‘Fitting in’ and ‘giving back’: Constructions of Australia’s ‘ideal’ refugee through discourses of assimilation and market citizenship

Author(s):  
Ashleigh L Haw

Abstract This paper examines how the ‘ideal’ refugee is conceptualized in discussions about Australia’s humanitarian policies. Critical Discourse Analysis of semi-structured interviews with 24 Western Australians revealed strong themes of assimilation alongside the neoliberal concept of ‘market citizenship’, where the ‘ideal’ refugee is positioned as achieving economic success through contributions to Australia’s labour market. These discourses served competing ends—they were voiced both in support of, and opposition to, Australia’s acceptance of refugees. I argue that by constructing refugees’ deservingness of protection along market citizenship lines, their belonging becomes contingent upon their adherence to a narrowly defined ideal. Consequently, refugees who do not fit within this ideal face continued exclusion, with their ‘human capital’ prioritized over their safety and human rights. This article calls for a reconsideration of arguments that focus on refugees’ capacity to ‘fit in’ and ‘give back’ as these narratives may exacerbate their experiences of exclusion and stigmatization.

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 10-38
Author(s):  
Phillip Joy ◽  
Matthew Numer ◽  
Sara F. L. Kirk ◽  
Megan Aston

The construction of masculinities is an important component of the bodies and lives of gay men. The role of gay culture on body standards, body dissatisfaction, and the health of gay men was explored using poststructuralism and queer theory within an arts-based framework. Nine gay men were recruited within the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Participants were asked to photograph their beliefs, values, and practices relating to their bodies and food. Semi-structured interviews were conducted, using the photographs as guides. Data were analyzed by critical discourse analysis and resulted in three overarching threads of discourse including: (1) Muscles: The Bigger the Better, (2) The Silence of Hegemonic Masculinity, and (3) Embracing a New Day. Participants believed that challenging hegemonic masculinity was a way to work through body image tension.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 162-188
Author(s):  
Giulia Evolvi ◽  
Mauro Gatti

Abstract This article focuses on the European Court of Human Rights’ (ECtHR) case law about religious symbols (N=27) from 2001 to 2018, exploring the following questions: What discourses does the ECtHR employ in cases about religious symbols? How do ECtHR’s discourses about religious symbols evolve in time? The data is innovatively analyzed through critical discourse analysis and leads to two findings: first, the ECtHR tends to endorse ‘Christian secularism,’ considering Christian symbols as compatible with secularism but not Muslim symbols; second, ECtHR discourses occasionally become more favorable to Muslim applicants over time, but the evolution of case law is not linear.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 213
Author(s):  
Atin Fitriana

<p>The Javanese culture has a specific perspective on the ideal figure of women. This perspective is generally manifested in the classical texts, for example, in Serat Wulang Putri Adisara. Written by Nyi Adisara. Serat Wulang Putri contains the teachings for royal daughters in living their life as Javanese women based on Javanese teachings. In this manuscript, the readers can see the women figure portrayed from the perspective of a woman writer. This paper discusses the ideal women’s discourse in Serat Wulang Putri using the approach of critical discourse analysis from van Dijk. The analysis is conducted by considering the text’s microstructure, macrostructure, and cultural context. Through the analysis, we can see the ideal discourse of Javanese women based on Serat Wulang Putri. Furthermore, the text discusses women as figures who must pay attention to their attitudes and behavior, and can control their hearts, minds, and feelings. In this case, the author uses the male point of view to describe the characteristics of ideal Javanese women. Javanese women are also described as a weak figure and must obey what men command or expect from them.</p>


2021 ◽  
pp. 120633122110665
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Punzi

Sites of oppression might be remembered in ways that contribute to dialogues about human rights and justice, exemplified by Sites of Conscience. Oppression was commonplace in former psychiatric institutions, yet such institutions are often subject to strategic forgetting and transformed into business parks, hotels, or residential areas. This article concerns Långbro Hospital, a digital museum presenting the former psychiatric institution Långbro, Sweden, now transformed into a residential area. I discuss how the former institution becomes a digital nonplace in which patients tend to be objectified or excluded, and the park and the buildings in which oppression occurred are reduced to representing beauty and functionality. I relate the analysis to digital Sites of Conscience such as British Museum of Colonialism and Pennhurst Memorial and Preservation Alliance and, thereby, show that thoughtful digitization might recognize prior as well as current injustice and oppression and contribute to change.


2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 130-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amber Gazso

In this article, I undertake a critical discourse analysis of policy documents and in-depth interviews with seven caseworkers and 28 benefit recipients to explore how two discourses, ‘work first’ and ‘distance from the labour market,’ inform how persons living with addiction access and then experience social assistance in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Drawing in Foucauldian insights on power, I reveal the conceptualisation of benefit recipients’ eligibility for Ontario Works through these two discourses and how this is replete with ideological assumptions and disciplining power relations, constitutive of a subject position of ‘the recovering addict’, and suggestive of social control implications. I argue that the coercion and regulation of benefit recipients’ lives on Ontario Works has not disappeared but transmuted for Torontonians living with addiction, and conclude by considering the governance of this population as biopower.


Target ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-237 ◽  
Author(s):  
Li Pan

This article investigates the Chinese translations of several English news reports on China’s human rights issue carried in Reference News, a Chinese authoritative state-run newspaper devoted to translating foreign reports for the Chinese reader, and aims to establish how evaluative resources are resorted to by the translators to facilitate ideologically different positioning in presenting events and identifying participants in the translated news. The translations are compared with their English source texts using Appraisal Theory (Martin and White 2005) as the micro analytical framework and Fairclough’s (1995a, 1995b) three-dimension model of Critical Discourse Analysis as the explanatory framework.


Author(s):  
Sabrina Daiana Cúnico ◽  
Marlene Neves Strey ◽  
Ângelo Brandelli Costa

This study aims to analyze fathering practices and the meanings attributed to it by imprisoned men. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with twelve fathers, incarcerated in a penal institution located in in southern Brazil. Transcribed data were analyzed through the Critical Discourse Analysis. Results are presented according to two themes: Deprivation of freedom X Deprivation of Fatherhood and Criminality X Fatherhood. Our findings indicate that the meanings attributed to fathering practices within deprivation of freedom context rely on different psychosocial factors and the prison context itself. The results presented here demonstrate that paternity in prison is a complex phenomenon and should be a focus of academic problematization. Its relevance is given both in the context of gender studies and in the studies involving the family and different settings.


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