, these expecta-
tions have gone hand in hand, so that the alleged failure of international students
to immediately become economically successful is interpreted as a symptom of a
cultural deficit. This interpretation, in turn, has questioned the legitimacy of their
inclusion and led to the augmentation of the requirements employed to select
among them. Likewise, Stratton has argued that when ‘Asian’-identified interna-
tional students fail to move into the Australian upper middle class, their status as
honorary whites is withdrawn, exposing them to forms of exclusion reserved to
 Failing to be(come) ‘ideal’ 81
allegedly ‘unskilled’ migrants: asylum seekers and guest workers (2009b: 20). It is
not coincidental then that in the years following Birrell et al.’s report – as news on
the failures of the nexus between education and migration were reported more and
more often in the Australian media – Australians’ perceptions of international stu-
dents, especially Indians, changed radically. This change commenced in the printed
media, venting concerns about ‘Asian’ international students’ lack of English
proficiency (‘English barrier’ 2006). Following the lead of the review of the GSM
program, these concerns were soon to be coupled with the suspicion that interna-
tional students might aggravate and not resolve Australia’s skill shortage (Alex-
ander 2008). This suspicion rapidly led the public to question the quality of the
education that international students sought in Australia and thus the legitimacy
of their intentions. News reporting on ‘dodgy’ colleges multiplied rapidly in the
Australian public sphere, and accusations against them ranged from passing inter-
national students ‘without attending class in return for paying extra fees’ (Morton
and Mckenzie 2007) and ‘taking money to supply bogus work experience docu-
ments’ (Johnstone 2008) to ‘taking illegal payments from visa-seeking students in
cash-for-certificates scams’ (Das 20 2008). As both Michiel Baas and Shanti Rob-
ertson have noted, news articles such as these made the public aware of the fact
that international students in general and Indian students in particular were not
just transient visitors pursuing educational outcomes but also migrants actively
seeking to settle in Australia (Baas 2010: 5; Robertson 2013: 55). Considering the
way in which internationals students’ conduct was depicted in the media, it is not
then surprising that appeals to ‘close the back door’ once again circulated in the
public arena as a solution to the problems posed by ‘dodgy colleges’ and ‘bogus
migrants’ (‘Close the Backdoor’ 2009).24 As shown in the previous chapter, the
metaphor of ‘back door’ is saturated with a long history of negative meanings
and affects. In evoking the fear of a new ‘Asian invasion’, the resentment so
engendered has attached most to the bodies of those non-white migrants accused
of infringing on the conditions of security of the nation: ‘bogus’ asylum seekers,
migrants and students. As Baas has observed, ‘Anglo-Saxon/White; Australians’25
gradually shifted their perception of Indian students from ‘welcome “guests” –
who’d bring in money’ to ‘profiteers, having come in Australia under false pre-
tences, competing unlawfully for local jobs and taking up public space where they
were supposed to “feature in the background” ’ (2010: 4). For Baas, this change
in perception ought to be understood as a space matter. As the presence of Indian
students in Melbourne grew considerably in a few years, so did their visibility to
Australians, who in turn began to speak of them as being ‘everywhere’, ‘crowding
the streets’, ‘not getting out of the way’, ‘always in groups’ and ‘filling up trains’
(4). Baas interprets such comments as indicative of the fact that Australians – who
often make the ‘spaciousness’ of the country a matter of national identification –
began to perceive of Indian students as both ‘profiteers’ and ‘space invaders’:
migrants who were to not only stay but also grow considerably in number, thus
causing further troubles (202). Taken together, according to Baas, these percep-
tions legitimised ‘a certain way’ of treating Indian students (202). Positioned as
both ‘a source of income and nuisance’, they become collectively perceived as a
82 Failing to be(come) ‘ideal’
group ‘from which it is legitimate to profit’ (203). Baas’s observations resonate
with Hage’s explanation of racist violence as a nationalist practice which aims to
assert who and what is desirable in the space of the nation as imagined by those
who dominate (27–47). Chapter 3 develops the implications of such practices
by analysing the last event of the history of the Overseas Student Program: the
protests staged by Indian students in Melbourne in 2009. To conclude this chapter
with Baas, it is important to emphasise how the positioning of Indian students as
an object of national resentment has contributed to the legitimisation of violence
against them. Yet to be deemed undesirable, their presence had to first be encoun-
tered as bodies ‘out of space’ and, second, be interpreted as a threat to the security
of the nation. To ‘take in’ is to be ‘taken in’.

Notes
1 ‘Failing to Be(come) ‘Ideal’: Multiculturalism, Whiteness and the Politics of Resent-
ment’ uses an excerpt from the article ‘Australia’s Colombo Plan: the Beacon of West-
ern Knowledge in the Asia-Pacific Region’ [1–16] originally published in Critical
Race and Whiteness Studies e-Journal (Volume 11, Number 1, 2015). This has been
reprinted in accordance with the journal’s copyright policy.
2 The designation of migrant minorities as interest groups emphasises how non-white or
non–white-enough migrant groups were incorporated into the liberal pluralist politi-
cal system of Australia not as representatives of the concerns of the entire Australian
population but as representatives of groups with specific interests. This attribution of
particularity coincidences with Nirmal Puwar’s observation that racially marked citi-
zens of a nation are always encountered as representative of specific and not general
forms of humanity and concerns (2004: 58).
3 For further details on the Hawke-Keating agenda regarding multiculturalism, see
Office of Multicultural Affairs 1989; 1996.
4 For further details on the concept of productive diversity and its employment in Aus-
tralia, see Migliorino, Miltenyi and Robertson 1994; Cope and Kalantzis 1997.
5 For a detailed account on the involvement of cultural anthropologists such as Margaret
Mead and Gregory Bateson in the United States’ war effort and the influence of their
studies on the emergence of intercultural communication as an independent field of
studies, see Leeds-Hurwitz 2010: 21–33.
6 For a detailed account of the adaptation of cultural anthropology to the practical needs
of diplomats and businesspeople and the role played by the anthropologist Edward
Hall – unanimously regarded as the father of the discipline – in the conceptualisation
of communication as culture, see Leeds-Hurwitz 1990: 267–270.
7 The International Development Program of Australian Universities and Colleges Ltd
(IDP) is still active, and it is an organisation that formally represents and provides
services for all public universities and private educational institutions subscribed to it.
See the IDP website at www.australia.idp.com/about_us/about_idp_australia.aspx.
8 In accordance with the genealogy of intercultural communication as a technology of
population management, it is relevant to note here that in the context of education,
the ‘deficit view’ has been differently applied to domestic students, demystifying dis-
parities in educational outcomes as problems inherent to the cultural makeup of mar-
ginalised group populations rather than as the product of class and race inequities.
Such application has, for instance, led to the formation of stereotypes that confine
the understanding of low educational achievement within the myth of the ‘culture of
poverty’: low-income families and communities are lazy and do not value education
(Gorski 2011: 152–176). The ‘deficit’ position’s employment across a disparate array
 Failing to be(come) ‘ideal’ 83
of social problems has equally led to the unstated assumption that inequalities can be
resolved by ‘fixing’ disenfranchised collectives instead of what disenfranchises them
(Gorski 2008: 518). As Paul Gorski has pointed out, ‘fixing’ deficient subjects has
often amounted, especially in the case of migrant and other racialised group popula-
tions, to assimilating them into the very structures and values that oppress them (518).
9 Stratton prefers to use the category Anglo-Celtic to emphasise the later inclusion of
Irish into the Australian definition of whiteness in contrast to the original identification
of it only with Britishness. The inclusion of the Irish had marked an important shift in
the history of the Australian Federation in that it furthered the distance that Australia,
as a nation, had taken from the English ‘motherland’. For further details, see Stratton
1999: 174–176 and Stratton 2004: 222–238.
10 Stratton has more recently complicated his distinction of the Australian population into
white and ethnic by applying the concept of ‘honorary whiteness’ to ‘Asian’ interna-
tional students to argue that their increased presence in the upper and middle classes has
rather consolidated than undermined cultural homogeneity in Australia. He argues so
by showing how the bestowment of ‘honorary whiteness’ to ‘Asian’-identified profes-
sionals more generally is always premised on their acceptance of core Australian val-
ues, thus the contingency of their ‘white’ status. Yet he does not examine the discursive
mechanisms through which their original core values are rendered as non-Australian
or less than Australian in the first place. In this sense, Hage’s conceptualisation of
whiteness is more pertinent to grasp the nuances of racial identity and cultural strati-
fication in Australia. For further details on the concept of honorary whiteness and its
application to ‘Asian’ professionals, see Stratton 2009b.
11 Like Stratton’s conceptualisation of the Anglo-Celtic construct, Hage’s is informed
by the history of struggles and progressive naturalisation of the cultural capital of
migrants such as the Irish as national (1998: 57). Because of its historical foundation,
cultural capital or singular traits of group populations other than the Anglo-Celtic ones
might be naturalised as national over time, yet what Hage refers to as the Northern
European ideal is very likely to always represent the limit of what can count as Austral-
ian (58–59). See Hage 1998: 49–77.
12 In this speech, Ruddock is referring to the shift from the supply-driven to the demand-
driven model illustrated at the beginning of this section.
13 Biao analyses the practice of small IT firms bringing Indian IT professionals to work
in other countries by contracting them as consultants and landing them work on their
clients’ projects. This practice is popularly known amongst Indian IT professionals
as ‘body shopping’. Biao’s analysis of this and other related practices sheds light on
the complexity of the phenomena characterising the production of IT professionals in
India and their movements through intermediate agents around the world. See Biao
2007.
14 Puwar’s analysis of ‘legitimate language’ as means of exclusion/inclusion is based
both on the work of Frantz Fanon on speaking the imperial language of French as a
measure of civilisation and on the study of Pierre Bourdieu on cultural capital as a
means of social distinction. See Puwar 2004: 107–117.
15 This passage is extracted from Philip Ruddock’s speech ‘Immigration reform: the
unfinished agenda’ delivered at the National Press Club. This speech is rather telling
of the backlash against multiculturalism accompanying Howard’s election as prime
minister in 1996. The speech encompasses each category of the migration program
by firstly addressing cases of abuse committed against its integrity and secondly by
presenting the measures the government was to implement to restore public trust in
the migration program. Against such a list of national enemies, international students
are briefly discussed at the end, revealing the ambivalent intent to open the nation
to them while remembering the recent history of overstaying. See http://parlinfo.aph.
gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22media%2Fpressrel%2
FRP005%22.
84 Failing to be(come) ‘ideal’
16 The data provided by Birrell et al. includes only international students who had
obtained permanent residency through the visa subclass 880, which allows interna-
tional students to apply for permanent residency without leaving the country. Con-
sidering that former international students can apply for permanent residency under
several visa subclasses, i.e. 134, 136, 138, 139, 881 and 882, it is then possible to
conclude that the numbers of former Chinese and Indian students granted a permanent
visa as skilled migrants in the years 2003–4 were higher than the one referred to in the
text. For further details of the many visa subclasses included in the General Skilled
Migration, see Birrell, Hawthorne and Richardson 2006: 14–69.
17 Bob Birrell is the co-director of the Centre for Population and Urban Research at
Monash University and co-founder of the demographic journal People and Place,
published by the same research centre from 1993 to 2011. Birrell has worked as an
advisor on migration issues for both Labor and Coalition governments and was a
member of the Commonwealth Government’s National Population Council from 1987
to 1993. For further details on Dr Bob Birrell and the Centre for Population and Urban
Research, see the website of Monash University at http://artsonline.monash.edu.
au/cpur/.
18 Lesleyanne Hawthorne is Associate Dean International at the University of Mel-
bourne and previously worked as research manager at Australia’s Bureau of Immi-
gration, Multicultural and Population Research. Her expertise is focused on global
skilled migration, international student mobility and foreign credentials recogni-
tions. For further details on Associate Professor Lesleyanne Hawthorne, see the web-
site of the University of Melbourne at www.findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/display/
person15262.
19 Sue Richardson is Principal Research Fellow for the National Institute of Labour Stud-
ies at Flinders University. She has served as president of the Academy of the Social
Sciences in Australia and is a member of the National Academies Forum, the Board
of the South Australian Certificate of Education, the South Australia Population Advi-
sory Committee and the Ministerial Inquiry into Skills in South Australia. For further
details on Professor Sue Richardson and the National Institute of Labour Studies, see
the studies centre website at www.flinders.edu.au/sabs/nils/home.cfm.
20 The decision to allow international students to apply for permanent residency without
leaving the country in 2001 led to the creation of three new visa subclasses: Skilled
Independent Overseas Student (880), Skilled Australian Sponsored Overseas Student
(881) and State Specific and Regional Sponsored Overseas Student (882). While all of
the aforementioned visa subclasses were designed to exclusively select amongst inter-
national students, only the visa subclass 880 allows international students to stay in
Australia as skilled migrants without being sponsored by any relative, employer, state
or region. For this reason, visa 880 has been the one under which most international
students have applied for permanent residency and hence is the most important regard-
ing the terms of reference of the independent evaluation of the General Migration
Program. For further details on these three visa subclasses, see Birrell, Hawthorne and
Richardson 2006: 42–55.
21 In the aftermath of 9/11, few studies tested the incidence of race-based discrimination
in the job market and workplace in Australia. Alison Booth, Andrew Leigh and Elena
Varganova have demonstrated ‘ethnic minority candidates’ have to apply for more jobs
than their Anglo-Celtic counterparts to obtain the same number of interviews (2010:
1). Kevin Dunn has recorded that the workplace is the institutional setting in which
both Indigenous and ethnic Australians report experiencing race based discrimination
most often (2003: 9–11). Margaret Thornton and Tirsh Luker have shown changes in
the anti-discrimination law in conjunction with shifting legislation regulating work
employment and immigration under the new neo-liberal regime of economic efficiency
 Failing to be(come) ‘ideal’ 85
and competitiveness, which has effectively erased racism as a basis to claim legal
redress by means of ‘application of exemptions and heightened burden of proof for
complainants’ (2010: 1). See Booth, Leigh and Varganova 2010; Dunn 2003; Thornton
and Luker 2010: 1–27.
22 It is important to note here that the work performance of migrants under all the cat-
egories so far mentioned was assessed six months after their ‘arrival’ as permanent
migrants. For further details on the authors’ justification of this methodological limita-
tion, see Birrell, Hawthorne and Richardson 2006: 72–74.
23 MV Tampa is the name of the Norwegian freight handler which, on the night of
August 26 2001, rescued 438 refugees, mostly Afghans, from a distressed fishing
vessel in international waters. Following the rescue operation, MV Tampa required
permission to enter Australian water to disembark the refugees at Christmas Island,
an Australian territory in the Indian Ocean. The permission was denied and, instead,
military personnel were dispatched to prevent MV Tampa from entering Australian
water. The events which followed led to a succession of migration policies effectively
preventing refugees from claiming asylum status by means of reaching Australian ter-
ritories. Moreover, they allowed John Howard to win his second term as prime minister
of Australia by rallying a scaremongering campaign portraying refugees as potential
Muslim terrorists. For a critical account of the Tampa affair and the forms of exclusion
it exerted, see Perera 2002; Stratton 2009a; and Perera and Stratton 2009.
24 The genealogy here traced on how the governmental positioning of international stu-
dents shifted from ‘ideal’ to ‘bogus’ permanent migrants is germane to Australia. Yet
similar shifts have taken place across the major destinations of international education:
the United States, UK, Canada and New Zealand. In the UK, for instance, an ad hoc
pathway to permanent migration for international students has never been established.
Yet when the Points-Based System (PBS) was introduced to regulate migration in the
UK in 2008, a sub-visa to the category of Tier 1- Highly Skilled Migrants was added to
facilitate graduated international students’ passage to permanent migration (Secretary
of State for the Home Department 2006: 24). Referred to as the post-study route, this
sub-visa allowed international students to extend their stay up to two years to seek
employment and eventually apply for permanent residency under two other sub-visa
categories: Highly Skilled Migrants – General (Tier 1) and Skilled Workers with a
Job Offer – General (Tier 2; 21–29). In general, sub-visa categories comprised in Tier
1 and 2 were similarly designed to increase the skilled workforce and fill in labour
shortages (21). Yet only those applying for Tier 2 sub-visas were required to be spon-
sored by an employer (21), allowing those granted with Tier 1 sub-visas to seek any
employment, low-skilled or unskilled job positions included. In 2009, 18,780 visas
where granted under Tier 1, and former international students from India, Pakistan
and Nigeria constituted the second-biggest cohort of successful applicants (UK Bor-
der Agency 2010: 2). In 2010, on the basis of a representative sample, the UK Border
Agency assessed the performance of all Tier 1 visa holders in the UK job market and
accordingly projected that three out of five graduated international students granted
a post-study in 2009 were employed in unskilled positions such as shop assistants,
security guards, supermarket cashiers and care assistants (2–4). Following this find-
ing, references to how the student visa system could be used to work and eventually
settle in the UK multiplied in public discourses regarding migration (see Green 2010;
May 2010; May 2011). At the level of policies, this new emphasis translated into the
shifting of the governmental effort to stamp out abuses in the international education
system from ‘bogus’ colleges to ‘bogus’ students (cfr. Home Affairs Committee 2011:
4–5). Like in Australia in the aftermath of the review of the GSM program in 2006,
the positioning of international students as ‘bogus’ migrants using their student visa
to work and settle in the UK led to the popularisation of the metaphor of ‘backdoor
86 Failing to be(come) ‘ideal’
route’ (see May 2012), and thus the legitimation of forms of exclusion ranging from
the scrapping of the post-study route in 2012 to ever-tightening bona fide assessment
criteria. For further details on visa application conditions and restrictions currently in
use in the UK, see Home Office 2016.
25 The author does not elaborate his reference to Australians negatively commenting on
Indian international students as Anglo-Saxon/white, and no mention is likewise made
of any theoretical elaboration of whiteness in Australia. Yet the comments supporting
his ethnographic observations seem to be informed by Hage’s conceptualisation of
whiteness as a naturalised national capital. See Baas 2010: 185–206.

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3 ‘Think Before You Travel’
Urban violence, risk management
and the territorialisation of the
Australian public space

In recent months, there have been a number of attacks on young Indians studying
or working in Australia. . . . In fact, there is a much wider problem of urban vio-
lence in various parts of some of our larger cities. I speak on behalf of all Austral-
ians when I say that we deplore and condemn these attacks. These are senseless
acts of violence. Those who carry out these attacks stand condemned. I said that
the Commonwealth Government was working closely with state governments to
ensure that the perpetrators of these crimes are brought to justice and that govern-
ment agencies are responding to these crimes to protect all students and others in
our community. . . . Australia is a country of great diversity, harmony and toler-
ance. We are a multicultural nation and we respect and embrace diversity.
(Rudd 2009, emphasis added)

In the face of an accusation of racism, what does it mean to condemn violence? To

condemn is to take a strong position of disapproval, to declare somebody’s action
to be bad or wrong, a breach of what is commonly regarded as good and right
(‘Condemn’ 2015). To condemn is to take a stance. It is to stand up for what we
believe is good and right as members of a collective. To take a stance is to claim
what a collective is and the values it shares. To take a stance is to come closer as
a collective against and away from those whose actions threaten the existence
of what we are and believe: a ‘multicultural nation’ that ‘respects and embraces
diversity’. To condemn is to move away, to recast a community as united in its
differences in the face of the divisions thrust upon it by violence. To condemn it
is to restore the faith of the collective as ‘welcoming and tolerant’ while holding
others responsible for hostility and intolerance. To condemn is to take responsibil-
ity by displacement: condemning violence against Indian students is condemning
those who ‘carry out’ the violence. Distanciation and displacement are strategies
rather common in institutional responses to racism, often resulting in the appraisal
of racism as either the deviancy of a few individuals or as what a nation fails to
do (Ahmed 2012: 44–45). Either way, when acknowledged, racism is ultimately
apprehended as an incident, an isolated expression of anachronistic beliefs, a mat-
ter of acting ‘out of character’ (47–48) – that is, out of what a nation’s true char-
acter is: ‘a country of great diversity, harmony and tolerance’. Yet the response
92 ‘Think Before You Travel’
of Kevin Rudd, the then-prime minister of Australia, to the accusation of racism
moved by Indian students in 2009 differs slightly from these patterns of institu-
tional response. In Rudd’s speech – the very first one delivered in the aftermath of
the protest of Indian students in Melbourne – the word ‘racism’ is not mentioned
even once. The violence that he condemns is instead specified as ‘senseless acts’
occurring within a ‘wider problem of urban violence’. Problematised as a matter
of life in big cities, violence constitutes a ‘risk’ which all of the Australian popula-
tion is exposed to. Everybody living in a big city is at risk of urban violence, and if
everybody is at risk of urban violence nobody, in particular is then at risk of racist
violence. The deployment of the language of risk reveals the emergence of a new
governmental strategy of racism disavowal and diversity management, one that
recasts the threat of violence as a matter of law and order but also self-regulation.
To argue so, this chapter examines the response of the state and federal rep-
resentatives to the accusation of racism to show how the solution envisioned to
protect international students’ safety functioned as a new pedagogy of racial con-
cealment and mobility restriction. Toward this end, the first section revises state
and federal representatives’ responses to the accusation of racism to show how the
growth in visibility of Indian students in public spaces should be regarded less as
a consequence of the increase in their number than an effect of their alleged resist-
ance to ‘feature in the background’. The second section analyses the first inquiry
launched to investigate the attacks to demonstrate how their problemisation as
a matter of urban crime rearticulated the representation of ‘Asian’ international
students as vulnerable and culturally deficient subjects in ways that have furthered
the pressure on them to become more like Australians to be safe in the nation.
The third section examines the second official federal response to the protests
of Indian students – the Baird Review – to show how positioning international
students as ‘subjects at risk’ is an attempt to harness their political agency into
forms of representation amenable to the nation’s objective of ‘growing hubs’ of
prospective migrants acculturated to Australian mainstream culture. The last sec-
tion undertakes a close reading of the multimedia safety campaign Think Before
You Travel to demonstrate how the state and federal representatives’ responses to
the accusation of racism had as much condemned the attacks as normalised the
making of the Australian public space into territories that only the ‘right kind’ of
racialised minorities have the right to inhabit without fear.

Subjects at risk: urban violence, new prudentialism

and technologies of self-regulation
Following the stabbing in the head with a screwdriver of twenty-five-year-old
student Sravan Kumar Theerthala at a party in the Melbourne suburb of Had-
field a week earlier, thousands of international Indian students on May 31, 2009,
marched peacefully from the Royal Melbourne Hospital – where the young victim
was recovering – to Melbourne’s Federation Square, urging the Victorian govern-
ment and police to take action against similar crimes committed against them.
During the march and the following sit-in protest, which lasted until the police
 ‘Think Before You Travel’ 93
removed the protesters the following day, the Indian students also advanced sev-
eral other demands. These included the establishment of a multicultural police
section; that crime statistics be made public; that on-site accommodations at all
universities and colleges be made available for international students; and a public
campaign educating the Australian population about migrants’ and international
students’ contributions to Australia (‘Indian Anger’ 2009). One week later, hun-
dreds of international Indian students and supporters also marched in downtown
Sydney, from Town Hall to Harris Park, demanding changes to the education and
migration policies to prevent their exploitation by landlords and employers and
for guaranteeing the same opportunities and benefits provided to domestic stu-
dents (‘Indian Students Protest’ 2009).
As mentioned earlier, these protests unleashed an incandescent debate on the
nature of the attacks, as Indian students publicly labelled them racist. In India,
responses to this accusation were almost unanimous: the attacks were motivated
by a growing anti-Indian sentiment likely shaped by the Australia’s legacy of
racial exclusion. In Australia, public responses to the accusation of racism ranged
from outright rejection to acknowledgment that the attacks might have been at
least partly racially motivated. Yet as Gail Mason has noted, the most common
response in Australia to the accusation of racism was that of framing the attacks
as a matter of urban crime and not racism (2011: 42).
Taking the lead from this observation, this study is not concerned with deter-
mining whether the attacks were racist. Rather, it seeks to show how the rep-
resentation of the attacks by the Australian government and media led to the
problemisation of international students in general as subjects at ‘high risk’ of
urban crime, restricting their mobility in public spaces accordingly. Yet it must
be acknowledged that there is sufficient evidence to support the Indian students’
claims that the attacks were at least partially if not exclusively motivated by rac-
ism or aggravated by racist remarks and behaviour (Mason 2011: 24–29). Racist
remarks such as ‘Why the fuck did you come here?’ ‘Fucking Indian cunt’ and
‘Go back to your country’ often accompanied the attacks (26–27), which moreo-
ver appeared to stem from the practice of selecting victims on the basis of them
looking South Asian (28–29), suggesting that many if not all of the attacks were
at least aggravated by racial prejudices. The practice of targeting victims on the
ground of their racial appearance – known as ‘curry bashing’ – was precisely the
one that Indian student representatives argued to be racist and required govern-
mental intervention to protect their safety and freedom to move in public spaces
without fear (Osuri 2010: 95–96).
Notwithstanding students’ claims and evidence, Victoria Police, Victoria State
and the Australian federal government instead referred to the attacks as instances
of ‘opportunistic’ crimes such as robberies or offences favoured by the following
risk factors: working until late at night, travelling long distances alone, carrying
mobile phones and iPods and living in ‘high-risk’ suburbs mostly populated by
ethnic minorities and newly arrived refugees (Cauchi and Pierik 2010). That many
Indian students were attacked in these predominantly non-white suburbs factored
into the framing of the attacks as opportunistic. The logic was the following: if
94 ‘Think Before You Travel’
assailants were from many racial backgrounds the attacks could not be racist by
default. In this vein, columnist Andrew Bolt argued that the attacks could not
be claimed to be racist in that they were perpetrated by ‘people of foreign ori-
gins’ and ‘African gangs’ (2010). Taking as an example one of the earliest cases
reported as evidence of rampant anti-Indian sentiment in Australia, he stated,

Take the notorious bashing on the Werribee train last year of . . . which led
The Times of India to declare that a ‘tribe of extreme nationalists who cham-
pion an exclusivist, white Aussie identity seems to be increasing in Australia’.
Check the CCTV vision and you could see what the police and journalists
would not say – that the attackers seemed to include youths who weren’t
‘white’, and at least one who looked very Indian.
(2010)

Likewise, albeit with a less provocative tone, Paul Sheehan wrote,

Indian students are being attacked in Australia, with at least 100 incidents in
Melbourne and Sydney during the past year. . . . But the distorted story of
white racism has been helped along by the prevailing sensibilities of report-
ing of crime in Australia, with skittishness about detailing the gritty reality
that most violent street crime in Sydney and Melbourne is not committed by
whites. The prison populations confirm this. The attacks on Indians have fol-
lowed this pattern, with the crimes committed by a polyglot mix reflecting the
streets – white, Asian, Middle Eastern, Aboriginal, Pacific Islander.
(2009)

These interventions demonstrate the persistent belief of racism as an expression

of white racial superiority, implying that the attacks had to be committed by white
Australians to be claimed as racist rather than opportunistic acts of individuals.
When Indian student protests in the Sydney suburb of Harris Park revealed their
assailants to be local ‘Lebanese’ and ‘Middle-Eastern’ people, the attacks began to
be likewise explained as the result of the social and economic alienation suffered
by ethnic youth: the activity of ‘idiotic thugs’ (Callick 2009), ‘the behaviour of a
few “miscreants” ’ (Stapleton 2009) and ‘a group of young thugs muscling their
way around the area [Harris Park]’ (Callaghan 2009). As Osuri has noted, the
emphasis put by this strand of explanation on the perception that Indian students
were ‘cashed up’ have made the attacks a class issue ‘trivialis[ing] anti-racism as
legitimate ground for political speech and action’ (2010: 106).
Public media focus on the racial and class background of the perpetrators also
shifted attention away from the effects that the attacks had on their victims. If, for
instance, with Ahmed we take up racist violence as a means to produce or rein-
force divisions in a given community by thrusting a perceived group identity upon
singular individuals (2001: 350), we would realise how violence does not need to
be enacted by white subjects animated by a belief in racial superiority to be racist
in its effects. Hage’s conceptualisation of whiteness as a cultural capital likewise
 ‘Think Before You Travel’ 95
highlights how non-white Australians too can exert racist violence as a means to
assert a privileged position in the space of the nation. As discussed in Chapter 1,
by naturalising their cultural capital as national, white Australians have positioned
themselves as the only group population that can govern any other in the best
interests of all. Hage describes this self-ascribed entitlement as ‘governmental
power’ – that is, the ‘power to have a legitimate view regarding who should “feel
at home” in the nation and how, and who should be in and who should be out, as
well as what constitutes “too many” ’ (1998: 46). Yet as Hage reminds us, although
white Australians are the only national subjects who can legitimately claim this
form of power nation-wide, non-white Australians too can do the same in non-
national contexts and with regard to other groups such as newly arrived migrants
(1998: 60–61). In this sense, concomitant representations of Indian students as
‘profiteers’ and ‘bogus migrants’ might very well have engendered the attacks as
a nationalist practice aimed at asserting that Indian students were too many or just
undesirable in the space of the nation as imagined by the attackers across racial
and class boundaries.
In any case, both the understanding of the attacks as opportunistic and as an
expression of social malaise relied on the assumption that Indian students consti-
tuted a ‘soft targets’ for local petty criminals. This view was first advanced by the
Victoria Police when – in the aftermath of the Indian students’ protests in Mel-
bourne – Deputy Police Commissioner Kieran Walshe stated that the police under-
stood the attacks as being opportunistic rather than racially motivated ‘because
they [Indian male students] are a very passive and very quiet-natured people and
they do carry valuable items such as iPods and mobile phones’ (Henderson 2009).
As discussed earlier, the representation of South Asian students as ‘very passive
and very quiet-natured people’ is not a novelty of the debate engendered by the
protests. Rather, it traces back to the discursive positioning of Colombo Plan stu-
dents as ‘victims’ employed to counter the concomitant representation of ‘Asians’
as a homogenous whole threatening the nation by virtue of sheer numbers. Keep-
ing Colombo Plan student numbers low was thus important to keep fear of territo-
rial invasion at bay while facilitating their temporary inclusion. As Stratton has
suggested, at that time, the Australian nation was progressively opening itself to
non-white migrants provided that their number did not ‘exceed the community
capacity for smooth assimilation’ (1998: 49). It is not chance, then, that emphasis
on the number – or rather the rapid growth in the number – of Indian students
studying in Australia featured centrally in the response of both federal and state
representatives as well as the media to the accusation of racism. Throughout the
debate, the public was repeatedly informed that the number of international stu-
dents in Australia had ‘been growing over many years’ and that among almost the
half million international students in Australia at that time, one-fifth came from
India (Mornings with Neil Mitchell 2009). As Chapter 4 demonstrates, figures
like these were used in the debate as means to both normalise the attacks and label
Indian representatives and media’s responses to the attacks hysterical. Yet when
circulating within public discourses concomitantly depicting Indian students as
taking advantage of a ‘loophole through the back door’ of an otherwise ‘orderly
96 ‘Think Before You Travel’
immigration system’ (‘Close the Backdoor’ 2009), they reinforced the perception
that the attacks were less of a problem than the ever-growing number of Indian
students: if only there were fewer of them, there would be no attacks.
Baas too has noted how the perception of Indian students as a ‘nuisance’
stemmed from their growth in numbers in public spaces, likening numbers to
visibility: the more who came to study in Melbourne, the more they became
visible as taking up space where ‘they were supposed to “feature in the back-
ground” ’ (2010: 4). However, the expectation for Indian students to ‘feature in
the background’ does not amount to that of being less in number. To ‘feature in
the background’, as Ahmed has observed, echoing Puwar, rather amounts to the
expectation to recede from view, to ‘not stick out’, ‘to pass by passing your way
through’ the somatic and behavioural norm of a given space (2012: 41). That is,
to minimise signs of difference by a labour of disguise: to not wear ‘anything
perceived as ethnic’ (41) or ‘to not assert your culture’ (158) (significantly, one
reported attack consisted of the physical attempt to remove the turban and cut the
hair of a victim).1 Yet passing does not necessarily amount to passing as white –
which is, as both Ahmed and Puwar have emphasised, a possibility precluded to
visible minorities – but passing as the ‘familiar rather than unfamiliar strangers’
(Puwar 2004: 128), the ‘ “right kind” of minority, the one who aims to not cause
unhappiness or trouble’ (Ahmed 2012: 157). Passing then can grant those who
are already recognised as deviating from the norm less visibility, provided that
they succeed in minimising their differences through bodily self-stylisation and
conduct. Conversely, those who fail to ‘not cause unhappiness or trouble’ become
subjected to forms of heightened visibility and surveillance: ‘a sprinkling of two
or three Black and Asian bodies rapidly become exaggerated to four or seven’,
and ‘even a single body can be seen to be taking up more physical space than it
actually occupies’ (Puwar 2004: 48–49). In light of this effect – that Puwar calls
‘amplification’ (48–54) – the form of suspicious visibility that Indian students
came to be subjected to should be regarded less as the consequence of the growth
in their number than as an effect of the perception of them refusing to fade in,
lessen their differences by approximating what it means to be Australian.
In the aftermath of the protests, the Victoria Police advised Indian students to
enhance their safety by following a few ‘streetwise’ tips that recommended stu-
dents avoid walking alone in dark streets, crossing parks late at night and display-
ing technological devices but also to keep ‘a low profile’ (Chaku 2010) and to not
talk ‘in their native language’ (Topsfield 2009. As Goldie Osuri has noted, refer-
ences such as these to Indian students’ physical appearance and native language
betray the implicit acknowledgment that the attacks were racially motivated while
indirectly soliciting Indian students to reduce their racial visibility as means to
minimise the risk of being attacked (2010: 100–101). More than a simple bunch
of ‘streetwise’ tips, for Osuri, the Victoria Police’s recommendations amounted
to a ‘neo-liberal technology of subjectivity’: a set of instructions aimed at mak-
ing Indian students responsible for their behaviour and appearance in public
while explicitly disavowing race and racism as motivating factors of the attacks
(102). Here, Osuri draws on Aihwa Ong’s conceptualisation of neoliberalism as a
 ‘Think Before You Travel’ 97
bio-political form of governing that regards individuals and populations as ‘living
resources’ amenable to self-governing by means of two sets of ‘optimising’ tech-
nologies: ‘technologies of subjectivity’ and ‘technologies of subjection’ (2006: 6).
In a time of rapid market changes, the first set amounts to all those techniques of
‘self-engineering and capital accumulation’ that mobilise the knowledge of social
scientists and workers to augment individuals’ self-government and economic
competitiveness (6). Conversely, the second set amounts to all those techniques
and related knowledge(s) that inform the ways in which governments regulate
their populations as an aggregate of a variety of groups to ensure the optimal pro-
ductivity of each and all in contributing to the well-being of national economies
(6). For Ong, the two sets of technologies are often employed in conjunction with
each other to manage the movement of visitors and migrants while propelling the
‘recruitment of certain kinds of actors to growth hubs’ (6). In the case of Australia,
as demonstrated so far, the government has had vested interests in accruing inter-
national students acculturated to the Australian mainstream culture. Considering
this, Osuri has argued that if we read the recommendations of the Victoria Police
against the nation-wide objective of expanding the export industry of education,
we can then understand them as a governmental strategy that sought to grow hubs
of international students able to minimise the risk of attack through assimilation
(2010: 102).
With Osuri, this study argues for understanding the recommendations as a neo-
liberal governmental technology of subjectivity that urged international students
to actively take responsibility for their safety by reducing their racial visibility.
According to Andersen, the technologies of subjectivity, otherwise known as
technologies of self-regulation, define the relations that individuals establish with
the subject positions ascribed to them, and from which individuals are supposed
to speak and act in intelligible ways. Through these technologies, individuals are
called to actively engage with the subject positions they are provided with and,
in this sense, they imply a transformation of the subject by means of working
upon the self in certain ways instead of others (Andersen 2003: 24–25). From
this perspective, Osuri’s understanding of the Victoria Police’s safety tips is not
complete insofar as she does not investigate the subject position corresponding to
the technology of self-regulation thrust upon international students. By analysing
the federal response to the violent attacks, the following sections of this chapter
show how the technology of subjectivity identified by Osuri can be more precisely
described as a ‘technology of agency’ and corresponds to the subject position
ascribed to those who come to be singled out as ‘at risk’ (Dean 2010).
The language of risk is, historically speaking, a specific one. It does not charac-
terise any historical conjunction of socio-economic and political circumstances but
only those that are affected and shaped by neo-liberal rationalities and practises.
As Mitchell Dean has pointed out, there is a ‘certain affinity between advanced lib-
eral government2 and the rationalities and technologies of risk’3 (2010: 194). Such
affinity is traceable in the process of individualisation of risk, and individuals,
families and communities have been more and more often urged to take respon-
sibility for the risks that characterise their lives (e.g. risk of poor physical and
98 ‘Think Before You Travel’
mental health, poverty in old age, long-term unemployment or becoming victims
of crime), and minimise each of these on their own (194). Taken together, these
solicitations can be considered as a new form of prudentialism, which differs from
nineteenth-century forms of prudentialism (e.g. early-nineteenth-century Malthu-
sianism) for its proliferation of domains in which individuals are called to act
upon themselves and their lives to at least reduce certain risks, if not completely
avoid them (194). Another important difference lies in the conceptualisation itself
of risk in comparison to the notion of ‘dangerousness’, which underpinned pre-
vious forms of prudentialism. Dangerousness was once understood as being an
almost intrinsic quality of certain segments of populations, places or activities
because of the converging of socio-economic factors such as, for example, being
working class, uneducated and living in the periphery of industrial cities. Contrary
to dangerousness, risk is instead understood as traversing all population segments,
places and activities, making each and all individuals responsible for its manage-
ment (195). Unlike dangerousness, the notion of risk is then more understandable
as a ‘continuum rather than a clear break’ (195). As a continuum, risk can never
be eliminated but just localised, monitored, reduced or, at best, avoided (195).
Most importantly, as Dean has observed, because risk is conceived as affecting all
members of a society, ‘it does not divide population by a single division’ (195).
Even though certain segments of a population can be considered as being either at
low or high risk, it is the population as a whole and not just some segments of it
that is seen as being the locus of risk (195).
In this sense, we can then begin to understand why Australian representatives
approached the attacks as a matter of urban crime. As a matter of crime, the vio-
lence that Indian students suffered could be generalised as a risk threatening the
whole of the urban population of Australia, making racism irrelevant as a result. It
is not surprising that the pedagogical instruction to understand Indian students as
‘soft targets’ was further underpinned by the assumption that they were assaulted
more often than other population groups because of being less ‘street smart’.
Besides being conspicuous in the avalanche of policy reviews and research
reports that followed the Indian student protests, this assumption points to a much
more important distinction. In Governmentality, Dean reminds us that employing
the language of risk and risk management has led governments to loosely divide
their populations into ‘active citizens’ and ‘targeted populations’ (195). ‘Active
citizens’ are those subjects who are deemed able to manage and minimise risks
on their own (195). In opposition to them, ‘targeted populations’ are those sub-
jects who are held to not be able to manage risks on their own and are therefore
understood as in need of special governmental interventions to be empowered
and become autonomous citizens (195). This division is imbued with moral value.
Whereas active citizens are praised as responsible individuals contributing to the
general well-being of the nation, targeted populations are construed as groups of
individuals burdening the nation with their irresponsible behaviour. Building on
this insight, the next section of this chapter demonstrates how the employment
of the language of risk and risk management in the first federal inquiry launched
to investigate the attacks rearticulated the construction of ‘Asian’ international
 ‘Think Before You Travel’ 99
students as vulnerable and culturally deficient subjects in ways that not only disa-
vowed racism as a cause of the attacks but also furthered the pressure for them to
become the ‘right kind’ of minority’ to be safe in the nation.

‘Would you travel . . .’: common sense, risky behaviour

and cultural deficiency
Before examining the first inquiry launched to investigate the attacks, we must
be reminded that several other issues broadly concerning international students
as a whole immediately complicated the debate on whether the attacks were or
were not racist. These issues included the availability of affordable and safe
accommodations on and off universities’ campuses, the vulnerability of interna-
tional students in the job market and their exploitation in the workplace, sexual
harassment and discrimination against international students by employers and
landlords, poor quality of education provision and support services and social
exclusion. Although these issues were discussed at least at city level in Sydney,
Melbourne and Brisbane4 before the attacks were reported publicly, they were
neither comprehensively discussed nor addressed. From this point of view, the
Indian students’ protests were successful in pushing all these connected issues
to the top of the federal government’s agenda and prompting orchestrated
solutions.
The federal government’s first response to the protests was launching an inquiry
into the welfare of international students. In June 2009, the Senate commissioned
the Senate Standing Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (EEWR)
References Committee to conduct an inquiry into the roles and responsibilities
that all the stakeholders of the export industry of international education have in
securing international students’ safety and well-being. As stated in the terms of
reference of the inquiry, the Committee was responsible to examine

[t]he roles and responsibilities of education providers, migration and edu-

cation agents, state and federal governments, and relevant departments and
embassies, in ensuring the quality and adequacy in information, advice, ser-
vice delivery and support, with particular reference to: student safety, adequate
and affordable accommodations, social inclusion, student visa requirements,
adequate international student support and advocacy, employment rights and
protection from exploitation, and appropriate pathway to permanency.
(2009: 5)

As the quoted passage illustrates, the Committee did not have to determine the
reasons at the core of international students’ problems nor recommend solutions
accordingly, as both the causes and the solutions were already established by
the terms of reference. The problems were understood to be caused by a lack of
trustworthy and adequate information, while the solutions offered were ensuring
that good and comprehensive information was provided to international students.
Framed in these terms, the work of the Committee was reduced to finding out
100 ‘Think Before You Travel’
which institutions and organisations are supposed to provide information and to
what extent. To do so, the Committee gathered 124 submissions5 and listened
to fifty witnesses at three public hearings in Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra.6
Published in November 2009, the Committee’s report begins by stating that the
inquiry was commissioned as a result of the continued attacks against Indian stu-
dents in Melbourne and Sydney. Under the title ‘Background to the inquiry’ the
Committee claims,

This inquiry was initiated following a series of attacks upon Indian students
in Melbourne and Sydney (the incidents). These incidents damaged Austral-
ia’s reputation as a safe destination for overseas students. The reporting of
the incidents made headlines in the Indian press and were met with a rapid
response by relevant authorities in Australia.
(6)

The attacks on Indian students are very briefly mentioned and immediately re-
named ‘the incidents’. This choice is significant. On the one hand, it suggests
a certain caution in repeating the terms broadly employed in the concomitant
media debate. On the other hand, it conveys the intention to minimise the pat-
terned nature of the attacks, as this was emphasised by Indian students. The Com-
mittee further comments on the ‘incidents’ by adding that they had damaged the
Australian reputation as a safe study destination as if protecting the reputation of
Australia was a more urgent matter to deal with than protecting Indian students.
Tellingly, the Committee uses the term ‘incidents’ to describe the attacks once
again when discussing the issue of international students’ physical safety in Aus-
tralia in a chapter dedicated to international students’ well-being. This definition
is indicative of the Committee’s position that the attacks were not racially moti-
vated but opportunistic. In ‘Lack of personal safety awareness’, the Committee
claims,

The majority of evidence given to the committee indicated that the incidents
were more likely to be opportunistic robberies, with the attackers targeting
owners of laptop computers who did not have an appropriate level of per-
sonal safety awareness, as opposed to attacks based on race.
(25–26, emphasis added)

As the quoted passage shows, the Committee quickly rules out the possibility
that the attacks are racially motivated and instead advances the stance that they
ought to be understood as ‘opportunistic robberies’ and that they were caused by
international students’ lack of ‘an appropriate level of personal safety awareness’.
In so doing, the Committee effectively forestalls any alternative explanation to
the problem of violence and positions international students as subjects who are
exceptionally naïve. In providing the evidence to support this claim, the Commit-
tee recounts several statements collected during the public hearings. For instance,
 ‘Think Before You Travel’ 101
Felicity Fallon, who was at the time president of the International Education
Association Inc. (ISANA), is reported as stating before the Committee:

I do have to say that I had a student who was attacked on a railway station
a couple of years ago. I think he was from Hong Kong; he certainly was not
Indian but he did what Indian students did. He stayed late at a friend’s place,
he came home, he was carrying his laptop obviously and he was jumped at
the local railway station on his way to his home stay. But I do not think it was
because it was an international student. I think he was there at a bad time;
he did not understand local conditions. . . . As one of our ISANA members
who work at Victoria University said to me: ‘Would you travel on a train to
Sunshine at one o’clock in the morning?’ I said: ‘No, I wouldn’t’. But these
students are doing it alone because they have been working in the conveni-
ence store or something until that hour of the night and then there is the whole
time difference. Asian young people do not go to bed before midnight and
they do not think it is time to go home until somewhere around there whereas
most Australians are home, and their kids would be home and in bed or at
least up in their rooms studying by then. That is not there. There are cultural
issues about that sort of thing.
(26, emphasis added)

Although the ISANA president could recall just one episode of violence among
her students and that this student was not from India but from Hong Kong, she
uses his experience anyway as an example of the opportunistic nature of all the
attacks just because he, like Indian students were alleged to do, was carrying a
laptop when travelling alone late at night. Most importantly, after establishing this
connection, she subtly contrasts the conduct of her student, hence the conduct of
all Indian students, to the conduct dictated by common sense by recounting the
question: ‘Would you travel on a train to Sunshine at one o’clock in the morning?’
In posing such a question, the audience as well as the readers of her statement are
compelled to identify themselves either as individuals whose conduct abides by
common sense or as individuals whose conduct puts them at risk.
By posing this question, Fallon seems to imply that international students in
general and Indian students in particular are attacked by street criminals because
they lack that kind of common sense that individuals normally employ to mini-
mise the perils of living in modern cities such as Melbourne and Sydney. As a
consequence, for her, the solution to the problem of violence lies in equipping
international students with common sense. This conclusion would be tenable if it
were premised on the assumption that international students in Australia are gen-
erally rather young and away from home for the first time in their lives. From this
perspective, all young students living in a big city for the first time in their lives
would be equally likely to become victims of urban crime. But this is not the case.
Following her statement, it emerges rather clearly that in her view only ‘Asian
young people’ are likely to be victims of street crime because, as she maintains,
102 ‘Think Before You Travel’
they ‘do not go to bed before midnight and they do not think it is time to go
home until somewhere around there whereas most Australians are home’. In stat-
ing this, she establishes a contraposition between Australians, who are aware of
‘local conditions’ and know how to properly behave to avoid unnecessary risk,
and ‘Asian young people’ who, contrary to ‘most Australians’, are not aware of
‘local conditions’ and pursue risky behaviours by cultural default. This last state-
ment is particularly relevant in that it not only relies on the broad division of
people into ‘active citizens’ and ‘targeted populations’ mentioned earlier, but it
also characterises risky behaviour as a cultural practice that is common among
‘Asian young people’. Somehow, Indian students’ victimisation becomes merely
a problem of cultural translation and adaptation. Not only do international stu-
dents lack personal safety awareness because they are young and living on their
own for the first time in their lives, they lack such awareness also because they
are ‘Asian’. From this perspective Fallon’s question, ‘Would you travel on a train
to Sunshine at one o’clock in the morning?’ is more precisely calling her audience
and the readers of the report to identify themselves as Australian citizens who, by
contrast, are construed as being equipped with that common sense necessary to
minimise the risk of urban crime.
Moreover, the Committee refers to an excerpt from the submission handed in
by the International Students Online organisation, which states,

Personal safety of international students is of great concern, I believe from

first hand experience that any international students are not educated suf-
ficiently on arrival to Australia by their education provider. This leads to stu-
dents carrying laptops, iPods, valuables on public transports and travelling
alone late at night. . . . It is certainly apparent that international students do
not know how to perform basic tasks and undertake safety measures in our
society.
(26, emphasis added)

In this submission, the problem of a lack of safety awareness is more precisely

framed as lack of education, which, in turn, should be provided by education
providers as soon as international students arrive in Australia. It is because inter-
national students are not properly educated in how to ‘perform basic tasks and
undertake safety measures’ by their education providers that they expose them-
selves to risks that would be otherwise avoidable. To a certain extent this state-
ment seems to refer, once again, to the fact that many international students are
young and go to live on their own for the first time in their lives. Far from their
parents, it seems reasonable to charge education providers with the responsibility
of teaching their students how to protect themselves once they have moved to live
in big cities where urban crime is on the rise. Yet the submission specifically states
that ‘international students do not know how to perform basic tasks and undertake
safety measures in our society’. By specifying that international students do not
know how to properly behave in Australian society, the authors of the submission
might have implied either that Australia cities are riskier than any international
 ‘Think Before You Travel’ 103
students’ place of origin or that international students’ societies are so different
from the Australian one that they do not know how to conduct themselves prop-
erly once arrived in Australia unless they are taught to do so. Either way, the con-
traposition between competent individuals able to manage risk on their own and
individuals in need of intervention is once again deployed and implicitly under-
pinned by the assumption of a cultural division that ultimately positions the living
practices of international students as antithetical to the Australian ones.
Lastly, the Committee refers to Christine Bundesen, who was then a council
member of the English Australia organisation, who states,

Australia is a relatively safe country, but over the past few decades, Australia,
like a number of other countries, changed slightly, and it is very important that
we ensure that students have the appropriate type of information about the
way in which they should live, the way in which they should behave to pro-
tect their own safety in Australia, the same way that domestic students would
have that innate knowledge as to how they should be protecting themselves.
(27, emphasis added)

Contrary to the previous statements, this one is not anchored to any experience in
particular but only grounded on the generic observation that Australia, in terms
of safety, has slightly changed over the last few decades. Because Australia has
changed, and urban crime in metropolitan areas has increased, international stu-
dents coming to live and study in Australia should be informed accordingly not
only on ‘the way in which they should behave to protect their own safety’ but
also on ‘the way in which they should live’. Most interestingly, the English Aus-
tralia councillor concludes by suggesting that what international students should
be taught in order to protect their safety in Australia is that ‘innate knowledge’
which domestic students are assumed to already possess. In other words, like the
aforementioned witnesses involved in the Committee’s inquiry, Bundesen distin-
guishes between Australian nationals who innately possess the appropriate knowl-
edge to live in Australia and avoid unnecessary risks and international students
who do not have that knowledge and who, as a consequence, need to be taught
about it by their Australian education providers.
In discussing differences between the notions of risk and dangerousness, Dean
reminds us that despite the understanding of risk more as ‘a continuum rather than
a clear break’ according to which any given population can be loosely divided
into ‘active citizens’ and ‘targeted populations’ (Dean 2010: 195), its language
has not entirely replaced the one of dangerousness for at least two reasons. Firstly,
the divisions enabled by the rationalities and technologies of risk often overlie
predating partitions established by past detections of danger – that is, suburbs
populated mostly by migrants are often considered riskier than other suburbs.
Secondly, labelling certain group populations as high risk often conflates preced-
ing divisions into new ones – that is, working-class women and men are more
often than other population segments targeted with education campaigns (195).
In light of these connections, Dean concludes, ‘the vocabulary of risk might be
104 ‘Think Before You Travel’
better thought of as reinscribing and recoding earlier languages of stratification,
disadvantage and marginalisation’ (195).
As the passages analysed illustrate, the witnesses heard by the Committee –
upon whose statements the Committee could firmly claim that the ‘incidents’ were
not racist and that international students were targeted because of a lack of per-
sonal safety awareness – consistently positioned international students as being
intrinsically unable to protect themselves. By contrast, they positioned Austral-
ians as being innately able to understand ‘local conditions’, as well as to ‘perform
basic tasks and undertake safety measures’ in the Australian society. As a result
of such positionings, international students are thus conceived of as subjects who
need to be assisted with bridging cultural differences (see first statement), taught
by their educational providers on avoiding unnecessary risks (see second state-
ment) and ultimately equipped with that kind of streetwise knowledge that domes-
tic students innately have (see third statement). Following Dean, it is possible to
conclude that employing the language of risk and risk management regarding
Indian students’ victimisation has as much singled out international students as
subjects at high risk of urban crime as it has re-inscribed and re-coded predated
positionings of ‘Asian’ international students as vulnerable subjects in need of
guidance to overcome culture shock (see Chapter 1) and as deficient learners who
are in need of special academic support to bridge fundamental epistemological
gaps (see Chapter 2). In light of this rearticulation, the next section of this chapter
examines the second official federal response to the Indian students’ protests –
the so-called Baird Review – to show how the problemisation of international
students as subjects at risk has been used to harness their political agency into
forms of representation more amenable to make them resemble the ‘right kind’ of
migrant than protesting.

Growing hubs: cultural literacy, political agency

and governing ‘at distance’
As mentioned earlier, the issue of international students’ safety was immediately
presented to public opinion as compounded by other problems, exploitation by
unscrupulous migration agents, education providers, employers and landlords in
primis. Due to the widespread nature of this phenomenon, the then-Minister of
Education Julia Gillard asked the Hon Bruce Baird to review the Education Ser-
vices Students (ESOS) Act 2000 and enhance the protection afforded to them as
consumers of educational services (2010: iii). In light of this objective and a criti-
cal mass of inputs, informed opinions and conflicting interests,7 Baird begins to
comment on the spate of violent attacks on Indian students by merging the prob-
lem of physical violence they suffered with the broader problem of international
students’ exploitation in the educational, rental and job markets:

International students have the same rights to safety and protection under the
laws of Australia as other temporary and permanent residents in Australia.
 ‘Think Before You Travel’ 105
However research and anecdote suggest a significant number of international
students do not enjoy the rights they have.
(39)

By conflating the two orders of problems into each other, Baird introduces to the
reader Indian students’ request for protection against physical violence as a right
that international students in general are already entitled to but that, for some
reason, they do not always enjoy while studying, living and working in Australia.
He continues,

[I]nternational students do not enjoy the rights they have and are either una-
ware their rights are being impinged or are unaware of how to enforce them.
Incidents of overcrowding in sub-standard housing and alleged workplace
exploitation are examples of this. These and other issues must be addressed
by governments better enforcing the laws that are meant to protect everyone
in Australia from these types of exploitation. In addition, international stu-
dents must be given better information as to what their rights are and better
support to make complaints when their rights are infringed.
(39–40)

In this passage, contrary to the Senate Committee’s Inquiry into the Welfare
of International Students, Baird does not immediately rule out the possibility
that a considerable number of international students do not enjoy the rights of
safety and protection that they are entitled to for reasons relating to racial dis-
crimination. As a matter of fact, he even urges federal and state governments to
enforce the laws designed to protect everyone in the nation from both physical
violence and exploitation. Yet at the same time, he presents the infringements
of such rights as compounded by the fact that international students are either
unaware that their rights are infringed or unaware of how to act upon such
infringements. Besides being unfounded, this last observation effectively dis-
misses the political agency of Indian students who, aware of their rights, organ-
ised and marched in the streets of Melbourne and Sydney to obtain redress to
their victimisation and better represent the problems they faced daily. Such
dismissal was not occasional but constitutive of the Australian media response
to the Indian student representatives’ accusation of racism, a point that will be
further argued in Chapter 4 when analysing the debate on whether Australia is
a racist country.
As Osuri has pointed out, the final report of the Baird Review was released at
a time when some state and federal government representatives had shifted from
officially denying racism as a motivating factor for the spate of attacks on Indian
students to partially acknowledging it as an element, with the aim of prevent-
ing further falls in international student enrolment numbers (Osuri 2010: 98–99;
see also Chapter 4). In fact, consistent with the new federal government strategy
of acknowledging marginal racial elements, in a following paragraph, with the
106 ‘Think Before You Travel’
subheading ‘Racism’, Baird briefly dwells on racism as a problem international
students in general face in Australia:

The Australia and New Zealand Race Relations Roundtable held in Novem-
ber 2009 acknowledged in the communiqué that racism and discrimination
are issues that face international students in Australia. The Roundtable called
for more research to better understand the scope of the problem and I support
the call.
(40)

Yet Baird’s endorsement of the Australia and New Zealand Race Relations Round-
table’s call for more studies to be conducted on the racism and related forms of
exclusion international students face in the country swiftly morphs into a pretext
for him to define both the extent and nature of the problem in question. As Baird
observes:

Since 1975 discrimination on the basis of race has been illegal in Australia. . . .
However, it would be naïve to believe that governments can change how peo-
ple think and feel simply by legislation. Racism is disappointingly common
throughout history and within any individual country, but this should be not
an excuse for inaction.
(40)

In reminding the reader that race-based discrimination has been made illegal
in Australia since 1975, Baird is not merely stating that legal measures have
been taken to counter racism for some time. Rather, he is more effectively
establishing that the racism international students endure within the border
of the nation is not state sanctioned. If the Australian state is not racist by
definition of its own law, then racism ought to be understood not as a sys-
temic problem entrenched in its institutions but rather – following the common
strategy of displacing responsibility onto individuals – as a set of anachronis-
tic beliefs that some of its citizens held in their minds and hearts. Framed as
an unfortunate deviance affecting the population of ‘any individual country’
‘throughout history’, the racism international students suffer within Australian
educational institutions and communities cannot be addressed by legal means
in that, according to Baird, the law is already protecting each and all interna-
tional students from being discriminated on the ground of their race, nationality
or religion. Ruling out the possibility of corrective legislation, Baird concludes
his review by advising that the federal government shifts from a legal to a
pedagogical framework:

International education should be recognised as an important means of build-

ing cultural understanding. Governments, the Australian community, provid-
ers and students – international and domestic – need to be actively engaged in
 ‘Think Before You Travel’ 107
campaigns and education activities that address the prejudice and ignorance
that fuel racism.
(40)

Besides the fact that campaigns and education activities aimed at nourishing cul-
tural understanding between international students and Australian citizens and
residents have not been enacted yet and actions in this direction have been limited
to event-based initiatives such as welcome events at the level of city council, with
this statement Baird is reiterating his understanding of racism as a matter that can-
not be addressed legally. Most importantly for the scope of the present analysis,
Baird’s comments on the racism international students suffer in Australia do not
ever mention the violent attacks on Indian students. Racism is thus ultimately rep-
resented as a problem generically affecting international students, not as the cause
of the spate of attacks that were still occurring. Indeed, nowhere in the report does
Baird discuss where, when and how racism affects international students in Aus-
tralia. The attacks are instead discussed in another section, under the subheading
‘Safety’. Here, much like the authors of the Senate Committee’s Inquiry in the
Welfare of International Students, Baird refers to the violent attacks as ‘incidents’:

While safety was not raised in many consultations or in submissions, recent

incidents have clearly highlighted that Australian governments and the com-
munity must tackle this issue if we are to maintain our reputation as a safe
and welcoming country.
(40)

As this statement illustrates, the political agency of Indian students and their rep-
resentatives is once more dismissed in that, following Baird’s reasoning, the ‘inci-
dents’ per se and not the protests brought the issue of international students’ safety
to the fore of public attention and discussion. Most importantly, by framing the
‘incidents’ as a problem of safety rather than of racism, like the Senate Commit-
tee, Baird can conclude his review by reasserting the positioning of international
students as subjects at risk of urban violence who thus need to be taught how to
minimise and manage this risk as part of their cultural literacy in Australia:

For the most part Australia is a safe place to live and study. But no society is
entirely safe. International students need to be made aware of the risks and
given information on how to minimise them.
(40)

International students are hence positioned once again as subjects at high risk of
urban crime, and the provision of accurate information is advanced once more
as an adequate solution to enhance their safety. At the end of his review on the
issue of safety, Baird recommends that the provision of comprehensive informa-
tion ought to be the result of cooperation among federal and state governments,
108 ‘Think Before You Travel’
police forces, providers of education, student representative organisations and the
‘international student hubs’ (43).
The reference to international student hubs is relevant to the purposes of this
analysis because it connects the provision of safety information to the broader
strategy that Baird canvassed to improve the political representation of interna-
tional students’ problems and increase their participation in designing effective
solutions and services. Baird envisions the construction of international student
hubs on the lines of a one-stop shop, a unique place with functions ranging from
catering services to facilitating student organisations with the ultimate scope of
‘building a representative student voice’ (38). In Baird’s words,

International student hubs would provide a space for government agencies

and community organisations to deliver services to international students.
This could be a tenant advice service talking about renters’ rights, or regula-
tors advising students of their rights and obligations under ESOS. . . . In the
event of a provider closure international student hubs would be a reliable
source of information and support as the tuition protection measures were
implemented.
(38, emphasis added)

The idea of opening centres to deliver services tailored to the needs of interna-
tional students falls perfectly in line with both the commercial ethos underpinning
the ESOS Act and the broader strategy of the provision of accurate information
to improve the quality of international students’ experience studying and living in
Australia. But Baird also advances the possibility of using international student
hubs as spaces of political networking and representation by setting up a rep-
resentative committee in each international student hub (38). As envisioned by
Baird, these committees would function as important channels of communication
among all the major stakeholders involved in the export industry of international
education comprised of the Australian government, education providers and inter-
national students (38). In proposing such a solution, Baird is clearly thinking of
international students not only as consumers of educational services but also as
political subjects whose agency and voice need to be empowered in order to mini-
mise the risk of violence and economic exploitation. In Baird’s words,

While university students have historically had a strong voice, the same can-
not be said of VET students. Many of the issues that are now facing the
international education sector, therefore, could have been avoided had there
been a strong and heeded international student voice, whether insisting on
better quality teaching at a particular provider, or seeking more from local
police services.
(38–39, emphasis added)

As discussed earlier, the private sector of vocational and training colleges had
a marginal share of the market of international education at least until 2004–5,
 ‘Think Before You Travel’ 109
when the introduction of several trade occupations in the Migrant Occupations
in Demand List (MODL) stimulated a dramatic increase in enrolments especially
among Indian students. Baird’s distinction between students enrolled in universi-
ties and those enrolled in private colleges aptly sums up the change in enrolment
trends which occurred in the mid-2000s. But it also shifts the responsibility of the
attacks on international students, since, according to him, they did not raise their
concerns with the appropriate institutions: educational providers’ regulators and
local police. This statement clearly disregards the political activism of Indian stu-
dents, who formally organised in a federation and sought assistance from the Vic-
toria Police for years before making the issue of violence public (Osuri 2010: 95;
see also Chapter 4). Most importantly, it reveals the assumption that international
students are disempowered political subjects in need of a special intervention to
have their rights protected and their interests addressed.
According to Dean, when certain problems are framed in terms of risk manage-
ment, the state intervenes by deploying a broad set of self-regulation technologies
to change the conduct of targeted groups (2010: 196). As mentioned earlier, these
technologies do not operate on their own but involve the mediation of professionals –
that is, managers, counsellors, doctors, nurses and social workers (2010: 196). As
well as involving a wide array of professional knowledge, these technologies also
subsume a disparate array of techniques: from specific forms of formal commit-
ment such as signing contracts to softer instruments of guidance such as counselling
and therapy. Because such technologies aim to enhance individuals’ capacities to
efficiently manage their own risks, Dean defines them as ‘technologies of agency’
(196) and broadly divides them into two sub-sets: technologies of citizenship and
the technologies of representation and voice. Technologies of citizenship consist of
all those techniques and political projects that attempt to empower disadvantaged
or subordinated group populations by linking their subjectivity to their subjection
and their activism to discipline (Cruikshank 1999: 67).8 Similarly to the technolo-
gies of citizenship but more specifically, the technologies of voice and represen-
tation include all those techniques through ‘which the claims of user groups can
enter into the negotiation over needs’ (196), which amounts to the establishment
of specific governmental or non-governmental organisations, bureaucratic proce-
dures and mechanisms through which individuals, groups and communities are
consulted and enabled to identify their needs and provision of targeted services.
In both cases, as Dean promptly reminds us, in spite of the fact that the technolo-
gies of agency seem to address individuals, families and communities as informed
and active agents capable of minimising risk on their own, they are exclusively
deployed when certain individuals or groups are deemed at high risk and, as such,
problematised as subjects whose agency needs to be enhanced for them to achieve
control over the risks that characterise their lives (196–197).
International students clearly fall into this last category of subjects and, as such,
are targeted with the employment of several technologies of agency: provision of
comprehensive and ongoing information, tailored services and independent mech-
anisms of administration and political representation. However, as Dean points
out, the technologies of agency – which appear to only facilitate the aggregations
110 ‘Think Before You Travel’
of individuals, groups or communities on the basis of shared economic, cultural,
social or professional interests – aim to harness and channel such interests into
forms of political representation that can be regulated ‘at distance’ (197–198).
Because of this objective, the technologies of agency usually go hand in hand
with another set of technologies of self-regulation, which are bureaucratic mecha-
nisms of control such as performance and budget reviews. By means of using
both, governments at all levels can and do exert their authority over their subjects
and discipline them accordingly (197–200). This clarification, in turn, allows us
to appreciate how the positioning of international students as victims of urban
violence has not only effectively marginalised the issue of racism in the debate
following Indian students’ protests but also attempted to harness Indian students’
political agency into forms of representation that subjugate them as prospective
assimilable migrants.

George keeps the hoons at bay:9 gender, race and the

territorialisation of the Australian urban space
In addition to the streetwise safety tips suggested to Indian students in the after-
math of their protests in Melbourne and Sydney, in 2010 Victoria Police launched
a social media campaign to reach international students with messages regarding
their safety while studying, living and working in Australia. As Andrew Troun-
son recounts in the pages of The Australian, the idea of running a social media
campaign specifically targeting international students was raised when Larry
Anderson, the then-head of business at ABC’s International TV service Australia
Network, responded to Victoria Police Inspector Ian Geddes’s concern about get-
ting safety messages to international students by suggesting they employ social
media (2010). As a result, Victoria Police commissioned filmmaker James Hack-
ett to create a short animation that deals with ‘racial stereotypes sensitively in
representing the victims and perpetrators of assaults, while also getting across a
complex safety message “without scaring the crap out of people” ’ (2010). Titled
Are You Feeling Lucky? Think Before You Travel, Hackett’s animation introduces
the public to the cartoon character George, ‘a happy-go-lucky, stereotypical stu-
dent’ (2010). Trounson reports that Hackett, charged with the responsibility of
‘sensibly navigating racial stereotypes’, developed the cartoon character George
with physical features that allow him to pass for different nationalities:

In it [the short animation], George wanders late at night through a film noir-
ish city, headphones blaring, blissfully unaware of the lurking dangers.
George, with dark hair and small beard, could be Indian or Latin American,
while the would-be villains are reminiscent of henchmen from the 1960s Bat-
man television series, ninjas and convicts.
(2010, emphasis added)

Lasting just 63 seconds, the animation covers George’s journey from a university
bookshop in the city centre to home in a distant suburb. Divided into three main
 ‘Think Before You Travel’ 111
spatial-temporal sequences, Hackett’s animation brilliantly synthesises the array
of risk factors and behaviours that Victoria Police and other spokespersons had
noted as increasing the likelihood of urban crime against Indian students. The
animation begins with George chatting in an incomprehensible language with two
other students, whose physical features equally blur straitjacket racial stereotypes
(see Figure 3.1 and 3.2). After waving goodbye to the students as they walk away
together, George is shown looking at his iPod, selecting the playlist ‘George’s
Beats’, wearing his headphones and happily walking alone while listening to his
music (see Figure 3.3).
In the same sequence, George is casually looking at the well-lit main road
where he is walking before turning into a poorly lit secondary street. Only three
characters walk ahead of him on the main road, with two of them walking side
by side (see Figure 3.4). The following sequence in a train station reveals them
to be two young women who, unlike George, chose to reach the station by walk-
ing through the same well-lit main road that George leaves behind in favour of a
dangerous shortcut. The physical appearance of the two young women suggests
they are not international students but local white residents. Their inclusion in the
animation establishes a relation of equivalence between young women and young
international students, according to which, like international students, local young
women are encouraged to take extra precautions in the streets at night. However,
this relation of equivalence is limited to pointing out to international students the
precautions they should take to avoid unnecessary risks. This is the case in that, in
contrast to George, the two young women are portrayed as consistently behaving
correctly and, thus, avoiding the risks of which international students like George
seem to be unaware.

Figure 3.1 The opening sequence of Are You Feeling Lucky? Think Before You Travel
animation. George and two other students chat in front a university bookshop
late at night before saying goodbye.10
Figure 3.2 George with the students appearing at the beginning of Are You Feeling Lucky?
Think Before You Travel. The message accompanying the above picture states:
‘Whenever possible travel in groups. Risk is created by travelling alone’.11

Figure 3.3 George walking while listening to his playlist

 ‘Think Before You Travel’ 113

Figure 3.4 This frame captures George’s view of the main street before he turns into the
darker secondary street. On the right, the two young women walk side by side.
Another peripheral character, the train driver, is on the left.

After George turns into the dark secondary street, the risks represented by his
choice immediately materialise in the form of two criminal-looking young men
whose approach George completely ignores. Portrayed looking at his phone and
listening to his music, George ‘luckily’ escapes the threat of assault by falling
into a manhole and straight down to the ‘Museum’ train station. Interestingly,
the physical characteristics of the criminals suggest a mixed-race identity for the
assailant wearing a hood and a Levantine-Southern European racial identity for
the second assailant wearing a black jumper and cap (see Figure 3.5).
After being depicted waiting for twenty-nine minutes for the train to take him
home, George finally alights from the carriage. The sequence following the arrival
of the train is particularly relevant in that the viewer can see the young women
from the main road, comfortably chatting with each other in the first carriage
of the train, right behind the driver, whose presence seems to suggest security
against the threat of assault. In contrast, George is portrayed looking at the first
and second carriages of the train and deciding to get on the second one, which is
not only far from the reassuring presence of the driver but also empty. The camera
dwells on the moment when George decides which carriage to take, reinforcing
the equivalence between young international students and young local women
previously established in George’s journey from the bookshop to the train station.
It suggests that George, like the two young women sitting in the front carriage,
should be in a carriage that is not empty but occupied by the presence of a reassur-
ing local male presence, namely the driver or the guard (see Figure 3.6).
As a result of his decision, George is once again depicted as under threat of an
assault. After he takes a seat and opens his laptop, the animation shows two young
114 ‘Think Before You Travel’

Figure 3.5 
This frame captures the moment in which George ‘luckily’ avoids being
assaulted by falling down a manhole.

Figure 3.6 In this frame George is deciding which carriage of the train to enter. As the
Think Before’s website reports: ‘Outside of peak times and at night travel in
the front carriage of the train with the driver or sit in the guard’s compartment.
Where possible do not travel in empty carriages’.

men passing by him and suggests that their ‘swarthy’ appearance should alarm
George (see Figure 3.7). The representation of criminal intentions through the
‘swarthy’ appearance of the two men has at least two consequences. On the one
hand, the reference to the ‘henchmen from the 1960s Batman television series’
 ‘Think Before You Travel’ 115

Figure 3.7 George ignores the risk of being assaulted by the two young men whose
swarthy appearance, according to the narrative of the animation, should alert
George of their criminal intentions.

un-problematically reproduces the representation of Southern European and

Levantine migrants’ masculinity as inherently dangerous as historically projected
in globalised American popular culture. On the other hand, it once again aligns
(male) international students with young local women in that George’s passive
masculinity comes to be defined as antithetical to the active masculinity of the
two men who intend to assault him. Contrary to the swarthy men passing by,
George’s masculinity is not threatening but rather, like the femininity of the two
young women sitting in the front carriage, represented as the potential object of
male violence.
In his article on the launch of the international student safety campaign, Troun-
son mentions that the students whom Hackett consulted in the process of creating
the animation insisted on having George confront the risk of being assaulted to
a certain point. As a consequence, the last part of the animation finally shows
George becoming aware of his environment and ‘taking action’ to protect his own
safety. As the article reports,

The first cut of the film saw George unaware of the dangers, but the students
insisted he should have to face up to the hazards he so narrowly avoids. So
George almost gets jumped and has to take action.
(2010)

Chased by the swarthy men passing by him in the train carriage, George is finally
portrayed coming to an awareness of the risk of being assaulted in a frame which
shows him moving his headphones away from his ears. Once he removes his
headphones, George hears the two young men and therefore turns around to see
them chasing after him. Right before he takes his headphones off, the camera
116 ‘Think Before You Travel’
shows one of the two young women who were in the same train as him turning
around and worriedly looking towards George. It is not clear whether she is look-
ing at George or beyond George at the two men walking after him. Either way, it is
clear that it is her act of worryingly turning around to control her environment that
attracts George’s attention and prompts him to behave likewise (see Figure 3.8).
For the first time in the animation, some sort of interaction between George
and the two young women is displayed. This interaction suggests a passing on of
agency from the local young woman, who is naturally aware of her environment
and avoids unnecessary risks, to the young male international student whose ‘very
passive and very quiet-natured’ racialised ‘Asian’ identity positions him as a sub-
ject who is, like women are in general, vulnerable and ought to be fearful. As a
result, George’s decision of taking action against the threat of assault occurs in the
form of flight. Once he becomes aware of the two ‘swarthy’ young men walking
after him, he runs into a nearby kebab shop, where another Southern European/
Levantine-looking middle-aged man stands smiling behind the shop counter (see
Figure 3.9).
The reassuring presence of the smiling, middle-aged kebab shop owner rein-
forces the understanding that the violent attacks against Indian students were
predominantly committed by disenfranchised ethnic suburban youth and are
therefore a violent expression of social malaise (see first section). The contra-
position of the two threatening young men chasing George with the reassuring
presence of the smiling kebab shop owner also works as a representation of what
constitutes ‘good diversity’ and ‘bad diversity’ in present-day Australia. Much
like Ahmed’s ‘ “right kind” of minority’, Alan Lentin and Gavan Titley elaborated
the concept of good and bad diversity to define the unstated division employed

Figure 3.8 This frame portrays George noticing that something is wrong thanks to the
glance of the young woman walking ahead of him.
 ‘Think Before You Travel’ 117

Figure 3.9 This frame portrays George running away from the two potential assailants to
the kebab shop. As Think Before’s website reports, ‘If you feel threatened in
any way while walking on the street go to a shop or a house with its lights on
(if at night) and ask for police to be contacted’.

to establish who ‘qualifies to be recognised as the right kind of diverse subject’

(2011: 176). For the authors, this distinction is the result of discourses celebrat-
ing cultural diversity at the same time during which policies of migration and
citizenship have been employed to enforce nationally shared values as a means of
preserving social cohesion against the alleged failures of multiculturalism (179–
180). Diversity is then understood as a governmental rationale of integration that
provides a discourse and policy framework to talk about and manage cultural dif-
ferences without acknowledging ‘the intersectional political demands of diversity
politics’ (182). The authors also emphasise how this distinction recasts the neo-
liberal understanding of citizens as self-sufficient and autonomous subjects and,
consequently, urge racialised migrants and citizens to make race a private mat-
ter if they want to be recognised as part of the diversity that contemporary self-
declared multicultural societies celebrate and cultivate (162–176). In this sense,
Lentin and Titley argue that the idea of ‘good diversity’ also ‘racialises the limits
of adversarial politics’ in that it tends to marginalise racially/ethnically identified
or self-identified subjects’ political critiques as examples of poor integration or
divisive forces in a society that would be otherwise harmonious (187).
From this perspective, the kebab shop owner stands for the well-integrated
communities of Southern Europeans and Levantine migrants whose small busi-
nesses are now represented as legitimately contributing to the Australian econ-
omy and their political complacency as an indicator of successful settlement. As
such, both his position in the economy and his smiling presence constitute a valid
118 ‘Think Before You Travel’
example of good diversity, whereas the two threatening young men stand for the
disenfranchised urban ethnic youth whose alleged failure to integrate into main-
stream society economically and culturally represents the limit of the good diver-
sity that the Australian nation strives to achieve and maintain through its policies
of migration and citizenship. The representation of the middle-aged shop owner
appears to be imbued with nostalgia, and like any other nostalgic representation
of the past, it conceals the symbolic violence and labour exploitation suffered by
ethnic migrants who came to Australia after World War II as it does their politi-
cal activism to obtain recognition and redress. But like any representation of the
past, it also functions as a representation of present-day Australia as a nation
that is open, tolerant and diverse. As Ahmed reminds us, representations such
as this one work towards sustaining a national ideal that migrants are compelled
to take and pass on by refusing to ‘keep their difference to themselves’ (2004:
134). Because of this expectation, events such as riots or phenomena like segre-
gation tend to be analysed more as a failure on the part of migrants to embrace
the multicultural imperative to ‘mix with others’ than as instances of structural
racism (137–139). Likewise, in The Promise of Happiness, Ahmed suggests that
migrants who refuse to forget racism and move on from the injury it causes tend
to be represented as a ‘sore point’ (2010: 141). Put more simply, when migrants
are perceived to stay attached to the injury of racism, this attachment becomes
construed not only as an obstacle to their own happiness but also as a blockage
to the happiness of the nation (144). In this sense, she argues, migrants injured
by racism are charged with the ‘moral task’ of getting over their injury and, in so
doing, severing the hold that racism has in social life (143). Considering Lentin
and Titley’s understanding of adversarial politics in societies celebrating diver-
sity and Ahmed’s analysis of the conditions of happiness in multicultural nations,
it is then important to unpack the happy ending of the Are You Feeling Lucky?
Think Before You Travel animation.
In the last sequence of the animation, after successfully escaping from his
assailants by running into the kebab shop, George walks to the bus stop and sits
next to the two young women with whom he has shared the journey home. For
the first time in the animation, they directly interact with each other and establish
a genuine connection by sharing a laugh (see Figure 3.10). This sequence sug-
gests that George had to become aware of his surroundings and had to learn to
act upon them accordingly to be able to join and enjoy the company of the two
local young women. Once he has apprehended that he must be as attentive as the
young women on the streets at night, the animation seems to suggest that George’s
reward for such realisation goes beyond the achievement of physical safety. His
movement from an inattentive and vulnerable masculinity to an attentive but still
vulnerable femininity is in fact also represented as a necessary ritual of passage
to achieve membership in that happy multiculturalism on which Australia wants
to pride itself.
The frame that portrays George walking towards the bus stop and the two
young women illustrates his passage from the unhappy multiculturalism charac-
terising the Australian suburbs populated by disenfranchised urban ethnic youth
 ‘Think Before You Travel’ 119

Figure 3.10 This frames shows George walking towards the bus stop and the two young
women. The sign for the kebab shop is in the background.

to the happy multiculturalism of well-integrated migrants who live side by side

with white Australians (see Figure 3.10). The happiness of such a moment, as well
as the good diversity it aims to represent, is brilliantly condensed in the physical
proximity of the bus stop to the kebab shop. This proximity allows the director to
include in the frame the kebab shop’s sign, which pictures the smiling kebab shop
owner holding his right thumb up. The inclusion of such a reassuring sign in the
background of the frame does a double job. On the one hand, it confirms George’s
achievement, his transformation from a passive, inattentive subjectivity to a pas-
sive but attentive subjectivity used to characterise women. On the other hand, it
marks George’s entrance into a happy scene of multiculturalism wherein interna-
tional students, old generations of migrants and white Australians get along with
each other just fine provided that the former agree to take responsibility for their
own physical safety and, in so doing, withdraw the accusation of being victims
of racism. From this perspective, the Are You Feeling Lucky? Think Before You
Travel animation not only equips international students with information regard-
ing their safety in Australia but also carries with it the promise of a happy inclu-
sion within multicultural Australia. This promise works also as an injunction in
that, to be included, international students must first get over their injury at being
the targets of racist violence and, in so doing, abide by the national ideal that – as
Rudd stated after the Indian students’ protest in Melbourne – ‘Australia is a coun-
try of great diversity, harmony and tolerance’ (Rudd 2009).
The relation of equivalence established between George and the two young
women against the two pairs of male assailants he ‘luckily’ escapes moreover
normalises the uses of public spaces as territories that only men have the right to
120 ‘Think Before You Travel’
inhabit without fear. As mentioned earlier, the representation of Indian students as
soft targets resonates through history with the depiction of Colombo Plan students
as passive and easily impressionable subjects in need of Australians’ protection
and guidance. Protection and guidance were likewise deemed necessary to mini-
mise the emotional distress Colombo Plan students were understood to suffer as
a result of cultural shock and loss of everything familiar to them. Passivity and
emotionality were thus equally attributed to the mostly male and young South and
South-east Asian Colombo Plan students with the effect of gendering their racial
differences as feminine. In contrast to them, Australian white-male subjectivity
was established as the site of both bodily and intellectual superiority thanks to
the self-assigned capacities to be active instead of passive, to impress upon others
instead of being impressed and to control emotions instead of being controlled
by emotions.12 The feminisation of ‘Asian’ Colombo Plan students can be hence
understood as the result of the metonymic equation of passivity with emotionality
and the understanding of both attributes as proneness to be injured by others. In
Ahmed’s words,

It is significant that the word ‘passion’ and the word ‘passive’ share the same
root in the Latin word for ‘suffering’ (passio). To be passive is to be enacted
upon, as a negation that is already felt as suffering. The fear of passivity is
tied to the fear of emotionality, in which weakness is defined in terms of
a tendency to be shaped by others. Softness is narrated as a proneness to
injury. The association between passion and passivity is instructive. It works
as a reminder of how ‘emotion’ has been viewed as ‘beneath’ the faculties of
thought and reason. To be emotional is to have one’s judgment affected: it is
to be reactive rather than active, dependent rather than autonomous.
(2, emphasis added)

But, as Ahmed notes, proneness to be acted upon, or vulnerability, is also generi-

cally perceived as being not only a psychological trait but also an ‘inherent qual-
ity or characteristic of some bodies’ (2004: 68). For instance, in discussing the
uneven effects of the politics of fear, she reminds us how ‘women’s access to
public space is restricted by the circulation of narratives of women’s vulnerability’
(69). Because women are construed as subjects who ought to be fearful of public
space, their safety becomes then a matter of ‘not inhabiting public space or, more
accurately of not moving through that space alone’ (70). The pedagogical account
of the attacks as the result of an inherent proneness of Indian students to physical
vulnerability had likewise circulated in the public discourses in ways that do not
contest but rather reinforce the fear imposed upon them by violence as the most
effective strategy to counter its threat. Like women, Indian students too become
positioned as subjects who ought to be fearful of public spaces and consequently
inhabit them with special caution. Ahmed also emphasises how publicly sanc-
tioned narratives of vulnerability, which restrict the mobility of women and like-
wise feminised subjects, expand the mobility of other subjects, whose freedom
from fear ultimately shapes public space by and through their movements and
 ‘Think Before You Travel’ 121
ways of inhabiting it (69–70). In this sense, she argues, fear works to regulate
the movement of certain bodies and, in so doing, allows public spaces to become
‘territories’, ‘rights’ that only some subjects can claim (70). It is then relevant to
note that in spite of the lack of public attention, women international students
were reported to be as, if not more, likely to be victims of violence. As Carolyn
Poljski stated in a research paper on the prevention of violence against migrant
and refugee women,

While media and community attention has focused on male international stu-
dents and their experiences of violence in public settings, violence against
female international students has remained largely invisible despite their
increased risk of discrimination, harassment and violence. Female students
are more likely than their male counterparts to experience discrimination,
physical abuse, sexual harassment and social exclusion during their stay in
Australia.
(2011: 24)

Woman international students are reported to have been subjected to a variety of

instances of hate crimes in public spaces ranging from spitting and throwing of
objects to physical assaults, especially when travelling on public transport (Mar-
ginson et al. 2010: 227–234). Muslim students in particular have reported their
perception of safety being considerably diminished because of the heightened
visibility attached to wearing a headscarf, leading some of them in the aftermath
of the Bali bombings in 2002 to stop wearing the headscarf (435). The instances of
violence suffered by woman international students powerfully question the peda-
gogical apprehension of the attacks as an expression of urban violence, instead
revealing the process of territorialisation of Australian public space into a territory
that only Australian men can inhabit without fear. The fact that not all the attack-
ers were identifiable as white does not change that – in contrast to ‘bogus’ Indian
students or Muslim students wearing a headscarf – they might have all regarded
themselves as citizens legitimately belonging to the nation either by the birthright
of an Anglo-Celtic background or by the right bestowed to them by means of
cultural assimilation.
In conclusion, whereas Indian students’ protests aimed to have their right to
move safely in the public space enforced by the appropriate local authorities, the
strategy that the federal government designed to protect such a right effected an
antithetical outcome. Provision of information about how to not become a victim
of crime was in fact the primary solution advanced by both local and federal
authorities, and – as this section of the chapter has demonstrated – it clearly relied
on the expectation for Indian students themselves to minimise the risk of physical
violence by means of controlling their behaviour and mobility in public space. In
this sense, Australian representatives’ condemnation of the violence Indian stu-
dents suffered had as much disavowed racism as a cause as normalised the restric-
tion of the mobility of any other subject who, like Indian students, fail to pass as
the ‘ “right kind” of minority’.
122 ‘Think Before You Travel’
Notes
1 See Dunn, Pelleri and Maeder-Han 2011: 73.
2 Although acknowledging the predominance of neo-liberal mentalities, Mitchell Dean
prefers to adopt the term ‘advanced liberal government’ to describe the multiplicity of
rationalities and technologies employed by most of the Western nation-states to govern
the conduct of both their citizens and non-citizens. See Dean 2010: 10–12.
3 In the field of governmentality studies, which Dean has largely contributed to develop,
Foucault’s conceptualisation of technique or technology is explicitly subsumed into
that of government. In this field, government is defined as any attempt which deliber-
ately aims to affect or shape the conduct of social institutions, agencies and subjects
in accordance with given norms and a variety of objectives (Dean 2010: 18). On the
basis of this definition, Dean has proposed to examine actualised forms of government
as complex configurations of organised practices set in place to regulate the conduct
of multiple social actors. As he heuristically laid out, these configurations or ‘regimes’
of practices typically involve ‘characteristic forms of visibility’ (i.e. ways of seeing
or perceiving), ‘distinctive way of thinking and questioning’ (e.g. social sciences and
humanities’ practices of knowledge or truth production) and ‘types of practical ration-
ality’ (e.g. ‘expertise’ and ‘know-how’) alongside ‘definite’ techniques or technologies
(33). In other words, contrary to Foucault, Dean distinguishes the practices involved
in the production of knowledge or truth from the mechanisms employed to achieve
certain ends. Accordingly, he has defined techniques or technologies of government as
follows: ‘forms of notations, ways of collecting, representing, storing or transporting
information, forms of architecture and the division of space, kinds of quantitative and
qualitative calculation, types of training and so on’, which are ‘typically assembled
from diverse elements, take part in techno-economic systems, constitute logistical and
infrastructural powers, and subsume the moral and political shaping of conduct by
performing criteria’ (269–270). This definition, in turn, explains Dean’s conceptualisa-
tion of risk as a form of governing that couples certain rationalities (i.e. ways of prob-
lematising socio-economic issues) with a mixture of heterogeneous technologies (i.e.
practical means employed to effect the conduct of social actors). For further details, see
Dean 2010, 16–51; 194–196.
4 See Hopkins 2007, Education Futures Brisbane Taskforce 2008 and Turcic 2008.
5 For further details on the organisations and individuals handing in submissions to the
Committee see Appendix 1: 111–114.
6 For further details on the organisations’ representatives and individuals heard by
the Committee during the public hearings in Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra, see
Appendix 2: 117–120.
7 Baird initiated a process of consultation that involved around 200 students, education
providers from the secondary, tertiary and ESL sectors and stakeholders in the export
industry of international education. In addition, following the release of an issue paper
in September 2009, Baird received around 150 formal submissions along with 300 per-
sons who registered on the online discussion forum. For further details, see Appendix
B: 65–69.
8 For further details on the technologies of citizenship and their relation to the will to
empower disenfranchised group populations, see Cruikshank 1999: 67–86.
9 ‘George keeps the hoons at bay’ is the heading of Andrew Trounson’s article on the
multimedia safety campaign Think Before You Travel (2010). URL: www.theaustralian.
com.au/higher-education/george-keeps-hoons-at-bay/story-e6frgcjx-1225922827303.
10 The images here used to illustrate my analysis of the short animation Are You Feeling
Lucky? Think Before You Travel were kindly provided by the director himself, James
Hackett, and his staff at Hackett Films. Hackett Films’ executive assistant Georgia
Brown and producer Melody Ha also secured on my behalf the copyright permission
from the Victoria Police to use ten still frames from the short animation in this study.
 ‘Think Before You Travel’ 123
Their generosity and solicitude were crucial to the completion of this chapter, and
I would like to thank them all here for their help.
11 Unfortunately, the website ‘Think Before. A Student Safety Initiative’ which hosted the
short animation Are You Feeling Lucky? Think Before You Travel, besides listing Victo-
ria Police’s safety tips, is not any longer available online. However, the short animation
was also uploaded on YouTube, presumably by the Victoria Police, on July 20, 2010,
with the heading ‘International Student Safety – Think Before’. At the time of writing,
the short animation is still available on YouTube at the following URL: www.youtube.
com/watch?v=JaKOZvEH1tU.
12 I draw here from Ahmed’s discussion on the production on the racialised body in scien-
tific knowledge at the height of British imperialism. In this discussion, Ahmed argues
that ‘women and “the lower races” ’ were seen to be alike in their bodily difference
from white men: an analogy which allowed women as a group to be racialised, and
‘ “the lower races” as a group to be feminised’ (2002: 51).

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Ong, Aihwa (2006) Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty.
Duke University Press: Durham.
Osuri, Goldie (2010) Once More to a Slightly Different Breach: Race, Neoliberal Govern-
mentality and Violence against International Students, in Suvendrini Perera, Graham
Seal and Sue Summers (eds.) Enter at Own Risk? Australia’s Population Questions for
the 21st Century. Black Swan Press: Perth, 91–116.
Poljski, Carolyn (2011) On Her Way: Primary Prevention of Violence Against Immigrant
and Refugee Women in Australia. Multicultural Centre for Women’s Health: Melbourne.
URL: www.mcwh.com.au/downloads/2011/On%20Her%20Way_Final.pdf.
 ‘Think Before You Travel’ 125
Puwar, Nirmal (2004) Space Invaders: Race, Gender and Bodies Out of Place. Berg:
Oxford.
Rudd, Kevin (2009) Australia and India. Statement, 1 June. URL: http://india.highcom
mission.gov.au/ndli/pa1009.html.
Senate Standing Education, Employment and Workplace Relations References Committee
(2009) Inquiry into the Welfare of International Students. URL: www.aph.gov.au/bina-
ries/senate/committee/eet_ctte/international_students/report/report.pdf.
Sheehan, Paul (2009) Brutal Truth About Attacks. The Sydney Morning Herald, 10 June. URL:
www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/brutal-truth-about-attacks-20090610-c2dm.html?
skin=text-only.
Stapleton, John (2009) The Fear That Stalks the Streets at Night. The Australian, 13 June.
URL: www.theaustralian.com.au/news/the-fear-that-stalks-the-streets-at-night/story-e6frg
6n6-1225734283745.
Topsfield, Jewel (2009) Indians Told to Keep Low Profile. The Age, 19 February. URL:
www.theage.com.au/national/indians-told-to-keep-low-profile-20090218-8bjz.html.
Trounson, Andrew (2010) George Keeps the Hoons at Bay. The Australian, 15 September.
URL: www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/george-keeps-hoons-at-bay/story-e6fr
gcjx-1225922827303.
Turcic, Sandra (2008) Needs Assessment of International Students in the City of Sydney. City
of Sydney: Sydney. URL: www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/Community/documents/Servi
cesAndPrograms/MulticulturalServices /Needs-Assessment-International-Students.pdf.
4 ‘Is Australia racist?’
Interpretive denial and the politics
of anger

Yes, in big cities around the world we do see acts of violence from time to time;
that happens in Melbourne, it happens in Mumbai, it happens in New York, it
happens in London. And any individual act of violence is obviously to be deeply
regretted and our sympathies go to anyone who is harmed through an act of vio-
lence. The Australian Government has expressed its sympathy for the loss of a
young man’s life recently in Melbourne. The police are now investigating that
matter and that is a matter to leave to the police at this stage.
(‘Acts of Violence’ 2010: emphasis added)

To regret is to concede that something ‘disappointing or unpleasant’ has happened

(‘Regret’ 2015). It is to feel ‘sad or sorry’ for something we ‘did or did not do’ but
that is, either way, beyond our power ‘to repair’ (‘Regret’ 2015). When express-
ing regret, we are also conveying our impotence to undo the cause of harm or
make those who were harmed feel otherwise. To see ourselves as impotent is to
see ourselves as not necessarily responsible for the harm that we ‘did or did not’
cause to others. As Spelman has observed, if those who express regret saw them-
selves as accountable, they would feel propelled into undoing what caused harm
or attending to it in some way (1997: 103). When harm is caused, who is then to
be held responsible? In the case of Nitin Garg’s death on January 2, 2010, first
victim of the spate of attacks against Indian students, the Australian authorities
were not to be held accountable. In the words of the then Deputy Prime Minister
and Education Minister Julia Gillard, released in the aftermath of Garg’s death,
as violence occurs everywhere, no place in the world can be completely safe.
‘From time to time’, violence takes place, especially in ‘big cities’. So general-
ised, violence becomes individualised: sporadic acts committed by individuals
that those who govern cannot control, let alone prevent. When out of a govern-
ment’s control, sporadic yet common acts of violence can be only wished to never
have occurred and therefore the harm they caused – including the death of a young
man – become a matter of sympathy.
In refusing to take responsibility for the death of Garg, Gillard’s response to the
event is consistent with the positioning of international students as subjects at high
risk of crime, as examined in Chapter 3. This analysis moreover demonstrated
 ‘Is Australia racist?’ 127
how this positioning constituted an attempt to deflect Indian students’ accusation
that the attacks committed against them were racially motivated. Because of this
accusation, their protests were accompanied by a heated debate on whether the
attacks were or were not racist. Like Indian students in Australia, some media
outlets in India held that the attacks were racist and urged both the Indian and
Australian governments to act accordingly. In Australia, police, state and federal
representatives as well as the Australian media continued to simply not, or only
partially, acknowledge racism as a motivator. Yet as the attacks continued, claim-
ing the life of Garg, the media debate quickly degenerated into an exchange of
blunt accusations. On the one side, Australian representatives and media accused
their Indian counterparts of acting out of ‘hysteria’. On the other side, the Indian
media responded by reproving them for being ‘in denial’ of the evidence that
the attacks were racist. Somehow, the problem represented by the attacks rapidly
morphed into a question of legitimacy, which might be summed up in the follow-
ing questions: Whose understanding of the attacks could claim the high moral
ground before the international community of nations which followed the debate
from a distance? Can a non-Western nation like India accuse a Western nation like
Australia of being racist?
This chapter addresses these questions by approaching the media debate accom-
panying the spate of attacks in 2009 and 2010 as a complex system of responses
to racism and to the accusation of racism.1 The accusation of racism is examined
as a response to the attacks that required both acknowledgment and accountability
from the Australian authorities. Conversely, the charge of hysteric behaviour, like
the aforementioned statement of regret, is analysed as a refusal to be held account-
able by Indian students, media and representatives. The first section analyses the
Australian representatives’ response to the Indian students’ and media’s accusa-
tion of racism and unpacks the way this response sought to uphold Australia’s
entitlement to morally judge but not be judged by a non-Western country such as
such India. The second section reviews the feminist literature on anger as an emo-
tional response to racism, its uses as a political means to hold dominant groups to
account and, conversely, the need to dismiss anger to maintain power.
The third section demonstrates how the Australian authorities’ and media’s
interpretation of their Indian counterparts’ expressions of anger as hysteria
worked as a technology of affective dismissal that aimed to protect Australia’s
moral authority in the Asia-Pacific area more broadly.

Racism v. urban crime: the Australian brand

and the politics of denial
As Chapter 3 documented, Victoria Police representatives contested the Indian
students’ accusation of racism by advancing that the attacks were opportunistic.
This explanation was perfected by the display of data demonstrating escalating
street crime in the metropolitan areas of Australia. For instance, shortly after the
first protest in Melbourne, the then-Chief Commissioner of Victoria Police Simon
128 ‘Is Australia racist?’
Overland normalised the attacks against Indian students by associating their rapid
growth in number with an alleged increase in street crime:

Our statewide figures show that in 2007–08, 1447 people of Indian origin
were victims of crimes against the person . . . an increase from 1082 the
previous year . . . In 2008, there were almost 160,000 international students
in Victoria. Of these, more than 46,000 were from India . . . This has more
than doubled since 2006. Unfortunately, this issue is symptomatic of what we
are seeing across the community as a whole. In recent years, there has been a
rise in street level robberies with people walking alone seen as ‘soft targets’,
particularly if they are carrying laptops, mobile phones and MP3 players.
(2009)

The association between the rise in the number of Indian international students
and assaults endured throughout the debate in spite of a vicious attack that had
occurred shortly before the then Victorian Premier John Brumby went to visit
India with the mission to ‘allay safety concerns among potential international
students’ in September 2009 (Legrand and Trounson 2009). A week before this
visit took place, four Indian-descent men – Mukhtair Singh, Indpal Singh, Sukh-
dip Singh and Gurdeep Singh2 – were attacked in the car park of a nightspot in a
northern suburb of Melbourne by a group of Australians attending a birthday party
(Das and Wade 2009). The ethnicity of the attackers was not specified, allowing
the speculation that they were not representatives of the ‘polyglot mix reflecting
the streets’ of Melbourne. Victoria Police did not report the case for four days,
and the Australian media was likewise silent (Cooper 2009). The Times of India
eventually broke the news, reporting the four men had been ‘brutally bashed’ by
as many as seventy Australians, ushering the Indian government into charging
its consulate in Australia to investigate the case (Legrand and Trounson 2009).
This assault, alongside the silence that followed, triggered a new wave of public
indignation in both India and Australia. The then-president of the Federation of
Indian Students Associations in Australia (FISA) Gautam Gupta publicly accused
Victoria Police of attempting to cover up the attack (Legrand and Trounson 2009).
Victoria Police questioned the claim that as many as seventy Australians attacked
the four Indian men but acknowledged that the violence inflicted on the four men
was accompanied by verbal racist vilification:

Acting Senior Sergeant Glenn Parker denied as many as 70 people had been
involved. He told ABC Radio four men had been party to the assault and
further 20 had been bystanders. ‘While police were on scene they observed
about 15 males and females, also from the larger group celebrating the birth-
day, make racist comments and one female from the group was seen to throw
water over one bystander’, the police statement reads. ‘After police removed
the victims from the scene, the larger group continued with their threatening
behaviour and racist remarks’.
(Legrand and Trounson 2009)
 ‘Is Australia racist?’ 129
In spite of the public admission that the attack aimed to racially vilify the four
Indian men (‘Australia finally admits’ 2009) and the outrage expressed by spokes-
people in its wake, the attacks continued to be justified, especially at the federal
level, as symptomatic of urban crime. As more assaults took place, Indian student
representatives and the Indian media grew more impatient with the reluctance of
their Australian counterparts to acknowledge the racist nature of the attacks. This
was the case when Kevin Rudd visited New Delhi for the first time as Prime Min-
ister of Australia in November 2009. This was not the first official visit to New
Delhi regarding the attacks – prior to Rudd, federal ministers and state representa-
tives had visited the capital city (including Gillard, Trade Minister Simon Crean
and Treasurer Wayne Swan) to mitigate Indian officials’ fears for the safety of
Indian students in Australia. This visit, however, was officially planned to sign a
series of bilateral agreements on ‘science, defence and other areas of co-operation’
(Srivastava 2009), yet part of the Indian media expected Rudd to acknowledge that
the attacks were racially motivated. The news channel Times Now, for instance,
positioned the issue of the violence as a top priority in the diplomatic and trade
relations agenda discussed during the visit:

Even though racism continues unabated down under the Australian Prime
Minister Kevin Rudd will touch base in New Delhi today. Rudd is saddled
with the formidable task of not just laying the ground for a strategic rela-
tionship between the two countries – but also of limiting the damage to ties
caused by racial prejudice against Indians. . . . Should India discuss busi-
ness deals with the Australian prime minister before the racist attacks issue
is solved?
(‘For Aus PM’ 2009)

On the other side of the Indian Ocean, Australian media depicted the first visit
of the prime minister mostly as an important opportunity to enhance commercial
and diplomatic ties with India against the bad publicity engendered by the Indian
media’s coverage of the attacks. The Sydney Morning Herald reported,

Mr Rudd flies into Mumbai on Wednesday on a whistlestop visit to a country

flagged as a foreign policy priority since he won government . . . This visit
is aimed at bolstering Australia’s relationship with the south Asian super-
power. . . . It will help make amends for strained relations earlier this year,
after a spate of violent attacks that seemed directed at Indian students turned
the spotlight on problems in the rapidly-growing education export industry.
Mr Rudd is the most senior member of the government to head to India after
an outcry over the students’ treatment led to fears about a possible backlash
affecting the $15 billion a year industry.
(O’Malley 2009)

From the perspective of mismatched expectations, Rudd’s comments on the

attacks during his visit to India provoked even more controversy. During his
130 ‘Is Australia racist?’
foreign policy speech at the Indian Council of World Affairs, Rudd first addressed
the attacks as a matter of bilateral concern. Times Now took this speech as an
admission of the racist nature of the attacks (‘Rudd finally admits’ 2009). Yet
Rudd had defined the attacks as being criminal and not racist, a detail that did not
pass unnoticed in other Indian media outlets. The Hindustan Times, for instance,
referred to Rudd’s condemnation of the attacks as a refusal and not as an acknowl-
edgement of the accusation of racism:

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd . . . said on Thursday he was ‘dis-

gusted’ and ‘deeply disturbed’ by the attacks on Indian students in his coun-
try. Speaking at the Indian Council of World Affairs, Rudd, who is on an
official visit, said: ‘These attacks will not be tolerated. We’re working to
make sure everything is done to protect overseas students’. Rudd, however,
never once acknowledged there could be a racial element in the attacks, as
many students have alleged.
(Srivastava 2009)

The refusal to address the accusation of racism directly was a common pattern
among Australian representatives, especially at the federal level. Mason reports
these findings in her study of media reports and transcriptions of federal offi-
cials’ responses to the attacks (2011). Throughout 2009, several police and state
representatives partially acknowledged the accusation of racism, that is, Brumby
in September 2009 (Burke 2009). However, federal representatives rarely joined
them. For instance, neither Rudd nor Gillard ever explicitly addressed the accusa-
tion of racism (Mason 2011: 33–35). Mason defines this strategy as interpretive
denial3 in that racism was more subtly denied by means of contesting the ‘cogni-
tive meaning’ that the attacks had for their victims and representatives (42).
As the previous chapter showed, federal officials were not the only Australian
group contesting the meaning that the attacks had for the Indian students in Aus-
tralia (6). State police officers and representatives explained the attacks as esca-
lating yet isolated instances of petty criminals taking advantage of ‘soft targets’.
Likewise, industry spokespersons of international education concurred that inter-
national students were generally at high risk of being attacked because of a ‘lack
of personal safety awareness’. Lastly, journalists such as Rowan Callick, John
Stapleton and Greg Callaghan conveyed the view that the attacks represented a
matter of class antagonism exacerbated by the perception of Indian students as
‘cashed-up’ subjects (see Chapter 3). Yet Mason focuses on the federal repre-
sentatives’ responses, as their statements are most likely to ‘stand as a record of a
nation’s position on events of global importance such as cross-border accusation
of racism’ (2011: 6). Following this distinction, Mason individuates three main
discursive strategies of interpretive denial: avoidance, nationalistic rhetoric and
deflection (33). As already mentioned, avoidance consisted of federal representa-
tives’ refusal to utter the words ‘race’ and ‘racism’ even when they were urged to
do so by both Indian and Australian journalists (33–34). Nationalistic rhetoric was
employed to fill in the silence engendered by an alternative account of Australia
 ‘Is Australia racist?’ 131
as a diverse, tolerant and multicultural nation (36–38). These two strategies went
hand in hand from the onset:

‘I said to Prime Minister Singh the more than 90,000 Indian students in Aus-
tralia are welcome guests in our country . . . and the more than 200,000 Aus-
tralians of Indian descent are welcome members of the Australian family’, he
told parliament . . . The Commonwealth is working with state governments to
ensure the perpetrators of the crimes are ‘brought to justice’, the prime minis-
ter said. He promised Australia embraced its multicultural society. ‘Australia
is a country of great diversity, harmony and tolerance. We are a multicultural
nation and we respect and embrace diversity, diversity which has enriched
our nation’, he said.
(‘Kevin Rudd Defends Australia’ 2009: emphasis added)

As this passage shows, Rudd does not mention that the Indian students alleged the
attacks to be racist. Rather, he opens his first public statement on the attacks by
reminding Indian students and Australians of Indian descent that they are ‘wel-
come’ ‘guests’ and ‘members of the Australian family’ respectively. If Indian stu-
dents and citizens are welcome in the nation, then the nation, and by extension its
citizens, cannot be understood as intentionally hostile towards them. The attacks
therefore must be apprehended as a matter other than racism. The reference to the
enforcement of justice against the ‘perpetrators of the crimes’ is thus relevant in
that it anticipates Mason’s third and final strategy of interpretive denial: deflection.
Mason describes this strategy as the attempt to position the problem of violence
as the less volatile issue of ‘law and order’ (2011: 42). As already demonstrated,
the attacks were in fact consistently qualified as ‘opportunistic’, ‘criminal’ or ‘acts
of violence’ and, as such, interpreted as mundane expressions of urban crime. As
Rudd stated during a radio interview in Melbourne,

The truth is, in our cities right across the country, there are acts of violence
every day. . . . That’s just a regrettable fact of urban life . . . Let’s get our
statistics right . . . Australians in India at any time run the risk also of some
violence. In the last decade I was advised we had, I think, up to 20 Australians
who have either been murdered or had various forms of assault committed
against them . . . Now that is not the result of Australians being targeted in
India. That’s just a fact of violence in cities all around the world.
(Mornings with Neil Mitchell 2009: emphasis added)

In concert with each other, the strategies of avoidance, nationalistic rhetoric

and deflection made the denial of racism more complex than outright negation.
The accusation of racism was not refuted. Rather, it was countered by means of
factoring an account of the violence that rendered any alternative interpretation
logically untenable if not illegitimate. Australia embraces diversity. Violence is a
matter of urban crime. Urban crime occurs ‘in cities all around the world’. Racism
is not and cannot be the problem.
132 ‘Is Australia racist?’
As Osuri has observed, whilst the attacks continued, the strategy of ‘non-
acknowledgment’ of racism ambivalently started to coexist with one of partial
‘acknowledgment’ of ‘racial elements’ when, in the months following the pro-
tests, data revealed a dramatic fall in Indian students’ enrolments (2010: 98–99).
Faced by this fall, Australian representatives – including some at the federal
level – occasionally opted for acknowledging racism as a marginal element moti-
vating the attacks in the hope that such recognition would prevent further losses
(99). Mason too argues that, by and large, federal representatives denied the accu-
sation of racism to protect the international reputation of the Australian brand,
thus retaining its share in the global market of education (2011: 6). Yet whether
the violence was caused by racism or rising urban crime, what goes unsaid is that
both the safety of Indian students and Australia’s reputation were at stake regard-
less. So why did federal representatives prefer to admit that Australia was becom-
ing increasingly more violent than racist?
Drawing on the work of Teun Adrianius van Dijk (1992; 1993a; 1993b), Mason
addresses these questions by arguing that ‘within public discourse, norms have
changed to the point that racism, largely understood as ‘old racism’, is now inter-
preted as a sign of uncivilised culture’ (2011: 12). ‘Old racism’ is here understood
as the belief in the biological superiority of some races over others, which, con-
sequently, legitimised claims to moral superiority and a variety of forms of bio-
political control: extermination, exclusion, confinement, economic exploitation
and paternalistic tutelage. As discussed in Chapter 1, in the aftermath of World
War II, the replacement of the concept of race with those of culture and ethnicity
led to the consolidation of culturalist forms of racism over its pseudo-scientifically
informed manifestations. Nonetheless, racism is still commonly referred to as
those speeches and practices that are motivated by a belief in racial superiority
(11). Because of this shift in public discourses, for Mason, ‘racial tolerance’ has
become a highly visible symbol of the degree of social progress achieved by any
society and, as such, associated with the quality of the goods and services that
a nation can offer to any other (14). In a globalised economy, in which West-
ern nations increasingly depend on trading with non-Western nations, the accu-
sation of being racist has become, as a result, highly damaging (14). Australia
is no exception. The history itself of the Overseas Student Program exemplifies
this stance. To strengthen its economic position in the Asia-Pacific region, Aus-
tralia had to first prove it was not racially biased against its Asian neighbouring
countries. Over time, international education has become the third biggest export
industry of the nation, making its economy dependent even more on the goodwill
of those countries it first opened up to as a white saviour. From this perspec-
tive, Mason argues, Australian federal representatives preferred rationalising the
attacks as a matter of urban crime rather than racism to protect the image of the
nation against the impression that ‘incivility is an “enduring characteristic” of (its)
population’ (van Dijk cited in Mason 2011: 43). But if this was the case – and to a
great extent it certainly was – why were Indian student representatives and media
depicted as overreacting even after the first admissions that some of the attacks
were racially motivated? In other words, if it was simply a matter of denying the
 ‘Is Australia racist?’ 133
cognitive meaning that the attacks had for both Indian students and their repre-
sentatives, why was it so important for Australian representatives and media to
prove that their Indian counterparts were wrong in their assessment of the attacks?
Conversely, why was it so important for the Indian students and their supporters
that Australian representatives acknowledged the attacks as racist?
Mason indirectly addresses these questions when pointing out that protect-
ing the Australian brand was equally necessary to sustain the ‘ “dominant white
consensus” within global politics’ that non-Western nations are not as tolerant
and culturally advanced as Western nations are (Van Dijk cited in Mason 2011:
44). The necessity to uphold this consensus seems to suggest that acknowledging
racism would have jeopardised Australia’s position in an international order in
which entitlement to judge but not be judged by non-Western nations appears to
dictate moral authority. Unfortunately, Mason does not elaborate further on this
suggestion, leaving this study with the task of examining the relationship between
accusation of racism and the authority of making judgements. To do so, the next
section reviews the feminist literature on anger as an emotional response to rac-
ism, its uses as a political means to claim moral authority and, conversely, the
need for dominant groups to dismiss others’ anger to maintain their power.

The uses of anger: moral agency and the politics

of expression
In her landmark essay ‘The Uses of Anger’4 Audre Lorde addresses white femi-
nist’s commitment to fight racism in the form of a response to their accusation
that women of Color’s5 expressions of anger are ‘useless’ and ‘disruptive’ in the
forging of solidarity across racial lines (127). Her response to this accusation is
as simple as it is powerful: anger is her and her sisters’ affective response to rac-
ism. Women6 who want to respond to racism must respond to the anger brought
into being by its daily manifestations: ‘exclusion’, ‘unquestioned privileges’,
‘silence’, ‘misnaming’ and ‘co-optation’:

My response to racism is anger. I have lived with that anger, ignoring it,
feeding upon it, learning to use it before it laid my visions to waste, for most
of my life. Once I did it in silence, afraid of the weight. My fear of that
anger taught me nothing. Your fear of that anger will teach you nothing, also.
Women responding to racism means women responding to anger; the anger of
exclusion, of unquestioned privilege, of racial distortions, of silence, ill-use,
stereotyping, defensiveness, misnaming, betrayal, and co-optation.
(Lorde 2007: 124, emphasis added)

As this passage exemplifies, for Lorde, anger is inextricable from racism. It

encapsulates the multifarious affective embodied experience of having been born
and lived in a ‘world that hates [women of Color’s] very existence outside its ser-
vices’ (129). So engendered, as she recounts, anger is the emotion she attempted
to ignore, to live with in ‘silence’, for the fear that expressing it outwardly would
134 ‘Is Australia racist?’
provoke ‘contempt’, ‘censure’, ‘judgement’ and ‘annihilation’ (42). Yet as Lorde
warns her fellow women, when suppressed by fear, anger could not teach her any-
thing let alone show to her that it could be ‘expressed and translated into action’
for ‘progress and change’ (127). But once she both acknowledged her anger and
learnt to not be fearful of it, it cleared her ‘visions’ for a future freed of racism
and sexism. For Lorde, anger can do so because it is ‘loaded with information
and energy’ that – when put to ‘use’ – functions as ‘a liberating and strengthening
act of clarification’ about who are ‘genuine enemies’ and who are not (127). For
Lorde, anger can thus be understood as a form of knowledge based on and accrued
through a systematic examination of the causes of oppression and the tactics
employed to encourage hostility and divisions among those who are oppressed to
prevent radical change (48). Or, as Sue Kim has commented, for Lorde, anger is
women of Color’s response to racism because it epitomises a ‘political analysis’
of the conditions of their oppression, the assessment of a ‘problematic situation’
that furthermore aims to envision alternative ways of living together (2014: 39).
In Killing Rage, bell hooks speaks of her anger at racism in a similar fash-
ion. In recounting her discovery of anger as an emotion she could ‘claim’, she
describes repressing anger as an integral part of the process of colonisation of
African-Americans (1996: 14). To survive in the past, she writes, and to aspire
to economic well-being in the present, the anger of African-Americans at rac-
ism must be ‘permanently silenced’ (13–14). Socialised into repression, hooks’s
awakening of anger was enabled by two concomitant factors: her letting go of
some of the terror of white people (when moving from the segregated South to
the white-liberal West Coast) and her reading of the work of scholars and activists
on racism and colonialism:

When I first left the apartheid South . . . I was not in touch with my rage. I had
been raised to dream only of racial uplift . . . to turn the other cheek. How-
ever, the fresh air of white liberalism encountered when I went to the West
Coast to attend college . . . let go some of the terror and mistrust of white peo-
ple that living in apartheid had bred in me. That terror keeps all rage at bay.
I remember my first feelings of political rage against racism. They surfaced
within me after I had read Fanon, Memmi, Freire. They came as I was reading
Malcolm X’ autobiography. As Cornel West suggests . . . I felt that Malcolm
X dared black folks to claim our emotional subjectivity and that we could do
this only by claiming our rage.
(16, emphasis added)

Like Lorde, hooks describes anger at racism as an emotion she had always had
but could not delve into, let alone express, because of the terror of being punished
accordingly. Anger had to be repressed by means of negating the reality of one’s
living conditions: ‘[w]e lived in denial, and living that way we were able to mute
our rage’ (14). In the face of terror, hooks poses denial of ‘the myriad abuses and
humiliations black folks suffered daily’ (14) as a necessary tactic to survive. Yet
when threatened with punishment, ‘to turn the other cheek’ does not amount to
 ‘Is Australia racist?’ 135
relinquishing anger. Rather, as hooks recounts, in these circumstances, denying
racism only enables survival by ‘muting’ anger – that is, taking sound or voice
away from affective expressions that would otherwise be perceived as being too
loud, a nuisance in the unfolding of everyday life. In this sense, to deny racism
and, consequently ‘to mute’ anger should, more productively, be understood as
a suspension or interruption of a person’s own assessment of their suffering at
the hands of systematic racism. The non-definitive nature of the work of repres-
sion is further highlighted by hooks’s description of her encounter with the work
of Fanon, Memmi, Freire and Malcolm X. When reading their work, hooks felt
anger surfacing within her.
To surface means to ‘come to surface’, ‘to appear or become obvious after
being hidden’ and ‘to come into public view’ (‘Surface’ 2015). While these vari-
ous applications of the verb differ slightly, all point to the process of an object
coming into view or exposure. This process can be understood as the acquisition
of visibility as a new characteristic of the object, something that the object had
lacked before the process began. Likewise, surfacing can be understood as the
process of an object acquiring definition or clarity – that is, the quality of ‘being
easily seen or heard’ or ‘being expressed . . . in a very exact way’ (‘Surface’ 2015).
In the process described by hooks, what acquired definition or clarity7 was
as much her understanding of the working of racism (which she was previously
required to deny) as it was her anger at racism itself (which she had to repress).
In both instances, to see with clarity amounted for her to see what was previously
concealed or hidden in ways that make their denial impossible.8 As hooks engages
with the political analysis of racist oppression as an un-deniable yet revocable
condition of reality, anger becomes impossible to ‘mute’. She has to claim anger
and, in claiming anger, work towards defining her subjectivity outside a system
which wants her to be just compliant.
For Lorde and hooks, anger is their response to racism, insofar as anger simul-
taneously informs and follows from their systematic analysis of their living condi-
tions as members of an oppressed collective. The working of anger as both cause
and effect of political examination points out to its status of an ‘outlaw’ emotion.
As Alison Jaggar describes them, outlaw emotions are those emotions that con-
trovert socially prescribed emotional responses to events over-determined by rac-
ism, homophobia and sexism (1989: 144). Jaggar is here drawing on cognitivist
theories that apprehend emotions not so much as physiological responses but as
intentional judgements or assessments (133). According to these theories, emo-
tions are intentional because they always implicate an object. When we are angry,
we are not just angry. Rather, we are angry at somebody or about something
(Spelman 1989: 265). The ‘aboutness’ of emotions then warrants that we identify
our emotions based on the judgements or assessments they require. Anger, for
instance, entails the judgement that we have been wronged or insulted (270). Yet
our assessments are as personal as they are socially informed. When we judge
that we have been wronged or insulted we typically conclude so according to
the social values and expectations that shape our understanding of wrongdoing
or insult (Jaggar 1989: 143). This prompts Jaggar to conclude that the ways we
136 ‘Is Australia racist?’
experience emotions follow social conventions that are conformed to the interest
of dominant groups (1980: 143). As a result, those who ‘pay a disproportionally
high price for maintaining the status quo’ are more likely to experience outlaw
emotions. Their social and material circumstances might impede them to respond
emotionally as conventionally expected (144). Outlaw emotions are thus likely to
cause a clash in judgement or assessment of events shared with others and, conse-
quently, open our perception of the world to alternative understandings:

They may provide the first indications that something is wrong with the way
alleged facts have been construed, with accepted understandings of how
things are. Conventionally unexpected or inappropriate emotions may pre-
cede our conscious recognition that accepted descriptions and justifications
often conceal as much as reveal the prevailing state of affairs. Only when we
reflect on our initially puzzling irritability, revulsion, anger, or fear, may we
bring to consciousness our ‘gut-level’ awareness that we are in a situation of
coercion, cruelty, injustice, or danger.
(145, emphasis added)

Outlaw emotions thus operate as ‘indications’ of social injustice and – if they are
reflected upon – pave the way for understandings of reality that diverge from or
contest hegemonic ones. As such, outlaw emotions represent a not-yet-conscious
source of knowledge which might be experienced with confusion or fear at their
first instance (144). Yet when they are acknowledged and addressed – as Lorde
and hooks did with their anger – outlaw emotions can develop into thorough
political analyses and stances, especially when they are shared or validated by
others (144).
As grounds of new critical perspectives, for Jaggar, outlaw emotions moreover
contest the assumption in Western epistemology that emotions are antithetical to
knowledge production. As well documented in feminist theory, this assumption
has maintained an unequal distribution of power. Dominant groups have associ-
ated themselves with reason while associating emotions with subordinated groups
(141). Consequently, subordinated groups’ claims against dominant ones are often
rendered as evidence of their emotionality and are, on those terms, disregarded
(142). Yet anger represents an exception. As Spelman has noted, whereas subor-
dinated groups are expected to ‘have emotions run their lives, their anger will not
be tolerated’ (1989: 264). Lorde and hooks’s accounts of their fear at expressing
anger exemplifies this stance. When not violently punished, the anger of subor-
dinated groups is likely to be pathologised as ‘hysteria or rage’9 (264). So why
is anger denied to subordinated groups? What makes their anger so threatening?
The conflation of anger, rage and hysteria highlights how anger per se is not
necessarily conceived of as divorced from reason. Rather, according to Spelman,
in the history of Western thought, anger has been understood as an appropriate
response to social events (264). Like Jaggar, Spelman approaches emotions as
intentional judgements (265). Further, she highlights how social values and expec-
tations affect not only the way we assess the objects of our emotions but also the
 ‘Is Australia racist?’ 137
ways in which we or others judge our responses to them as being: ‘appropriate or
inappropriate’, ‘reasonable or unreasonable’, ‘justified’ or unjustified’ (265). This
applies to anger too. Socially established criteria are used to assess expressions of
anger as either right or wrong. To be deemed right, anger must be expressed with
control – that is, for the right reason, in the right circumstances and expressed
with the right intensity or manner (265). When satisfying all of these criteria,
expressions of anger are to be collectively acknowledged as right regardless of
who expresses it. Yet when subordinated groups express anger this anger is typi-
cally perceived as ‘being on the verge of excess or already excessive’ regardless
(Campbell 1997: 172). For Spelman, this is the case because of what anger says
about the ways we regard each other and ourselves as moral agents (263), a point
that she develops by examining anger as a relation between subject and object.
When we are angry at someone, we judge both the action or belief that caused
wrongdoing and the person whose action or belief brought it about. We then hold
that person responsible as blameworthy for the wrongdoing he committed because
he should have known better. In Spelman’s words,

[I]nsofar as my anger is appropriate, there must be good reason to believe

he is responsible for the wrong or hurtful deed: if he didn’t do it, or did it in
circumstances in which he couldn’t be said to be responsible for what he did,
my anger would not be justified. My being angry at him means, in addition,
not just I hold him responsible, but that I find him blameworthy, since I think
that what he did is the kind of thing he shouldn’t have done.
(1989: 266)

Anger thus involves negative assessments that charge our relations to others
affectively. Our anger becomes a matter of negative regard, and this regard might
change our relationships with those with whom we are angry. But anger might
also implicate a change in the way we come to regard ourselves as a result. When
we are angry at someone, we judge his conduct according to our own standard.
We become his judges regardless of what our position is in a given material and
social arrangement. For example, even when we are angry at someone considered
our superior, by expressing anger we are also expressing the belief that, at least
on this occasion, we are equal to him. In so doing, our anger, especially when we
express it, can reduce or even annihilate the distance engendered by asymmetrical
power relations. In this sense, Spelman argues, dominant groups are afraid of
subordinate people’s expressions of anger. Anger is, in this case, perceived as an
act of insubordination:

But the regard I have for myself when I get angry at him is perhaps even more
interesting than what my being angry implies about my regard for him. To be
angry at him is to make myself, at least on this occasion, his judge – to have,
and to express, a standard against which I assess his conduct. If he is in other
ways regarded as my superior, when I get angry at him I at least on that occa-
sion am regarding him as no more no less than my equal. So my anger is in
138 ‘Is Australia racist?’
such a case an act of insubordination: I am acting as if I have as much right
to judge him as he assumes he has to judge me.
(266, emphasis added)

In approaching anger as a relation, Spelman’s analysis highlights how subordi-

nated people’s expression of anger functions as a standard of conduct that ques-
tions the alleged moral superiority of those who position themselves as judges of
all. When expressing anger, the subordinate person is questioning the authority of
those who are dominant but also, and more importantly, stating they have standard
of judgement themselves (267). This makes of anger an act of insubordination,
the emotion by which subordinated people can claim themselves as moral agents.
Or, as hooks states, echoing Toni Morrison, ‘ “anger is better, there is a presence in
anger” . . . the assertion of subjectivity colonizers do not want to see’ (1996: 12).
Throughout history, the work of not seeing subordinated people as moral agents
has been carried out in several ways: threatening punishment; mystifying oppres-
sion, supplying ‘inducements to placidity or madness’ (Spelman 1989: 267) and
controlling access to social resources necessary to express anger effectively, for
example, education, justice and political power (Campbell 1997: 170). Not seeing
is performed too by not listening or listening to the expressions of anger of sub-
ordinated groups in ways that legitimise their dismissal, the latter of which takes
several forms. As Lorde and hooks point out, expressions of anger can be miscon-
strued as a cause of fear or intimidation, an expression of aggression that can be
only met with silence, immobility or defensiveness (Lorde 2007: 131–132; hooks
1984: 11–14). Anger can likewise be, as mentioned, depicted as being ‘useless’
and ‘disruptive’ (Lorde 2007: 127) or pathologised as ‘hysteria or rage’ (Spelman
1989: 264). All these responses to anger at racism share one characteristic in com-
mon; they constitute a critique of the form of anger’s expression rather than its
content (Campbell 1997: 167–172). As Lorde writes,

I speak out of direct and particular anger at an academic conference, and a

white woman says, ‘Tell me how you feel but don’t say it too harshly or I
cannot hear you’. But is it my manner that keeps her from hearing, or the
threat of a message that her life may change?
(2007: 127, emphasis added)

Lorde’s listener explicitly requires her to express how she feels in a mode she
deems hearable. What she disputes, seemingly, is not the content of Lorde’s anger
but the tone of its expression. For her, Lorde expresses her anger ‘too harshly’
such that she ‘cannot hear’ anything at all. She makes excessive harshness
equivalent to a loud noise disrupting communication, a disturbance interrupting
an otherwise orderly process of reception. Depicted as disturbance, it is Lorde’s
excessive harshness that stands in the way; if Lorde could only turn her harshness
down, the listener and everybody else in the room would hear her message out.
Conversely, if Lorde continues to express her anger ‘too harshly’ the listener and
everybody else in the room will be legitimated to stop listening. If the latter is the
 ‘Is Australia racist?’ 139
case, Lorde’s listeners cannot be held responsible for their failure to listen. Rather,
Lorde herself should be held responsible for them ‘not caring or no longer caring
to listen’ (168).
As Sue Campbell has noted in her analysis of Lorde’s experience, critiques
of the mode of anger’s expression, such as saying it ‘too harshly’, constitute a
political strategy that ‘block’ anger (169). They do so by means of engendering a
double shift. On the one hand, they shift attention from ‘blameworthy behaviour
to the mode of expressing blame’ (169). On the other hand, they shift responsibil-
ity from ‘the people who could do something about the blameworthy behaviour
to the expresser herself, who is now meant to account for her behaviour’ (169).
Through this double shift, those who express their anger as a result of problems
they face become the problem, the cause that blocks ‘the goodwill that would be
exercised toward them’ if they were not too angry (170). As Lorde writes, when
women of Color express their anger at racism they are told as response that they
are ‘ “creating a mood of hopelessness” . . . or “standing in the way of trusting
communication and action” ’ (cited in Campbell 1997: 170).10
Campbell describes such critiques of anger’s expressive modes as ‘techniques
of interpretive dismissal’ (171). She defines them so to emphasise the power that
listeners as interpreters of others’ expressions have in distorting ‘intended anger’
into emotions they feel socially legitimised to dismiss: bitterness, rage or hysteria
(168–172). That interpreters can exercise this power regardless of social norms
establishing appropriateness shows how expressions of anger must be interpreted
as such by those towards whom it is directed to exert the acknowledgment of
moral authority. Building on this insight, the next section examines Australian
media and official representatives’ interpretation of their Indian counterparts’
expressions of anger as hysteria.

Hysteria v. denial: anger and the politics of interpretive

dismissal
As Greg Sheridan noted in an opinion piece for The Australian, the Indian stu-
dents’ protests constituted the very first case in Australia’s history in which the
federal government was compelled into action by the media of an Asian nation on
an issue that would have been otherwise dealt with as a domestic matter (2009).
In fact, in India, the debate on the attacks started before Indian students rallied
in Melbourne on May 31, 2009. The coverage of the attacks in the Indian media
started a few days earlier, and their scope went beyond informing the public. The
news channel Times Now in particular actively prompted both Indian and Aus-
tralian officials into preventing further attacks. Daily, it reported any new attack
on Indian students and kept the count of the victims to prove the assaults were
not sporadic instances of urban violence.11 Quantity and frequency of the attacks
were pointed out as evidence of a growing anti-Indian sentiment in Australia.
This sentiment was not understood necessarily as an expression of white suprem-
acy. Rather, the Indian media attempted to draw public attention to the fact that
Indian students were systematically targeted for a mixed array of reasons: their
140 ‘Is Australia racist?’
racial visibility, the expectation that they would be subservient and resentment
for the growing economic prosperity of India (cfr. ‘Racism beyond shame’ 2009
and ‘Brutality after Racism’ 2009). Wedded to the cause of proving racism as the
reason of the attacks, Times Now fiercely questioned the Australian representa-
tives’ and media’s response to the attacks from the outset. Victoria Police’s safety
tips were promptly cast as an attempt to shift the blame for the violence onto its
victims and the Australian media’s silence on the attacks interpreted as an attempt
to black out the issue from public attention (cfr. ‘Racism beyond shame’ 2009).
Compared to their Indian counterparts, the Australian media was relatively
slow. In Australia, the coverage of the attacks started after Indian students staged
their first protest in Melbourne. As mentioned earlier, public reactions to the
protests and the accusation of racism rapidly evolved into a national debate on
whether Australia was still a racist country, with positions ranging from outright
rejection to acknowledgment that Australia was still a racist country. Yet as the
protest broke into the streets of Melbourne, Indian students’ anger at the attacks
they were suffering, for the first time – and contrary to the widespread perception
of them being ‘very passive and very quiet-natured people’ – gained full public
attention across the two countries as well as internationally. The Times of India
opened its report of the protest:

Shaken by a wave of racial assaults, thousands of Indian students and sup-

porters rallied here on Sunday, demanding justice for victims of recent attacks
as Australia scrambled to contain the rising anger and frustration within the
community.
(‘Thousands rally against racism’ 2009, emphasis added)

Focusing on the violent turn the protest took when police attempted to disperse
the students, The Age wrote,

Yesterday, the Indian students’ anger and frustration spilled on to the city’s
streets as scuffles broke out during their protest against the continued violent
attacks . . . Mr Gupta blamed outsiders for the trouble outside the station, say-
ing it was always meant to be a peaceful rally. ‘People have been angry over
the past few weeks, especially the young people, but it was supposed to be a
peaceful rally. Unfortunately there were some agitators there, stirring things
up . . . They had their own agenda’, he said.
(‘Indian anger boils over’ 2009, emphasis added)

Taking a more diplomatic angle, The Sydney Morning Herald reported on New
Delhi’s reactions to the attacks:

Canberra is battling to reassure New Delhi that Australians aren’t racist, fear-
ful the outcry over attacks on Indian students may harm relations and stop the
flow of lucrative education dollars. New Delhi has raised its concerns about
 ‘Is Australia racist?’ 141
assaults on its students for more than a year, and is now warning it could
jeopardise the numbers of Indians studying in Australia, worth $2 billion a
year . . . The assaults are attracting international headlines after Australia’s
Indian community began voicing outrage following the recent screwdriver
stabbing of Sravan Kumar Theerthala, 25, in Melbourne.
(O’Malley and Drape 2009, emphasis added)

The Herald Sun also briefly dwelt on the Indian diplomatic reaction to the con-
tinued attacks:

The Indian Government expressed to Australia its ‘deep anguish’ over a

recent spate of attacks on its students, warning growth in the education sector
could be jeopardised if nothing is done to stop the violence. Education-related
travel is Australia’s biggest service export to India, valued at $2 billion in
2007/08, according to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The vio-
lence has made headlines across India and internationally, creating potential
problems for Australia’s $15.5 billion education export market.
(Roberts 2009)

In conjunction with the coverage of the protests in Melbourne, the Herald Sun
dedicated an entire article to summarising Indian media’s response to the protest.
Citing from an editorial of The Times of India, it reported,

‘It’s difficult to put down the attacks on Indian students in Australia as stray
incidents any longer’ . . . ‘Instances of Indian students being assaulted there
often grievously have been one too many recently’. ‘These students, like thou-
sands of others, went to that country in search of educational opportunities to
fulfil their dreams. Recent incidents, though, will not inspire confidence among
current or prospective Indian students considering Australia as a destination’.
(Bane 2009)

As these passages illustrate, in organising the protest and claiming that the vio-
lence that they had been subjected to was racist in nature, Indian students publicly
expressed their anger in a way that was impossible to ignore. In fact, as the then-
FISA president Gupta stated in the course of the radio debate ‘Are we racist or are
we just violent?’ (774 ABC Melbourne 2009), FISA had decided to make the alle-
gation of racism public as a last resort. In his words: ‘for three years we have been
telling behind closed doors – to the state government, to the federal government,
to the Victoria Police – and there was not action’ (cited in Osuri 2010: 95). Osuri
describes this decision as a media strategy (2010: 95). Tired of being ignored by
the Australian authorities, Indian students contacted the Indian media in India
and then, seizing on the exposure they created, organised the rally that made their
voice heard internationally. Indian students had to involve the public opinion of
both India and Australia to have their anger addressed and, accordingly, their
142 ‘Is Australia racist?’
experience of victimisation understood as a systematic problem affecting their
community in Australia. But what exactly were Indian students angry about?
As discussed earlier, according to cognitivist theories of emotions, anger entails
negative judgements or assessments that are intentional insofar as they are charac-
teristically about something or at someone. Anger is thus understood as an emo-
tion that must have one or more objects to be defined as such. In the case of Indian
students, we can individuate at least three objects. Initially, Indian students were
angry at being violently targeted for their racial visibility, what Indian students
themselves reported as ‘curry bashing’ (see Gupta cited in Osuri 2010: 94). As
they sought assistance over the course of three years from the Victoria Police and
the Victoria state and federal governments, their anger accrued another object:
the institutions that failed to address their concerns as seriously as they expected
them to. Therefore, by the time the first protest broke in Melbourne, Indian stu-
dents’ anger was directed as much at their racial victimisation as at institutions’
lack of proper response to their request for intervention. In the aftermath of the
first protest, this stance was clearly articulated by Indian students and community
representatives:

Student leaders said this kind of violence is racially motivated and had not
been properly addressed by government authorities such as police and politi-
cians. ‘There’s a name for them: “curry bashing” . . . “Let’s go curry bash-
ing” ’ . . . But the more prevalent police response, the students say, should
have been to treat the attacks more seriously . . . ‘The students are frus-
trated . . . Whenever they go to the authorities, they believe they are not taken
seriously’.
(Callinan 2009)

As this passage shows, through their protest, Indian students expressed their anger
at their victimisation but also made public their negative assessment of police
and government institutions’ modus operandi. Australian authorities were not
only held responsible for the continued attacks but also blamed for not acting
against them promptly. In expressing their anger publicly, Indian students also
individuated the third object: the denial of racism as motive of the attacks. As
demonstrated earlier, this denial ensued from Australian authorities’ interpretation
of the attacks as a matter of urban crime and the related attribution of physical
vulnerability to Indian students as an inherent trait of their bodies. This attribution
was epitomised by the naming of Indian students as ‘soft targets’. Indian students
firmly refused to take on this label and in so doing maintained their understand-
ing of the attacks as motivated not by opportunism but by racism. This stance
emerged forcefully on two occasions. The first occasion took place just a few days
before the rally in Melbourne, when the Victoria Police announced that a police
officer was to be sent to India on a ‘mission to meet with students planning to
visit Australia and to teach them how to stay safe’ (Waters and MacBean 2009).
The Indian student community, represented by the Islamic Council of Victoria on
this occasion, did not welcome the initiative, which they understood as an attempt
 ‘Is Australia racist?’ 143
to address the problem of violence by shifting the responsibility of preventing
assaults onto Indian students themselves:

But according to the Islamic Council of Victoria it’s all an ill-conceived idea.
The Council’s Nazeem Hussein says he is disappointed more is not being
done to stop the attacks and protect the foreign visitors. ‘I think it’s one thing
to help the victims look less like victims, sorry to look less Indian, but I think
it’s another thing to really attack the core issue here which is racism’, he said.
‘And we’re seeing not as much from the police that we would have probably
expected’.
(Waters and MacBean 2009, emphasis added)

The second occasion occurred during the rally in Melbourne, when then-Police
Chief Commissioner Overland addressed the protesters with the intention of per-
suading them to return to their homes (Roberts 2009). Contrary to his intention,
his reference to the aforementioned safety initiative further enraged the students
gathered at Flinders Street station, leading them to protract the protest in the
form of a sit-in (Roberts 2009; see also Overland 2009). In taking such action,
Indian students clearly refused to be held responsible for the attacks and reiterated
their position that it was Australian authorities’ duty to protect their safety. On
this stance, the Indian media supported the students and, as mentioned, likewise
resisted Australian officials’ attempt at construing the attacks as a matter of urban
crime and not racism.
Australian representatives’ labelling of Indian students as ‘soft targets’ points to
their narrow acknowledgement of Indian students’ anger alongside their attempt
to define the significance that the attacks ought to have for all parties involved in
the debate. As mentioned earlier, according to Campbell, those who are held as
blameworthy for racism have the power to block anger by means of interpreting
its expressions as some other emotion they can dismiss (1997: 168–172). For
her, this is the case in that – contrary to the assumption that feelings are formed
prior to their expression – emotions are individuated as particulars by and through
their expression in relation to occasions that are shared with others. Put more
simply, for Campbell, we typically define whether we are angry or bitter based on
the acts we employ to express the way we feel about occasions that elicit them.
Because feelings about occasions are expressed in contexts that are shared, oth-
ers’ understandings and interpretations of our expressive acts exert an influence
on the way we understand our emotions and the affective significance that cer-
tain occasions have in our lives as individuals or as members of a collective. In
this sense, according to Campbell, emotions amount to communicative acts that
can result in expressive success or failure. In the first case, two or more subjects
achieve a mutual understanding of the affective significance that one or more
occasions has for each and all of them thanks to their ‘willingness to respond to
each other’s responses’ within a common context (129). In the second case, two or
more subjects fail to achieve a mutual understanding on the affective significance
that certain occasions have for each and all of them in spite of sharing a common
144 ‘Is Australia racist?’
context (128–131). With regard to public debates such as the one accompanying
Indian students’ protests, each case is important in that, as Campbell has observed,
when subordinated groups’ anger is dismissed, what comes to be dismissed is not
only the authority of their judgements of wrongdoing but also the understanding
they have of themselves and their lives as marked by events that they call and
count as ‘significant’ (171).
By understanding emotions as an act of communication, it is possible to con-
clude that, when they protested in Melbourne, the Indian students succeeded in
securing a sympathetic interpretation of their expressive acts – that is, getting
organised in an association, soliciting Indian media’s coverage of the attacks,
organising a rally, participating in debates and so on. All these acts were in fact
initially accepted as rightly expressing Indian students’ anger at the continued
attacks, as well as at the lack of a proper response by the authorities supposed to
protect them from violence and exploitation, which were, by then, two problems
widely known in India and Australia (see Chapter 3). By recognising their protests
as acts expressing anger, Indian students had, in other words, managed to have
their understanding of the attacks as a matter requiring immediate intervention
broadly accepted by both the Indian and Australian communities. Most impor-
tantly, by expressing their anger in ways that made other interpretations impossi-
ble, Indian students obtained voice and representation not only in India but also in
Australia. Yet this acceptance did not extend to their refusal of being labelled ‘soft
targets’. In this instance, Indian students’ and media’s expressions of anger met a
less sympathetic interpretation than the one received by their plea for protection.
It is no coincidence that as soon as the Australian representatives acknowledged
Indian students’ and media’s anger as an appropriate response, their anger began
to be interpreted in a more antagonistic manner.
As discussed earlier, according to Spelman, when members of subordinated
groups express anger, this anger functions as a reminder that they possess stand-
ards of conduct themselves, which, moreover, they are willing to apply to those
who dominate them. Understood as insubordination, we can appreciate how any
sustained interpretation of Indian students’ and media’s expressive acts as anger
would have amounted to acknowledging they had the moral authority to judge
Australian representatives’ conduct while holding them responsible for the attacks
until they were satisfied with the strategies designed to counter them. As already
argued, Indian students and part of the Indian media were not contented with the
solution proffered – providing adequate information about safety in Australia –
and as the attacks continued, their expectation for Australian authorities to fully
acknowledge that the attacks were racially motivated rose proportionally to the
number of attacks reported. In this sense, if Australian authorities continued to
interpret Indian students’ and media’s expressive acts as anger, they would have
to concurrently admit that Indian students’ and media’s expectation for acknowl-
edgment was as legitimate as their authority to judge Australians’ conduct. This
double admission would have not only compromised Australia’s reputation but
also seriously undermined its moral authority at determining the significance of
 ‘Is Australia racist?’ 145
both problems and solutions. Unsurprisingly, the Indian media’s response to the
attacks began to be dismissed as ‘hysterical’.
In July 2009, The Australian announced the visit of then-Minister of Immigra-
tion Chris Evans to India as an occasion ‘to repair damage done by the Indian
media’s “hysterical” reporting of attacks on Indians studying in Australia’ (‘Evans
off to India’ 2009). This was the first time the accusation of hysteria was lev-
elled against Indian media and significantly, this move resulted in positioning
their coverage of the attacks as not the result but the cause of diplomatic ‘damage’
between Australia and India. This positioning effectively shifts attention from
Australian authorities’ blameworthy behaviour – not stopping the attacks and not
acknowledging racism – onto the affective expressive modes employed to hold
them responsible. In this sense, Evans’s accusation of hysteria works as a tech-
nique of ‘interpretive dismissal’ (Campbell 1997: 171), namely disregarding the
anger of Indian students and media on the grounds that it had been expressed so
excessively that it had become impossible for Australian authorities to address it
constructively.
As Campbell has observed, techniques of interpretive dismissal such as accusing
others of hysterical behaviour block anger because of being used as ‘trait words’
(167). Put more simply, these indictments are typically employed less as an inter-
pretation of singular expressive acts than as descriptors of the emotional nature of
those who are so accused (166–167). For instance, when a person is accused of
hysteria it is not to say that the person overreacted on one or a few occasions but
rather that that person overreacted on one or few occasions because they are hys-
terical. Used as ‘trait words’, Campbell argues, these indictments dismiss subordi-
nated groups’ anger not because they attribute them with emotions but because they
characterise their entire ‘emotional lives as unhealthy’ (167). Likewise, Ahmed
has noted how the hierarchy between emotions and reason has been displaced by
a hierarchy between emotions: ‘some emotions are “elevated” as signs of cultiva-
tion, whilst others remain “lower” as signs of weakness’ (2004: 3). Accordingly,
‘cultivated’ emotions have been apprehended as instrumental to the development
of a ‘competent self’ and, as such, claimed by dominant groups as a further demon-
stration of their capacity to govern against and over those who are associated with
‘unruly’ emotions (3–4). Campbell and Ahmed’s distinctions between attributions
of emotionality show how critiques of the expressive modes of anger can function
as critiques of the very capacity of subordinated people to make judgements of
wrongdoing (Campbell 1997: 171), especially when the latter refuses the author-
ity of self-proclaimed emotionally healthy and competent dominant groups. It is
therefore relevant to trace how the accusation of hysteria evolved over the course
of the media debate between Australia and India.
Always in July 2009, Times Now aired the News Hour program’s episode ‘Yes,
It’s Racism’, which covered both attacks against Indian students and education
scams.12 In this episode, Times Now described Rudd’s praises to Indians’ gastro-
nomic contribution to Australia as an attempt to trivialise the attacks and reported
that the assault of an ABC Indian journalist13 was racially motivated. A wave of
146 ‘Is Australia racist?’
outraged responses immediately followed the airing of this episode. The Austral-
ian media accused Times Now of ‘lambasting’ Rudd as well as reporting facts
wrongly, as the aforementioned journalist herself claimed to have been attacked
by a fellow countryman (‘Indian media labels student exploitation “racism” ’
2009). Natasha Robinson and Amanda Hodge opened their article on the program
thus:

As the Indian media’s response to the dangers faced by Indian students and
migrants in Australia reached a new level of hysteria yesterday with Kevin
Rudd called a racist, the undercover reporter said. . . ‘I know it was not a
racially motivated attack’, she said. ‘Most sane Indian students in Sydney
and Melbourne don’t think these are racist-motivated attacks at all’.
(2009, emphasis added)

Minimising the attacks as ‘dangers’, the journalists’ reference to the Indian nation-
als as students and migrants reinforces the depiction of the former as a target
made ‘soft’ by the lack of that ‘innate’ streetwise knowledge armouring Austral-
ians against the perils of living in big cities (see Chapter 3). In contraposition to
the attacks, the anger of Indian media is magnified into hysteria which ‘reached a
new level’. The reference to a ‘new level’ construes the media response as a series
of expressive acts that had escalated over time, effectively extending the accusa-
tion of hysteria from their coverage of the latest events to all those preceding the
airing of the episode ‘Yes, It’s Racism’. Used retrospectively, the accusation of
hysteria interprets Indian media’s expressions of anger as a reaction that had been
excessive from the onset. The excessive nature of this reaction is subsequently
rendered as symptomatic of an unhealthy affective attachment to racism as an
explanation of the attacks by means of contrast. Those who are ‘sane’ see the
attacks for what they are, namely ‘dangers’ of living in big cities and not racially
motivated ‘at all’. Following this contrast, the reference to a ‘new level’ appears to
suggest that Australian media had long waited for their counterparts to report the
attacks reasonably, that is, on the basis of what they deemed an objective assess-
ment of the evidence provided by police investigations and government inquir-
ies. Accordingly, the accusation of hysteria was often either interspersed with or
replaced by vague references to facts and statistics. For instance, in commenting
on the program ‘Yes, It’s Racism’, Victorian Premier Brumby stated,

‘We’re determined to make sure that we portray the right message and the
right image about being educated in our state’, he told reporters in Melbourne
on Tuesday. ‘The fact of the matter is that we live in one of the safest places
anywhere in the world, that’s what the objective statistics show’.
(‘Vic “safe” ’ 2009, emphasis added)

Starting with Evans, the accusation of hysteria began to be used more often, espe-
cially after the stabbing to death of twenty-one-year-old accountant graduate Nitin
Garg on January 2, 2010. The death of Garg – the first casualty in the spate of
 ‘Is Australia racist?’ 147
attacks – inevitably triggered a new wave of anger both in India and in Australia.
This anger compelled Indian authorities to respond more firmly than they previ-
ously had. In condemning the murder of Garg as a ‘heinous crime on humanity’
and ‘an uncivilised brutal attack on innocent Indians’ (Wilson and Callick 2010),
Indian External Affairs Minister Somanahalli Mallaiah Krishna threatened diplo-
matic actions against Australia, including issuing a travel advisory (Wilson and
Callick 2010). As the body of another Indian national was found partially burnt
in NSW on January 6, 2010, the Indian government followed through its commit-
ment to taking action and released an eight-point travel advisory warning both
Indian nationals planning to study in or visit Australia and those who were already
there about the rise in attacks. Significantly, the advisory refrained from defining
the attacks as being racially motivated, and it merely encouraged Indian nationals
to take basic precautions along the lines of the ‘streetwise’ safety tips given by the
Victoria Police. As The Times of India reported,

Succumbing to popular outrage over continuing attacks on Indian students in

Australia, the government on Tuesday issued an advisory warning students
heading to Australia for studies and those already there. . . ‘There have been
several incidents of robbery and assault on Indians in Australia, particularly
in Melbourne, which has seen an increase in violence on its streets in recent
years, with the offenders suspected to be mainly young people in their teens
and early 20s. Increasingly also, the acts of violence are often accompanied
by verbal abuse, fuelled by alcohol and drugs’, the advisory said.
(‘Advisory asks students’ 2010)

Despite the absence of any direct accusation of racism, the Indian government
began to be associated with the Indian media for conveying the ‘outrage’ of its
nationals at the attacks and acting accordingly. For instance, then-Acting Premier
of Victoria Rob Hull stated that contrary to any misrepresentation, Melbourne was
a safe and welcoming city, but he also demanded Krishna to show ‘restraint’ in his
response to the latest events:

‘Whilst warnings are entirely a matter for the Indian government, everyone
needs to realise that Melbourne is a welcoming, open place that certainly
welcomes Indian students and students from all around the world’ . . . He
also called on the Indian government to show restraint in its response to the
killing. ‘People should just show some restraint and allow the police to get on
with the job of investigating this callous crime’, he said.
(‘Aus audacity’ 2010, emphasis added)

Hull’s call for ‘restraint’ perfectly epitomises the Australian authorities’ refusal
to address the Indian government’s expression of grievance through a critique of
the mode of expression. To show restraint, Krishna’s decision to issue an advisory
had to have been interpreted as an exaggerated response to the death of Garg in the
first place. Unpacking the logic of this interpretation, as the cause and modalities
148 ‘Is Australia racist?’
of the fatality were yet to be determined, any reaction to the death of Garg other
than cautiousness could only be dictated by the same emotional incapacitation
to assess events objectively characterising the Indian media. Conversely, con-
strued as an expression of emotional competency, Hull’s call for ‘restraint’ can
be understood as an attempt to re-establish the exclusive authority of Australia in
determining the significance that attacks ought to have for all parts involved in the
debate. It is no coincidence that Hull’s statement ends by positioning Krishna’s
response as an obstacle to the police’s work of carrying out such determination. In
the same vein, then-Acting Foreign Minister Simon Crean demanded the Indian
government to not ‘whip up hysteria’:

Amid outrage in India, Australian Acting Foreign Minister Simon Crean yes-
terday said there was no evidence to suggest that the attack on Garg was
racially motivated and asked New Delhi not to whip up ‘hysteria’ over such
incidents. . . . Asked about comments by his Indian counterpart S. M. Krishna,
who urged Australia to respond to the ‘uncivilised brutal attack on innocent
Indians’, Crean said he hoped ‘wiser heads will prevail’.
(‘Aus audacity’ 2010, emphasis added)

Like Hull’s injunction to allow the police to proceed with their investigation,
Crean’s reference to a lack of evidence laboured towards maintaining Australia’s
authority in assessing the nature of the murder and the right course of action for
justice. Connecting evidence with the capacity to make objective assessments,
this statement too relied on the characterisation of the Indian representatives
as subjects emotionally incapable of making judgements of wrongdoing. Once
again, on the presumption it lacked prudence, Krishna’s request for prompt action
was construed as fanning ‘hysteria’ instead of as an appropriate affective response
to the loss of an Indian national. Crean’s positioning of Australian authorities as
those who ‘will prevail’ further reveals the self-attribution of a higher capacity to
make assessments. Armoured with the confidence of their moral superiority, Hull
and Crean effectively legitimised the whole of the nation from stopping attend-
ing to the anger of Indian media and representatives. By dismissing this anger as
symptomatic of emotional incapacitation, their statements not only disavowed
racism as a motive of Garg’s death but also attempted to shift the blame for the
strained diplomatic relationships from the Australian to the Indian authorities.
However, the Indian media, led by Times Now, refused to be construed as ‘hys-
terical’. Rather, they firmly countered this representation by reproaching the Aus-
tralian representatives for being in ‘denial’ of the evidence that the attacks were
racially motivated (see ‘From Australia’ 2009). As the debate further escalated
after the release of the travel advisory, Times Now also accused the Australian
officials of blaming the Indian media’s expression of anger to divert attention
from their failure to protect Indian students against continued attacks (‘Unable to
act’ 2010). According to Mason, the Indian media’s accusation of denying racism
represented their attempt to ‘unmask Australia’s image as a champion of justice
and civility’ (2011: 48). Yet racism per se cannot be denied effectively without
 ‘Is Australia racist?’ 149
anger at racism being likewise muted. To deny racism, Australian authorities also
had to dismiss the anger of Indian students, media and representatives as sympto-
matic of an inherent incapacity to appraise wrongdoing. This dismissal was neces-
sary for them to uphold the legitimacy of their moral authority in determining the
affective significance that the attacks ought to have across the two countries and
internationally. The Indian media’s refusal to be labelled ‘hysterical’ can there-
fore be understood more precisely as an attempt to resist Australia’s distortion of
their anger and an assertion that this form of moral subordination was no longer
acceptable.
As the debate eventually wound down, leaving little resolution to the many
problems the attacks raised, it is difficult to establish which explanation prevailed
in the end beyond the borders of each nation. Yet it is possible to draw a few
conclusions with regard to the relevance of emotions such as anger in challenging
asymmetrical power relations across national borders. As Chapter 2 demonstrated,
the designation of Australia as a Western nation relies on white Australians’ strug-
gle to ‘impose a specific national order in which they have a dominant position’
(Hage 1998: 65). For Hage, this national order represents an idealisation of the
position of white Australians in the field of the nation which is grounded on and
sustained by the fantasy that only this group population naturally possesses all the
qualities necessary to govern any other in the best interest of all (18). To preserve
such a fantasy, white Australians’ moral authority to judge the conduct of any
other group cannot be challenged. Australia’s participation in the Colombo Plan
can be understood as the projection of this fantasy in the Asia-Pacific area. As
within the borders of Australia, to claim moral leadership in the region, Australian
representatives had to position the nation as the only one in the region that natu-
rally possessed the moral authority and will necessary to lead any other towards
economic prosperity and democracy.
As this chapter demonstrates, a full acknowledgment of the Indian students and
media’s anger as an appropriate response to the attacks would have amounted to
the recognition that both have the moral authority to hold Australian authorities
responsible and blameworthy of wrongdoing. This recognition, in turn, would
have not only threatened the international brand of Australian as a safe study des-
tination but also, and more importantly, undermined the moral authority underpin-
ning white Australia’s fantasy of being the exclusive manager of the nation and
moral leader of the region. Understood as a threat to this fantasy, we can fully
appreciate the power that emotions such as anger at racism have at challenging the
reproduction of as much national borders and boundaries as an international order
of nations in which Western countries such as Australia are witnessing the erosion
of their geo-political influence to the emergence of economic powers such as India.

Notes
1 As columnist Malcolm King noted in an online piece on the role played by media in
‘fledgling democracies’ (2010), the attacks against Indian students in Australia hit the
media in both India and Australia mostly in concomitance of two events: the Indian
students’ protests in May 31 2009 and the death of the Indian graduate Nitin Garg
150 ‘Is Australia racist?’
in January 2010. Those were the key events that fuelled the anger and fear of Indian
students in Australia and triggered endless media and diplomatic exchanges between
the two countries. Because these two events were central to the debate that ensued, late
May 2009 and January 2010 constitute the approximate temporal limits of the analysis
here conducted.
2 Mukhtair Singh, Indpal Singh, Sukhdip Singh and Gurdeep Singh are related to each
other, but the nature of their relation is reported differently from article to article. In
any case, it is possible to establish that Mukhtair Singh was the oldest among the group
and had lived in Australia for twenty-two years at the time of the attack. See Das and
Wade 2009.
3 Mason describes three forms of denial: literal, implicatory and interpretive. Literal
denial consists of the outright denial of an event or knowledge. Implicatory denial is
instead the strategy of minimising the effects of a certain event and, in so doing, avoid-
ing responsibility. For further details on the uses of these strategies in the history of
Australia, see Mason 2011: 13–14.
4 Before being published, this essay was delivered as a keynote presentation at the
National Women’ Studies Association Conference in June 1981. On the occasion of
this conference, the Association had committed itself to respond to racism. Lorde’s
keynote addressed this commitment in the form of a reminder: to respond to rac-
ism, white women must respond to the anger of non-white women. See Lorde 2007:
126–128.
5 This reading of Lorde’s essay reproduces her reference to non-white women as ‘women
of Color’. In the essay, Lorde specifies that when she speaks of women of Color she
refers to not only ‘Black women’ but also to all women who are not black but are (dif-
ferently) oppressed because of their colour. See Lorde 2007: 127–128.
6 Reading this passage against the whole essay, it appears that Lorde refers here to both
white women and women of Color. Whereas white women are invited to address the
anger of women of Color to respond to racism, women of Color are invited to attend to
their anger in order to learn how it can bring about radical change. See Lorde 2007: 127.
7 Like Lorde, hooks links political rage with clarity when describing decolonisation as
the political process by which ‘to learn to see clearly’ (18).
8 hooks writes that after becoming politicised, her anger became visible to friends and
professors at her college as well as relatives and the ‘ “good” southern white folks’
back home in the South (16). In her words: ‘Inwardly, I felt as though I were a marked
woman. A black person unashamed of her rage, using it as a catalyst to develop critical
consciousness to come to full decolonized self-actualization, had no real place in the
existing social structure’ (16).
9 In Killing Rage, hooks writes of ‘black rage’ and not anger. This does not suggest
that she herself conceives of African-Americans’ anger as a pathological expression
of their experiences of oppression. Rather, she highlights that ‘black rage’ has always
been denied the status of being a ‘potentially healthy, potentially healing response to
oppression and exploitation’ (1996: 12) by means of association with the ‘underclass’
(12) and fixation on its violent expressions (as ‘usually personified by angry young
black males wreaking havoc upon the “innocent” ’) (18). In both cases, she concludes,
‘black rage’s potential to bring about radical change has been concealed in favour
of its representation as ‘useless’, ‘without meaning’, and ‘destructive’ (18). In this
sense, we can extrapolate that hooks writes of rage instead of anger to emphasise
an increased intensity accrued as a result of the continued denial of racism (see also
Lorde 2007: 129).
10 Ahmed too has examined Lorde’s account of dismissal to argue how the anger of
women of colour is blocked by having their speech heard as angry instead of moti-
vated by anger at racism. For Ahmed, when women of colour’s anger is heard as such,
their anger becomes further associated with them as a characteristic of their bodies.
 ‘Is Australia racist?’ 151
This association, in turn, can make the mere presence of women of colour be read as a
blockage to the sharing of good feelings, namely the cause of unhappiness. See Ahmed
2010: 67–69.
11 See ‘Four Indian students assaulted in Melbourne’ (2009); ‘Another Indian student
attacked in Australia’ (2009) and ‘Outrage over Oz “curry bashing” ’ (2009).
12 Contrary to other cited TV news mentioned in this study, The News Hour program’s
edition ‘Yes, It’s Racism’ is not available for consultation, as this has been removed
from the website of Times Now. The content of the program is reconstructed here on
the basis of Australian media’s accounts. See ‘Indian media labels student exploitation
“racism” ’ 2009 and Robinson and Hodge 2009.
13 The identity of the Indian investigative journalist for the ABC television program Four
Corners was not revealed, but it was reported that, at the time of the debate, she was
working undercover on education scams in Australia when a man who appeared to be
Indian attacked her. See ‘Indian media labels student exploitation “racism” ’ 2009; and
Robinson and Hodge 2009.

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5 Feeling like an international
student
Racial grief, compassion and
national sentimentality

For many of them [international students], it is quite usual, and necessary at times,
to move in and out of differing social constructs such as culture, language, and
education . . . In trying to do this, several of them had expressed the problem of
‘trying to fit’ into a system. There were feelings of ‘being categorised according
to race and culture’; of ‘being stereotyped’; of ‘not fully participating’; of being
‘lost’; ‘of not being understood’ and feeling ‘a sense of rootlessness’ . . . I could
see a theme emerging that was common to all these students. This was that they all
seemed to have reached an understanding that they should be feeling thus because
they were international students.
(Kumar 2004: 2–3, original emphasis)

What does it mean to feel like an international student? What makes individual
subjects feel as though they are the same? The response to these questions cannot
be straightforward. Yet some hints can be gathered from the ways in which inter-
national students describe their experiences affectively. International students feel
they are ‘trying to fit’ into a system where their identities, actions and affective
expressions are deciphered according to an order of knowledge that reduces the
complexity of their singular biographies to a matter of ‘race’ and ‘culture’. They
feel ‘stereotyped’ and dealt with according to assumptions that fix who they are
and what they do into something already known to many but not to them. They
feel they are ‘not fully participating’, not full members of a collective. They feel
‘lost’, cut off from the possibility of being known for who they are. Misunder-
stood and disengaged, they feel as though they have no roots, fixed according to
pre-conceived notions of their identities yet floating in search of a belonging that
appears to preclude them.
With this brief but nuanced account of the feelings of the students she assisted
as learning adviser, Margaret Kumar points to the multilayered affective experi-
ence of living and studying in Australia as an international student. On the one
end, it highlights the emotional complexity of this experience in a context that
constrains individual subjectivities to pre-fabricated notions of cultural identities,
learning styles and everyday practices. On the other hand, it exposes the difficul-
ties many international students face when expressing their feelings in ways that
156 Feeling like an international student
are intelligible to themselves and to others. Most importantly, it sheds light on
how international students’ attempts to make sense of their own experiences – and
thus communicate the affective meaning that such experiences have for them –
are inextricable from the apparatus of power and knowledge that has been refined
over time to regulate and educate them.
For Kumar, these students’ inchoate expressions of feelings can be understood
as the unintended result of institutional practices and discursive representations
that ignore the hybrid nature of international students’ subjectivities and margin-
alise the cultural capitals they bring with them when they join Australian uni-
versities (167–208). Following this insight, her study focuses on the mismatch
between discursive representations of international students and the ways they see
themselves in light of their personal biographies (27–165). By recounting these
subjective narratives, Kumar shows how the deployment of racial and cultural
constructs such as the one of the ‘Asian’ learner in understanding international
students’ experiences is as artificial as it is constrictive of their capacity to master
multiple subjective identifications and cultural systems. However, she ultimately
says little about the feelings that she opens her study with and even less about the
history of their representation in those same discourses against which she con-
trasts her students’ self-representations of their identities.
As Chapters 1 and 2 broached, since the implementation of the Overseas Stu-
dent Program in 1951, feelings have occupied an important place in Australian
discourses regarding the governance and pedagogy of international students due
to the pragmatic objective of providing them with support services that minimise
academic failure and psychological disruption. Considering this objective, much
attention has been given to the feelings associated with their experience of social
isolation as understood within the intercultural communication tropes of culture
shock, loss and loneliness. Taken together, these tropes have constituted the pil-
lars of the representation of international students’ feelings as symptomatic of an
emotional subjectivity inherently prone to distress, leaving little room for any
alternative account of their affective experiences of living and studying in Aus-
tralia. But where does this representation stem from? Most importantly, taking
Campbell’s model of emotions into account, if feelings are individuated, assessed
and eventually contested through interpretation – a point argued in Chapter 4 –
what objectives does the affective depiction of international students as melan-
cholic subjects seek to achieve?
To address these questions, this chapter takes up the task of deconstructing the
figure of the emotionally vulnerable international student by providing it with a
history of the ways in which feelings attached to the experience of studying and
living overseas have been interpreted over time. The first and second sections
trace the aforementioned tropes back to their emergence in the documents pro-
duced and circulated in the early 1950s and shed light on how they were used to
manufacture a ‘sentimental’ account of Colombo Plan students’ affective experi-
ences of racism in Australia. The third section undertakes a close reading of the
most comprehensive study conducted so far on international students’ problems,
 Feeling like an international student 157
International Student Security (Marginson et al.: 2010) and illustrates how the
interpretation of their feelings in terms of the same tropes of culture shock, loss
and loneliness has persisted over time as a result of the national sentimental
fantasy that full inclusion of international students in their host nations can be
achieved by means of compassion – that is, without taking racism into account.
This section concludes by arguing that it is because of upholding this fantasy that
calls to compassion towards international students have given way to seemingly
oppositional feelings of resentment

The ‘tragedy’ of Colombo Plan students: shortage

of accommodation and loneliness
In 2004 Daniel Oakman published Facing Asia: A History of the Colombo Plan.1
As the title suggests, in this book, Oakman chronicles Australia’s participation in
the Colombo Plan to demonstrate this changed the nation’s attitude towards Asia
while shaping its representatives’ aspiration to assume a leading role in the region.
In advancing this argument, the author provides his perspective on the impact
that the presence of students who came with this plan to Australia had on its
citizens’ impression of Asian nations and people. For Oakman, this presence had
undermined racial prejudices against Asians in general and, consequently, facili-
tated major social and cultural changes in the racial organisation of its society –
that is, the slow dismantling of the White Australia policy. From his perspec-
tive, everyday interactions with ‘young, clean, and English speaking’ Colombo
Plan students, who could not stay and take jobs permanently, broadened Austral-
ians’ understanding of Asia and concomitantly proved that Asian nationals could
assimilate to the ‘Australian way of life’ (271). Citing letters written by Colombo
Plan students’ landladies publicly advocating in their favour – and, in so doing,
having a say on whether to allow more Asian nationals to come to Australia –
Oakman maintains that intimate interactions between Colombo Plan students and
Australian hosts countered what were at the time the common understanding of
Asians as a homogeneous and passive collective who were, furthermore, vulner-
able to Communist influence (191–192).
To further support this stance, Oakman provides extensive details regarding the
stay of Asian students in Australia throughout the 1950s. His account appears par-
ticularly comprehensive, as it relies on a wide range of historical documents rang-
ing from administrative notes to personal correspondence of Australian officers
to letters written by common citizens to Overseas Students Program’ administra-
tors and local newspapers. On the basis of these documents, Oakman claims that
social isolation among Colombo Plan students constituted the biggest problem for
the Department of External Affairs (DEA) – headed by Richard Gavin Gardiner
Casey, champion of the Colombo Plan in Australia – which was especially press-
ing during the first years the humanitarian project was implemented (183–184). In
this regard, relying on Casey’s communication with then-Prime Minister Robert
Menzies, Oakman recounts a few tragic events to suggest shortage of appropriate
158 Feeling like an international student
accommodation as the primary cause of the social isolation Colombo Plan stu-
dents faced during their stay in the country:

Casey raised his concerns with Menzies as early as July 1951: ‘My depart-
ment has for some time been concerned that accommodation difficulties,
problems of orientation and a good deal of ordinary loneliness may not only
lead to occasional instances of personal tragedy, but also leave the way open
to Communist influences’.
(Letter from Casey to Menzies cited in Oakman 2010: 184)

Lack of appropriate accommodation was a sensitive issue in the 1950s. Many

Australian officers, churches and universities’ representatives advocated the
opening of International Houses in Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth and Hobart.2
Nonetheless, Oakman does not explain the reasons behind the accommoda-
tion shortage, only briefly mentioning that it was due to the absence of ‘the
right type of landladies’.
(Oakman 2010: 191)3

Vague as this reference to the problem is, it is then instructive to ‘read’ the pri-
mary sources Oakman draws from directly. Tracing Casey’s correspondence a
little further back, it emerges that in advocating with Menzies the establishment
of International Houses in any capital city of Australia, Casey took the liberty of
extensively citing letters he had received in his capacity as Minister of External
Affairs, including the letter referring to the ‘instances of personal tragedy’ men-
tioned by Oakman. Casey himself was in fact informed of such events through
correspondence with the then-Registrar of the University of Western Australia,
Mr C. Sunders, who reported to Casey:

Firstly two of them [Colombo Plan students] have committed suicide in the
last three years. One other had such a bad mental breakdown that the War-
den of St. George College flew with him in Derby to meet representatives
of the family. The most recent case was when a young student from Malaya
hanged himself in a Claremont hostel devoted to such students. . . . The Vice-
Chancellor of this University, Dr S. A. Currie . . . is strongly of the opinion
that something like an ‘International House’ along American lines should be
established at Australian universities.
(Letter to Casey from Sunders cited in Letter
from Casey to Menzies 1951: 1)

As this passage illustrates, the tragic instances of suicide and mental breakdown
were included in the letter as evidence of the problem of social isolation affect-
ing Colombo Plan students in general. The two phenomena were hence linked to
each other and offered as sufficient evidence to solicit governmental intervention.
Sunders writes to Casey, Casey writes to Menzies, both attempting to address
 Feeling like an international student 159
the problem of social isolation by providing instances of Colombo Plan students’
emotional distress. Nonetheless, the reasons causing such distress are not clearly
stated; somehow the task of drawing the conclusion is left to the reader.
In citing another letter – sent to Casey by the then-chairman of the Interna-
tional Service Committee of the Rotary Club in Melbourne, Anthony Clunies-
Ross – Casey moreover suggests that the opening of International Houses would
have pre-empted the impression that Colombo Plan students were segregated in
Australia. As Chapter 1 demonstrated, countering Asian governments’ accusa-
tion that Australia was racially prejudiced towards them was the most important
diplomatic objective of the Colombo Plan. Ensuring that Colombo Plan students
were not concentrated in a few sub-standard accommodations was thus funda-
mental to thwart any perception that something like a ‘colour bar’ was applied
to Colombo Plan students coming to Australia. In this regard, via Clunies-Ross’s
words – Casey proposes to Menzies to open International Houses to host as many
Asian students as other overseas and Australians students:

[T]he aim of the Government . . . is to enable Asian students to be closely

associated with Australians and avoid any suggestion of segregation. To over-
come this problem, it was felt that . . . up to, say 50% or 60% of accommoda-
tion could be reserved to Asian students and the remainder for other overseas
students, together with some proportion of Australians.
(Letter to Casey from Clunies-Ross cited in Letter
from Casey to Menzies 1951: 2)

As Casey’s correspondence shows, the suggestion of accommodating Asian and

Australian students in equal numbers was widespread especially among universi-
ties’ and non-governmental associations’ representatives like Clunies-Ross. How-
ever, it is not clear whether the suggestion was simply preventive or founded on
discriminating trends that were already in place as early as 1951. If the problem
of accommodation was merely a quantitative one, why did both Clunies-Ross
and Casey insist on the risk of being accused of racial segregation? Most impor-
tantly, why were Clunies-Ross and Casey worried about missing the opportunity
for Asian students and Australians to get close to each other? Casey implicitly
answers these questions when citing a letter sent to him by Mr J. R. Darling, head-
master of the Church of England Boys Grammar School in Geelong:

The second point is more general, but I believe desperately urgent and impor-
tant, that is the provision in the capital cities here of some kind of hostels
for these Asian students. The whole business of educating them in Australia
will do more harm than good if they have to suffer as they at present do, the
humiliation of being turned away over and over again by ignorant landladies,
who refuse to house coloured people. There is only one answer to that, which
is hostels in which there should be half and half of Australians and Asians.
(Letter to Casey from Darling4 cited in Letter from
Casey to Menzies 1951: 2, emphasis added)
160 Feeling like an international student
Although in his letter to Menzies, Casey cites Darling as ‘representing the con-
cerns of secondary school authorities’ (Letter from Casey to Menzies 1951: 2),
Darling was not just the headmaster of the Geelong Grammar School; he was
also, at that time, on the Council of the University of Melbourne and a member
of the Universities Commission. In forwarding Darling’s letter to another officer,
Casey refers to him as ‘a man of real consequence’.5 Darling’s reference to the
racial discrimination Colombo Plan students suffered was then based on a broad
and first-hand experience of the matter and, as such, was strongly considered by
Casey. Like the letter that Darling sent to Casey, various other letters provide evi-
dence that racial discrimination against Colombo Plan students was widespread
across the country. For instance, in advocating the opening of an International
House at their university, the Students Representative Council of the University of
Adelaide wrote to the then-Minister for the Interior, Wilfred Kent-Hughes:

The students of the Adelaide University, in common with the students of

other Australian Universities, now have an unprecedented opportunity of
mingling with Asian students of their own age group. . . . This unique oppor-
tunity afforded us is in danger of being jeopardised by a tendency towards
half-measures. These students have great difficulty in finding suitable accom-
modation. This problem exists with all students, but in the case of overseas
students it is aggravated by a certain colour prejudice and in some cases lack
of money.
(Office of the Students Representative Council of University
of Adelaide to Kent-Hughes 1951: 1, original emphasis)6

Reading these primary sources against Oakman’s account, it also emerges that
racial hostility towards Colombo Plan students was diffuse even among those
Australians who had the means to state their opinion publicly. In 1953, the Hostel
for University Students and International Friendship Centre organised a Christ-
mas party. All Colombo Plan students in Sydney were invited, and Casey was
expected to participate. When Casey turned the invitation down due to other com-
mitments, via an internal note written on his behalf, we are informed that for this
occasion he was asked to contribute in absentia a ‘sympathetic’ message to Asian
students’ experience of racial hostility. As the note reports,

Dr Winton, the Warden of the Hostel, has suggested that a ‘sympathetic and
reasoning word from the Minister would do a great deal to encourage good-
will on the part of Colombo Plan students towards Australia and to reassure
those of them who have been disturbed and hurt by hostile statements from
irresponsible but noisy sources’.
(Note from Keating to Marshall 1953)

In view of the correspondence so far analysed, it is then possible to conclude

that racial discrimination and hostility against Colombo Plan students were well
known to Casey. Yet in advocating the establishment of International Houses
 Feeling like an international student 161
at Australian universities, he minimised the racism that Colombo Plan students
endured. As Casey originally wrote to Menzies,

These are only a few of the letters. They will emphasise the note of urgency
that is common to all of them. May I make one additional point of some
importance? My department has for some time been concerned that accom-
modation difficulties, problems of orientation and a good deal of ordinary
loneliness may not only lead to occasional instances of personal tragedy, but
also leave the way open to Communist influences.
(Letter from Casey to Menzies 1951: 3)

The righteous tone of Darling’s observation of the humiliation Colombo Plan stu-
dents suffered almost disappears, embedded as it is between the listing of tragic
events and rehearsing of the fear of Communist invasion, which both leave the
reader with the impression that they all are greatly susceptible to be affectively
distressed or influenced. As Chapter 1 demonstrated, this representation was domi-
nant in Australian public discourses reporting on the Overseas Student Program
throughout the 1950s, yielding the double effect of facilitating the acceptance of
Asian nationals in the nation while engendering an international image of Australia
as a generous, open and tolerant nation. It also coincided with the conceptualisation
of ‘intercultural contact’ as a ‘stressful, anxiety-provoking situation’ which is wors-
ened for migrants by the feelings of mourning accompanying the loss of their love
objects: ‘family, friends, language, music, food and culturally determined values,
customs and attitudes’ (Garza Guerrero 1974: 409–410). As Chapter 2 examined,
known as the ‘culture shock’ model, this understanding of ‘intercultural contact’
does not entail mutuality insofar as migrants’ ‘adaptation’ is problematised as a
journey that they must undergo individually in order to develop a new identity, one
which is at home within the host culture. Thus, in this model, the possibility that
migrants might suffer emotionally because of racism is a priori precluded, making
social exclusion a problem solvable by means of assisted acculturation. Considering
the diplomatic imperative of countering the accusation that Australians were racially
biased towards Asians, it is then possible to conclude that Casey merely reproduced
what was then the norm in representing Colombo Plan students and their problems
in public discourses. Yet how could Casey disavow racism as the cause determining
the grief of Colombo Plan students while still mobilising the emotional distress they
suffered as evidence to advocate their social inclusion? To address this question,
the next section draws on Anna Anlin Cheng’s work on the articulation of racial
grief into political grievance (2001) to show how Casey’s advocacy style abided
by a strategy of political containment that naturalises the grief that racism causes to
subordinated subjects into an inherent characteristic of their personality.

‘Asian temperament’: racial grievance and sentimentalism

In The Melancholy of Race, Anna Anlin Cheng examines the experience of
racial grief to understand the complex web of psychic negotiations that minority
162 Feeling like an international student
subjects have to undertake to live ‘within a dominant system that privileges that
which they can never be’ (2001: 7). For Cheng, this critical examination is nec-
essary to challenge the strategies typically used in political thinking and advo-
cacy to engage with the affective histories of marginalised groups, which are,
according to her, either denial or sentimentalisation (xi). To advance this engage-
ment, Cheng examines the ‘urgencies and complications surrounding formula-
tions of racial grief into social meanings and claims’ by tracing the legacy of the
very well-known American legal case Brown v. Board of Education (1954) (5).
This case was the very first in which psychological evidence was provided to
ascertain that racial segregation causes psychological damage to those who are
subjected to it. This evidence was pivotal to the decision of the Supreme Court
of the United States to rule against racial segregation in the American schools.7
Years after Brown v. Board, the very same psychological evidence was employed
in the case Stell v. Savannah-Chatham County Board of Education (1963) but
this time to support racial segregation in classrooms on the basis that ‘biracial
education’ was an opportunity for the African-American children to develop ‘a
stronger, “healthier” and more independent black identity’ (5).8 In the same case,
new psycho-social evidence was also provided to argue that the African and white
Americans had two different learning patterns, hence the benefit of biracial edu-
cation for both groups (5). For Cheng, this appropriation is indicative of how
the idea of psychical damage can be emptied of its history of social injury and
transformed into a ‘concept of inherent disability’ when articulated into claims of
social redress (5). She then argues that, with Stell v. Savannah-Chatham, we have
begun to witness what she defines as the slip from recognition to naturalisation
of social injury (5).
Considering Cheng’s analysis on the risks characterising the articulation
of racial grief into political grievance, we can approach Casey’s advocacy
style from a different perspective. As suggested earlier, Casey was aware that
these students suffered racial discrimination and hostility and could easily
have connected the emotional distress they endured to the racial exclusion
they experienced. Nonetheless, in advocating the opening of International
Houses, he recounted their emotional distress to Menzies as if it was unrelated
to the problem of racial exclusion. So that – in contrast to the case of African-
Americans in the US civil rights movement – the social injury that ‘Asian’
students endured in Australia was never publicly acknowledged. Their distress
was instead dealt with as a by-product of the ‘Asian temperament’, that is
the characterisation of their emotional subjectivities as naturally ‘shy’, ‘pas-
sive and withdrawn’ (see Chapter 1). In other words, the injury that Colombo
Plan students suffered as a result of racism was directly naturalised into an
inherent predisposition to emotional vulnerability. By means of naturalisa-
tion, Casey could disavow racism while still employing the emotional distress
this inflicted upon Colombo Plan students as evidence to solicit governmen-
tal intervention without any apparent contradiction. Yet it is not clear how
Colombo Plan students’ racial grief could become naturalised and sustained
 Feeling like an international student 163
as an inherent personality trait, especially if we consider that some of these
students publicly articulated their feelings into a precise accusation of racial
discrimination (see what follows).
Cheng does not provide a straightforward answer to this question. Nonethe-
less, her reflections on political engagements with the affective histories of
minority groups constitute a valid starting point to trace back the naturalisation
of Colombo Plan students’ racial injury. As anticipated earlier, Cheng argues
that the sorrow of minority groups has traditionally been either denied or senti-
mentalised. Either way, she argues, these strategies have worked as instruments
of political containment by means of naturalising their psychical pain, that is
the cult of the vanishing Indians and, as Chapter 4 explored, the bitterness of
African-Americans (14). Building on this suggestion, we could conclude that
the sentimentalisation and the naturalisation of the pain of minority groups are
linked to each other, with the latter working as a condition of the former. To be
naturalised, the grief of racialised groups must first be emphasised to the point
of annihilating the complex history that engendered it. In turn, the erasing of
this history allows dominant groups to transform their feeling of compassion
into a different kind of feeling: pity or even resentment. Cheng only briefly
explores this connection and, in discussing the risk of naturalisation, she main-
tains ‘the path connecting injury to pity and then to contempt can be very brief’
(14). As the next section of this chapter demonstrates, the sentimentalisation of
racialised groups’ sorrow is indeed strictly related to the feelings of dominant
groups, and this connection expands on the argument levelled in Chapter 1,
wherein it was demonstrated how resentment towards overstaying Chinese stu-
dents was premised on the simultaneous representation of the opening of the
Australian border to non-white migrants as an act of generosity and proneness
to be injured.
In any case, even if the sentimentalisation of racial grief and the naturalisa-
tion of social injury are related to each other, it remains to be explained how the
representation of Colombo Plan students as emotionally vulnerable subjects has
resisted the articulation of their feelings into a precise accusation of racial dis-
crimination. Curiously, both Casey and Oakman are silent about how Colombo
Plan students felt about their own experiences. Because of his responsibilities,
Casey was familiar with these students’ feelings, and he spent a great part of his
career attempting to avoid Asian countries’ future leaders’ dissatisfaction. None-
theless, in speaking on their behalf, he minimised their experiences of racial dis-
crimination in favour of a more dramatic representation of their experience of
social isolation. Like Casey, Oakman too is aware of the racism that Colombo
Plan students had to endure, yet in recounting the encounters between the former
and Australians, any experience challenging the idea of an ‘Asian temperament’
is consistently disregarded:

Contact with Australians, especially for those who boarded with local fam-
ilies, was marked by the shyness of students, and their sometimes overly
164 Feeling like an international student
polite nature. Nervous yet congenial encounters were the rule; overt racism
or discrimination, the exception. In homes and hostels across the country a
more intimate bond formed between Asians and Australians.
(2010: 190–191, emphasis added)

This description is rather uncanny in that it uncritically reproduces the language

deployed in the 1950s to deflect accusations of racial discrimination and hostility.
For instance, when Casey was asked to write a ‘sympathetic and reasoning word’
to reassure Asians students affected by racist remarks, he wrote,

We are delighted to have you with us in Australia, and I hope you are feeling
as much at home in our country as I have felt in yours. . . . From what I have
heard, I know that many of you are doing so. Here and there, there may still
be a little shyness, on both sides. If you find it so, do please be patient with
us. And do please play your own part in helping to overcome that shyness.
(Message from Casey to Colombo Plan students 1953)

Considering the context in which the message was produced, ‘shyness’ can be
understood as a coded way to speak of racial hostility. Speaking of shyness implies
that racist encounters were more determined by ignorance of each other’s way of
life or, in the words of Lentin, a lack of ‘intercultural knowledge’ than intended
discrimination of or disinterest in Colombo Plan students. It is then interesting to
find out how Colombo Plan students themselves understood the ‘shyness’ of their
Australian hosts.
Among the many newspaper articles that promoted the Colombo Plan, it is pos-
sible to find a few discussing the racism that Asian students faced in Australia. For
instance, an anonymous writer9 of The Sydney Morning Herald reported,

Almost all of them have experienced Australian racial and colour prejudice,
but only a few will complain. They say that their main problem in Australia
is not active hostility. They know they would meet isolated examples of racial
prejudice in any European country. However, while an active spirit of ani-
mosity is, in general, absent, so too, is any positive feeling of friendship.
(‘Students From Asia’ 1954: 2, emphasis added)

For the students interviewed,10 blunt racial hostility per se was not as problematic
as the absence of a genuine ‘feeling of friendship’ from Australians. Because of
this lack, Colombo Plan students might have developed a certain feeling explained
by an interviewee thus:

When I first came to Australia, people at home used to write and ask me was
Australia worse than South Africa. . . . Many Asians feel that Australians treat
them with an air of superiority. An Australian will be talking to an Asian and
he will use a slang term. The Asian doesn’t know what it means and he shows
it. Instead of explaining the term the Australian will often give the impression
 Feeling like an international student 165
that the Asian is ignorant and inferior because he doesn’t understand. Often
an Australian doesn’t mean harm, but he will do or say something that will
show his real feelings. Asians are not fools. They can tell when they are not
accepted as equals.
(‘Students From Asia’ 1954: 2, emphasis added)

This passage is particularly telling of the complex distinctions some students

were attempting to make with regard to their experience of racial exclusion. As
suggested by the question about South Africa, Colombo Plan students coming to
Australia expected to be confronted occasionally with open racism. What they did
not expect was the attitude of ‘superiority’ with which this student felt Australians
treated Colombo Plan students in general and unconsciously betrayed on trivial
occasions such as explaining a slang term. Another student stated,

An Asian . . . knows that the Colombo Plan is very generous. . . . He asks him-
self, why does Australia do this? Is it because Australians are very friendly to
Asians and sincerely want to help them? Perhaps. But if he doesn’t find friend-
ship towards himself when he is looking for accommodation or trying to mix
with Australians, then he will start to doubt Australia’s motives . . . . Austral-
ian leaders, political, religious and commercial, make speeches in Asia about
friendship and brotherhood and tell us that Australia has at last realised her
geographic position . . . Asians are very pleased to hear it. They welcome it.
But don’t you think it’s time somebody told the Australian people?
(‘Students From Asia’ 1954: 2, emphasis added)

In listing the reasons Colombo Plan students were suspicious of the genuineness
of Australia’s diplomatic intentions, this student mentions as equally relevant
the problem of racial bigotry in finding accommodation and the resistance of the
Australian population to mixing with Asian students. Ultimately, in illustrating
the feelings that Asian students might have developed as a result of Australians’
indifference, both students articulated their grief at the injury of being treated
as ‘ignorant’ and ‘inferior’ and only ever superficially included in the Austral-
ian community. Far from being determined by ‘shyness’, Colombo Plan students’
accounts of their own experience illustrate the affective effects that social exclu-
sion had upon them: they grew angry, suspicious and cynical. We can now see
how the emotional distress many of these students suffered was not a by-product
of an alleged ‘Asian temperament’ but the result of social relations that excluded
them from full participation in the Australian society. How then could this emo-
tional distress continue to be interpreted as a symptom of inherent vulnerability?
In Interpreting the Personal, Campbell argues that when we express our feel-
ings we are not simply revealing the truth of our inner state in the presence of
others. Feelings do not precede their expression; rather they are individuated and
formed in and through the process of being expressed and interpreted by those
who act as our witness (1997: 48–74). In this sense, as Chapter 4 broached, for
Campbell, feelings constitute communication acts by which we attempt to convey
166 Feeling like an international student
the significance that certain experiences have for us (103–134). If we understand
feelings as communicative acts, we can appreciate how those who interpret them,
especially from positions of power, determine our chances to successfully express
what we feel (111–120). Communicative exchanges shaped by relations of com-
passion are no exception. Rather, as Chapter 1 demonstrated, when suffering is
used to move institutions or citizens of a nation to action, appeals to compassion
can easily turn into an ‘authoritative interpretation of the experience of those suf-
fering’, leaving those who suffer ‘no say in the presentation of who they are and
what they are going through’ (Spelman 1997: 64).
As the Minister of External Affairs, Casey carried the moral weight to assert
what ought to be the official interpretation of Colombo Plan students’ experi-
ences of living and studying in Australia, allowing him to explain their racial grief
as a natural predisposition to emotional distress. Due to his position as authori-
tative interpreter, the racial grief of Colombo Plan students could be routinely
constrained into a sentimental account of their emotions without contestation.
Conversely, if their emotions had been rightly interpreted as an outcome of social
exclusion, the Australian diplomatic effort to project a tolerant and progressive
image of the nation would have abruptly come to an end. Yet if it is just so, why
has the depiction of Colombo Plan students as inherently emotionally vulnerable
subjects survived both the dismantling of the White Australia policy (1973) and
the phasing out of the Colombo Plan (1985)? The longevity of such a charac-
terisation suggests a broader model of representation of the racial grief of Asian
international students whose purposes stretch beyond the geo-political interests
of Australia at the end of World War II. To demonstrate so, the following section
undertakes a close reading of the tropes of culture shock, loss and loneliness as
employed in the most comprehensive study conducted so far on the problems
faced by international students in Australia.

Feeling like an international student: culture shock,

loss and loneliness
In the aftermath of the protests staged by Indian international students in Mel-
bourne and Sydney in 2009 and 2010, the most comprehensive review and analysis
undertaken so far of the problems that international students face in Australia was
published: International Student Security (Marginson et al.: 2010). Approaching
issues ranging from finances, health, accommodation and employment to personal
safety, interaction with the immigration department, friendship with local students
and racial discrimination, this study synthesises the work of several prominent
scholars in the field of international education11 and six years of research, reading,
discussion and presentation of findings in a wide array of settings.12 As the preface
of the book states,

International Student Security has been built on a full engagement with its
topic. It has been nurtured by four research projects,13 a commissioned litera-
ture review14 and much reading and discussion. It is the product of planning
 Feeling like an international student 167
sessions, research data collection, conference papers, policy intervention and
participation in media and public debate in several Asia-Pacific countries.
(xi)

Designed from its conception to assert an influence on the debates regarding the
governance of international students, this study epitomises the role that academia
has played in conceptualising international students as an object of governmental
intervention both nationally and transnationally. It also articulates an emerging
pattern in international education studies, one which approaches international
students more like temporary migrants than just consumers of educational ser-
vices.15 Enhancing the ‘security’ of international students beyond national legal
frameworks of consumer protection is in fact the primary objective of this project
(10–12; 63–66). Marginson et al. draw attention to the fact that such security can-
not be achieved satisfactorily without enabling the agency of the students them-
selves (59). Thus, to achieve a better regime of security, international students’
capacity for self-determination should be acknowledged, fostered and maintained
regardless of their status of temporary migrants (60):

[T]he present study defines human security as maintenance of a stable capac-

ity for self-determining human agency . . . Here protection is not seen as an
end in itself but one of the conditions essential to active human agency, its
expressions in all zones and its self-managed evolution of self-formation.
(60, original emphasis)

Considering this definition of security, it is then relevant to investigate how the

authors problematise their understanding of agency with regard to issues of cul-
tural devaluation and racial discrimination. According to them, all international
students share in common the experience of moving from a known to an unknown
environment. This movement per se can weaken their agency, especially if they
are not able to adapt to the new environment accordingly (61). Likewise, all inter-
national students experience the passage from a status of full citizenship to one
of mere consumer protection (61). Lack of political, civil and social rights thus
compounds the problems engendered by their movement and objectively impairs
their capacity for self-determination (61). Yet the authors acknowledge that some
students face more problems than others due to language and cultural differences
when zooming in on the experience of students who are from ‘non-Anglo cultural
environments’ (61). Throughout the book, Marginson et al. refer to such a distinc-
tion in several ways. In some cases, students are distinguished from each other
according to binary divisions such as local/international, Western/non-Western
and white/non-white (401). In other cases, students are differentiated as local and
European students compared against Asian students, with the category of ‘Euro-
pean’ ambiguously stretched to include students coming from both North and
South America (425). Here and there, references in the text seem to suggest that –
regardless of their individual biographies and histories of movements – students
coming from Asian countries are typically the most disadvantaged (174–203,
168 Feeling like an international student
204–240, 392–446). However, Marginson et al. also acknowledge that some stu-
dents might face more problems than others due as much to language and cultural
difference as the lack of respect for both of them in the Australian society:

[F]or non-English speaking students from non Anglo-cultural environments,

human security is affected by cultural issues. Equal cultural respect is hard
to secure in a country such as Australia in which formal systems are mono-
lingual and education and public policy are monocultural.
(61, emphasis added)

Hence, the authors raise issues of cultural devaluation and legitimacy as factors
constraining the agency of international students coming from countries whose
culture is not deemed equal to the Australian one. This statement resonates with
Cheng’s work on racial melancholy and possibly paves the way for an analysis
of international students’ agency that takes their experience of racial grief into
account. Such possibility appears to be further corroborated by the authors’ deci-
sion of collecting qualitative data. The research’s findings are based in fact on 200
semi-structured interviews16 with international students coming from thirty-four
countries17 and enrolled at nine Australian public universities.18
In explaining the reasons behind this methodology, the authors emphasise the
importance of reflecting the voice of international students and exploring the issues
affecting their experience on their own terms. Issues of voice and self-representa-
tion are thus central to their study and, like the question of agency, are considered
fundamental to improving the regime of security offered to international students
in Australia (12–13). Because of this emphasis, a comprehensive analysis of the
emotional distress suffered by international students in relation to cultural devalua-
tion and discrimination would be expected, especially if we consider that issues of
racial hostility and abuses are included in their analysis. Rather surprisingly, and at
odds with their review of the literature on international students’ mental health –
which details the correlation between racism and well-being (180) – the authors’
approach to the emotional distress suffered by international students is detached
from instances of racism. The two sets of issues are in fact explored separately and
mostly understood as expressions of specific and individuated circumstances, the
former analysed as a consequence of ‘loneliness’ (365–391) and the latter, alongside
social isolation, described as problems of ‘intercultural relations’ (430).
Despite this separation, the authors’ approach to the problem of loneliness
appears to be less psychological than political. Initially, they define the feeling
of loneliness as an emotional state triggered by the need to belong: ‘a person is
lonely when the need to belong is unsatisfied’ (364). In this definition, the need
to belong is not anchored to any specific referent so that international students
can feel lonely either because they live away from their family and community
or because they lack a sense of belonging in the place where they study, live and
work. In line with this definition of loneliness, the authors further differentiate
the feeling of loneliness into ‘personal’ and ‘social’ (367). They define the former
 Feeling like an international student 169
as caused by ‘the loss or absence of an intimate tie with spouse, lover, parent or
child’ and the latter as ‘triggered by a lack of an engaged social network with
peers’ (367). To further distinguish the latter from the former, they add,

‘Being accepted, included or welcomed leads to positive emotions such as

happiness, elation, commitment and calm’, while ‘Being rejected, excluded
or ignored leads often to intense negative feelings of anxiety, depression,
grief, jealousy and loneliness’.
(Osterman cited in Marginson et al. 2010: 367, emphasis added)

In contrast to the definition of personal loneliness, this description specifies lone-

liness as the affective effect of social dynamics that actively reject, exclude or
ignore some subjects while making some others feel ‘accepted, included or wel-
comed’. By relating the feeling of loneliness to a lack of substantive inclusion,
Marginson et al. seem to subvert the consolidated understanding of international
students’ loneliness as a result of personal losses, linking instead their emotional
distress to systematic exclusion by the part of their host institutions and com-
munities. The authors seem to further support this stance when reporting that
international students can suffer from acute loneliness even if they are in regular
contact with people coming from the same city or culture as them (373). Yet they
ultimately overlook the relevance of this evidence to claim instead that loneliness
is not necessarily correlated to social isolation (368; 372). Consequently, their
study focuses on personal loneliness as a feeling caused by the loss of preceding
significant relationships and familiarity with their environment. For instance, in
the section ‘Personal loneliness’, they report:

Those who had lost the warmth of personal relations with parents, spouse,
children, siblings, relatives and close friends often reported a profound sense
of loneliness. For some the experience was very painful and challenging . . .
The sense of isolation increased when the student became sick and was
without parental care or, alternatively, when a family member back home
needed care. The familial bond was there but frustrated, which could trigger
an intense feeling of loneliness.
(377–378)

In another section, titled ‘Shock of the new’, the authors state:

Often loneliness began with initial feelings of profound unfamiliarity, extend-

ing from culture, language and people to the urban ambience; things looked
and smelt different, some said. . . . It was less a sense of node without con-
nections, more like lost in a strange jungle. The sense of everything new
confused and unbalanced the students, leaving them permanently uncertain
about what to do, where to seek help, and the resources available.
(379)
170 Feeling like an international student
As these passages illustrate, Marginson et al.’s decision to study loneliness apart
from social isolation is not devoid of consequences. Rather, it leads them to reduce
international students’ emotional distress to the inevitable product of culture
shock and loss. It goes unsaid that the further the culture of international students
is understood to be from the Australian one, the more they are expected to suffer
from loneliness. This understanding recalls the representation of Colombo Plan
students as inherently emotional vulnerable subjects, and it is furthermore con-
sistent with the aforementioned psychoanalytical model of intercultural contact’s
representation of migrants as melancholic subjects caught in between two differ-
ent social and cultural realities. Considering this resonance, it is then relevant to
investigate how the authors explain the problem of social isolation as recounted
by the students they interviewed.
Marginson et al. approach the problem of social isolation alongside instances
of racial hostility and abuse (392–444). The fact that the authors discuss the two
sets of problems together suggests that they understand social isolation as part
and parcel of the racism that international students suffer in Australia. The authors
appear to further confirm this impression when they state,

The separation between same-culture [international students] and locals is

sustained by more than communication barriers, and more than the laziness
of Anglo-Australian students who gain nothing (as they see it) by adjust-
ing to the newcomers in their midst. The separation is also propelled by the
entrenched dynamic of cultural segregation. It is locked down by stereotyp-
ing and by cultural closure and discrimination, which enforce binary catego-
ries, block the route to local relations and consign international students to
an outsider status.
(394)

This passage is especially relevant if we consider that, as mentioned through-

out this study, international students have frequently reported that they would
like to have more Australian friends (416), and some of the authors’ interviewees
maintained that ‘the essential problem was not overt conflict or incidences of
discrimination but the segregation of international students from local people’
(433). To a great extent, both claims resonate with the feelings of frustration and
anger conveyed by Colombo Plan students, highlighting how international stu-
dents themselves understand the problem of social isolation as a covert expression
of racism. Nonetheless, in approaching their interviewees’ accounts, Marginson et
al. analyse the problem of social isolation separately from the instances of overt
racism and discrimination they recounted, framing the former as the result of bar-
riers to ‘cross-cultural friendships’ (419) and the latter as expression of ‘cross-
cultural pathologies’ (431).
This distinction reflects the limits of the theoretical approach employed by the
authors, that is, intercultural communication. Marginson et al. emphatically repu-
diate the essentialist understanding of culture underpinning this discipline (396–
397), and yet their study upholds the related conceptual reduction of avoidance or
 Feeling like an international student 171
conflict among cultural groups to the individualised dynamics of ‘social catego-
risation’, ‘stereotyping’ and ‘prejudicial attitudes’ (401–404). Albeit conceptually
independent from each other, these dynamics can be likewise understood as pro-
cesses through which individuals tend to favour the group they identify with while
derogating others by attributing positive and negative characteristics respectively
(see Ward, Bochner and Furnham 2005: 113–115). Whereas it is agreed that these
processes hinder migrants’ inclusion in host nations (113), they are typically
understood as tendencies inherent to all group populations, regardless of whether
they are culturally dominant (105). In line with this understanding, Marginson
et al. approach, for instance, stereotyping as a semi-unconscious activity that is
only more likely to be carried out by local than international students in that, for
the latter, ‘openness’ and ‘contact’ constitute essential strategies to ‘survive’ and
‘learn’ (2010: 403). So devoid of their history of previous encounters between
international students and Australians, instances of overt racial discrimination and
abuse against the former can only be apprehended by the authors as ‘pathological’
expressions of social dynamics otherwise amenable to improvement by means of
a ‘wide and deep cultural engagement’ between the two parties (441).
Framing it as a matter of lack of ‘intercultural knowledge’, Marginson et al.
further examine international students’ problem of social isolation in terms of
differences in cultural practices and lifestyles rather than as an expression of that
lack of respect for cultural differences they mention at the beginning of their
study. For instance, in the section titled ‘Taking the initiative’, they write,

One student said Australians were approachable but rarely initiated friend-
ship. International students had to make the first moves. Many international
students found this hard. It seemed to breach politeness regimes in which
locals welcome guests.
(422)

In the section ‘Lifestyle barriers’, they add:

An ongoing problem for some international students was differences in val-

ues and lifestyles. One student in 10 said they did not share local party life-
styles, alcohol, smoking and other substance use, or sex outside marriage.
(430)

Differences in lifestyle constitute a valid explanation of the difficulties that inter-

national students face in making friends with locals, yet – when advanced within
a framework that minimises the relevance of the systematic devaluation of inter-
national students’ cultural capitals – it constrains the expression of their feelings
at being socially excluded within tropes that naturalise their emotional distress
as an inherent characteristic of their status of migrant: culture shock, loss and
loneliness. The resultant characterisation of international students as melancholic
migrants is far from new. Rather, as this study has demonstrated, this was part
of the ‘casualties’ representation of Colombo Plan students which was used to
172 Feeling like an international student
mobilise Australians into accepting Asian nationals by means of appealing to their
compassion (Burke 2006: 350–351). It is not surprising then that when discuss-
ing the evidence that domestic students are not interested in mingling with their
international counterparts, especially if they are Asians (Marginson et al. 2010:
414–418; 423–426), the authors suggest appealing to their ‘kindness and generos-
ity’ (443):

The harder question is how to motivate in local students curiosity about inter-
nationals. One argument often used is the career-building potential of global
learning. This works better with internationals, who are already practising
it, than it works with locals. Perhaps students would be more touched by an
appeal to their kindness and generosity than by yet another appeal to their
self-interest.
(443)

In light of this appeal, it is possible to conclude that, like Casey and Oakman,
Marginson et al. provide a sentimental account of the emotional distress interna-
tional students suffer as a means to move Australians into accepting them on the
ground of sympathy rather than their right to be fully included within Australian
universities and communities. Considering this account as a consequence of their
theoretical framework, why did the authors opt to interpret the feelings of their
interviewees as symptomatic of personal loneliness instead of social exclusion?
According to Campbell, our feelings are more likely to be ‘distorted or constricted’
when our interpreters are unsympathetic to us or to our affective experiences
(1997: 165). Considering the authors’ commitment to improving the security of
international students, it is impossible to argue that they interpreted the feelings
of their interviewees merely as expression of culture shock, loss and loneliness
because of a lack of empathy. Rather, their interpretation could be understood as
symptomatic of an excess of sympathy. To argue so, a brief review of the debate
on the role of pain in the realm of politics is necessary to throw further light on
compassion as an affective technology of political containment.
This debate began with Wendy Brown’s critique of the ‘over-evaluation of
the wound in the rhetoric of contemporary US identity politics’ (Berlant 2000:
43). For Brown, the identification of minority groups with their wound – that is,
the injury that the dominant system of exclusion and repression has caused them
through history – transforms the wound into a ‘fetishised evidence of identity’
(43). This fetishisation, in turn, precipitates political identities and actions that are
more reactive to than transformative of social injuries (Ahmed 2004: 32). In ‘The
Subject of True Feeling’, Lauren Berlant argues that the genealogy of the fetishi-
sation of the wound is longer and ‘far more privileged’ than the identification of
minority groups with their wound. In contrast to Brown, Berlant argues that pain-
ful feelings entered the realm of the political as a result of not as much minority
groups’ claims of social injury as what she defines as ‘national sentimentality’ –
that is, ‘a liberal rhetoric of promise . . . which avows that a nation can be best
built across fields of social differences through channels of affective identification
 Feeling like an international student 173
and empathy’ (Berlant 2000: 44). For Berlant, it is because of this promise that,
for instance, ‘changes in feelings’ have come to be apprehended as evidence of
social justice (45) and that emphatic identifications with those who suffer have
come to be used as ‘proleptic shields’ to sustain hegemonic power relations (46).
Approached as expressions of ‘national sentimentality’, we can then conclude
that Australian representatives’, policy makers’, social workers’ and scientists’
appeals to compassion have naturalised the racial grief of international students
to facilitate their inclusion into the nation without disrupting existing social and
political relations. It is no coincidence that Casey persistently advocated improv-
ing the well-being of Colombo Plan students but never publicly acknowledged the
racism they suffered or openly objected to the legitimacy of the White Australia
policy. Likewise, the authors of International Students Security, although they
initially admit that racial discrimination and abuses greatly affect the experience
of ‘non-white’ international students (Marginson at al 2010: 434; 437), do not
engage with any substantive critique of the status quo of race relations in Aus-
tralia. Understandably, a comprehensive analysis of institutionalised forms of rac-
ism in Australia was beyond the scope of their study, which sought to promptly
intervene in the debate regarding international students’ safety. Nonetheless, such
analysis is necessary if, in Cheng’s words, we aim to break with ‘vicious cycles
of blame, guilt, and denigration’ (2001: 202) which have characterised debates
around international students in Australia. But why is this analysis necessary?
How do appeals to compassion reproduce instead of solve antagonistic social
identifications across racial divisions?
As discussed earlier, when naturalised into an ‘inherent disability’, the psychi-
cal damage suffered by minority groups due to racism is emptied of its historical
complexity (Cheng 2001: 5). As Cheng points out, when these histories are erased,
calls for privileged national subjects to feel compassionate for those who are mar-
ginalised can lead to feelings of pity and contempt (14). Likewise, in her interven-
tion in the aforementioned debate, Ahmed argues that the over-evaluation of the
wound of minority groups is less problematic for inhibiting transformative politi-
cal actions than cutting wounded identities ‘off from a history of “getting hurt” or
injured’ (2004: 32) In other words, when deprived of their history, the wound of
minority groups ‘turns into something that simply “is” rather than something that
has happened in time and space’ (32). For Ahmed, this reduction has resulted in
an equalisation of injuries, which has paved the way for the perception of them
as political claims indiscriminately available to everybody, privileged subjects
included (32). From this perspective, Ahmed argues, it is no coincidence then
that ‘normative’ national subjects such as white citizens have been often ‘secured’
through ‘narratives of injury’ that position them in public discourses as the ones
who have ‘been “hurt” by the opening up of the nation to others’ (33).
Likewise, ‘narratives of injury’ emerged from the debate accompanying the
protests Indian international students staged in Melbourne and Sydney in 2009
and 2010. As Chapter 4 demonstrated, Australian representatives’ and media’s
accusation of hysteria positioned their counterparts’ responses to the attacks as the
cause and not the product of the ‘damage’ to the Australian reputation as a safe
174 Feeling like an international student
study destination. The resultant positioning of the Australian nation as a ‘victim’
reverberated across the public sphere, accruing affective value by means of cir-
culation. For instance, following the stabbing to death of Nitin Garg, Indian news
channel NewsX Live posted a news video on YouTube on January 4, 2010. In this
video, the news channel reports that while ‘India has registered a strong protest’
to the violent assault of Nitin Garg ‘after a string of such attacks in 2009’, Austral-
ian representatives ‘remain on a denial mode on whether the attack was racially
motivated’ (NewsX Live 2010). In response to this statement, one YouTube user
commented:

Notice how Indians are so concerned about the racial element of a crime.
Could it be that Indians are so racist and have an inferiority complex? 1447
crimes against Indians is only a drop in the bucket compared to the number
of attacks overall against all Australians. But the Indian media are not con-
cerned when Australians are the victims of Indian crimes in either India or
Australia. Indians attack Australians more than Australians attack Indians.
(NewsX Live 2010, emphasis added)

Mirroring Australian federal and state representatives’ explanation of the attacks

against Indian students as symptomatic of rampant urban crime, the author of
this comment too appears to refer to statistics on crime to counter the accusation
of racism. Yet contrary to the official representatives, this commenter does not
seem to be preoccupied with denying racism to uphold Australia’s reputation as a
racially tolerant country. Rather, racial tolerance per se appears to be positioned
as a matter of trouble, the cause of the victimisation of Australians on the part of
Indian media, who, instead of showing concern for Australians allegedly attacked
by Indian nationals, abuse Australians’ patience by emphasising what is ‘a drop in
the bucket’. Likewise, another user wrote,

For the past 10 years, these media reports from India about Australia is an
attempt to scare the Australian government in to giving Indians special privi-
leges. Indians have been attacking Australians much more than the reverse.
(emphasis added)

Like the first comment, this too takes up on the positioning of Australians as vic-
tims instead of perpetrators of violence. Yet in this comment the injury suffered
by Australians is explicated as double. On the top of having been imaginatively
attacked by Indian students ‘more often than the reverse’, Australians have had
also to endure their government being ‘scared’ into giving ‘special privileges’ to
Indians coming to study in Australia. Considering that the Indian media advocated
the right of Indian students to physical safety and protection, the inscription of
this right as a privilege suggests that for this commenter, Australia as a nation
had already demonstrated its openness to Indians’ demands, such that any further
request qualifies as an abuse of its generosity. Either way, according to the author
 Feeling like an international student 175
of this comment, it is Australian citizens and their government and not Indians
students who are the real victims. Likewise, another commenter stated,

I love it when Indian students dealing drugs in a Parramatta park to pay for
their student loans get beat up by the local Lebanese dealers . . . then blame
it on the white Australians! And when the Yugoslavs burn and maim each
other at the soccer matches . . . then blame white Australia! You see morons,
Australia is a Multiculturalist country, and ALL the ethnic tensions of all the
other cultures come with it, only in Australia the fanatics have a scapegoat
and someone to blame . . . white Australia!
(emphasis added)

Like the previous two comments, this one too abides by the positioning of the
Australian nation and its citizens as victims while radically reconfiguring violence
as a problem inherent to multiculturalism. For the author of this post, multicul-
turalism per se is in fact inevitably a matter of trouble for having allowed ‘ALL
the ethnic tensions of all other cultures’ to be brought in. Blamed by all parties
for problems otherwise unknown to a nation united in its sameness on the one
side and scapegoated by ‘fanatics’ on the other, the imagined ‘white’ core of the
nation is firmly positioned by this commenter as the most mistreated group of
all. In each of these comments, the authors’ claims of being at the receiving end
of mistreatment and abuse are predicted upon an account of the opening of their
nation to others as an act of generosity, which erases the history of racialised
others’ subjugation. Equally cut off from its history of social exclusion, Casey’s,
Oakman’s and Marginson et al.’s sentimental accounts of international students’
grief do not contest but rather underpin equivalence between all injuries, paving
the way for international students’ demands for social redress to be dismissed as
either an illegitimate request for ‘special privileges’ or the inevitable product of
‘ethnic tensions’.
In her analysis of multicultural discourses, Ahmed further demonstrates how
narratives of injury are routinely employed to position those who are already ‘rec-
ognised as “being different” ’ as an object of hate by means of reading the pres-
ence and demands of the latter as a threat to the well-being of the nation or, in
the case here examined, an abuse of its generosity (2004: 42–44). In Chapter 1,
we saw how narratives of injury were employed to position overstaying Chinese
international students as an object of national resentment by means of reading
the breach of their visa conditions as a double threat to the security of the Aus-
tralian nation. This analysis moreover highlighted how narratives of injury func-
tioned as an affective technology of truth through which feelings of sympathy
and compassion were converted into resentment. If we take the earlier-examined
comments as evidence of their authors’ refusal to be ‘generous’ we could also
argue that, more generally, the historical investment in the suffering of interna-
tional students as a means to solicit their inclusion in the nation has created the
very conditions for the conversion of compassion into resentment. The resulting
176 Feeling like an international student
concomitant positioning of international students as an object of national compas-
sion and resentment cannot possibly resolve the problems that they face because
of racism; rather, it repeats the cycle of ‘blame, guilt, and denigration’ that only a
historically informed analysis of the causes of their social exclusion can open it to
new perspectives, if not break it once and for all (Cheng 2001: 202).

Notes
1 The book was republished in 2010, and this is the edition I cite.
2 See for instance: Letter, Weeden to the Secretary of the Department of External Affairs
(19 July 1951) A10299, A18, NAA; Letter from Geechoun to Casey (24 March 1952)
A10299, A18, NAA; Memorandum on Hostel Accommodation for Asian students,
Percy to Clunies-Ross (15 February 1952) A10299, A18, NAA. Many appeals were
also published in state newspapers to raise funds to open hostels to accommodate
Asian students, see, for instance, Hutton, Geoffrey (1952) ‘We must make a home for
our overseas students.’ The Argus, 2, 25 July; ‘University Hostel Is Proposed’ (1952)
The Western Australia, 15, 2 May; ‘Appeal for Students’ Hostel’ (1952) The Mercury,
6, 30 May.
3 Oakman refers to a memorandum written to Casey by Meredith Worth, who was then
DEA Liaison Officer at the University of Melbourne. See Memorandum, Worth to
Casey (6 July 1953) A10299, A18, NAA.
4 Letter, Darling to Casey (14 May 1951) A10299, A18, NAA.
5 Memorandum, Loveday to the Secretary of the Department of External Affairs (31
May 1951) A10299, A18, NAA.
6 Kent-Hughes forwarded this later to Casey, see Letter, Kent-Hughes to Casey (12
July 1951) A10299, A18, NAA.
7 The psychological evidence was presented in court by the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) lawyer Thurgood Marshall as an appendix
to his oral argument. It was based on Kenneth and Mamie Clark’s series of experiments
on African American children’s perception of racial differences. The findings of these
experiments, known now as the ‘doll test’, were at the core of the document presented
in the Supreme Court to prove the psychical injury suffered by African-American
children. The document was titled ‘The Effects of Segregation and the Consequences
of Desegregation – A Social Science Statement’. For further details on the series of
experiments, the deployment of psychological evidence and the case Brown v. Board
of Education, see Cheng 2001: ix–xii; 3–7.
8 The Stell v. Savannah-Chatham County Board of Education case was a class-action
suit filed by African-American parents against the Chatham County Board of Educa-
tion for conducting biracial education. African-American children were in fact inte-
grated in the county schools but still segregated in the classrooms. For further details
on the case, see Cheng 2001: 3–7.
9 In contrast to the dominant tendency to refer to Colombo Plan Students as a homog-
enous group population, this article begins by stating the variety of ‘races’ and nation-
alities that are normally ‘lumped together’ under the common label ‘coloured’. The
article moreover carefully distinguishes between the experiences of Colombo Plan stu-
dents from those of privately funded Asian students in Australia. See ‘Students From
Asia’ 1954: 2.
10 That the writer directly reports students’ impressions of their experiences of studying
and living in Australia constitutes quite a novelty in that these were normally reported
second-hand through Australians or, less frequently, Asian officers involved in the
Overseas Students Program. Indeed, to reinforce the authority of her or his sources, the
writer adds at the end of the article that both of the two students interviewed had stayed
 Feeling like an international student 177
in Australia ‘for more than four years’ and been ‘very active in Sydney University in
helping their fellow Asian students to mix with Australians’. See ‘Students From Asia’
1954: 2.
11 The authors Simon Marginson, Christopher Nyland, Erlenawati Sawir, Helen Forbes-
Mewett, Gaby Ramia and Sharon Smith differently contributed to the work of research,
data collection, analysis and writing. For further details on the authors and their contri-
bution to the book, see Marginson et al. 2010: ix–x and xi–xii.
12 From 2003 to 2006, the research work was carried out at the Monash Institute for
Global Movements, Monash University. From 2006 to 2009, the research group meet-
ings were held at the Centre for the Study of Higher Education at the University of
Melbourne. For further details on the institutions that supported the research work
behind the book, see Marginson et al. 2010: xi.
13 Most of the book is grounded on an Australian Research Council grant that funded
200 semi-structured interviews with international students at nine public universities.
For further details on this and the other projects, see Marginson et al. 2010: xi–xiv and
11–15.
14 In 2007, the Queensland government funded a literature review on the topic of student
safety. For further details on the project, see Marginson et al. 2010: xi.
15 On the sociological approach to international education in relation to global flows of
migration and international students as subjects of human rights, see Deumert et al.
2005: 329–352; Marginson 2007; Jakubowicz and Monani 2010; Marginson 2013.
This strand of studies differs from the one approaching international students as pro-
spective permanent migrants of their host nations. In these studies, the policy nexus
existing between international education and permanent migration is more prominent;
see Robertson 2008: 97–119; Robertson, Hoare and Harwood 2011: 685–698; and
Robertson 2013.
16 The interviews were based on a group of sixty-three sets of questions and aimed to
cover all the issues affecting international students’ experience of living and studying
in Australia, from exploitation in the workplace to loneliness. See Marginson et al.
2010: 14–17.
17 For further details on the composition of the sample of students interviewed, see Mar-
ginson et al. 2010: 15–16.
18 The universities involved in the study participated on the condition of not being
qualitatively compared against each other with regard to their provision of services to
international students. For further details on the universities involved in the study, see
Marginson et al. 2010: 14.

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Conclusion
Fantasies of multiculturalism: whiteness,
emotions and the border

Such is the broader scope of raci[sm]. It is too short-sighted to think of it only as

a discrimination. Both are branches of racial consciousness . . . in their respective
policies of segregation and assimilation . . . The roots are all bound together. We
may labor unnecessarily in demonstrating sympathy and maybe ‘love’ for others
because we wish to rebut the presumption of hate or antipathy . . . we assimilate
deliberately because we do not believe in the dignity of the other as a separate
entity; and likewise we segregate because we do not honour the integrity of the
other, and therefore prefer not to have ourselves polluted.
(Deng 1965: 93)

To think of racism as discrimination is ‘short-sighted’. It is to see what is right

in front of us, what appears to be evident for a bluntness that feels like clarity. In
an apparent paradox, what makes discrimination a glaring instance of racism is
the distance it creates. To discriminate is to ‘make a distinction’ (‘Discriminate’
2015). To ‘distinguish’ is ‘to mark as separate’ objects that are alike (‘Distinguish’
2015). The more objects are marked as separate the more they are to be perceived
as standing apart. Separation entails distance, and the greater the distance between
objects, the more evident the work of discrimination is. According to the ‘colonial’
student1 Francis M. Deng who penned the cited passage, landladies who refuse
to accommodate ‘coloured’ tenants because of their skin exemplify this stance
(1965: 89–92). The distance that this refusal entails in the form of a ‘colour bar’
(91) bluntly reveals the desire of the former to keep themselves apart from the lat-
ter so that confusion will not arise and distinctions between categories of people
will be maintained. Antipathy and hate are expected to inform behaviours such as
this one, leaving little doubt of the negative nature of the attitude informing these
actions. Because of distance, negative feelings, attitudes and actions are associ-
ated with one another and individually taken as obvious manifestations of rac-
ism, marking, by contrast, their opposite as instances of goodwill, tolerance and
acceptance. So positively marked, goodwill, tolerance and acceptance can hardly
be seen as instances of racism; it follows that such is the case with feelings typi-
cally associated with the idea of people coming together: sympathy and love. Yet
for Deng, antipathy and sympathy, hate and love can equally be manifestations of
racism, insofar as they both spring from the same ‘roots’: lack of respect for the
‘integrity’ of the ‘other’ as a ‘separate entity’.
 Fantasies of multiculturalism 181
Stemming equally from the same lack of respect, both antipathy and sympathy,
hate and love can be understood as affective readings through which dominant
groups define the meaning and value of their encounters with subordinated ones
while, as Deng notes, pursuing seemingly oppositional objectives ‘segregation’
and ‘assimilation’. For instance, as Chapter 1 demonstrated, the inclusion of inter-
national students in the decades following World War II was publicly elaborated
as an extension of the love of the nation. Conversely, the employment of a two-
tiered visa system discriminating against overstaying Chinese international stu-
dents was predicated upon their positioning as an object of national resentment.
Yet as their characterisation as ‘Asian’ epitomises, both attributions stem from the
same lack of respect for international students as autonomous entities.
As Chapter 2 unpacked, the ‘Asian’ designation is far from neutral. Rather –
and by means of intersecting with the Orientalist discursive reduction of Asian
populations and cultures into a passive and homogenous object of Western knowl-
edge and intervention – it stands metonymically for a chain of interrelated mean-
ings which ultimately position those who are so referred to as irreducibly other
to white Australians. Or, in Stratton’s words, it operates as a signifier of cultural
differences that are deemed incompatible with Australia’s core values, thus unde-
sirable (1998: 40–45). Yet when circulated in concomitance to national discourses
valorising diversity as an asset for the national economy, the depiction of inter-
national students as ‘Asian’ has worked as a marker of irreducible differences as
much as an injunction for them to convert their educational capital into whiteness.
As the expectation for international students to join the Australian upper mid-
dle class exemplifies, the use of the ‘Asian’ characterisation demonstrates how
the espousing of multiculturalism as a national ideal demands that international
students take up a specific ‘orientation’ and course of ‘action’ to not be deemed
‘bogus’ – that is, they must gratefully return the love of the nation generously
extended to them by becoming ‘like’ white Australians.
As Chapter 3 demonstrated, during the spate of attacks against Indian inter-
national students, the injunction to convert educational capital into whiteness
entailed the requirement for them to approximate the nationally sanctioned ideal
of migrant by receding from view, namely to disguise any bodily marker of cul-
tural difference through self-stylisation and conduct. Elaborated within the lan-
guage of risk and risk management, this requirement was advanced as a solution
to the threat of physical violence while signifying the attacks as a matter of urban
crime. Resulting from the broader positioning of international students as sub-
jects ‘at risk’, this requirement also constituted an attempt to harness the political
agency of Indian students into forms of representation amenable to the systemic
disavowal of racism as a factor impeding the successful integration of them as
yet-to-be migrants.
Issues of agency likewise emerged in Chapter 4. In this chapter, we saw how
racialised collectives’ claims to anger amount to assertions of moral authority that
dominant groups ‘do not want to see’ (hooks 1996: 12). As this chapter pointed
out, the work of not seeing racialised minorities as moral agents – that is, subjects
who have standards of conduct on their own – has taken different forms through
history, repression by means of physical violence included. We also saw how
182 Fantasies of multiculturalism
when racism is denied, anger at racism has to be likewise muted. By no chance, on
the occasion of the Indian students’ protests, their assertion that the attacks were
racially motivated was countered by means of affective interpretive dismissal,
namely the accusation of ‘hysteria’. As the analysis conducted in this chapter
revealed, this accusation was necessary to uphold the moral authority underpin-
ning the white Australians’ fantasy of being the exclusive managers of the nation
and leaders of the Asia-Pacific region.
Conversely, in Chapter 5 we saw how the denial of anger at racism does not
constitute the only strategy of political containment of minority groups’ claims of
social redress. Drawing on Cheng’s work on racial melancholia (2001), this chap-
ter demonstrated how the moral agency of international students has likewise been
constrained over time by means of manufacturing sentimental accounts of their
grief at being racially excluded. By means of these accounts, their suffering has
been iteratively cut off from the history of its making, thus fetishised into either an
inherent trait of their personality or a by-product of their status as migrant. In pro-
viding a history to their ‘sorrow’, this chapter also demonstrated how the framing
of their experiences of social exclusion within the tropes of culture shock, loss and
loneliness has conformed to what Berlant defines as ‘national sentimentalism’: the
‘liberal rhetoric of promise’ that national unity can be achieved across social divi-
sions and inequalities by means of ‘affective identification and empathy’ (2000:
44). As the analysis of the responses to Indian students’ request of social redress
illustrated, the reliance on affective identification as a solution to international
students’ exclusion has not been devoid of consequences. Calls for a compassion-
ate response to the problems international students more generally face have in
fact paved the way for the articulation of narratives positioning white Australians
as the true victims of multiculturalism – that is, subjects injured by the opening of
the nation to those whose inclusion is appraised as an act of generosity. In other
words, like the accusation of ‘hysteria’, the sentimentalisation of international
students’ experiences has worked as an affective interpretive strategy aiming to
retain white Australians’ moral authority over the determination of what counts as
racism and its effects. This last observation leads to the last argument of this study.
In defining whiteness as a cultural capital naturalised as national, Hage indi-
viduates two ways of belonging to the nation: homely and governmental. Accord-
ing to this distinction, non-white Australians can at most aspire to ‘fit into’ or ‘feel
at “home” ’ in Australia (1998: 45), whereas white Australians can feel entitled
not only to feel at home in the nation but also to have the right ‘to contribute to
its management such that it remains one’s home’ (46). For Hage, this distinction
is fundamental to understand how both ‘white’ racist discourses of exclusion and
‘white’ multicultural discourses of inclusion are just different expressions of the
same attitude that sees racialised migrants as ‘passive objects’ of governance (17).
As such, according to him, both positions can be understood as expressions of a
fantasy of white supremacy (17) or, paraphrasing Deng, manifestations of the
 Fantasies of multiculturalism 183
same lack of respect for non-white migrants as subjects endowed with a moral
authority independent from the dominant one.
Once ‘others’ have been problematised as yet-to-be migrants, we can conclude
that both those who have excluded international students by naming them as an
object of national resentment and those who have countered such naming by
positioning them as ‘victims’ share in common the same ‘orientation’ – that is,
the appraisal of them as a passive object of governance. Yet – as this study has
demonstrated by unravelling the discursive conditions of the attribution of emo-
tionality to international students – this ‘orientation’ has also stemmed from the
sentimental fantasy that inclusion in the nation for them can be achieved without
taking into account the structural and symbolic inequities characterising the his-
tory of race relations in Australia. As already stated at the beginning of this study,
due to the specificity of this history, this conclusion – like any other finding of
this study – cannot be applied straightforwardly to shed light on the ‘orientation’
predicating the inclusion of international students in other English-speaking host
nations. Nonetheless, as the popularity of the characterisation of international stu-
dents as ‘Asian’ in the field of international education across national borders tes-
tifies, it can be used effectively as a starting point for a new strand of historically
grounded studies aiming to dismantle the colonial legacy of educating the other in
the manner of the culturally hegemonic West.

Note
1 At the time of writing, Deng was a Sudanese postgraduate student of law at King’s Col-
lege, London (1965: 87). As already mentioned in Chapter 1, in the UK, overseas stu-
dents were referred to as ‘colonial’ presumably because they came from British colonies
in the West Indies, West Africa and Asia. His essay is part of the collection Disappointed
Guests. Edited by Henry Tajfel and John L. Dawson, this collection is the first and only
publication directly documenting overseas students’ ‘attitude towards the color problem’
before and after they came to study in the UK (1). In spite of the emphasis historically
put on international students’ accounts as truth of their experiences, the essays collected
in this book have never been used as examples. Rather, their destiny has been that of
being briefly mentioned in passing as a reference to early studies on international stu-
dents. For further details on the collection, see Tajfel and Dawson 1965: 1–3.

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Index
aboutness: of emotions and feelings
31, 135
active citizens 98, 102 – 5
adversarial politics 117 – 18; see also
diversity
Ahmed, Sarah: On Being Included 91, 96,
116; The Cultural Politics of Emotions
1, 3 – 4, 14, 30, 40, 44, 46n2, 53 – 4, 118,
120, 145, 172 – 3, 175; The Organisation
of Hate 94; The Promise of Happiness
4, 118, 150 – 1n10; Racialised Bodies
123n12
amplification effect 96
Andersen, Niels Akerstrom Discursive
Analytical Strategies 10, 16n3, 97
anger 6, 15, 148 – 9, 170; and critique of
affective expressive modes 138 – 9,
145 – 9; of Indian students, media and
representatives 13, 140 – 50, 149 – 50n1;
as intentional judgements or assessments
135 – 8, 142; and moral agency 137 – 8,
144 – 5, 181; as a political response
to racism 7, 13, 126 – 7, 133 – 6; and
political subordination 136 – 8, 182; of
racialised minority groups 7
Anglo-Celtic background 65, 84n21,
121; as Australian epistemic tradition
and norm 65 – 7; and Britishness 83n9;
dominant group 66; as ideal 24, 65,
83n11; see also whiteness
anti-Indian sentiment 93 – 4, 139; see also
curry bashing
archive 14; of representations 5, 29
Are You Feeling Lucky? Think Before You
Travel 13, 91 – 2, 110 – 12, 118 – 19,
122n9
Asian (characterisation) 66 – 7, 183; as a
chain of meanings 18; as an injunction
to labor towards whiteness 54, 60,
67, 80, 92, 98, 181; as a marker of
irreducible differences 69, 80, 181; as
a technology of differential inclusion
67; see also Asian temperament; Asian
invasion
Asian invasion (rhetoric) 25, 28 – 9, 71,
81, 95
Asian-professionals see honorary
whiteness
Asian temperament 162 – 3, 165
Asia-Pacific 13, 23, 26, 28 – 30, 55, 82n1,
127, 132, 149, 167, 182
assimilation 40, 48n25, 95, 97, 121; as
a condition of inclusion 12, 54, 60,
70; as labour 65; and policy 39; and
segregation 180 – 1; and socio-economic
success 79; as a strategy to minimise the
risk of violence 97; technology of 71,
74; see also Asian (characterisation);
conditional hospitality
attachment 118; affective 4, 46; to the
ideality of whiteness 4; to racism 146
attacks (against Indian students): as
caused by an inherent proneness to
physical vulnerability 12 – 13, 120; as
the expression of social malaise 94 – 5,
116, 130; as ‘incidents’ 94, 100, 104 – 5,
107, 141, 147 – 8; ‘opportunistic’ 12 – 13,
93 – 5, 98, 100 – 1, 121, 127 – 32, 143,
146, 174, 181; racially motivated 93, 96,
105 – 6, 127, 129, 132 – 3, 142 – 3; see
also violence
Baas, Michiel: Curry Bashing 12;
Imagined Mobility 81 – 2, 86n25, 96
Bacchi, Carol Analysing Policy 10
backdoor entry 45n1, 48n27, 8, 96;
metaphor of 4, 9, 41, 67, 85 – 6; see also
jump the queue
186 Index
Baird, Bruce 104 – 9, 122n7
Baird Review 92, 104 – 5
Bali bombings 121
Ball, William Macmahon 26
belonging: governmental 95, 181;
homely 181
Berlant, Lauren 4; The Subject of True
Feelings 172 – 3
Birrell, Bob 9, 74 – 5, 84n16; Evaluation of
the General Skilled Migration Program
12, 68, 73, 75 – 8, 81, 84n20, 85n22
Bolt, Andrew 12, 94
bona fide: assessment criteria 48n – 9n,
86n24; students 71
border: as a barrier 21 – 2; double 54, 74;
as a filter 55, 68; as a technology of time
regulation 68 – 9, 74
brain drain 16n1
Brown, Wendy 172
Brown v. Board of Education 162, 176n7
Bundesen, Christine 103
Burke, Bryan Support Services for
Overseas Students 8, 18, 60 – 6, 80
Burke, Rachel Construction of Asian
International Students 25, 28 – 9, 172
Campbell, Sue Interpreting the Personal
13, 137 – 9, 143 – 5, 156, 165, 172
Casey, Richard Gavin Gardiner 157 – 64,
166, 172 – 3, 175, 176n
change of status 38, 48n
Chen, Ann Anlin 168, 182; The
Melancholy of Race 161 – 3, 173,
176, 176n7
Chinese students (overstaying) 12; as
illegal migrants 22; as an object of
national resentment 43, 67, 163, 175,
181; as a threat to the integrity of the
migration program 36, 39, 41 – 2, 44,
48n27, 71, 74, 83n15
Clunies-Ross, Anthony 159
cognitivist theories of emotions 13, 135,
142; see also Allison M. Jaggar; anger;
Elizabeth V. Spelman
Colombo Plan 22 – 3, 25 – 6, 28, 36, 46n3,
47n17, 57, 74, 82n1, 149, 157, 164; see
also Overseas Students Program
colonial students 26, 47n15
common sense see personal safety
Commonwealth of Australia Constitution
Act 45n1
compassion 21, 27, 40, 45, 155; as an
affective response 2, 9; and attribution
of generosity 30; conversion into
resentment 12 – 14, 22, 157, 163, 173,
175, 182; as an effect in texts 14; as an
injunction to action 30, 166, 173, 182; as
a mean for inclusion 14, 157, 172; and
subordination 31, 166; as a technology
of political containment 172; as a
technology of truth and differentiation
11, 16n4; see also generosity; racial
grief; sentimentalisation
conditional hospitality 40
Crean, Simon 128, 148
cultural competency 80
cultural distance 54, 59, 62, 65
culture shock 7, 104, 161; (definition) 58
culture shock, loss and loneliness: tropes
of 1, 13, 156 – 7, 166, 170 – 2, 182;
see also culture shock
curry bashing 93, 142, 151n11
dangerousness 98, 103; see also risk
Darling, J. R. 159 – 61, 176n
Dean, Mitchell Governmentality 97 – 8,
103 – 4, 109, 122n3
deficit view 59, 82 – 3n8
demand-driven model (of migration) 67
Deng, Francis M. 180 – 2, 183n1
denial 136, 162; of Aboriginal land rights
47n12; implicatory 150n3; interpretive
12, 126, 130 – 1; literal 150n3;
ontological 70; of racism 13, 70, 127,
131, 134 – 5, 142, 148, 150n4, 174, 182;
as a technology of political containment
162; see also hysteria
differential inclusion 67, 73 – 5; (definition)
69 – 70
discriminate (definition) 180
disguise, labour of 96, 181
displacement and distanciation:
institutional responses to the accusation
of racism 96, 106
distinguish (definition) 180
diversity 74, 76; cultural 54, 56, 91; good
and bad 116 – 18, 119; and integration
117; and internationalisation of higher
education 55 – 7; and national ideal 91,
119, 113; as social good 59; see also
multiculturalism; technology.
dodgy colleges 8, 81; see also backdoor
entry
Education Services for Overseas Students
(the ESOS Act) 37 – 8, 48n22, 104, 108
Education Test 24, 46n9
emotionality 27; attribution of 8, 9, 58,
120, 123, 145, 183; as inherent quality
of Colombo Plan students 162, 165;

metonymic equation with vulnerability
120; myth 13, 157; and passivity
120; see also Asian temperament;
vulnerability
emotions 1 – 4, 14, 169, 180; as affective
value 4, 44; and alignment 44;
attribution and objects 3 – 4; and
circulation 44; of Colombo Plan
students 166 – 7; as communicative acts
143 – 4; and contact 4, 44; as cultural
politics or world making 3; as an effect
in texts 14; as intentional judgements
135 – 6; and interpreters 139; and
orientation and action 14; and power
149; and race 7 – 8; and social norms and
ideals 4; as trait words 145
employability (of international students)
74, 79 – 80
English Australia 103
enterprise culture 33 – 4; see also human
capital
equivalence, relation of 111, 113, 119
Evaluation of the General Skilled
Migration Program 12
Evans, Chris 13, 145 – 6
Fallon, Felicity 101 – 2
fear 92 – 3, 120 – 1, 129, 136, 150; of anger
133 – 4, 136; as anticipation of pain
or injury 3, 21, 46n2, 53; of Chinese
migration and invasion 23 – 5, 44, 81,
95, 161; narrative of 42 – 3; of passivity
and emotionality 120; politics of 120 – 1;
as a response to anger 138; as a response
to the threat of violence 120; see also
anger; generosity; vulnerability
Federation of Indian Student Association
in Australia 128, 141; see also Gautam
Gupta
feminisation: of Colombo Plan students
120; of non-Western countries 59; of
racial differences 13
Feminist Cultural Studies of Emotions 4
Foucault, Michel 1, 17, 122n3; Nietzsche,
Geneaology, History 16n3; Truth and
Power 10, 16n4
Fraser government 31 – 2, 38, 48n24, 54
full-fee system 31 – 2
Garg, Nitin 126, 146, 149, 174
genealogy 1, 10, 45, 48n27, 85n24;
(definition) 16n3; of the Dictation Test
46; and events 10 – 11; of intercultural
communication 57, 82n8; as a method
of historical analysis 10 – 15
Index 187
General Skilled Migration program 75 – 8,
80, 85n24
generosity 172; as a national characteristic
9, 30, 182; and proneness to be injured
12, 40, 43, 163, 175
George 110 – 19, 122n9
Gillard, Julia 104, 126, 129, 130
Goldring Report 32, 38, 46n4
governing knowledge(s) 10 – 11
Gupta, Gautam 128, 141 – 2
Hackett, James 110 – 10, 115, 122n10
Hage, Ghassan 67, 82, 83n10, 86; White
Nation 65 – 6, 83n11, 94 – 5, 149, 182
hate: as an affective 180 – 1; crimes 121;
object of 175; and women of Color 133
Hawke government 32 – 3, 35 – 6
Hindess, Barry Neoliberalism and the
National Economy 33
hooks, bell Killing Rage 134 – 6,
150n9, 181
Howard, John 83n15, 85n23; government
35, 67, 71
Hughes, Billy 24
Hull, Rob 147 – 8
human capital 34; theory of 34
hysteria 136, 138 – 9; accusation of 13,
127, 145 – 6, 148 – 9, 173, 182; and
‘trait words’ 145; see also interpretive
dismissal
Immigration Restriction Act 23, 46n5;
see also White Australia policy
Indian students: anger expressions 140 – 2,
144; cashed up subjects 94 – 130; growth
in numbers and racial visibility 92,
95 – 6, 128, 142; objects of anger 142 – 3,
150n1; political agency 92, 104 – 5, 107,
110, 181; space invaders 81
Industry Commission Exports of Education
Services 12, 33 – 7, 41 – 2, 45
injury, equalisation of 17; see also
psychical damage; racial grief
innate knowledge see personal safety
Inquiry into the Welfare of International
Students 92, 98 – 100, 103, 105, 107
intercultural communication see
genealogy; intercultural contact
intercultural contact 56 – 7, 61; and the
culture learning model 58, 63, 161;
and psychanalysis 58, 161, 170; and
the stress coping model 58, 161; see
also culture shock, loss and loneliness;
intercultural knowledge
intercultural knowledge 40, 159, 164, 171
188 Index
international education, as aid 11, 22 – 3,
35, 37, 60
international education, as export industry
9, 11, 22, 32 – 3, 35, 45, 55, 71, 97, 99,
108, 122n7, 129, 132
international education, as trade 31, 33, 35,
37, 55, 60
International Education Association
Inc. 101
International English Language Testing
System (IELTS) 5, 80
internationalisation of higher education 64;
(definition) 55 – 6, 59; educational policy
11, 55, 64; as a technology of diversity
management 57, 60, 66
international students: bogus 11, 15, 16n4,
22, 45, 48 – 9n27; as bogus migrants 3,
8, 12, 81, 85n24, 95; as consumers 22,
35, 38, 41, 108; as culturally deficient
subjects 58, 92, 98 – 102, 104, 116, 120;
as deficient learners 2 – 4, 6, 15, 61,
63 – 4, 104; as deserving migrants 45;
as emotionally vulnerable subjects 1 – 3,
8, 162, 165 – 6, 170; genuine 11, 16n4,
22, 45, 48 – 9n27; as ideal migrants 2 – 3,
39, 68, 73, 80, 85n24; profiteers 8 – 9,
12, 81, 95; as melancholic subjects 27,
156, 170; as an object of governmental
intervention 10 – 11, 26; as an object of
national compassion 3, 15, 22, 31, 39,
176; as an object of national resentment
3 – 4, 12, 15, 43 – 4, 82, 176, 181, 183;
as permanent migrants 9, 38, 54, 74 – 5,
77, 80, 84n; as subjects at risk 13, 92 – 3,
104, 107, 110, 123, 126, 130, 181; as
subjects in need of special intervention
108, 110; as subjects of the border 10;
as surrogate children 29; as victims 8 – 9,
11, 13, 15, 29, 61, 95, 171, 183; see also
Asian temperament; racial grief; soft
targets
international students hubs 108
interpretive dismissal 139; affective 182;
techniques of 13, 139, 145
interpretive model of emotions see anger;
Sue Campbell
investment: affective 4; economic 23;
in education and economic growth
34 – 7; financial 53; in the future of
Australia 34 – 5; in the human capital
34; professional 7; in the self 34; of self-
managing students in their education 37;
in the suffering of international students
176; see also human capital
Islamic Council of Victoria 143
Ivison, Duncan Multiculturalism and
Resentment 43
Jackson Report 32, 46n3
Jaggar, Alison M. 7; Love and Knowledge
135 – 6
jump the queue 42, 71; metaphor of 22,
41 – 2, 48n27, 71
Kent-Hughes, Wilfred 160, 176n6
Krishna Somanahalli, Mallaiah 147 – 8
Kumar, Margaret The Discursive
Representation of International
Undergraduate Students 155 – 6
Lentin, Alana and Gavan Titley The Crises
of Multiculturalism 116 – 18
Lentin, Alana 164; ‘Racial States, Anti-
racist Responses’ 24, 39 – 40, 47 – 8n20
loneliness 168, 172, 177; of Colombo Plan
Students 158, 161; personal and social
168 – 70; see also cultural shock, loss
and loneliness
Lorde, Audre The Uses of Anger 133 – 6,
138 – 9
love 21, 38; as an act of generosity 40,
181; as an affective reading 180 – 1; as
anticipation of loss 46n; objects 57, 161;
politics of 40; as proneness to injury 40;
and security conditions 40 – 1, 42 – 3;
see also generosity
Marginson, Simon 9, 47n19, 177n11 – 18;
International Student Security 8, 14,
121, 157, 166 – 73, 175; ‘Subjects and
Subjugation’ 33 – 4
Mason, Gail ‘I am Tomorrow’ 12, 93,
130 – 3, 148, 150n3
May, Theresa 48n27, 85 – 6n24
Mazzadra, Sandro and Brett Neilson
Border as a Method 69 – 70, 73 – 4
Menzies, Robert 157 – 62
metonymic slides 62 – 3
Migration Occupations in Demand List
(MODL) 74 – 5, 76, 109
migration program 25, 32, 36, 39, 41,
42 – 3, 53, 83n15; review of 75, 95
migration tap, metaphor of 53
minority, right kind 72, 92, 96, 99, 104,
116 – 17, 121
mobility: restriction for women and
feminised others 13, 92 – 3, 120 – 1;
see also fear; vulnerability

movement see mobility
multiculturalism 44, 53, 69, 180; backlash
against 83n15, 175; and happiness
118 – 19; and the imperative to mix
with others 118; as a national ideal 2,
53, 91, 118 – 19, 181; and the politics
of love 40; as population management
policy 38, 48n24, 54 – 5, 65, 82n8; and
resentment 43 – 4; see also diversity;
love; productive diversity
narratives of injury: and conversion
of compassion into resentment 175;
national ideal (see multiculturalism);
and normative national subjects
173, 182
Natal Model 24
national character see generosity
national language 70, 83n14
national sentimentality 155, 173;
(definition) 172
naturalisation see racial grief
1989 crisis 11, 22, 35, 36, 67, 71, 74
Northern Territory 23 – 5, 46n6, 47n11,
47n13; see also terra nullius
Numerical Multifactor Assessment System
(NUMAS) see points test migration
scheme
Oakman, Daniel Facing Asia 11, 24, 26,
47n14, 157 – 8, 160, 163, 172, 175,
176n3
Ong, Aihwa Neoliberalism as Exception
96 – 7
openness see generosity
Osuri, Goldie Once More to a ‘Slightly
Different Breach’ 93 – 4, 96 – 7, 105, 109,
132, 141 – 2
outlaw emotions 7, 135 – 6; see also
Allison M. Jaggar
Overland, Simon 13, 127 – 8, 143
Overseas Student Charge 31 – 2
Overseas Students Program 1, 22 – 3, 29,
31 – 3, 35 – 6, 42, 46n3 – 4, 67, 71 – 3, 82,
132, 156, 161; see also
Colombo Plan
passing, as the right kind of minority 121;
as a condition of safety 99; (definition)
96; see also disguise; minority
passing, of agency 182
passivity see emotionality
Perera, Suvendrini 85n23; Who will
I become? 66 – 7
Index 189
permanent migration 32, 80; ad hoc
pathway to 9, 12, 35, 85n24 (UK); and
international education (nexus), 81,
177n15
personal safety (lack of awareness) 100,
104, 130; as a cultural practice 101 – 2;
as a lack of education 102 – 3
points test migration scheme 69, 71 – 2, 75;
and the principle of non-discrimination
69 – 70, 77; see also Numerical
Multifactor Assessment System
political grievance see racial grief
prejudicial attitudes 171
productive diversity: policy of 55,
82n4, 181
prudentialism (new) 92, 98; see also risk,
language and management
public space 91, 119 – 21
Puwar, Nirmal 96; Space Invaders 70,
82n2, 83n14, 96
psychical damage 162 – 3, 176n7; as
inherent disability 162, 173; see also
racial grief
Racial Discrimination Act 48n24, 106
racial grief 155, 161 – 2, 166, 168; of
Colombo Plan students 165; and
naturalisation 162 – 3, 166; and
sentimentalisation of 14, 163, 173
racialised bodies, production of 123n12
racial melancholy 168
racism: as a belief in white racial
superiority 94, 132; cultural or
differentialist 40; disavowal of 122; as
discrimination 180; historicist 48n25;
and international students’ wellbeing
168; as prejudice and ignorance 106 – 7;
and shyness 163 – 5; see also denial;
hysteria; interpretive dismissal
rage see anger
resentment 2, 38, 53, 81; as an affective
response 3, 9, 12, 44, 163; and
multiculturalism 43 – 4; as a technology
of truth and differentiation 11, 16n4, 22,
45, 67; see also backdoor entry; jump
the queue
ressentiment 43
risk: as a continuum 98, 103; factors 93,
111; language and management of
91 – 2, 97 – 8, 103 – 4, 109; of migration
36, 38, 42, 45, 48 – 9n27, 54, 71, 73 – 4;
of national economic failure 35; as
a technology of racism disavowal
and diversity management 92; of
190 Index
violence 92 – 3, 96 – 8, 102 – 4, 107 – 8,
111 – 16, 121; see also dangerousness;
overstaying; vulnerability
risky behaviour 99, 102
Rudd, Kevin 91 – 2, 119, 129 – 31, 145 – 6;
government 67
Ruddock, Philip 72; The Economic Impact
of Immigration 68, 83n12; Immigration
reform 53 – 4, 71, 83n15
safety campaign 13, 92, 110, 115, 122n9;
see also Are you Feeling Lucky? Think
Before you Travel
Said Edward Orientalism 29
Senate Standing Education, Employment,
and Workplace Relations References
Committee 99, 105, 107
sentimentalisation: as a technology of
political containment 162; see also
racial grief
Sheehan, Paul 94
skilled and unskilled migrants 68 – 9, 80 – 1
social categorisation 171
softness see vulnerability
soft targets, label 13, 95, 98, 120, 128, 130,
142 – 3, 146; refusal of the label
13, 144
Southern-European and Levantine
migrants 25, 113, 117; swarthy
appearance 114 – 16
Spelman, Elizabeth V. Anger and
Insubordination 136 – 8, 144; Fruits of
Sorrow 30, 126, 166
Spender, Percy 21, 28
Stell v. Savannah-Chatham Board of
Education 162, 176n8
stereotypes: and the culture of
poverty myth 82n; and feelings of
disengagement 6; racial 110 – 11
stereotyping 133, 171
Stratton, Jon 74, 83n11; Borderline
Anxieties 83n9; Multiculturalism and
the Whitening Machine (1999) 65, 83n9;
Preserving White Hegemony 21, 25, 58,
68, 70, 80, 83n10; Race Daze 38 – 40,
48n24, 54, 65, 95, 181; Uncertain Lives
54, 65, 68, 85n23
street smart see personal safety
streetwise knowledge see personal safety
streetwise safety tips 96, 110, 123n11,
140, 147; as a neo-liberal technology of
subjectivity 96 – 7
suffering 2, 120, 135; framing of 30; as
an object of compassion 30 – 1, 166,
175; see also generosity; international
students
surface (definition) 135
Tampa Affair 80, 85n23
targeted populations 98, 102 – 4; see also
active citizens
Taylor, Douglas 25; see also backdoor
technologies of agency 97; (definition)
109 – 10
technologies of citizenship (definition)
109, 122n8
technologies of self-regulation 97,
109 – 10; see also technologies of
subjectivity
technologies of subjection (definition) 97
technologies of subjectivity 96; (definition)
97
technologies of voice and representation
(definition) 109
technology (definition) 16 – 17n4; and
governmentality 122n3
Terra nullius 25, 47n12
territorialisation 91, 110, 121; see also
mobility; public space
territory see public space
Test of English as Foreign Language
(TOEFL) 5
Theerthala, Sravan Kumar 92, 141
Tiananmen Square Uprising 12, 35 – 6
Times Now 129 – 30, 139 – 40, 145, 146,
148, 151n12
travel advisory 147 – 8
two-tiered system of selection 45
UNESCO 39 – 59; tradition of anti-racism
39; view of cultural differences 48n25
Vanstone, Amanda 73
Veracini, Lorenzo Settler Colonialism
46n5
Victoria Police 92 – 3, 95 – 7, 109 – 11,
122n10, 123n11, 127 – 8, 140 – 2, 147
violence: condemnation of violence 91 – 2;
as inherent to multiculturalism 175; as a
‘law and order’ issue 131; male violence
115; as a mean to assert a privileged
position 95; as a mean to reinforce
divisions 94; as a nationalistic practice
82 – 95; as a right protection issue
104 – 5; as a risk of urban crime 91 – 2,
98, 110, 126, 131, 181; see also attacks
Vocational Education and Training (VET)
74 – 5, 108

vulnerability: as inherent quality of some
bodies 120, 142; as a narrative 120; as a
proneness to be injured 53, 120; see also
emotionality; fear
Walshe, Kieran 95
Ward, Collen, Stephen Bochner and Adrian
Furnham: The Psychology of Culture
Shock 2, 26, 57 – 9, 63, 171
White Australia policy 9, 23 – 4, 38, 48n24,
157, 166, 173
white consensus 133
white man’s burden 27 – 8; see also
Edward Said
Index 191
whiteness 12, 53 – 4, 66, 80, 82n1, 86n25,
180 – 1; as a constructed category
65; as a cultural capital 65, 94, 182;
honorary 70, 74, 79, 83n10; ideality of
4; principle of inclusion 54; quantifiable
category 66 – 7; as a spatialised field
of power 66; spatial management 66;
transnational political identification 24
white ontology 28
white sovereignty see white ontology
white supremacy 139; fantasy of 149, 182;
see also whiteness
Whitlam government 31, 48n24
wound, fetishisation of 172 – 3, 182