Afrodiasporic Identities in Australia: Articulations of Blackness and Africanness [1st ed. 2022] 9811942811, 9789811942815

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Kathomi Gatwiri Leticia Anderson

Afrodiasporic Identities in Australia Articulations of Blackness and Africanness

Afrodiasporic Identities in Australia

Kathomi Gatwiri · Leticia Anderson

Afrodiasporic Identities in Australia Articulations of Blackness and Africanness

Kathomi Gatwiri Southern Cross University Bilinga, QLD, Australia

Leticia Anderson Southern Cross University East Lismore, NSW, Australia

ISBN 978-981-19-4281-5 ISBN 978-981-19-4282-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-4282-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

To Black people, You matter. You have always mattered

Foreword by Yin Paradies

This book tells stories about Blackness. These narratives, replete with resonant truth, will be unfamiliar to some, intimately recognisable to others. There will be those who think they already know and yet will be challenged by the felt sense of presence that flows from these stories. Still others will wish it were not so, while surprisingly many will deny the truths shared within these pages. Without a doubt, so-called Australia has a long history of excluding, marginalising, overlooking, isolating, alienating, discounting, labelling, hyper-visibilising, over-scrutinising, ever-patrolling and readily criminalising non-white populations. These variously deployed strategies serve to (re-)inscribe fantasies of white supremacy, protect ‘innocent Australians’, and foster racial battle fatigue among non-whites. In fact, this is a thread woven through the entire colonial history on this continent since 1788. To merely call these happenings ‘racism’ insubstantialises the profoundly pervasive colonial-capitalistpatriarchal lurking leviathan of Western modernity (Paradies, 2020), from which these lived experiences emerge and are embedded. While waves of migrants to Australia have been subject to indignities, assaults and traumas, there is something particular and specific about Black bodies as visible signifiers of unassimilable fear, intimidation and danger to the unspeakable status quo of white hegemony. While incomparable to the horrors of colonisation suffered by First Peoples, for those seeking opportunity in the ‘lucky’ country—situated as it is atop the Global North pyramid of power, oppression and exploitation (in the geographic south)—such abjection of Blackness relegates Black Africans to perpetual strangerhood; always suspect, or at imminent risk of being so. The expectation that non-white skilled migrants (regardless of their qualifications) will fill menial roles is aptly demonstrated by the post-COVID era. Temporarily stanched migration flows have left employers struggling to hire labour at the impoverished remittance on offer in late-stage capitalism (Price, 2021), while governments threaten migrant workers who vote with their feet in the face of draconian working conditions (Kelly, 2021). The stories (data if you prefer) in this volume amply demonstrate the tropes of assumed incompetence, intellectual inferiority and superiority of white expertise that beset Black African skilled migrants at every turn in their arduous search vii

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for meaningful work. The ‘burden of proof’ required to counter such insidious assumptions necessitates working twice as hard to overcome invisibilised harms, ranging from ‘benign’ racial microaggressions to ‘myriad subtle acts of exclusion’, rudeness, insensitivity as well as overt and blatant stereotypes. While engaging in various ‘creative accommodations’ and learning how to manage white fragility, Black African skilled migrants are worn down and drained, tending to internalise the burdens of anti-Blackness through inwardly directed blame and self-loathing. While some previous studies in Australia have focused on employment and work for Black Africans, the complexity of parenting, fathering and masculinity is less commonly examined in Australian scholarship. In this monograph, readers share a journey of ‘relearning how to be a father’ for many Black African men who find themselves re-positioned as stay-at-home dads while their wives work as breadwinners. Through challenging patriarchal cultural norms about ‘inferior’ feminised roles of childcare and home-keeping; coming to terms with the loss of status, identity and privilege; facing ‘ontological resistance’; and navigating marital discord, some African men embraced transformed masculinities, encompassing closer, ‘more profound, intimate and loving relationships with their children and spouses’. These re-dignified marginal masculinities, situated within ‘more porous gender roles’ that foreclosed expectations of women’s domesticity, servitude and obedience, were experienced as liberating, fulfilling and less hedged in by hegemonic bubbles of respectability. While toxic masculinity remains prevalent in patriarchal Australian society at large, these findings demonstrate the opportunities provided by migration to shape new gender relations in an Afrodiasporic context. This volume also surfaces parenting paradoxes, whereby skilled African migrant parents ‘temper and adapt their parenting’ to instil pride in African culture and ancestry while disciplining children to ‘curate their Blackness’ in an attempt to avert potential racism directed against them. A focus on thriving and surviving exists alongside hypercriticism of Black authoritarian parenting; the pervasive threat of child removal due to non-Eurocentric approaches to child-rearing; children’s embarrassment with African accents, food and culture; denialist discourses of colour-blindness; and the threat of racial profiling for boys and exotification for girls. Within this context, decolonising parenting seeks to help children believe in themselves and cultivate self-worth. It is clear that there is nothing inadvertent about the insidiousness dehumanising ontological violence of Black inferiority and marginalisation inherent in white Western ideological imaginations. White racial frames disingenuously emphasise the ‘inherent equality of all humans’ while celebrating cultures that continue to demean most of the world’s population for the benefit of a wealthy few. Compartmentalised axiologies uphold abuse, expropriation and oppression, normalise violence, and lambaste those victimised by the system (for their purported individual deficiencies). It is both a matter of truth and ‘the truth of the matter’ that Black Africans in Australia will never be respected, affirmed or dignified while this layered palimpsest of wilful ignorance persists. While Africans struggle to feel at home, they still feel that Australians are good people. Such unmerited generosity aside, skilled Black African migrants should

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be rightly proud of their capacities and willingness to adapt to and endure within profoundly different employment, gender and parenting contexts. Their contributions to ‘advancing Australian society’ far beyond ‘paying their taxes and not being a burden’ are evident via the cultural strengths, values and knowledges they bring from the birthplace of humanity. The real question is not how can Black Africans ‘integrate’ but will so-called Australia ever metamorphosise into a society worthy of their presence? Can we cultivate a culture of care, belonging, dignity, humility and respect that is deserving of Blackness? How can this continent become a land of healing, wisdom and freedom? What can we learn from philosophies such as Ubuntu and Sancofa in living by the principles of ‘I am, because we are’ and embracing the importance of going ‘back for that which you have forgotten’? What would happen if we welcomed the nuanced multiplicities of Afrocentric sociocultural ontologies and epistemologies alongside other local traditional Indigenous knowledges and radical localisation more generally? Could we weave ourselves garments made from the ‘strengths of the cultural collectivist pattern that hold African communities together’? What if we celebrated, instead of tolerating utter contempt for, Blackness? What could occur if we adopted fugitive Black aesthetics contoured by pleasure as well as grievance, by receptivity and sublime creative sensibilities in addition to truth and rationality (Shulman 2021)? Rather than dance to algorithms of coercion, what if we danced to Afro-rhythms of liberation (Best & Brooks, 2021) that inspire authentic, creative, thriving, playful, vivid, visceral, plural, messy, vulnerable, sacred, sensuous, joyful and sense-full lives? November 2021

Professor Yin Paradies Wakaya Man Chair in Race Relations Deakin University Melbourne, Australia

References Best, A., & Brooks, L. (2021, November 17). Afrorithms vs algorithms. The other others [podcast]. Deakin University Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab. https://anchor.fm/tyson-yunkaporta/ episodes/Afrorithms-vs-Algorithms-e1acrjr Kelly, C. (2021). ‘You may bring shame to your family’: Australia launches campaign to stop seasonal farm workers absconding. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/australianews/2021/nov/05/you-may-bring-shame-to-your-family-australia-launches-campaign-tostop-seasonal-farm-workers-absconding Paradies, Y. (2020). Unsettling truths: Modernity, (de-)coloniality and indigenous futures. Postcolonial Studies, 23(4), 438–456. Price, J. (2021, November 17). Struggling to find staff? Here’s why nobody wants to work for you. Sydney Morning Herald. https://www.smh.com.au/national/struggling-to-find-staff-heres-why-nobody-wants-to-work-for-you-20211114-p598tu.html Shulman, G. (2021). Fred Moten’s refusals and consents: The politics of fugitivity. Political Theory, 49(2), 272–313.

Foreword by Virginia Mapedzahama

In 2018, the former Australian Race Discrimination Commissioner, Dr. Tim Soutpommasane, warned that Australians should ‘remain vigilant because race politics is back’. In fact, he contended: ‘in one sense, race and racism have never gone away’. Indeed, we have a growing and significant body of work lending credence to Dr. Soutpommasane’s warning: racism never went away in Australia; it is still rife. Yet, despite this body of work and the fact that Australia is a settler-colonial state with a past etched in racism and racist colonial policies, a denial discourse of racism predominates. White majoritarian narratives of race, rooted in white racial privilege and anti-Black racism, overwhelmingly constitute the master narrative of race in Australia. Not surprisingly, discussions of racism are not only muted, but ‘racism’ is also still a ‘dirty word’, not to be spoken of ‘freely’—at least not in a white-majority context. There are simply rarely any speaking positions for those with lived experience of racism. Even less surprising is that within this context, the voices of Black African migrants are virtually unheard—as the authors of this book aptly point out: ‘we are at the bottom of the social hierarchy’, with hardly any power to command an audience. I eagerly welcome this book on many levels. The book feels quite personal to me. I see myself in the narratives it tells. I am the ‘fieldwork’ in this book; I am that which it researches—an embodied Black African migranthood. The participants’ stories are my stories too. Yet, I am also the researcher, the Black African author and narrator who has ‘told’ the Black African race narrative more times than I care to (re)count. I, too, have heard the stories the participants in this book tell. ‘Race’, racism, anti-racism, it’s all been my life’s work. As the Black bodies in this book, we have lived expertise in racism. Racism is in our dailiness—in the structures ingrained in the legacy of a colonial past built on racism; in a society that is bent on telling us that we are ‘wrong’ about racism, that we are ‘stuck’ in a past that is no longer ‘relevant’, and that the ‘world’ (read as, white people) have moved on. Yet, despite the fact that we know about racism—what it looks like, how it feels, how to address it—our stories are hardly ever heard in Australia. We are experiential experts with no speaking platform. As such, this book is a powerful platform.

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So, accepting to write this foreword for me is a personal act grounded in my conviction to be part of the disruption to the Australian practice of ‘omitting race’ in its narratives. I strongly believe that in a context where anti-Black racism is denied, deflected and its discussions muted, a book about Black Africans by ‘racial insiders’ is a powerful way of elevating the voices of my community. Moreover, the Afrocentricity deployed in this book (re)presents a formidable counter-narrative to the anti-Black, racist, white majoritarian narrative of race that continues to circulate in Australia. Racism needs to be on the national agenda, and Black Africans have a story to tell in that space—because, as many critical race theorists contend, Black people (in the racial psyche of the white majority) are the epitome of the ‘racialised other’. Further, I also welcome this book as a very important and much-needed addition to the ‘Afrocentric discourse’ in Australia. This discourse powerfully centres Black Africans as agentic beings who, though constantly marginalised, are making significant contributions and inroads to the broader Australian society. In this book, Black Africans are not positioned as the ‘problem’; neither are they infantilised subjectivities deserving only of ‘saving’ from benevolent white Australians. I have written in my own work about the consequences of this problematising, deficit-focused discourse that still predominates discussions of/about Black Africans in Australia. That is, we ‘lack’ English language competency, we ‘lack’ a good education to get us into good-paying jobs, we ‘lack’ the health literacy to make us good healthy citizens who can make good healthy choices; the list goes on. For starters, the evidence base of these claims is refutable (at best), but more importantly, even if these were more than racist-informed claims, the racialised nature of the structural issues that feed these ‘poorer’ outcomes for Black Africans in Australia is completely invisibilised or ignored. I also welcome the framing of racism in this book as a ‘structure’—a system of oppression grounded in centuries of exploitation and exclusion of Black, Indigenous and other people of colour. This critical, nuanced and broad discussion is absolutely imperative in Australia, where racism is misunderstood and misconceived by white bodies who do not experience it, but rather gain from its systemic perpetuation. I have found myself consistently and persistently explaining to my fellow Australians that racism is more than an individual ‘flaw’ or the outcome of ‘a few bad apples’ who refuse to ‘get with the times’. Explaining to someone who refuses to see the racism embedded in the very ordering of Australian society, that in fact living in Australia is to occupy a racial standpoint, is a near useless project. So, discussions such as those in Chapters 3–7 are crucial to advancing this level of race talk. Finally, the publication of this book is timely. For starters, it comes at a time when Black Africans are making significant inroads into academia in recognisable numbers and, as such, are writing as ‘voices of colour’ whose insights and race analyses are not readily ignored or dismissed. In that sense, this book constitutes an important foundational text. Moreover, the book comes at a time when, even in Australia, discussions about race are being ‘forced’ upon us due to the global significance of the Black Lives Matter movement. While in Australia, this movement has tended to focus more on the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, it has still

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ignited discussions of race in various contexts across the nation. This book will be pivotal to maintaining this momentum in ‘race talk’. In the end, the way I see it, this book is a call to action: to change the dominant race narrative in Australia from one that is controlled by the white privilege that benefits from (and, in fact, is dependent on) the denial of racism, to one that centres experiential expertise of racism. When those with lived expertise of racism speak, the story they tell is (not surprisingly) vastly different from that of the white majority. But, rather than fear the lived experience narratives of race, it is time for Australia to embrace them. It is only through these narratives that we can embed anti-racism rather than non-racism (which is passive and complicit in the perpetuation of racism) into the structures. What we need is an anti-racism that is not only reflexive but centres on the multiplicity of voices of those with lived experiences of racism, of which Black Africans are an integral part. Sydney, Australia October 2021

Dr. Virginia Mapedzahama

Foreword by Gilbert Caluya

Whatever success Australians had in creating a multicultural nation after the end of the White Australia policy has been severely marred by the racial politics of the post-9/11 era. Of course, racism existed pre-9/11, but the War on Terror intensified it through long-term states of emergency and racialised security regimes supported by perpetual crises. Australian media and politicians waged a successful fearmongering campaign around refugees and Muslims (often conflating the two) to attack multiculturalism as a ‘failed policy’ and stoke public support for policies and policing that have racialised effects. This fuelled not only the resurgence of the white nationalism that underpinned the White Australia policy, it simultaneously intensified racist, farright fascism in Australia. The mainstreaming of such fascism was in evidence when Blair Cottrell, a criminal convicted of stalking, arson and burglary and leader of the Islamophobic group United Patriots Front who publicly supported Hitler, was invited onto national media broadcaster Sky News to ‘discuss’ immigration with the Northern Territory Chief Minister. The world witnessed the awful culmination of these developments with the Christchurch mosques mass shootings in 2019 by a white Australian male homegrown terrorist inspired by right-wing fascism. Within this broader racial context, there has been growing negative attention towards Black African migrants in Australia. Media reports on ‘South Sudanese’ gangs echo the well-worn use of ‘gangs’ to criminalise racialised minority men in Australia by demonising them as abject criminals and threats to civilisation. In the Australian racial imagination, since all Black Africans are a single race, the reporting on Boko Haram’s kidnapping of schoolgirls was seen as evidence of the exceptional misogyny in Muslim and Black communities and used by right-wing commentators to suggest that Black Africans could not assimilate to Australia. Here we see the commingling of anti-Blackness with the Islamophobia cultivated through the War on Terror. Sustained reporting on terrorist activities in Africa raised concerns about ‘hidden terrorists’ among Black African migrants, particularly humanitarian migrants, thus conflating refugees with terrorists. Right-wing commentators felt vindicated when a Black Somalian Muslim migrant man committed a fatal attack, inspired by Islamic State, in Melbourne in 2018. Repeated reporting on South Sudanese gangs, Somalian terrorists and individual African Australian criminals xv

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negatively shaped public perception of Black African Australians in the twenty-first century. Kathomi Gatwiri and Leticia Anderson’s book intervenes in this context by providing a trenchant critique of the interconnections of colonialism, racism and anti-Blackness in the Australian context through the experiences of diasporic Black African subjects in Australia. It recognises and draws on the growing body of research on African Australians, which has to date overwhelming focused on the experiences of racism of South Sudanese migrants in Australia in schools, public life and employment, from microaggressions and over-policing through to violent threats and physical assault. But Gatwiri and Anderson point out that this focus on South Sudanese migrants unwittingly obfuscates the experiences of other Black African Australians. They also point out that the term ‘African Australian’ is primarily conflated with Africans of sub-Saharan origin who are phenotypically Black as opposed to, for example, white South Africans. The book quickly dispatches with such misconceptions and the politics of such terminology, which provides a firmer grounding for African Australian Studies and opens up multiple avenues for research. This book shifts attention from Black African Australians as objects of academic discussion to subjects of academic enquiry. As far as I can tell, this is the first research monograph on Black African Australians. One reason for this absence is that Australian universities, unlike our British and North American counterparts, have never had a dedicated race and ethnicity studies programme. Of course, there are researchers who focus on race, ethnicity and racism in Australia, but we are scattered across other disciplines, such as Indigenous studies, sociology, cultural studies, criminology, and gender and sexuality studies, among others. There are a few university subjects that focus specifically on race and racism, but nothing like a programme of study as we see in other comparable contexts. Despite this ostensible dearth, at least comparatively, of race and ethnic studies in Australia, there has been a concerted public campaign across media and parliament to attack universities for teaching critical race theory on the very rare occasion we do. My reason for pointing all this out is to remind the reader, particularly international readers, of the work required to produce a book like this in the Australian context. Gatwiri and Anderson’s book reflects the passion and sense of justice animating critical researchers on race and racism in Australia when we often do not have the same kind of institutional support as colleagues in comparable contexts. On the other hand, it demonstrates that there are subterranean systems of support that do sustain our work in Australia. Perhaps they are not the same structures as elsewhere, but they exist. Far from being a ‘barren’ landscape, we find ways to nurture our work against extraordinary public and sometimes academic pressure to silence critical research on race and racism in Australia. This book reflects the interdisciplinary nature of critical Indigenous and critical race studies in Australia while contributing more broadly to critical race studies by modelling a transnational approach. By focusing on diasporic Black subjectivity, Gatwiri and Anderson’s book straddles experiences of migration, anti-Black racism and colonialism, which bypasses some of the problematic divides

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that haunt critical race studies in Australia. It is here where Gatwiri and Anderson’s book emerges as a pioneering work of critical race theory. It ought to shape future discussions and stimulate new research in our field. November 2021

Dr. Gilbert Caluya Deakin University Melbourne, Australia

Acknowledgements

Our first acknowledgements and thanks in this book go to the research participants who so generously gave their time, and their trust in sharing such deeply personal stories of and reflections upon theirs and their family’s experiences of relocation to Australia as skilled migrants from African nations. We thank respected Australian colleagues in the field of race and racism Professor Yin Paradies, Dr. Virginia Mapedzahama and Dr. Gilbert Caluya for endorsing this work with their wonderful forewords. I (Kathomi) remain grateful that I am afforded many opportunities to tell the stories of others (as a researcher) and to listen to the stories of others (as a psychotherapist). This book is yet another culmination of simultaneously beautiful and heartbreaking stories. It’s also a book about relationships. Here are but a few of the ones that are important to me. Dr. Leticia Anderson, my colleague and co-author. Leticia was the first researcher I met at Southern Cross University who was interested in anti-racist work. Through this connection began a friendship and colleagueship that later birthed the ideas for this book. We have been equal colleagues, together navigating our disappointments, burnout, frustrations and rejection but also our joys, such as promotions, publications and occasional beach walks with lots of moon staring. Conversations with our other colleagues and friends such as Dr. Marcelle Townsend Cross have only but enriched our work further. I also want to acknowledge the love, support and mentorship of my dearest friend, Associate Professor Lynne McPherson. I met Lynne on my very first day at Southern Cross University. In our attempts to find ‘sparkling moments’ in the grind of personal and professional life, sometimes Lynne has functioned as an ally, a sister, an honorary mama, a colleague and a mentor. Our collaboration, friendship and the important work we do together has been the greatest joy of my academic career. I wish all of us could find a Lynne—a colleague that not only cheers for us and sees us, but also deeply values us and our work. I also thank Professor Mary Spongberg, for the research fund that facilitated the professional editing of this text and Professor Anne Graham for her generosity and intellectual wisdom as a mentor. In naming all the above, I realised how lucky I have xix

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been to be surrounded by women who believe in my work. That for me, is what feminist scholarship is all about. Finally, my sincere thanks and love to my partner T, who after many years, is still enthusiastic about all my writing musings. He has contributed significantly to many ideas in this text and I value his wisdom and kindness immensely. Most importantly, he has provided a beautiful home as a cushion and sanctuary for me to rest within. I (Leticia) am grateful for the support and encouragement of the Southern Cross University Early Career Researcher Network, especially my co-author Dr. Kathomi Gatwiri and colleagues Dr. Emma Doolan, Dr. Marcelle Townsend-Cross, Dr. Claire McLisky, Dr. Sorcha Tormey, Mujib Abid, Dr. Jean Renouf and Dr. Lyn Dickens. The close and trusting relationships built through this network were socially and professionally invaluable in the regional university context, and led to writing and research collaboration with Kathomi and Marcelle. Our friendship and the nourishing professional collaboration reignited my passion for academic writing and research, and in turn led to the partnership with Kathomi on the research project which has culminated in this book. I have valued deeply Kathomi’s trust in choosing to collaborate with me on this project, and the value of her mentorship in embarking on and completing this book is inestimable. I would also like to acknowledge Associate Professor Adele Wessell (Southern Cross University), Associate Professors Chika Anyanwu and Rob Garbutt and Professor Barbara Rugendyke (formerly of Southern Cross University), and Professor Shahram Akbarzadeh (Deakin University) for your professional advice, warm encouragement and guidance which assisted me in forging the path towards the completion of this book. My heartfelt thanks and deep gratitude to Valeria Mariano, Jacopo Bardelli and Javelle Bardelli, who hosted me in beautiful Arakwal country in northern NSW during critical stages of writing this book. The friendship, assistance and hospitality that your family provided during this time have been so valued. My final acknowledgement is to my family, especially my wonderful partner and daughter. Although it is traditional that professional precede personal acknowledgements, their position in no way reflects the magnitude of my love for them and gratitude for their support. This book was written through lockdowns, relocations and other upheavals associated with the impact of the pandemic, and despite these challenges you both gave me your unconditional love and encouragement. For me, this book’s most poignant and moving contributions are the insights into the complexity and challenges of intercultural parenting and family dynamics. My efforts to write sensitively and appropriately on these topics and my personal reflections on them are both informed by and inform my experiences as a partner and parent. In particular, my passion for the research presented in this book—and for intersectional anti-racist work more generally—is nurtured by my desire that my daughter and her peers grow to adulthood in an Australian society that can acknowledge and make amends for past and present injustices, in order to provide a foundation for a future that supports genuine inclusion and belonging.

Acknowledgement of Country

We acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands of the Yugambeh, Bundjalung, Yagara and Eora Nations upon which this book was birthed and drafted. We also acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands of Kaurna Nation where the fieldwork for this research was conducted. We pay our respects to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and their Elders, past, present and emerging, acknowledging that we work and live on land that was stolen and that sovereignty was never ceded. As settlers, we make personal and professional commitments that we will do our best to agitate for decolonised and anti-racist knowledges that value and respect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories, cultures and knowledge. As such we commit to not perpetrate further injustice on this land that supports us at the expense of its original owners.

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Overview of the Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . An Overview of the Significance and Unique Contribution . . . . . . . . . . . Politics of Names and Terminologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Research Study Informing This Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Author Reflexivity and Positionality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kathomi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Leticia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Study Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Overview of Chapters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter 2—Contextualising Afrodiasporic Cultures and Identities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter 3—The Politics of Blackness: Theorising Afrodiasporic Identities and Experiences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter 4—The Boundaries of Belonging: Misrecognition and Challenges of Representation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter 5—The Workplace as a Racial Battleground and Devaluation of Black Expertise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter 6—Families Growing Through Change: Dynamics in the Afrodiasporic Family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter 7—Parenting Black Children in White Spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter 8—Afro-Masculinities in an Australian Context . . . . . . . . . . Chapter 9—Resilient Narratives: Telling Our Stories, Our Way . . . . . Chapter 10—Conclusion: A Way Forward for Policy, Practitioners and Researchers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Contextualising Afrodiasporic Identities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Setting the Scene: Whiteness as the Baseline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Contextualising African Migration to Australia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Contents

Challenges to Resettlement for Africans in Australia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Emerging Afrodiasporic Identities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Third Culture Identities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Concluding Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

23 25 27 28 28

The Politics of Blackness: Theorising Afrodiasporic Identities and Experiences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Theorising Afrodiasporic Migranthood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Critical Race Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Anti-Blackness Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Racial Battle Fatigue Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Theories of Belonging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Afrocentric Theories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

33 33 34 34 37 39 41 42 44 44

Boundaries of Belonging: Misrecognition and Challenges of Representation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Colonial Projects and Bordering Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Single Story of Africa[ns]: Challenges of Representation . . . . . . . . . Racialised Criminality and Moral Panics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Policing the African Body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Perpetual Strangerhood and Conditional Belonging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Exploring Recognition and Misrecognition and Its Impacts on Racial Dignity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Concluding Thoughts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Devaluation of Black Expertise: The Workplace as a Racial Battleground . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . African Migrants and Employment in Australia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Racial Microaggressions in the Workplace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Subtle Acts of Exclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Microinvalidations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Microinsults . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Racial Microburdens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Discussion: Blackness as a Battleground in the Workplace . . . . . . . . . . . Concluding Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

49 49 50 53 56 57 58 60 62 62 67 67 68 70 72 73 77 79 81 82 82

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7

8

9

Families Growing Through Change: Dynamics in the Afrodiasporic Family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Perspectives on Family and Intergenerational Family Dynamics . . . . . . . Notable Shift and Changes in Gender Roles and Expectations . . . . . . . . Loss of Class Privilege and Community Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Families Growing Through Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Discussion: Families Growing Through Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

xxv

85 85 88 90 93 94 95 96 97

Parenting Black Children in White Spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Critical Race Parenting in Australia: Theoretical Considerations . . . . . . Parenting Black Children in White Spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Teaching Black Children About Race and Racism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Teaching Black Children About Racial Dignity and Self-Worth . . . . . ‘Getting a PhD in Parenting’: Preparedness Among Parents . . . . . . . . Negotiating Western Versus African Parenting Styles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Collectivist Versus Individualistic Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Role of Christian Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Intercultural Parenting—Accommodating Multiple Value Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Discussion: Black Children in a Racialised Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

99 99 101 103 104 107 108 109 109 110

Afro-Masculinities in an Australian Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Contextualising African Masculinities in Australia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Theorising Masculinities: Hegemony and Intersectionality . . . . . . . . . . . Masculine Identity Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Reconstructing New Masculinities Through Change and Loss . . . . . . Alternative Masculinities Through Embracing Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Discussion: Broadened understandings of Afrodiasporic masculinities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Concluding Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

119 119 120 122 124 128 132

Resilient Narratives: Telling Our Stories, Our Way . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Social Resilience Frameworks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Willingness to Work Outside Existing Expertise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Social Capital Through Community and Family Support Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Religion and Faith as Protective Factors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

139 139 140 142

111 112 114 115

134 135 136

143 144

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Pride in Significant Contributions to Australia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Reframing the Narrative on Africans in Australia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Acknowledging and Adapting to the Challenges of Migration . . . . . . Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Conclusion: A Way Forward for Policy, Practitioners and Researchers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Summary of Key Lessons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Black Africans Experience High Levels of Anti-Black Racism and Racial Indignities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Black African Migrants’ Expertise Is Undervalued Within the Australian Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cultural Diversity Does Not Translate to Belonging for Black Africans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Black African Migrants Are Harmed by Negative Media and Misrepresentations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Black Africans Are Resilient in the Face of Personal and Structural Challenges of Resettlement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Recommendations for Policy Makers and Practitioners . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Afrocentric Frameworks Are Recommended to Inform Policy and Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Recognition of the Significant Contributions of Africans in Australia Is Important . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Education and Recognition of the Importance of Racial and Cultural Safety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Promote a Shift from Inclusion to Belonging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . More Research on Afrodiasporic Identities Is Necessary . . . . . . . . . . . Where to Now? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

145 147 148 150 152 153 155 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 162 163 163 164 164 165 166

Chapter 1

Overview of the Book

As nationalist ideologies intensify in Australia, so do the experiences of ‘everyday racism’ and exclusion for Black African immigrants. Despite the efforts and narratives that construct ‘multicultural Australia’ and an increased flow of African migrants into Australia for over a quarter of a century, the African population remains at the bottom of social hierarchies in Australia in many respects. The increasing size and diversity of African diaspora communities in Australia have led to excessive public and media interest and scrutiny levels. A settler-colonial nation that is now considered highly ‘culturally diverse’, Australia has a long history of excluding and marginalising non-white populations based on racial difference. These legacies have continuing health and economic impacts in the present day. Landmark research by Elias and Paradies (2016) showed that race-based exclusion cost the Australian economy ‘an estimated $44.9 billion, or 3.6% of GDP, each year in the decade from 2001–11’. Their research documents how many years of healthy working life are lost due to the mental and physical health implications of racial discrimination, exclusion and racial indignation. Black African migrants to Australia experience significant challenges of integration in comparison with other migrant groups and may struggle to establish an enduring sense of belonging. As a category of migrants, they are racially marked as ‘different’ within a white-majority society. They are both hypervisible and hyper-scrutinised while remaining invisible in other ways—leading them to be constantly overlooked, discounted and devalued within the Australian society. Globally, a growing body of research has been conducted on Black African migrants’ varied diasporic experiences, particularly in the United States and Europe. In Australia, research focusing on African immigrants is minimal, with the majority of extant research focused on the experiences of African refugees arriving on humanitarian visas. Within the literature, the experiences of the South Sudanese population seem to be overrepresented (Marlowe et al., 2014; Milos, 2011). Various other studies probe experiences of mental health, racism and racial microaggressions, changing family dynamics, parenting, employment and identity among African communities (e.g. see Gatwiri, 2021; Gatwiri & Anderson, 2020; Renzaho et al., 2011). Less research on these significant issues has been conducted with migrants from African © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 K. Gatwiri and L. Anderson, Afrodiasporic Identities in Australia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-4282-2_1

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1 Overview of the Book

nations who came to Australia through skilled migration or other non-humanitarian visa pathways, pointing to a need for increased research that examines new and emerging African diasporic identities and experiences (Mapedzahama & KwansahAidoo, 2013). There is often an underlying assumption that skilled migrants will integrate into the new culture much more quickly and efficiently than refugees. On arrival to Australia, however, most Black African migrants, regardless of their mode of entry into the country, face significant challenges, including isolation, racism, social dislocation, alienation and structural marginalisation, which can negatively impact their health and wellbeing. As such, there is an urgent need for theoretical writing on alternate African diasporic experiences and identities and the changing nature of such identities, especially writing that is sensitive to and generated through Afrocentric perspectives to avoid reductionism. This gap within the research presents an opportunity to consider the commonalities and differences between African refugees and skilled migrants to investigate whether the acculturation process differs by migrant type or potentially other factors.

An Overview of the Significance and Unique Contribution The arguments presented in this book are not particularly new, given knowledge on anti-Black racism and is readily available, but rather seek to extend already existing knowledge situated within small qualitative studies on Afrodiasporic experiences in Australia. What is unique in this study is that it focuses on highly professional Africans of diverse professions offering perspectives on their experiences. This book outlines the challenges and anxieties experienced by highly skilled Black African migrants living in Australia by evoking contours of knowledges with Black migranthood scholarship. It locates the lingering economic and employment disparities, family and parenting challenges, cultural differences and the underlying systemic, structural and institutional marginalisation that continue to affect Black people living in Australia. The book also outlines the creative accommodations, resilience, adjustments and growth migrants undergo to ‘succeed and thrive in Australia’. The narratives presented in this book contain common threads but also differences that are unique, personal and profound. In making our theoretical analysis through critical frameworks, we are aware that many other interpretations are possible, and there are ‘many challenges that may arise while attempting to “re-tell”, re-present, and reconstruct other people’s subjective experiences’ (Gatwiri, 2019a, p. 94). Recent research mapping of migration trends and the contributions of members of the new African Diaspora in Australia has ‘highlighted the need to establish a new discourse for Africans in Australia which transcends the traditional notion of “diaspora” as a single community, as well as the “refugee assumptions” and negative stereotypes pervading the African image’ (Hiruy & Hutton, 2020, p. 157). As is well documented in the literature, the Black African body is typically constructed as ‘other’ in various ways within the Australian context. The Australian state has historically strived to maintain a state of white fantasy mediated by ideologies of

An Overview of the Significance and Unique Contribution

3

securitisation through the rhetoric of ‘border-control’. By popularising the ideas of strange and alien bodies, Black bodies become unspoken signifiers for why national boundaries need to be erected and securitised to protect white bodies. Conversations and debates about immigration in Australia are therefore complicated by the rising influence and amplification of (white) nationalist discourses, with significant impacts for migrants of diverse racial and cultural backgrounds, making it imperative that the stories and experiences of Africans in Australia be effectively shared and documented with a dignified sociological nuance. Of importance, as Hiruy and Hutton (2020) suggest, is a ‘departure from essentialist notions of identity [that] illustrates diasporic groups as fluid, creolised, and syncretic, rather than heterogeneous’ (p. 3). To this end, this book provides an in-depth theoretical exploration of the underpinnings of mainstream attitudes towards immigration in Australia that can impact Black African migrants. It also locates the interconnections between these sentiments and the global resurgence of populist and exclusivist nationalism in whitedominant nations. The book explains why research on the movement of Black bodies across boundaries and geographies must incorporate histories of colonialism, racism, marginalisation and their impact on the lived experience of Black people in whitemajority nations. In this book, we utilise critical race theories and engage with colonial histories to contextualise diasporic Afrocentric experiences in Australia, arguing that the conditional acceptance of Black African bodies within public spaces remains contingent upon the status quo of white hegemony in Australia. Drawing on theories of belonging, we highlight how Black Africans are constructed as perpetual ‘strangers’ where moral panics and discourses of hyper-criminality are summoned to police and invigilate Black bodies. We examine how bordering processes are also simultaneously co-opted to reinforce scrutiny and securitisation. Simply put, this book demonstrates how Black African migrants are constructed, ranked and stratified within Australian society and explains why Black African bodies are at risk of being pushed to the margins of the societies they relocate to. We also discuss protective factors emphasised by participants in our research that highlight healthy and positive experiences of relocating to a country with a radically different cultural and social milieu. Our research has particular resonance in a post-pandemic context where significant expansions of Australia’s skilled migration intake are being projected (Greber, 2021). While we focus on the Australian context, where we live and work, our research has global resonances. By employing decolonial and critical theories and perspectives to understand the subjective experiences of Black African migrants in Australia, we argue that migration for most Black people and non-white others is more than just the movement of bodies; it is a phenomenon solidly tied to global inequality, power and abjection of Blackness. In addition, we argue that the immigration policies and systems historically promulgated by the Australian state in an attempt to ‘keep Australia white’ still dominate discourses surrounding immigration in contemporary Australian society and culture, with detrimental effects upon racialised bodies.

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1 Overview of the Book

Politics of Names and Terminologies The racialised category of ‘Black’ Australia remains dissident and contested given the eugenics colonial projects, which included an intentional multi-decade attempt to eliminate the Blackness of First Nations Peoples through assimilatory processes. As such, we preface this book by considering the words of Kaiya Aboagye (2018), who states: Any exploration of blackness in Australia must start with the first black people of this continent. It is also important to establish from the outset that concepts such as ‘blackness’ and ‘indigeneity’ can often be two intersecting ideas that are distinct to the nature of black Australia and the discursive field of black Australian(ness) … However, the socio-political complexity of the terminology ‘black’ in Australia must not be conflated with notions of colourism, in the same ways it might be applied elsewhere in the world. For within the black Australian context the term ‘black’ is used to assert political positioning that aims to subvert the ongoing project of colonisation distinct to Australia. (p. 76).

As such, we recognise that naming Blackness is a complex political project that, when contextualised within Australia’s sociocultural context, offers ‘a rich confetti of many black embodied/identifyingpeople; including first and second generation continental Africans’ (Aboagye, 2018, p. 72). This landscape, as Aboagye (2018) continues to argue, ‘filters through the complexity of the use of the term “black”’, and therefore, it is not ‘unusual or uncommon for people of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent to self-identify and be accepted as being both Indigenous and black regardless of their appearance’ (p. 77). Due to the complexities of Black identities in the colonial context of contemporary Australia that Aboagye (2018) highlights, at times when we refer to the experiences of ‘people of colour’ more broadly in this book, we use the term ‘Black, Indigenous and other people of colour’ (BIPOC) rather than other terms in contemporary parlance, to centre and emphasise the specificities and nuances of Black and Indigenous peoples’ relationships with and experiences of whiteness in (post)colonial contexts. We do this while recognising the complexities and limitations of any term that may reductively categorise and hierarchise people based on their racial and cultural characteristics (Deo, 2021; Ooi, 2020). However, many of the subjects whose stories are represented in this book identify with different identity descriptors, including ‘Black’, ‘people of colour’, ‘African’, ‘African-Australian’ or other national or cultural descriptors, and their self-chosen labels have been retained throughout when they are speaking of their own identities. This variety in self-descriptors underscores the nuances and subtleties of Afrodiasporic identities in a globalised world. Similarly, while we choose where possible to use the pluralist term ‘First Nations peoples’ to refer to the First Peoples of Australia, self-identifiers can include a variety of terms, including ‘Indigenous’, ‘Aboriginal’, ‘Torres Strait Islander’, ‘Blak’ or specific nations, language groups or regional descriptors, and this variety of descriptors is represented in sources utilised throughout this book (AIATSIS, 2022). This book specifically considers Afro-Blackness rather than Blackness more broadly. Akin to other Afrodiasporic scholars (e.g. Kwansah-Aidoo & Mapedzahama, 2018; Majavu, 2020; Mapedzahama & Kwansah-Aidoo, 2017; Mbembe &

Research Study Informing This Book

5

Dubois, 2017), we use the terms ‘Black’ and ‘Blackness’ to refer only to ‘AfroBlackness’ or Blackness that is experientially embodied by people identified as ‘Black Africans’. In this sense, Blackness is not only a racial marker but also a political, epistemological position. We do not wish to describe or theorise Blackness only in comparison or resistance to whiteness because that would be standardising whiteness as the default. Rather, we look at Blackness through an Afrocentric gaze that dignifies the multiplicity of its expression in a nuanced way. Afrocentric scholars Mapedzahama and Kwansah-Aidoo (2017) have argued that although there are ‘different articulations of blackness in Australia … significant experiential and historical variations warrant the specific focus on African blackness’ (p. 3) to aid an understanding of how Afro-Blackness is understood and experienced in Australia. We acknowledge that not all Black people are of African descent, and not all Africans are Black. Although this acknowledgement firmly guides our work, and we take particular care not to homogenise the experiences of those categorised in this way within the Australian context, we recognise that bodies visibly marked as ‘Black’ and ‘African’ can share some similarities in their experience. We suggest that Black African people in the diaspora can often relate to one another through their experiences of racialisation in white-majority contexts.

Research Study Informing This Book This book is based on a small qualitative study investigating the Afrodiasporic experiences of skilled African migrants in Australia. The identified themes define and inform the relevance and organisation of this book. We present findings from the study, providing a nuanced exploration of participants’ migratory experiences and how these experiences informed their personal and professional lives. It addresses a gap in the current literature (Fozdar, 2021) and advances our understanding of the resilience exercised by skilled Black African migrants as they adjust to a new life in Australia, with particular implications for social work, public health and community development practice. The study employed semi-structured interviews to investigate multiple aspects of the migrant experience, including employment, parenting, family dynamics and participants’ overall sense of belonging. Interview transcripts were de-identified and analysed against the research questions using thematic analysis and coded manually to enable analysis. In total, 27 participants (n= 27) were interviewed in this study. They were drawn from eight sub-Saharan African countries, namely Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The participants comprised 12 women and 15 men; 13 participants were interviewed as individuals and 14 as couples (i.e. seven pairs of married partners). Of these participants, 25 had children, but specific demographic details about their children were not collected. All couples were in heterosexual partnerships, although further data on sexual orientation was not collected. Participants’ occupations included senior roles in banking and finance, business, medicine, social work, science and research, engineering and

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1 Overview of the Book

academia. All the participants had acquired at least one university degree before arriving in Australia. They were all fluent in English and subjectively middle-class. Most participants migrated to Australia on skilled migrant visas, while a few others entered Australia through student visas to enhance their already existing skills and expertise. This study was conducted in Adelaide, South Australia, in 2018–2019 following the ethics approval by the University’s Ethics Committee (project number ECN-18– 002). The researchers recruited participants through existing community relationships and connections with the first author and snowball sampling. These community relationships created a ‘soft’ entry into the recruitment process and were crucial in establishing trust and credibility with potential participants. The first author represented an ‘insider status’, which helped mitigate mistrust towards researchers due to mainstream misrepresentations of Black African experiences within dominant narratives in Australia. However, there was no direct recruitment of any participants through the researcher’s personal networks. Instead, participants were formally recruited via social media and through the networks of African community organisations such as the Kenyan Association of South Australia. Interviews were conducted in the participants’ choice of space, which included homes, offices or other mutually agreed places.

Analysis All interviews were recorded on an application on the interviewer’s smartphone to facilitate transcription. The interviews were transcribed and then read multiple times by the interviewer to identify thematic connections across the narratives, which were then coded manually to enable analysis. Pseudonyms were subsequently assigned to all participants in the study, and all potentially identifying information was removed while coding and writing. The data analysis and transcription process included reading and re-reading, initial coding with descriptive linguistic and conceptual comments, connecting emerging themes and looking for thematic patterns across transcripts. Data were analysed against each research question using thematic analysis as Braun and Clarke (2013) outlined.

Author Reflexivity and Positionality Kathomi Interviews were conducted by me, an African academic living in Australia. Reflexively, my identity as an immigrant, an African, and visibly Black person, influenced my researcher position in this study. I acknowledge that the research process can be

Author Reflexivity and Positionality

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influenced by context, the position where we stand, and the assumptions ascribed to our social position in society. The fluidity of my own experiences as an African living in Australia provides inside knowledge of how race, ‘foreigner-ness’ and migranthood can impact one’s diasporic experience. I present this positioning openly as a valid research component that allowed me to enter vulnerable places in the participants’ stories. My Blackness and Africanness located me as an ‘insider’, which allowed participants to share freely, laugh, relax and engage authentically with me as a researcher from a position of trust. As a Black African professional, myself, living in a country that is mainly considered post-racial and the ‘most multicultural country in the world’, I was acutely aware of the boundaries of race conversations in Australia. Listening to, transcribing and analysing the data sometimes involved a reflexive process of recalling my own distressing racialised experiences, which I have detailed elsewhere (Gatwiri, 2019b, 2020, 2021).

Leticia I am a white woman who was born and has grown up in regional Australia, with predominantly Irish and Scottish heritage, and I am part of a multicultural and multiracial extended family with complex migration histories. Having been a researcher, teacher and activist in the areas of Australian nationalism, race and culture for over 15 years, I have developed a strong appreciation of the ways mainstream white Australian social norms, histories and experiences differ significantly from and impact upon people ‘othered’ through these processes, including First Nations peoples, migrants, and people from diverse cultural and racial backgrounds. Acknowledging colonialism’s past and continued impact on Australian society and culture has been a ‘difficult knowledge’ to encompass (Townsend-Cross & Flowers, 2016). However, this process of coming to terms with difficult knowledges that incorporate experiences of exclusion and discrimination for members of the Australian community who are not white like me has profoundly shaped my personal experience as a researcher, teacher and activist. I bring this concern and recognition of my positionality to bear witness in my contributions to this book. In addition to my racial and cultural heritage, gender and perspectives on intercultural and multicultural families have informed my approach to analysis, research and writing for this work. As Golombisky (2006) states, ‘if gender is performed during interview research, then researchers should be reflexive about: assumptions about women and men as gendered participants … gendered communication styles that emerge during interviewing; and gendered interpretations of [the] material’ (p. 176). In this study, critical reflection was employed to acknowledge that researchers and research participants may consciously or unconsciously deploy gendered or racialised assumptions in their communication during the interviews and in analysis. Understanding how this can manifest during the research process has been an essential tool for mitigating potential bias issues.

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Study Limitations The study involved highly skilled migrant participants who lived in South Australia but originated from different countries in Africa. The selection of this specific group of migrants enabled the researchers to explore the lived experience of this particular population. The specific nature of qualitative inquiry meant the research participants included only highly skilled Black Africans from different professional backgrounds, which provided a snapshot of experiences from different work contexts. The sampling approach meant that most of those who participated were actively engaged in community groups and therefore were easily found via a snowball approach. Although this resulted in a rich, detailed dataset through a deeply nuanced understanding of individual relocation stories, many other studies were left unheard and uninvited. Interviewing people who are already connected to groups and the snowballing approach (which relies on social networks) may have resulted in missing the equally important stories of less connected people in community. As such, the findings may not be generalisable or transferrable to migrants from other backgrounds and positions. Likewise, the scope of our research did not extend to views of Africans outside the broader South Australian community, which would have given further insight into alternative perspectives of settlement and resilience in different states and territories.

Overview of Chapters Chapter 2—Contextualising Afrodiasporic Cultures and Identities This chapter provides a theoretical context on African diasporic experiences and identities and the changing nature of such identities. This chapter explores the historical, cultural and social context that influences Afrodiasporic experiences and how Australia’s history of colonisation and nationhood formation informs the sustenance and growth of white nationalist identity processes in Australia. It contends the implications of homogenising people of sub-Saharan African origin into a singular ‘racial category’. Finally, this chapter introduces discussions about emerging Afrodiasporic identities and ‘third-culture’ identities, which are constructed as a highly salient aspect of migrant subjectivity.

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Chapter 3—The Politics of Blackness: Theorising Afrodiasporic Identities and Experiences Employing critical theories, this chapter conceptualises Black African migrant experiences by making visible the invisibility of whiteness. Taking a critical race theory (CRT) perspective, we argue that processes of racial subordination produce experiences of exclusion and fractured belonging and have a significant human cost in terms of mental wellbeing (Elias & Paradies, 2016, 2021). A CRT perspective explores how complex processes of racialisation are enacted and how African migranthood is contextualised through the normalised and standardised Eurocentric institutions and cultural practices within Australia. We draw on Durey and Thompson (2012), who suggest that: People often view racism solely as referring to interpersonal relations, where a person is treated unfairly … because of race. However, racism that exists systemically and institutionally, where the production, control and access to resources operate to advantage selected racial/cultural groups and disadvantage others, is more insidious (p. 3).

More significantly, our critical positioning provides a platform through which Black African assumed ontological and epistemological social locations can be interrogated to reveal racial patterning and blind spots for racism, leading to their exclusion and lack of belonging in Australia. We further outline other theoretical concepts, including belonging, labelling, everyday racism and racial battle fatigue, utilised within the book to explain and contextualise Black African migranthood in Australia.

Chapter 4—The Boundaries of Belonging: Misrecognition and Challenges of Representation This chapter discusses the racialised moral panics that lead to over-scrutinisation, hyper-criminalisation and over-policing of Black Africans in Australia. In the wake of mediatised ‘moral panics’ regarding the supposed criminality of African migrants, claims about their inability to ‘integrate’ successfully into Australian society are often summoned. Drawing mainly on theories of representation and belonging, this chapter theorises the politicisation and commodification of racism that routinely silences African ontological and epistemological experiences. The chapter investigates the tropes, material and symbolic systems that render the bodies of Black African migrants hypervisible and simultaneously invisible in Australia and how these discourses are utilised to police and patrol Black bodies. Experiences of racialisation result in loss of racial dignity, negative recognition and ‘minority stress’, which produce and intensify experiences of fractured belonging.

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Chapter 5—The Workplace as a Racial Battleground and Devaluation of Black Expertise This chapter examines how Black African professionals experience their workplace. We argue that Black African immigrants’ experiences do not support the oftenaccepted narrative of race-free workplaces, as they report constant, subtle and covert patterns of racial microaggressions at work. The chapter investigates how constant acts of overt and covert microaggressions and relentless questioning and challenging of their expertise, knowledge and skills compromise experiences of belonging for Black Africans in the workplace. Utilising CRT, this chapter makes the typical invisibility of microaggressions visible by probing how the Black body is worn as a burden in the workplace and how experiences of racialisation produce racial fatigue and impact psychological safety, with significant potential mental, emotional and physical health and wellbeing impacts.

Chapter 6—Families Growing Through Change: Dynamics in the Afrodiasporic Family Families experience significant challenges and opportunities following relocation to a new country. Given the collectivist and family-oriented nature of traditional African cultures, the perceived threats to the nuclear migrant family and how the family must adapt emerge as significant issues in African migrant families. This chapter explores how skilled African families adapt to changing family dynamics following resettlement. In particular, we focus on the intersection between gender, familial relationships and the navigation of loss and change at the familial level during the resettlement process. Understanding the impact of migration on changing family dynamics for migrants from skilled migration pathways has significant policy and practice implications for a range of disciplines and fields of research and practice introduced in this chapter and then explored further in the Conclusion.

Chapter 7—Parenting Black Children in White Spaces Existing literature locates parent–child relationships in a migration context as primarily characterised by intergenerational conflict, disagreements between boundaries of discipline and abuse, as well as placement of high expectations upon children to be ‘model minorities’ and to maintain cultural values of the original country of origin (Milo, 2011; Mudgaza et al., 2019, 2020). This chapter illuminates the complex interface of race and parenting for Black African migrants in Australia and the additional skill set required to explicitly teach children about race and racism

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while fostering positive racial identities. Essentially, we address the question: ‘what is it like to parent Black children in a white majority context?’. We further discuss the changing parent–child dynamics resulting from African migration to Western countries such as Australia. We explore how these different parenting styles can lead to mistrust of the destination culture or difficulties adapting to this culture more quickly than their parents. We also explore how dominant African parenting styles may conflict with Australian law and what changes families institute to ensure African parenting values are not eroded in adhering to child protection policies in Australia. Although this chapter only offers a perspective on the parenting experiences of skilled African migrants and how they creatively manage the tensions and change emerging from this process, we suggest that this understanding helps to expand knowledge on the complexity of parenting in multicultural, transcultural and intercultural contexts.

Chapter 8—Afro-Masculinities in an Australian Context This chapter will reveal some broad themes relating to masculinity, including the link between masculinity and paid work, loss of authority and social status, and gendered ‘jealousy’ around men’s perceptions that women had more significant postmigration opportunities in Australia. It also names the cluster of gendered expectations held by migrant men as the ‘patriarchal bargain’. This bargain includes the division of domestic work, economic contributions to the family, and decision-making and authority within the family, and is often challenged or needs to be renegotiated due to migration. Essentially, this chapter probes how Black African men’s gendered identities are produced and (re)produced, constructed and (re)constructed following their immigration to Australia. It investigates how relocation to Australia led to a reconfiguration of the meanings attached to their competing (old and new) masculine identities while actively and consciously employing various strategies to retain dignified masculinities within their families and the community.

Chapter 9—Resilient Narratives: Telling Our Stories, Our Way The final dataset chapter provides alternative narratives that counter the normalised ‘single story’ about Black African migrants. It explores the protective and resilience factors that help highly skilled African migrants mitigate the well-documented relocation challenges to Australia. By outlining how African migrants navigate the challenges surrounding the development of new diasporic identities, employment obstacles and complex pressures on familial and marital relationships, this chapter highlights successful and Afrocentric adjustment practices for a wider diversity of migrant families than has generally been addressed in the literature to date. It counters

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prevailing deficit-focused narratives regarding African migration, which is significant in Afrocentric and Afrodiasporic studies in Australia.

Chapter 10—Conclusion: A Way Forward for Policy, Practitioners and Researchers The conclusion ties all the arguments made in this book together, reflecting on the way forward for policy, research and practice while also providing some valuable recommendations from the research on fostering more inclusive experiences of belonging for African immigrants. It weaves together how conceptualisations of race, blackness, whiteness and Africanness intersect to produce a complex Afrodiasporic experience for Black migrants in Australia. We hope the arguments made in this book will foster dialogues regarding differing discourses of Afro-Blackness and how conceptualisations of race in the Australian context inform experiences of fractured belonging for Black African migrants. The knowledge contained within this text offers an original contribution to race scholarship in Australia. Hopefully, it will provide insights that can be integrated with policy and practice to foster more positive outcomes for African communities in Australia.

References Aboagye, K. (2018). Australian Blackness, the African Diaspora and Afro/Indigenous connections in the Global South. Transition, 126(72–85), 159. Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. (2022). Australia’s first peoples. https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/australias-first-peoples Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2013). Successful qualitative research: A practical guide for beginners. Sage. Deo, M. E. (2021). Why BIPOC fails. Virginia Law Review Online, 107, 115–142. Durey, A., & Thompson, S. C. (2012). Reducing the health disparities of Indigenous Australians: Time to change focus. BMC Health Services Research, 12, 1–11. Elias, A., & Paradies, Y. (2016). Estimating the mental health costs of racial discrimination. BMC Public Health, 16(1), 1205. Elias, A., & Paradies, Y. (2021). The costs of institutional racism and its ethical implications for healthcare. Bioethical Inquiry, 18, 45–58. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-020-10073-0 Fozdar, F. (2021). Belonging in the land down under: Black Africans in Australia. International Migration, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1111/imig.12862. Gatwiri, K. (2019a). African womanhood and incontinent bodies: Kenyan women with vaginal fistulas. Springer Nature. Gatwiri, K. (2019b). Leaning into the discomfort and embracing the disruption: A Freirean approach to (de)colonised social work teaching in Australia. Whiteness and Education, 3(2), 1–16. https:// doi.org/10.1080/23793406.2019.1573644 Gatwiri, K. (2020). Afrocentric ways of doing social work. In S. Tascon & J. Ife (Eds.), Disrupting whiteness in social work (pp. 44–60). Routledge.

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Gatwiri, K. (2021). Racial microaggressions at work: Reflections from highly skilled Black African professionals in Australia. British Journal of Social Work, 51(2), 655–672. https://doi.org/10. 1093/bjsw/bcaa145 Gatwiri, K., & Anderson, L. (2020). Parenting Black children in White spaces: Skilled African migrants reflect on their parenting experiences in Australia. Child and Family Social Work, 27(2). https://doi.org/10.1111/(ISSN)1365-2206. Golombisky, K. (2006). Gendering the interview: Feminist reflections on gender as performance in research. Women’s Studies in Communication, 29(2), 165–192. https://doi.org/10.1080/074 91409.2006.10162497 Greber, J. (2021, 12 October). Australia needs ‘explosive’ surge of 2 million migrants. Australian Financial Review. https://www.afr.com/politics/australia-needs-explosive-surge-of-2million-migrants-20211011-p58z0n Hiruy, K., & Hutton, R. A. (2020). Towards a re-imagination of the new African diaspora in Australia. African Diaspora, 12(2), 153–179. https://doi.org/10.1163/18725465-bja10010 Kwansah-Aidoo, K., & Mapedzahama, V. (2018). Black bodies in/out of place?: Afrocentric perspectives and/on racialised belonging in Australia. Australasian Review of African Studies, 39(2), 95–121. Majavu, M. (2020). The ‘African gangs’ narrative: Associating Blackness with criminality and other anti-Black racist tropes in Australia. African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal, 13(1), 27–39. Mapedzahama, V., & Kwansah-Aidoo, K. (2013). Negotiating diasporic Black African existence in Australia: A reflexive analysis. Australasian Review of African Studies, 34(1), 61–81. Mapedzahama, V., & Kwansah-Aidoo, K. (2017). Blackness as burden? The lived experience of Black Africans in Australia. SAGE Open, 7(3), 1–13. Marlowe, J., Harris, A., & Lyons, T. (Eds.). (2014). South Sudanese diaspora in Australia and New Zealand: Reconciling the past with the present. Cambridge Scholars. Mbembe, A., & Dubois, L. (2017). Critique of Black reason. Duke University Press. Milos, D. (2011). South Sudanese communities and Australian family law: A clash of systems. Australasian Review of African Studies, 32(2), 143–159. Mugadza, H. F., Akombi, B. J., Tetteh, V. W., Stout, B., & Renzaho, A. M. (2020). Engaging subSaharan African migrant families in Australia: Broadening definitions of family, community, and culture. Community, Work & Family, 24(4), 435–454. https://doi.org/10.1080/13668803.2020. 1752621 Mugadza, H. F., Mujeyi, B., Stout, B., Wali, N., & Renzaho, A. M. (2019). Childrearing practices among sub-Saharan African migrants in Australia: A systematic review. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 28(11), 2927–2941. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-019-01463-z Ooi, J. (2020, December 30). What to consider when using the term BIPOC. ABC Everyday. https:// www.abc.net.au/everyday/what-to-consider-when-using-the-term-bipoc/100003856 Renzaho, A. M., Green, J., Mellor, D., & Swinburn, B. (2011). Parenting, family functioning and lifestyle in a new culture: The case of African migrants in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Child Family Social Work, 16(2), 228–240. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2206.2010.00736.x Townsend-Cross, M., & Flowers, R. (2016). Professional education and Indigenous Australian issues: Towards uncomfortable pedagogies. In J. Higgs & F. Trede (Eds.), Professional practice discourse marginalia (pp. 223–232). Sense Publishers.

Chapter 2

Contextualising Afrodiasporic Identities

Abstract While much research has been conducted on the lived experiences of African migrants and African diasporic experiences, this has predominantly centred on areas of the Global North such as North America and Europe. In Australia, research on African migrants is increasing but has to date focused primarily on refugees. Research about other African diasporic experiences, such as skilled African migrants’ resettlement journeys and emerging diasporic identities, is still emerging in Australia. This chapter presents an overview of the historical and contemporary sociopolitical context of African migration to Australia and the literature on the experiences of African migrants. This overview provides a solid foundation for understanding and exploring contemporary African diasporic experiences and identities and the changing nature of such identities in Australia. This chapter is written from a sensitive standpoint and generated through Afrocentric perspectives to avoid reductionist arguments that singularise the experiences of diasporic Africans.

Introduction The African population in Australia has grown steadily in recent decades, and Africans in Australia now originate from all countries across Africa (Australian Human Rights Commission [AHRC], 2010). African migration to Australia has a long history, comprising different waves of migration, although large-scale migration of Black Africans gained pace only in the closing decades of the twentieth century, following the repeal of racially discriminatory migration legislation (AHRC, 2010; Jakubowicz, 2010). We have argued elsewhere that every ‘wave’ of Black African migrant arrivals has generated intense scrutiny, attention and interest from mainstream Australian media, the political establishment and the broader population (Gatwiri & Anderson, 2021; Gatwiri et al., 2021). The intensity and relentlessness of ‘concern’ with Black African migration to Australia require some historical contextualisation, given the ‘invisibility’ of Afrodiasporic studies in Australian academic discourse has remained relatively uncritiqued. The presence of ‘Africanness’ in mainstream research is often made visible as a response to the public [white] gaze, given the dominant theorisation of Africans © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 K. Gatwiri and L. Anderson, Afrodiasporic Identities in Australia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-4282-2_2

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through the deficit lens. Tying together decolonial and critical race theories to understand the historical complexities of national, cultural and social borders and borderlands enables a nuanced understanding of emerging migrant border-crossing experiences associated with new frontiers (for more on borderland processes, see Chap. 4). The nation-state of Australia is a settler-colonial society and changes in migration patterns take place within a complex sociohistorical yet deeply racialised context. The nation’s colonial history significantly informs and locates debates about ‘Australian identity’ and drives the persistent undercurrents of racism and prejudice that challenge many Black people’s sense of belonging. Before colonisation, it was home to several hundred distinct First Nations that never ceded their sovereignty. The failure to acknowledge First Nations sovereignty and continuous denials of the extent to which past and present colonisation practices negatively impact Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island peoples continue to cast a pall upon Australia (Behrendt, 2017). To date, despite its long history of migration and the multicultural reality of contemporary Australian society, ‘dominant narratives of “Australianness” and belongingness continue to revolve around the centrality of whiteness and “Anglo-Celtic” heritage to Australian identity’ (Anderson et al., 2019, p. 24). Critical disruptions to Australia’s whiteness are often challenged and denied as they threaten to expose and ‘poke holes’ into the racialised history that holds the white narrative together. Stratton (1998) has argued that this denial functions as ‘an attempt to silence Aborigin[al people] and other groups’ and as a way to ‘reinstate and re-naturalise the triumphalist, white, Anglo-Celtic and male version of the Australian mainstream, and as the historical expression of a unified nation’ (p. 124). Similarly, Schech and Haggis (2001) have argued that: Unlike European societies, Australia has always had to work hard at being a white nation, ever since it assumed nationhood in 1901. Its location within the Asia-Pacific region, its distance from the white ethnic homelands, and its origins in the violent appropriation of ‘black’ land have always emphasised the constructed and contingent nature of its claim to white identity. Creating a sense of the nation as both ‘white’ and ‘home’ is also caught within a trope of migrancy. Australia is stereotypically seen as a nation of migrants, but it is the concept of migrancy that captures the full implications of the migration process. (pp. 145–146)

To date, while narratives of multicultural Australia are dominant, the founding principles and core of Australian nationalism are still white and European. In addition to the legacies of the dispossession of First Nations peoples, the development of Australian national identity was characterised by a steadfast exclusion of ‘others’ based on race. Although formal racial discrimination is unlawful, Anglo-Celtic institutions, individuals and iconography continue to occupy hegemonic positions within Australian society and culture (AHRC, 2018), and periodic ‘moral panics’ around demographic change emerge in response to perceived threats to ‘border-control’ and white hegemony. Such developments are reflected in the recurrence and escalation of harsh rhetoric and policies directed towards asylum-seekers, refugees and migrants (Anderson, 2015; Gatwiri & Anderson, 2021; Glynn, 2016; Killedar & Harris, 2017). Periodic racialised moral panics concerning African migration have

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been heavily mediatised over time with significant adverse effects on Black Africans in Australia (see Chap. 5). For example, a recurrent trope of ‘African gangs’ has been ‘discursively employed to criminalize the entire racial group—Blacks of African descent’ (Majavu, 2020, pp. 30–31). These shared meanings or misunderstandings of Blackness and Africanness are translated through language to operationalise a representational discourse that justifies the politicisation of racism. The politicisation, monetisation and commodification of racism through a routined silencing of African ontologies and epistemological experiences create a dominant narrative about Black Africans in Australia as a ‘social problem’ and unwanted ‘burden’, consequently situating them at the bottom of the Australian sociocultural ladder (Gatwiri & Anderson, 2021). Challenging harmful representational tropes, stereotypes and discourses about Black Africans in Australia requires careful examination of the role these longstanding tropes play and their social, economic, cultural and political impact on the African community in Australia (Han & Budarick, 2018). It also requires further research documenting how Black African diaspora members of diverse backgrounds experience and counter these negative stereotypes. Such research, we posit, must be framed and written from a standpoint that is sensitive to and generated through Afrocentric perspectives to avoid reductionist arguments that singularise the experiences of diverse diasporic Africans. Setting the scene in this chapter, we provide a conceptual articulation of the historical and contemporary sociopolitical context in Australia, African migration to Australia and the literature on the experiences of African migrants in Australia.

Setting the Scene: Whiteness as the Baseline Ontologised categories of human difference and racial hierarchy have been fundamental in shaping Australian history and culture. Since the British invasion and settlement of the continent in the late eighteenth century, the legitimisation of colonisation and subsequent formation of a singularised, distinct Australian national identity was indelibly linked to the emergence of a ‘white’ racial identity. This was constructed through the ‘European monopolisation of “civilised humanity” and a parallel monopolisation of Whiteness as its marker’ (Hage, 2003, p. 50). The hegemony and dominance of white settlers of British origin over both the continent’s First Nations peoples and subsequent non-British, non-European and non-white migrants were established through the creation and reproduction of ‘racial projects’; that is, ‘structures of domination based on racial significations and identities’ (Omi & Winant, 2015, p. 128). These ‘racial projects’ were enacted through the linkage of structural inequity, injustice and representational practices, which have continuing ramifications in contemporary Australian society and culture. Upon the establishment of the federate state in 1901, Australia employed racially exclusive policies and laws (collectively known as the ‘White Australia policy’) in an ambitious racial project aimed at creating a homogeneous white population. The White Australia policy was intended to restrict the ability of Black, Indigenous and

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other people of colour to enter, work and live freely in Australia and was effective in engineering a racially and culturally homogeneous white Australian society. However, the paradox of such racial projects is that while the racial categories were presented as timeless and rational, they are often unstable and illogical in practice. The boundaries and definitions of what was ‘white’ and what was considered ‘nonwhite’ changed over time, and considerable slippage between the different racial categories is visible at different times and places. As Gunew (2004) has highlighted, these terms are ‘floating signifiers’ (pp. 34–35). As definitions of ‘whiteness’ shifted between World War II and the late 1970s, assimilationist policies were progressively abandoned, which dismantled racially discriminatory migration policies and led to significant demographic changes (Anderson et al., 2019). As Schech and Haggis (2001) state, ‘“white” is a fluid concept that often refers to Australians of Anglo-Celtic origin and identifies their cultural and political hegemony’ (p. 147). However, as they emphasise, more recently, ‘European migrants from non-English-speaking backgrounds have played a part in extending “white” to include themselves [and] the category “white” also at times included people from the Middle East who shared European mores and religion’. But it is important to remember that whiteness extends beyond skin colour and phenotype and that anybody, regardless of their racial signifiers, can embody white supremacist ideals and fantasies, which accumulated over time can become ‘sufficient symbolic capital to convert into whiteness’ (Schech & Haggis, 2001, p. 147). Almost a quarter of Australians now have non-European heritage, compared to the tiny minority during the period of the White Australia policy (AHRC, 2018). Despite this diversity, racial projects and racialisation processes continue to dominate the experiences of Australians of racially and culturally diverse heritage. As a concept, racialisation is a process through which racial meaning is created, reproduced and attached to a series of race-based experiences (Gonzalez-Sobrino & Goss, 2019). Put simply, racialisation is ‘the processes by which racial meanings are attached to particular issues—often treated as social problems—and with the manner in which race appears to be the, or often the key factor in the way they are defined and understood’ (Murji & Solomos, 2005, p. 3). Importantly, racialisation processes must be understood as evolving and ‘ongoing practices… born out of social dominance and power’ within the White Racial Frame (WRF) (Gonzalez-Sobrino & Goss, 2019, p. 507). DiAngelo (2016) defines the WRF as: The deeply internalized racist framework through which white [people] make racial meaning. This framework includes images, interpretations, perceptions, evaluations, emotions, and actions that position white [people] as superior and which are passed down and reinforced throughout society. (p. 354)

This process of creating racial meaning through a WRF plays a critical role in micro and macro formations of race hierarchisation and consequently influences the politics of embedded racial signifiers and social stratification in Australia. These factors have flow-on effects in regards to immigration policies, practices and social acceptance.

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For example, Tavan (2017) has argued that the political success of immigration in postwar Australia was founded on an implicit ‘bargain’ that non-white immigrants would ‘give up their foreignness’. This can be conceptualised as a WRF that facilitated necessary migration while enabling white Australian institutions and their dominant culture to remain unchanged by outside influence. This means that ‘while immigration might be an economic necessity, it would remain tangential to Australian national identity’ (Tavan, 2017, pp. 159–160). Reflecting upon this proposition, although Australians of non-European heritage have become a more significant proportion of the population, they remain underrepresented in leadership positions within government, industry and vital cultural industries (AHRC, 2018). This context contributes to the creation of particular challenges for migrants from African nations (Cox et al., 1999), who generally occupy one of the lowest levels of social stratification in Australia. Racial social stratification conveys an unequal ordering of value where Black Africans, as a social group, are seen as less valuable than others, thereby justifying the discursive and material devaluation of their skills, labour, expertise, culture, symbols and practices. By naming race and racism as material and symbolic functions of Australia’s multiculturalness, one risks being challenged in multiple ways. For example, in speaking of their racial experiences, Black people often encounter familiar questions such as ‘How do you know it’s racism?’ or ‘If we were a racist country, why would we be so tolerant of diversity?’ And yes, tolerance is the operative word, and it is so dynamically different from acceptance. But as Anthias (2016) argues, place, context and meaning-making are interlinked, and therefore: Instead of asking whether this is racism or something else, it is more productive to ask: how are people categorized, how are they positioned, what are the practices that they experience, what are the outcomes for their lives? We can also ask: how is all this linked to economic and political forces and projects of state-making and challenging (by the actors themselves or progressive forces)? (p. 80)

As a tool of racial categorisation, WRFs also inform recurrent moral panics and anxieties around the ‘browning of Australia’, which is perceived as evidence of a threat to the continuity of white hegemony. In governmental efforts to control perceived problems with ‘too much multiculturalism’, border-control processes can be summoned to ‘securitise’ debates around migration, reflecting on the unresolved legacies of White Australia policies. Popularising the idea of controlling strange and alien bodies as a signifier for protecting national boundaries enables the continued projection of Australian sovereignty as a white fantasy mediated by ideologies of securitisation (Hage, 2000). For example, in the wake of mediatised ‘moral panics’ regarding the supposed criminality of African migrants, claims about their inability to ‘integrate’ successfully into Australian society were connected to reductions in humanitarian resettlement from African nations. Subsequent cuts to migration in the lead up to the 2019 federal election have similarly been decried as racialised dogwhistling that pandered to anti-immigrant rhetoric (Majavu, 2020). As the rhetoric of ‘border-control’ gains dramatic momentum in the wake of the global pandemic, anxieties about out-of-place bodies reach new levels of amplification and thus require careful theorisation.

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Despite this, contradictory evidence regarding the mainstream acceptance of cultural diversity repeatedly resurfaces in large-scale social attitude surveys about Australia’s national identity and social cohesion (Markus, 2021). While such surveys often indicate strong affirmation that migration has been good for the country, they simultaneously reveal continued support for assimilation. For example, in a study commissioned by a public broadcaster, 80% of respondents agreed it was good for a society to be made up of people from different cultural backgrounds, yet 49% implicitly endorsed assimilation, reporting agreement with the statement that ‘people from racial, ethnic, cultural, religious minority groups should behave more like mainstream Australians’ (Blaire et al., 2017, p. 6). A study on discourses of national identity in Australian schools also found that ‘implicit white normativity’ still operates to ‘reinforce a white Anglo identity as the presumed “core” of Australian national identity … [this] condones the normative assumption that “real” Australians are white people and others with racially marked bodies and culturally “different” identities originate from elsewhere’ (Walton et al., 2018, p. 142). In another study of young people born or raised in Australia with North-Eastern African heritage, participants observed that even for citizens, ‘this country makes you feel that if you are not white and blonde hair, blue-eyed, you are not Australian. So, papers [citizenship] mean nothing’ (Gebrekidan, 2018, p. 120). These experiences highlight why a nuanced appreciation of Australia’s history and the continuation of racial projects aimed at protecting whiteness as the dominant racial signifier is essential for understanding how and why this creates particular challenges for Black migrants from African nations. It is well evidenced through recent research that migrants and refugees who are identified or identify as Black Africans ‘frequently report higher levels of discrimination and prejudice than other groups in Australian society’ (Anderson et al., 2019, p. 25). Given the historical positioning of whiteness as central to Australian identity, achieving a sense of belonging and acceptance for Black African migrants within their new communities can be complicated or even thwarted (Moran & Gatwiri, 2022). Kwansah-Aidoo and Mapedzahama (2018a) have described this as the relegation of Black Africans to the status of ‘perpetual strangers’ (p. 97). It is clear that while ‘assimilation’ is no longer an official government policy, it prevails through securitisation, microaggressive practices and an implicit presumption of the ‘bargain’ on immigration. This means assimilation is the assumed ‘ideal outcome’ of successful, ‘good’ multiculturalism. As such, navigating the tensions towards acceptance and exclusion of migrants is particularly fraught for people who cannot visibly ‘assimilate’ into mainstream white Australian culture and society.

Contextualising African Migration to Australia As previously established, African migration to Australia comprises different waves of migration under various circumstances and has a long history. Although large-scale immigration flows are relatively recent, a dozen men of African ancestry were among

Contextualising African Migration to Australia

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convicts transported to Australia as part of the First Fleet (Colic-Peisker & Tilbury, 2007; Pybus, 2006). Over the next century, people of African heritage—often descendants of formerly enslaved people from the Americas—regularly arrived in Australia on convict, settler and merchant fleets. While Black settlers and their descendants played varied and sometimes prominent roles in Australian history, including participation in establishing and perpetuating colonial racial projects that dispossessed First Nations peoples of land and culture, they contributed to the emergence of the Indigenous rights movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Atkinson & Roberts, 2008; Ghosh & Goodall, 2009; Udo-Ekpo, 1999). Later, ‘they were also slowly eliminated or “whited out” as elements of White Australia Policy started to emerge in 1850’ (Hiruy & Hutton, 2020, p. 9). Afrodiasporic experiences and lives are thus imbricated within the history of Australia’s colonisation and nationhood from its inception. However, it is vital to note that although often designated as ‘African’ in historical and scholarly sources, the extent of these migrants’ direct connection to Africa is not always clear from the current literature. As the ‘global colour line’ hardened from the mid-nineteenth century (Lake & Reynolds, 2008), the institutionalisation of discriminatory migration policies and practices meant that migration into Australia directly from African nations was generally restricted to Anglo-Saxon-origin migrants from former British colonies. Prior to and directly following World War II, most African-born migrants to Australia were white English-speaking Southern Africans of European descent. This majority began to decrease from the 1960s onwards due to the disestablishment of racial discrimination in immigration policies, although it is impossible to precisely determine the racial background of many African-born migrants in this period (Cox et al., 1999; Hugo, 2009; Jakubowicz, 2010). The migration of Black Africans to Australia began to gain significant momentum in the late 1980s when an expansion of humanitarian resettlement from African nations commenced. The African-born population in Australia grew steadily during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, eventually being drawn from every country in Africa and increasingly of Black African heritage (AHRC, 2010; Hiruy & Hutton, 2020). The growth of African diaspora communities in Australia in recent decades can be seen as part of the ‘new African diaspora’ phenomenon. Hiruy and Hutton (2020) state that: In contrast to the ‘old’ African diaspora—which encompasses descendants of forced migration, namely from the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade—this new diaspora maintains close connections with its countries of origin and is said to embrace a dynamic, transnational identity. (p. 154)

Significant demographic trends in recent decades have included the substantial increase since the 1990s in migrants from Northeast Africa, predominantly coming to Australia as refugees. There was also a gradual increase since the turn of the century in the number of migrants from West African and East African countries, predominantly via voluntary migration programmes (Hugo, 2009). Migrants to Australia born in African nations are highly concentrated in capital cities in Australia, although there

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have been some recent attempts to support increased regional resettlement of Africanorigin refugees (Anderson et al., 2018; Hugo, 2009). Between the 2001 and 2011 Australian censuses, the number of people born in sub-Saharan African countries living in Australia doubled. By 2016, the total of all Africa-born in Australia had increased to 388,683, or approximately 1.7% of the total population (Lucas, 2017). The diversity of migrants from African nations who have settled in Australia is underscored by the fact that they originate from 54 different African countries, collectively speak over 60 African languages, and include adherents of all six major world religions. Although they make up only a small proportion of the overall Australian population, most African nations include people from diverse ethnic and cultural groups, where even the current markers of diversity fail to capture the full richness of cultural multiplicity within Australia’s African-born population (Cox et al., 1999). Accordingly, contemporary migration to Australia by diverse members of the ‘new African diaspora’ is frequently associated with ‘multiple relocations, which ultimately produce hybrid geographical, experiential and linguistic identities’ (Hiruy & Hutton, 2020, p. 157). An additional emerging population cohort that is incompletely captured within Australian census data is people of Black African heritage born in Australia (Gebrekidan, 2018). African people wishing to permanently migrate to Australia currently enter via one of two visa ‘streams’: the humanitarian programme for resettlement of refugees and the migration programme for family-based and skilled work migration. This is in addition to a variety of temporary migration programmes, including for skilled workers and international students (Phillips & Simon-Davies, 2016). The intake of African-born migrants via the humanitarian resettlement programme was substantially reduced in the mid-2000s, and successive governments have aimed to reduce family reunion or ‘chain’ migration for several decades. Therefore, Black African migration to Australia is increasingly occurring via skilled migration rather than other pathways (Jakubowicz, 2010; Lucas, 2017). This phenomenon has been exacerbated by the pandemic, which has been associated with reductions in humanitarian resettlement (Refugee Council of Australia, 2021), and calls for a significant expansion of Australia’s skilled migration programme (Greber, 2021). However, the neat categorisation of distinct migration streams does not capture the total fluidity of African diasporic experiences. It is not uncommon for African migrants in Australia to have lived in more than one country before settling in Australia. They may enter this country via one stream—for example, as a student or skilled migrant on a temporary visa—before settling permanently in Australia through another stream (Cox et al., 1999; Hiruy & Hutton, 2020; Ndhlovu, 2013). Australia pioneered the points-based immigration system in the late 1970s to assess applicants in terms of their expertise and potential for economic contribution (Ressia et al., 2017). Skilled migration has since been championed by successive (primarily conservative) governments, arguing that it would ‘add to the nation’s economic prosperity without threatening social cohesion’ (Jakubowicz, 2010, p. 21). Concurrent with reductions to humanitarian resettlement, it can be argued that coded attempts to maintain discriminatory migration policies can still be discerned in the promotion of points-based migration, as it facilitates screening for more assimilable

Challenges to Resettlement for Africans in Australia

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migrants. However, in sectors such as healthcare, where there is an incredibly high demand for migrant workers with relevant bachelor- or postgraduate-level qualifications, there have been expanding opportunities for permanent migration to Australia for skilled Black African workers and their families (Hugo, 2009; Kwansah-Aidoo & Mapedzahama, 2018a; Udah et al., 2019). However, the emergence of new opportunities for migration from African nations to Australia in recent decades takes place in a context of decreasing support and facilitation for relocation and resettlement at a practical and policy level. For example, in 2007, the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs was renamed the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, which subsequently became the Department of Immigration and Border Protection, and by 2017 was absorbed into Home Affairs, a new super-department (Garnier, 2017). During the same period, Australian policies towards migrants and asylum-seekers became increasingly restrictive and punitive. These developments signal a transition away from historical periods with a robust political and social endorsement of multiculturalism and a reinvigoration of securitisation as an approach to immigration, which exacerbates the use of ‘border control’ as a wedge issue for political benefit (Anderson, 2015). The intensification of racialised forms of securitisation has consequently led to high levels of public and media scrutiny of Black African diaspora communities in Australia, specifically regarding the increasing size and diversity of these communities. The following section considers the form and impacts of this hyper scrutiny and the homogenisation connected to Black Africans and their communities in Australia.

Challenges to Resettlement for Africans in Australia Although people of African heritage in Australia represent a considerable range of diversity on multiple fronts, this heterogeneity is often poorly recognised in mainstream Australian society (Hiruy & Hutton, 2020). The homogenising label of ‘African-Australian’ is most often applied to Australians of sub-Saharan African heritage who are phenotypically Black and therefore singularised into one ‘racial category’ (Gebrekidan, 2018, p. 117). People with North African heritage or whiteidentifying Southern African heritage are generally not marked with this appellation in the Australian context. Instead, ‘white Africans become “colourless” or largely “invisible” upon migration to Australia, and therefore experience realities that are (arguably radically) distinct from those of their black counterparts’ (Mapedzahama & Kwansah-Aidoo, 2013, pp. 62–63). The deployment of racialised tropes that portray Black Africans as members of monolithic social categories increases their racial visibility in contemporary white Australia and ‘overshadows the cultural, linguistic, and experiential nuances between African ethnic identities, [and works] to invisibilise their diversity’ (Hiruy & Hutton, 2020, p. 165). Udah and Singh (2018) also found in their research with Black Africans in Australia that regardless of their backgrounds

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and reasons for migration, migrants frequently experienced reductive and stereotypical assumptions that singularised their identities, such as being assumed to be from a refugee background regardless of their migration history. Migrants generally face a range of challenges in their relocation to another country, which can vary in intensity and duration depending on the characteristics of the context and the migrant cohort. Inclusive and welcoming reception of migrants needs to be conceptualised as a process of equal participation rather than an assimilatory process. However, there are complex factors at play that can hinder successful experiences of relocation and settlement for migrants and host communities (Curry et al., 2018). Issues regarding securing appropriate employment and housing and navigating significant changes within family dynamics upon resettlement have consistently been documented as a challenge (AHRC, 2010; Cox et al., 1999; Gatwiri et al., 2021; Renzaho et al., 2011; Udo-Ekpo, 1999). It is well-documented that the everyday challenges of settling in can be heightened for migrants who are ‘visibly different’ within the Australian context (Colic-Peisker & Tilbury, 2007). Black African migrants, in particular, are highly visible within many Australian settings due to the combination of multiple ‘visibilities’, given their phenotypical differences often have most salience in Australia given the sociocultural context outlined at the beginning of this chapter. This may pose contextual and cultural challenges for relocation and settlement through experiences of discrimination and exclusion. Considering this context, among the other ‘complex challenges’ Black African migrants may face during relocation and settlement, the interplay between interpersonal, systemic and institutional racism can be significant (Marlowe et al., 2013, p. 2). Early research on Black African experiences of migration to Australia singled out racial discrimination in multiple areas of daily life as a consistent negative challenge to successful relocation (e.g. Udo-Ekpo, 1999). Later studies affirm this finding (Gatwiri, 2021, Gatwiri & Anderson, 2020; Kwansah-Aidoo & Mapedzahhema, 2018a, 2018b; Udah, 2018). In the Scanlon Foundation’s national survey of immigrant communities in Australia, for example, the highest rates of experiences of discrimination were reported by African-born participants. More specifically, 80% of respondents born in South Sudan reported discrimination in police contact in the previous 12 months, and 17% reported experiencing racially motivated physical attacks in the same period (Marcus, 2016, p. 4). Similarly, in a large study conducted in 2016, almost one-third of young Australians reported experiencing unfair treatment or discrimination based on their race (Mission Australia, 2016). Young Black, Indigenous and other people of colour were particularly overrepresented in out-of-home care and the criminal justice system. Cunneen (2020) has argued that ‘the criminal justice system has increasingly become a tool for substituting direct racial discrimination with less overt practices that still have discriminatory and exclusionary effects’ (p. 528). These persistent and consistent experiences of discrimination and exclusion are experienced as a burden, impact wellbeing and sense of belonging, and constitute an additional hurdle in relocation and settlement (Gatwiri & Anderson, 2021; Gatwiri et al., 2021; Hebbani et al., 2013; Udah & Singh, 2018).

Emerging Afrodiasporic Identities

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When Africans move to a new country, they become objects of curiosity for the white gaze and are often racialised and binarised into the ‘inferior other’. KwansahAidoo and Mapedzahama (2018a) theorised how Blackness can be carried as a burden in white spaces by highlighting how ‘experiences of racism and racialisation interfere with the processes of “being local”, and the resulting effect is a sense of non-belonging’ (p. 106). Writing of her experiences as an African migrant, Gatwiri (2018) states that in Australia, she ‘must manage racialised consciousness and the racial micro-aggressions when met with surprise by Euro-centric others who question who I am, where I came from (where I am really from), why I am here, if I intend “to go back home” and when’ (p. 7). As globalisation becomes normalised and the certainties of borders (physical and symbolic) become blurred, xenophobic nationalism can be embraced by dominant social groups as a way to assert and defend their hegemonies. As nationalist ideologies intensify in Australia, we argue that experiences of interpersonal and structural racism and exclusion also intensify for Black, Indigenous and other people of colour. To date, Black Africans’ social, cultural and political positioning remains dominated by deficit discourses. The Black African is often represented as a problematised ‘other’: unknowing, uneducated, oppressed and dispossessed, and in need of a white saviour (Gatwiri, 2021; Majavu, 2018, 2020; Wakholi, 2019). This ‘can lead to all Black African migrants being seen as synonymous with refugees, assumed to have experienced trauma and stereotyped as lacking in education, professional expertise and English proficiency’ (Gatwiri & Anderson, 2021, p. 154, emphasis added). Udah and Singh (2018) posit that such deficit discourses pathologise and inferiorise Black African migrants, ‘problematizing them as lacking in something’ (p. 37, emphasis added). This complicates the efforts of Black African migrants in Australia to achieve a sense of belonging.

Emerging Afrodiasporic Identities As Mapedzahama and Kwansah-Aidoo (2013) have pointed out, much of the literature on African diasporic existence has focused on the forced trans-Atlantic migration of Black Africans into America during slavery and refugeeship. In Australia, research on African migrants has focused primarily on refugees, with a tendency towards over-representation of research with South Sudanese communities, often driven by efforts to contend with recurrent media stigmatisation of these communities (Marlowe et al., 2013; Milos, 2011). Research about other African diasporic experiences in Australia, such as skilled African migrants or second/third generation migrants, especially research conducted by researchers who have personal experience of migration to Australia from African nations, is still an emerging field (Fozdar, 2021). Thus, there is a gap within theoretical writing and research on alternate African diasporic experiences and identities and the changing nature of such identities, especially those that challenge dominant narratives about Africa and Africans and are sensitive to and generated through Afrocentric perspectives.

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The crisis of migrant subjectivity can be seen as a liminal experience, where African migrants are situated somewhere between their home culture and the destination culture. The relegation of individual African migrants to the reductive category of ‘African’ can strip them of both national and personal identities and complicate their emerging identities in the new place. Migrants may feel ‘torn between’ being both African and Australian or like they belong to a third culture that is neither African nor Australian. In research, Africans have highlighted the importance of having original cultural knowledge (of ‘where you come from’) to understand the new culture (‘where you are going’) (Marlowe et al., 2014). This contradictory experience is layered and complex, often involving the reconfiguration of old and emerging identities in an attempt to ‘fit into’ the new place. Diasporic identities are constructed through various cultural modalities that involve tracing the old and new social, cultural, historical and political contexts within which our bodies are situated. As Chiang (2010) argues, ‘the mobility and re-placement of our bodies destabilise our traditional sense of identity that was usually deeply rooted in a sense of nation-state’ (p. 29) and localism. In many Western modernities, principles of local assimilation are promoted as a form of naturalisation into the new diasporic space for new entrants. For Africans in predominantly white countries, this involves negotiating between internalising Western norms and maintaining an identity connected to their culture of origin. This constant negotiation and oscillation between multiple cultures may produce what Du Bois (1903) referred to as a ‘double consciousness’ and even a racial and cultural identity crisis. For Black African migrants in white-majority nations, race is centrally tied to the construction of their diasporic identities (Gatwiri & Anderson, 2021; Kwansah-Aidoo & Mapedzahama, 2018a, 2018b; Mapedzahama & Kwansah-Aidoo, 2013, 2017). There are some challenges (and paradoxes) involved in negotiating Black African migrant-foreigner identities in Australia. The experiences of crisis in racial and cultural identities are often produced through processes of racialisation, which rank Black people based on their proximity to whiteness. As such, the Black Afrodiasporic identity is layered through readings of the raced African body, where significant aspects of diasporic identities are shaped and formed. Through the hypervisibility of the Black body, the Black African migrant experiences the paradoxical effect of simultaneously becoming invisible while remaining highly visible due to the harmful tropes associated with their Blackness (Gatwiri & Anderson, 2021; Majavu, 2018, 2020; Windle, 2008). This is played out in experiences such as being ignored in shops when requesting assistance, while at other times being followed and over-scrutinised when shopping; or being repeatedly overlooked for employment opportunities, yet also subjected to micromanagement and microaggressions in work settings. The Black body ‘speaks’, in a way, and is sometimes louder than the Black voice (Mapedzahama & Kwansah-Aidoo, 2013). It is also strongly connected to the persistent homogenisation of Black African identities. Hiruy and Hutton (2020) found that participants in their research reported the invisibility of African diversity as a profound obstacle to re-establishing a secure sense of identity in Australia. Yet, they also found evidence that participants believed ‘holding a united African voice was in the greater interests of the community … in this sense, “African-ness” functions as a platform to stand together in the face of systematic

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challenges, particularly when trying to influence policy’ (Hiruy & Hutton, 2020, p. 166). Therefore, extending the theorisation of Blackness to encompass multiple and fluid expressions of identities that challenge the dominance of the ‘single story’ (Adichie, 2009) about Black Africans is necessary. As highlighted earlier in this chapter, African migrants to Australia are among the most ‘visible’ in terms of phenotypical and other forms of difference and face significant problems relating to belonging and integration. To negotiate these social, cultural and racial dilemmas, African migrants have to engage in ‘an ongoing process of selfmaking’ (Gilroy, 1997, p. 103), whereby they adopt various acculturation processes that help them cope with or minimise the experience of the outsider-foreigner identity. This may involve any of the four strategies of acculturation Berry and Sabatier (2011) described, including assimilation, separation, marginalisation and integration. Assimilation involves active participation in the destination society and no maintenance of the original culture. Separation is the opposite process, involving avoidance of interactions with the destination society and retention of the original culture. Marginalisation involves the loss of original culture and limited interactions with destination culture, and integration involves becoming part of the destination society while also retaining the original culture. The conceptualisations of migrant adaptation recognise the role of social environments in creating or otherwise alleviating stressful conditions impacting migration, resettlement and integration (Ryan et al., 2008). Below we continue the discussion on identity formation through an overview of third culture identity constructions.

Third Culture Identities Identity navigation or construction is a highly relevant aspect of migrant subjectivity. The Black African identity in Australia is suddenly faced with a new series of identity markers that may not have previously been met with in African countries of origin. Therefore, navigating diasporic identity and forming new identities is a critical theme in the literature on African migration (Phillips, 2013). As discussed above, the research clearly illustrates the challenges (and contradictions) involved in negotiating reified and homogenised Black/African migrant/outsider labels and identities in Australia. Again, the existence of distorted stereotypical ‘interpretations’ or ‘constructions’ of ‘the African’ emerges as a key element in African migrant experiences. Significant aspects of identity negotiation and formation include the process of ‘becoming Black’ following migration to a white-majority nation and ‘the contradiction of blackness; embodying the visible and simultaneously invisible black body’ (Mapedzahama & Kwansah-Aidoo, 2013, p. 68; Showers, 2015). According to Hall and Du Gay (1996), racial and, more so, cultural identity is a sociological concept that refers to the process of becoming as well as being. In seeking a middle ground across their multiple cultural and social identities, African migrants not only aspire to a better future, they also engage in the process of cultural transformation. Drawing from this definition, it is reasonable to argue that creating

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‘alternative’ cultural identities is a transformative adaptation strategy towards their new diasporic environment (Gilroy, 1997). This means that as their systems of cultural representation multiply, a ‘fleeting multiplicity of possible [cultural] identities’ emerges (Hall & Du Gay, 1996, p. 277). The third cultural identity may signify a cultural identity created from two (or more) cultural identities. That is, while individuals understand the importance and the relationship between their original culture and historical contexts, they are also compelled to accommodate the current, new experiences in the diaspora as alternative identities. It is essential to consider how our understanding of ‘cultural rules’, ‘cultural stereotypes’, ‘cultural heritage’ are formed and how they are constituted within specific social, intellectual, political and physical contexts, including within the nation-state. As such, exploring the power to define identity in terms of ‘national culture’ can be a powerfully exclusive (as well as inclusive) force.

Concluding Comments In this chapter, we have explored the historical, cultural and social context that influences Black African experiences of migration to Australia. We have considered the historical and contemporary power of nationalist and racialised identity processes in Australia, as well as the specifics of understanding how the movement of Black bodies across boundaries and geographies must engage with the legacies of colonialism, racism, marginalisation and the impact of these factors upon migrant experiences. By employing critical race perspectives to conceptualise the experiences of Black African immigrants in Australia, we argued that immigration is more than just the movement of bodies, and attempts to ‘keep Australia white’ continues to dominate discourses of immigration in this country. In the next chapter, we explore theoretical conceptualisations of Black African subjectivity in Australia.

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Gilroy, P. (1997). Diaspora and the detours of identity. In K. Woodward (Ed.), Identity and difference (pp. 301–346). SAGE. Glynn, I. (2016). Asylum policy, boat people and political discourse: Boats, votes and asylum in Australia and Italy. Palgrave Macmillan. Gonzalez-Sobrino, B, & Goss, D. R. (2019). Exploring the mechanisms of racialization beyond the black–white binary. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 42(4), 505–510. https://doi.org/10.1080/014 19870.2018.1444781 Greber, J. (2021, October 12). Australia needs ‘explosive’ surge of 2 million migrants. Australian Financial Review. https://www.afr.com/politics/australia-needs-explosive-surge-of-2million-migrants-20211011-p58z0n Gunew, S. (2004). Haunted nations: The colonial dimensions of multiculturalisms. Routledge. Hage, G. (2000). White nation: Fantasies of white supremacy in a multicultural society. Routledge. Hage, G. (2003). Against paranoid nationalism: Searching for hope in a shrinking society. Pluto Press. Hall, S., & Du Gay, P. (1996). Questions of cultural identity. SAGE. Han, G.-S., & Budarick, J. (2018). Overcoming the new kids on the block syndrome: The media ‘endorsement’ on discrimination against African-Australians. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 32(2), 213–223. Hebbani, A., Obijiofor, L., & Bristed, H. (2013). Navigating intercultural difference: Understanding the perspective of Sudanese former refugee women in Australia. In J. Marlowe, A. Harris, & T. Lyons (Eds.), South Sudanese diaspora in Australia and New Zealand: Reconciling the past with the present (pp. 157–172). Cambridge Scholars. Hiruy, K., & Hutton, R. A. (2020). Towards a re-imagination of the new African diaspora in Australia. African Diaspora, 12(1–2), 153–179. https://doi.org/10.1163/18725465-bja10010 Hugo, G. (2009). Migration between Africa and Australia: A demographic perspective. AHRC. Jakubowicz, A. (2010). Australia’s migration policies: African dimensions. AHRC. Killedar, A., & Harris, P. (2017). Australia’s refugee policies and their health impact: A review of the evidence and recommendations for the Australian Government. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, 41(4), 335–337. Kwansah-Aidoo, K., & Mapedzahama, V. (2018a). Black bodies in/out of place? Afrocentric perspectives and/on racialised belonging in Australia. Australasian Review of African Studies, 39(2), 95–121. https://doi.org/10.22160/22035184/aras-2018-39-2/95-121 Kwansah-Aidoo, K., & Mapedzahama, V. (2018b). ‘There is really discrimination everywhere’: Experiences and consequences of everyday racism among the new Black African diaspora in Australia. Australasian Journal of African Studies, 39(1), 81–109. Lake, M., & Reynolds, H. (2008). Drawing the global colour line: White men’s countries and the question of racial equality. Melbourne University Press. Lucas, D. (2017). Africans in Australia. Australian Mosaic, 46, 9–10. Majavu, M. (2018). The whiteness regimes of multiculturalism: The African male experience in Australia. Journal of Asian and African Studies, 53(2), 187–200. Majavu, M. (2020). The ‘African gangs’ narrative: Associating Blackness with criminality and other anti-Black racist tropes in Australia. African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal, 13(1), 27–39. https://doi.org/10.1080/17528631.2018.1541958 Marcus, A. (2016). Migrants from Africa bear brunt of discrimination but remain positive, survey finds. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/migrants-from-africa-bear-brunt-of-discri mination-but-remain-positive-survey-finds-64288 Marlowe, J., Harris, A., & Lyons, T. (2014). South Sudanese diaspora in Australia and New Zealand: Reconciling the past with the present. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Mapedzahama, V., & Kwansah-Aidoo, K. (2013). Negotiating diasporic black African existence in Australia: A reflexive analysis. Australasian Review of African Studies, 34(1), 61–81. Mapedzahama, V., & Kwansah-Aidoo, K. (2017). Blackness as burden? The lived experience of Black Africans in Australia. SAGE Open, 7(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244017720483 Markus, A. (2021). Mapping social cohesion 2020. Scanlon Foundation.

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Udo-Ekpo, L. T. (1999). The Africans in Australia: Expectations and shattered dreams. Seaview Press. Wakholi, P. M. (2019). Migration and making sense of place: Against a backdrop of negative media discourse about Africa. In M. C. Patron & J. Kraven (Eds.), Intercultural mirrors: Dynamic reconstruction of identity (pp. 71–82). Brill. Walton, J., Priest, N., Kowal, E., White, F., Fox, B., & Paradies, Y. (2018). Whiteness and national identity: Teacher discourses in Australian primary schools. Race Ethnicity and Education, 21(1), 132–147. Windle, J. (2008). The racialisation of African youth in Australia. Social Identities, 14(5), 553–566.

Chapter 3

The Politics of Blackness: Theorising Afrodiasporic Identities and Experiences

Abstract This chapter theorises the nuances of emerging Afrodiasporic identities and how they metamorphose following relocation and resettlement. Critical theories make visible the normalised and standardised Eurocentric practices within Australia that inferiorise Blackness and Afrodiasporic experiences. In particular, it probes how Blackness impacts the hypervisibility and scrutinisation of Black Africans in Australia. Literature shows that the discourses of Blackness in Australia are underpinned mainly by white Western ideological imaginations that inadvertently justify Black inferiority. The emerging literature on Black African migrant experiences in Australia highlights the precarity of conditional belonging and the resulting experiences of racial battle fatigue and a variety of resilience strategies employed in response to these challenging circumstances.

Introduction There are significant and complex challenges facing racialised migrants in Australia, which intersect between the interpersonal, systemic and institutional structures that inform experiences of belonging (Gatwiri & Townsend-Cross, 2022; Mapedzahama & Kwansah-Aidoo, 2017; Moran & Gatwiri, 2022). Black Africans in Australia, in particular, experience significant challenges in integration compared to other migrant groups (Majavu, 2018; Udah et al., 2019). They also remain one of the most socially and economically disadvantaged communities of new Australians (AHRC, 2010; Colic-Peisker & Tilbury, 2007). Research shows that immigrants and refugees from Africa frequently report higher levels of discrimination and prejudice than other groups in Australian society (Marcus, 2016). Black African migrants report a higher frequency of racially motivated physical attacks, challenges finding work, hyper-criminalisation and overall high levels of community scrutiny, which informs a perceived need for hypervigilance (Anderson et al., 2019; Gatwiri et al., 2021). Current research shows that Africans are grossly misrepresented in media, misunderstood and treated suspiciously by mainstream Australia (Gatwiri & Anderson, 2020; Majavu, 2018; Weber, 2020). This systemic

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 K. Gatwiri and L. Anderson, Afrodiasporic Identities in Australia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-4282-2_3

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marginalisation has significant consequences, especially—but not limited to—family and mental health breakdowns and tensions (AHRC, 2010), substance misuse, poor employability (Udah et al., 2019) and a racially embattled sense of self. Globalisation and increased ease of transnational movement in recent decades have informed how Africans who move into Western countries navigate the variances of old and emerging identities. As Black Africans enter white-dominated spaces like Australia, where they are relegated to the margins due to race, class and immigrant status, the contours of their existing identities are challenged and compromised. Due to the hierarchy of hegemonic whiteness and the racial imagery of Blackness in dominant Western discourses, Black African experiences in the diaspora become racialised and consequently political. Therefore, considering how Afrodiasporic identities intersect with racialisation, colonialist and immigration discourses, we argue that Black Africans in Australia are disadvantaged by their social positioning, which negatively impacts their racial safety, wellbeing and cultural identities. This chapter draws upon different theoretical frameworks to explain and contextualise the lived experience of Black Africans in Australia. This provides a platform through which dominant Australian ontological and epistemological norms, values, beliefs and accepted behaviours can be interrogated to reveal how they function in creating blind spots for institutional and interpersonal racism (Sólorzano et al., 2005). We also utilise Essed’s (2008) ‘everyday racism’ framework, which theorises how the mechanisms of racial microaggressions and racial slights impact recipients, in conjunction with the work of Smith (2008) on racial battle fatigue (RBF). We theorise how RBF is an embodied stress response to the ongoing onslaught of everyday racism, and how these experiences can negatively impact the health and wellbeing of Black African migrants and their ability to develop a sense of belonging in Australia.

Theorising Afrodiasporic Migranthood To understand subjective and collective Afrodiasporic experiences, we must critically theorise how migratory and bordering practices are summoned when racialised bodies cross international boundaries and how that positioning affects their ability to belong in the new country. The changing social and political contexts for immigrants globally inform ‘a remarkable conjuncture between the escalation, acceleration, and diversification of migrant and refugee mobilities’ (De Genova, 2018, p. 1765). Investigating what this means for Australian borders and identities is theorised below.

Critical Race Theory CRT attempts to ‘demystify racism and racial oppression’ by theorising how race functions as a powerful social construct that is present in every social contouring of our lives (Dumas & Ross, 2016, p. 423). It is a standpoint from which racialised

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scholars ‘integrate experiential knowledge drawn from a shared history as “other” with their ongoing struggles to transform a world deteriorating under the albatross of racial hegemony’ (Robin, 1990, p. 1864). However, as Dumas and Ross (2016) argue, CRT is ‘not a theorisation of blackness or even the Black condition; it is a theory of race, or more precisely, racism, based on analysis of the curious administration of laws and policies intended to subjugate’ (p. 416) Black, Indigenous and other people of colour. Within this context of viewing whiteness as having the ‘absolute right to exclude’, as Ladson-Billings and Tate (2016) suggest, we contextualise Black Africans’ experiences in the diaspora as political. Discourses of Blackness in Australia are underpinned mainly by white Western ideological imaginations that may inadvertently justify Black inferiority and marginalisation. As Ogunyemi (2021) suggests, ‘Blackness is created by whiteness simply because … of what is at the centre of whiteness, [that is] that which is supposed to live, and Blackness, [as] being dispensable to life’ (p. 493). In particular, Black Africans in Australia have attracted high levels of media attention and scrutiny, associated with continued questioning about their capacity to integrate and assimilate. In their book Becoming an African Diaspora in Australia, Ndhlovu (2014) states that ‘Black-African immigration to Australia appears to have brought back memories about representations of race and the social construction of “whiteness” and “blackness” which were popular in colonial Australia’ (p. 101). Because race has historically been deployed to determine the Australian immigration policy, we must investigate how it continues to complicate Black migrants’ efforts to navigate the broader Australian sociocultural landscape in the present day. In Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon (1952) argues that the way blackness is constructed in white spaces makes it an ‘object among other objects’ (p. 89). This inferiority is determined by others who assume superiority, suspicion and curiosity of the Black body through the white gaze. This gaze produces the burden of hypervisibility, which places the Black body under extra surveillance, policing and scrutiny. Fanon (1952) says the visibility of Blackness ‘is there—dense, and undeniable’, its movement constantly patrolled and monitored by the white gaze. Through this ‘negritude movement’ that has total pathological infiltration on the Black psyche, the alienation of the Black body is not only lived through the body but also felt through the soul and the spirit. The insidiousness of this epistemic violence is in being the object of this dehumanising process and not being able to see it. As the very essence of Blackness is forced to disappear into the narratives of whiteness, as hooks (1997) contends, Black people are often forced to adopt the ‘mantle of invisibility, to erase all traces of their subjectivity’. By performing whiteness, their Blackness is internalised as a burden as they learn the peculiar rules of managing white fragility, which can easily be destabilised by a minimum amount of racial stress and can trigger an array of defensive reactions such as rage, fear, guilt and shame (DiAngelo, 2016). Reflecting on the Fanonian conceptualisation of race, we argue that the colonial system in the Australian political, social and cultural landscape produces what Song (2017) terms the ‘epidermalization of Black inferiority’, which is the progressive devaluation of the Black body through the filters of whiteness and the subsequent internalisation of discursive racial scripts. These scripts have continuously framed

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the migrant experience for Black peoples, with different waves of immigrants experiencing their own share of xenophobia, racism and hostility (Hibbins & Pease, 2009). Theorising race and the processes of racialisation allows for an analysis of the ‘very system of racism that perpetuates [racial] inequality’ (Mergia, 2005) and summons critical reflections on how race functions, is performed and articulated in everyday life through social relationships. This means race is much more than a social construction—it is an ideology and a belief system that shapes boundaries of power and racialised social systems (Doane & Bonilla-Silva, 2003). In his seminal book The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois (1903) provides a powerful and provocative articulation of what it means to be Black in a white colonial context: The Negro is … born with a veil and gifted with second sight … [in] a world which yields him no true self-consciousness but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. (p. 2)

The double-consciousness produced through this epistemic violence leads to a crisis of Black legitimacy, relevance, epistemology, historical representation and identity (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2013). Du Bois (1903) further describes this burden of double consciousness as the ‘sense of always looking at oneself through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity’ (p. 2). This means the interaction of Blackness with whiteness is mainly mediated through the filters of inferiority and superiority, where whiteness is centred as the object of rescue helping dissipate Black psychopathology and deficiency. As African subjectivity is constructed as deficient and lacking—that is, ‘lacking souls, lacking history, lacking civilization, lacking development, lacking democracy, lacking human rights and lacking knowledge’ (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2013)—a silencing of African ontologies is summoned. Yancy (2005) argues that the constant invasion of Black bodies through the ‘white gaze and then to have that body returned distorted is a powerful experience of violation’ (p. 216). Considering this context, Black Africans in Australia have a political ontology. Wilson (1990) adds: Only the carefully presented façade, the meticulous expression of nonaggressive, nonassertive body language, and a carefully managed nonthreatening black persona is accepted in white spaces. To have your integrity chronically under question, to always have to somehow verbally or nonverbally, communicate convincing reasons for being where you are, if you are not in your place.

Therefore, in white spaces, the Black body and psyche have no place to rest, recharge and recover. The ‘burden of Blackness’ (Mapedzahama & Kwansah-Aidoo, 2017) can facilitate the internalisation of the hatred summoned towards the Black body through the consumption of racial scripts on Blackness. It can also require constant ‘curation’ of the self to present to white audiences a Black identity that is positive and non-threatening, a work of constant emotional labour that can carry significant costs, as is discussed in more detail in Chaps. 6, 8, and 9.

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Anti-Blackness Theory Anti-Blackness is the process of locating Black people’s experiences of structural subordination within racial hierarchies embedded within transhistorical and transnational contexts. That means understanding anti-Blackness underpins dominant conceptualisations of ‘the basis of the privileges of all other groups’ because the ‘black position is irreducible to other positions and ontologies’ (Vargas, 2018). Anti-Blackness theory emerges from CRT frameworks. Its theorising is concerned with a particular form of racism experienced specifically by Black people. Dumas and Ross (2016) suggest it is a specific theorisation of how ‘Black people exist in a structurally antagonistic relationship with their humanity’ (p. 429). Therefore, anti-Blackness theory functions much more as a critique of white supremacy and its hegemonic power. As the Black Liberation Collective (2017) suggest, anti-Blackness theory interrogates: [The] interlocking paradigm of institutions, attitudes, practices and behaviours that work to dehumanize and oppress Black people in order to benefit non-Black people, and specifically, to benefit and maintain white supremacy … [it is] the depreciation of black humanity, denial of black pain, and the obstruction of black agency, in a perpetual process of dehumanization. Anti-Black racism is not merely ideology or overt prejudice and discrimination but consists of mechanisms and practices that reproduce white advantage and Black disadvantages.

The ‘prevalent anti-Black racist discourse in Australia is a long-standing trope’ of racialising and then criminalising African migrant communities and positioning them as a ‘problem group’ (Majavu, 2020, p. 28). The burden of this label informs the over-policing and heavy surveillance within the community that is summoned to protect ‘innocent Australians’. The Black body in white spaces carries a series of racial scripts and identity markers within this theorisation whereby racial scripting around Africanness and Blackness encodes negative and cultural meanings. Locating Black African Australians through the binaries of ‘us’ (Black) and ‘them’ (white) produces marginalised, disenfranchised outsiders and functions to ‘establish, consolidate, and/or confirm offender identities … which attract further intervention and/or negative reaction’ (Goldson, 2010). The correlation of whiteness to Blackness in ‘this relationship is both hierarchical and oppositional’ (Powell, 1999), and within this context, the Black African body remains political as it occupies a contested space. Similar trends of global anti-Blackness resulting in over-surveillance of Black people who are seen as ‘perpetual suspects’ or ‘persons of interest’ (see Chap. 4) are particularly evident in white Western contexts where agencies of law enforcement have utilised unnecessary deadly force when engaging with Black people, particularly Black males (Smiley & Fakunle, 2016). In such spaces, Black African men and male adolescents may be perceived as particularly aggressive or intimidating in their physique, expressivity of communication or other factors of their demeanour. They may then experience heightened negative impacts of hypervisibility within white contexts, as we address in further detail in Chaps. 8 and 9.

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As racialised assumptions about ‘Blacks’ are summoned and projected onto Black African individuals and communities, efforts of integration, inclusion and belonging may be thwarted. Racial prejudice towards Africans is different from that projected towards foreigners from other Western countries, as ‘the latter does not evoke the perceptions of inferiority’. To put this in context, the inferiorisation of the Black body through the absolute power of whiteness renders it a site of ostracisation. The hypervisibility of the Black body and the dominant racialised deficit discourse that emphasises what Africans lack thus informs an anti-Black consciousness in the Australian milieu. Anti-Blackness is evidenced in cultural discourses, where the emerging concept of ‘celebrating Blackness’ and the ‘growing symbolic valorisation of Blackness and recognition of Black suffering co-exists alongside the continuing violent exclusion of Blacks in the political sphere and the continuing necro politics of (Empire-) States’ (Vargas, 2018). Therefore, as Dumas (2016) argues, the aim of theorising anti-Blackness is not to offer solutions to racial inequality but rather to come to a deeper understanding of the Black condition within a context of utter contempt for Blackness, symbolised by the normalisation and acceptance of violence against Black bodies. This means understanding: The distinction between a theory of racism and a theory of blackness (in an anti-Black world) is key: whereas the former may invoke Black examples and even rely on the Black experience of racism in the formation of its tenets, only critical theorization of blackness confronts the specificity of antiblackness, as a social construction, as an embodied lived experience of social suffering and resistance, and perhaps most importantly, as an antagonism, in which the Black is a despised thing-in-itself (but not person in opposition to all that is pure, human(e), and white. (Dumas & Ross, 2016, p. 417)

Similarly, Yancy (2016) argues that ‘whiteness does not exist without the concept of blackness’ (p. 38); therefore, for ‘whiteness to exist as a positive, blackness needs to exist as a negative’ (as cited in Blaisdell, 2020, p. 74). In the white spatial imaginary of Blackness, Black Africans must wear a ‘white mask’ to be fully humanised, and even so, they need to aim ‘to become equal to white[s] or to resemble him to the point of disappearing in him’ (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2013). Gatwiri (2020) also argues that ‘the power of the violence enacted through assimilatory adaptation [to whiteness] perpetuates a crisis of legitimacy’ as well as a crisis of ontological, epistemological position. Anti-Black tropes in Australia are particularly informed by the fear blackness in and of itself induces in white people (Majavu, 2020). The darkness of Black people’s skin is synonymised with darkness—or that which is evil, savage or threatening to white comfort (Yancy, 2005). As Blaisdell (2020) argues, ‘the mere presence of blackness in racialized space is a potential threat to the perceived sanctity and purity of that space’ (p. 73). Further, due to the pervasiveness of global anti-Black rhetoric, ‘in most Black African countries, we also confront a discursive anti-Blackness that is so deeply entrenched in the psyche of the African due to the internalised violence of racism provoked by epistemic colonisation’ (Gatwiri, 2020, emphasis added). Song’s (2017) concept of ‘epidermalisation of Black inferiority’ also suggests the value of the Black body is produced through the discursive constructs of white filters. To be acceptable,

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the ‘negro’ must disappear into the depth of whiteness to acquire an identity. They must diminish their ‘corporeal schema’ by assuming a ‘racial epidermal schema’, which is the bodily embodiment of anti-Blackness (Song, 2017). The inferiorisation of Blackness by the white gaze, compounded by the aforementioned anti-Black and racialised attitudes, has continued to complicate efforts to create cohesion in ‘multicultural Australia’.

Racial Battle Fatigue Theory Processes of racial subordination produce experiences of exclusion and fractured belonging and have a significant human cost in terms of mental wellbeing (Elias & Paradies, 2016, 2021). This culminates in what Smith (2008, 2014) refers to as racial battle fatigue (RBF), which describes the profound ‘minority stress’ and ‘racial fatigue’ of living in a Black body within predominantly white spaces. RBF is a theoretical framework concerned with ‘the physiological, psychological, and behavioural strain exacted on racially marginalized and stigmatized groups and the amount of energy they expend coping with and fighting against racism’ (Smith, 2008, p. 617). The theory probes how the daily stressors emerging from racial stress and minoritisation cumulatively impact Black people’s health and wellbeing (Franklin, 2019). Smith identified three principal aspects of the most common impacts of RBF. First is the physiological response, which includes but is not limited to headaches, high blood pressure, muscle aches, indigestion, gastric distress, constipation, sleep disturbance, fatigue, insomnia and frequent illness. Second is the psychological stress response, which includes apathy, irritability, helplessness, powerlessness, hopelessness, mood deregulation and defensiveness. The final aspect is a behavioural category that includes poor eating habits, anger, rage, alcohol or drugs, and poor school or job performance (Smith, 2008). These responses to RBF are increased and intensified in predominantly white settings where there is elevated racial hostility and racial apathy (Franklin, 2019) and where Blackness is carried as a more significant burden due to overt and covert acts of racial hostility. On this, Fanon (1952) wrote: And then the occasion arose when I had to meet the white man’s eyes. An unfamiliar weight burdened me... In the white world, the man [sic] of color encounters difficulties in the development of his bodily schema. Consciousness of the body is solely a negating activity. It is a third-person consciousness. The body is surrounded by an atmosphere of certain uncertainty. (p. 83)

For Black people to develop and maintain a wholesome identity—a way of being attuned with themselves so that self-respect, self-confidence and self-esteem can flourish—they have to experience positive recognition regarding the core aspects of their racial identity. A growing body of research speaks to the impacts of racism, racial microaggressions, racial marginalisation, discrimination, stereotypes and prejudice. Durey and Thompson (2012) argue:

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3 The Politics of Blackness … People often view racism solely as referring to interpersonal relations, where a person is treated unfairly … because of race; however, racism that exists systemically and institutionally, where the production, control and access to resources operates to advantage selected racial/cultural groups and disadvantage others, is more insidious. (p. 3)

To this effect, DiAngelo (2011) asserts that, unlike white people, Black people do not enjoy the protection of a social environment that cushions them from the stressors of racialisation. She adds that white people see race as operating only in racially and culturally heterogeneous spaces but consider all-white spaces as ‘pure’ spaces, untainted by race vis á vis the absence of the carriers of race (and thereby the racial polluters): Black, Indigenous and other people of colour (DiAngelo, 2011). A study by Mapedzahama and Kwansah-Aidoo (2017) also highlights how ‘the ongoing and constant experience of discrimination, marginalization, and disempowerment by those racialised as “black” imposes on them a unique kind of burden which is both “symbolic” and “material”, derived from the notion of black or blackness as “a cultural trope”’ (p. 5). They provide a theorisation of ‘blackness as a burden’, arguing that: The black body in white space has always been constructed as a problematic difference to whiteness: an inferiority and an ‘other’. Blackness is thus not merely about skin color, but rather it is a social construct persistently conceived of as an opposition to whiteness: It is not only that which defines whiteness but is also inferiorized by it. (Mapedzahama & Kwansah-Aidoo, 2017, p. 1)

This unspoken burden can hinder Black people from thriving, as they spend most of their emotional and psychological headspace either navigating whiteness, curating their Blackness or nursing the wounds of the daily assaults of racism and racial microaggressions. On this terrorised Black identity, Yancy (2016) suggests: If you are Black, you can afford to believe that you are seen as a ‘neoliberal subject’ free from the force of white racism and its ugly legacy; you must not assume that your life matters in the same way that white lives matter. You must not assume that you are granted unconditional spatial mobility. You must not assume that your body is defined only by you and that such a definition can save you. Ad you must not assume that you can exercise your right to defend your dignity through ‘free speech’ without dire consequences. Within white [contexts] you must not even assume that you are take human. The history of white supremacy more than justifies this cautionary advice to you. (p. xxii)

Internalising the burden of racialised hatred extended towards the Black body means that Black people can harbour the hatred of white supremacy within themselves. According to Malcolm X (1965), this is the most successful tool of white supremacy. bell hooks (1997) also argues that the ways ‘whiteness exists without the knowledge of blackness even as it collectively asserts its control’ creates the burden of racial fatigue, where Black folk have to constantly justify their presence in spaces from which they are constantly excluded. Therefore, while navigating white spaces, Black people ‘feel themselves to be tokens, as symbolic representatives’ (Anderson, 2018). They do not have the luxury of the ‘structurally embedded privileges’ that frame the social ‘fabric of the cloak of White innocence’ and, therefore, must endure the humiliation of embodied racial oppression (Daniel, 2019). Thus, Blackness is experienced

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as an ‘embodied experience [and] a site of exposure’ and visibility (Yancy, 2016), where one also learns the peculiar rules of minimising their exposure and visibility as a way of managing white panic towards Black bodies, which is ‘always tentative, delicate, and is easily [diminished] by the smallest misstep or the tiniest deviation’ (Wilson, 1990). Managing this racial terror creates what Steele and Aronson (1995) term a ‘stereotype threat’, which occurs when there is an expectation that one will be judged based on their stereotype. And so, to avoid this stereotyping, Black people overcompensate by engaging in high effort coping strategies to prove they are an exception to the racial stereotypes imposed on Black people, which in turn perpetuates more of the racial battle. The theory of RBF probes how all these daily racial stressors emerging from racial trauma and minoritisation cumulatively impact Black people emotionally, psychologically, socially, culturally and economically.

Theories of Belonging The emerging literature on Black African migranthood in Australia highlights the challenges surrounding the precarity of conditional belonging, constant boundary work that is performed to manage inclusion, and the resulting experiences of exclusion. To understand subjective migratory experiences, we must critically theorise how bordering practices are summoned when colonised and racialised bodies cross international boundaries, and how that positioning impacts their ability to belong in the new country. We frame belonging through Nira Yuval-Davis’s (2006) theorisation, which locates belonging as an ‘emotional attachment, [and] about feeling at “home”’, or as Spaaij (2015) has elaborated, as having ‘a sense of being part of the social fabric’. As belonging becomes politicised, it moves from a feeling of being at home into ‘a relational concept’ mediated by power (Weber, 2020). YuvalDavis et al. (2019) suggest that belonging can be politicised, for example, when it is linked to the bordering and securitisation processes through which national polities construct ‘views on who has a right to share the[ir] home and who does not belong there’; that is, establishing a nationalised collective ‘us’ that is separate to ‘them’. As borders function symbolically and metaphorically as tools of geographical and colonial separation, the bordering processes that are summoned produce state-sanctioned ‘expressions of sovereignty’ that can be utilised to police those who have the right to cross certain borders and join ‘us’ and those who do not (Weber, 2020). Critical perspectives on colonial and postcolonial bordering practices question the identities, knowledges and traditional (Western) scholarship that work to privilege the white Western body over the non-Western body (Ali, 2019; Vollmer, 2020; Yuval-Davis et al., 2019). This body of knowledge also questions what we are socialised to think of as ‘natural boundaries/borders’ while interrogating the processes of border formation. In doing so, it draws strongly upon the complex ‘border-crossings’ and multifaceted experiences of groups of people who have been ‘othered’ through the processes of colonial bordering, including migrants, refugees

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and Indigenous peoples. As Kwansah-Aidoo and Mapedzahama (2018) highlight, establishing a sense of ‘belonging-as-negotiation’ requires that individuals come to terms with the likelihood they will ‘occupy what Gloria Anzaldúa (2007) refers to as “the borderlands”; that is, they are in-between places and will be juggling cultures’. A legitimate strategy for others is the contemplation of/or decision to ‘return home’ (Kwansah-Aidoo & Mapedzahama, 2018). That is, to relocate back to their African country of origin, searching for a more dignified sense of belonging where they are not relegated to racial margins. Navigating the formation of novel and resilient diasporic identities is a crucial theme in the literature regarding African migration to Australia. As African migrants are among Australia’s most ‘visible’ social groups in terms of phenotypical differences, the significant problems relating to their marginalisation and minoritisation extend beyond poor physical, psychological and economic outcomes. This visibility can make them simultaneously hypervisible and invisible, as discussed in the previous chapter. These paradoxical imageries can lead to the imposition of ‘strangerhood’ and denial of belonging. As Durey and Thompson (2012) suggest, whiteness is the norm in Australia, ‘the standard against which differences, or deviations from that norm, are measured, valued and often demeaned’. Whiteness is not seen merely as a skin colour but rather a universal marker of value and social capital that dominates other ways of knowing, being and experiencing the world. This suggests that African culture and traditions are often cited in Australian mainstream media and political discourses as the reason why Africans ‘don’t fit in’. To understand how African immigrants fit—or do not fit—within Australian national culture, it is helpful to consider what is deemed ‘un-Australian’. As discussed in the previous chapter, historically, ‘being Australian’ has been tightly bound to notions of white hegemony and the dominance of Anglo-Saxon institutions and culture. Cultural differences will always form an essential element of the migrant experience, in the sense of feeling that ‘it is different here’ (Babatunde-Sowole et al., 2016). Given this context, ‘outsiderness’ is frequently heightened for Black migrants to settler-colonial societies with a history of complex racial projects tied to notions of belonging and inclusion, such as Australia.

Afrocentric Theories There is increased recognition within many fields of research and practice in Australia of the necessity to use culturally affirming theoretical frameworks and research methodologies that recognise the cultural strengths of African communities. We contend that this need can be addressed by utilising Afrocentricity to investigate Afrodiasporic experiences. In many Western modernities, principles of local assimilation are promoted as a form of naturalisation into the new diasporic space for new entrants. For Africans in predominantly white countries, this involves a negotiation between internalising Western norms and maintaining an identity tied to their original culture. This constant negotiation between multiple cultures may produce what Du

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Bois (1903) referred to as a ‘double consciousness’ and crisis of racial and cultural identity (see Chap. 2). Afrocentric frameworks ‘affirm, codify, and integrate common cultural experiences, values, and interpretations that cut across people of African descent’ and help human service practitioners participate in understanding and solving pressing social problems (Clark Atlanta University, n.d.). Theoretically, it is a viable and innovative way of utilising African philosophies as a starting place for interpreting social problems affecting African diasporic individuals, families and communities to create long-term and sustainable community healing and societal change (Bent-Goodley et al., 2017). The employment of Afrocentric philosophies and perspectives such as Ubuntu and Sancofa, and recognition of the complex role religion plays within many African cultures, can further enhance Western theoretical perspectives. For example, renowned African theologian and philosopher John Mbiti (1990) has argued that religion is a core part of the African identity permeating most aspects of their lives. African philosophy and religion (which is sometimes not situated within Christian or Islam dogma) are not seen as primarily personal but rather a communal endeavour that spills into Africans’ social and cultural landscape. Therefore, one cannot simply detach themselves from African religious practices, as this would sever attachment with who they are. Mbiti (1990) writes: Wherever an African is, there is his religion: he carries it to the fields, where he is sowing or harvesting a new crop, he takes it with him to the beer party or to attend a funeral ceremony; and if he is educated, he takes it with him to examination room at school or in the university; if he is a politician, he takes it to the house of parliament … [This means an African’s] environment is occupied by religious meaning, so that at any moment and in any place, a person feels secure enough to act in a meaningful and religious consciousnesses’. (p. 3)

This decolonial African philosophy locates religion in African societies as fluid— that is, not formulated in dogma or sacred scriptures but set within people’s hearts and minds—where everybody is seen as a religious carrier. This perspective elevates Africans’ religious practices by decentring the Western gaze and critique and placing such beliefs and practices within a bigger picture of community and family (Mbiti, 1990). For example, Sancofa and Ubuntu philosophies offer relevant theorisation to the discussion in this book. Sancofa represents the embodiment of a mythological bird, which likes to fly forward but with its head turned backwards, symbolising the Ghanaian Akan proverb that it is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten (Mungai, 2015). This Afrocentric framework practice acknowledges the importance of returning to and renewing African knowledge and experiences that have been marginalised and/or forgotten. When people are too far separated from their country, culture, language and people, they may forget themselves and remain in an arrested state of identity crisis. This framework helps investigate how the process of returning to self can facilitate belonging and racial dignity and consequently full integration for Africans in Australia. As an African philosophical framework, Ubuntu argues that we are made human by humanising others, and belonging is sustained by maintaining one another’s human dignity (Gatwiri, 2019; Nussbaum, 2003). Thus, the willingness to see, feel and enter the depth of other people’s experiences through a humane process produces interconnectedness and change (Gatwiri,

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2019). The African view of humanity based on the Ubuntu philosophy is centred on this premise that ‘I am because we are, and since we are, therefore I am’. This philosophy embodies the true essence of what this book is about: by sharing the stories of a more diverse cohort of African migrants than has traditionally been represented within the literature, we will be promoting connection and belonging and humanising one of Australia’s most disenfranchised migrant communities. We theorise that belonging for Africans in Australia, when interpreted through the lens of Ubuntu and Sankofa and other Afrocentric perspectives, fosters positive outcomes and produces cultural and human connection.

Conclusion This chapter has presented multiple critical theories to conceptualise the Afrodiasporic experiences of Black African migrants in Australia. Critical theories provide a platform through which a society’s assumed ontological and epistemological norms, values, beliefs and accepted behaviours can be interrogated to reveal how they function in creating blind spots for racism and exclusion (Sólorzano et al., 2005). Reflecting on the Fanonian and other conceptualisations of race presented within this chapter, we have argued that the colonial system in the Australian political, social and cultural landscape has entrenched the ‘epidermalisation of Black inferiority’, which is the progressive but unseen devaluation of the Black body through the filters of whiteness and subsequent internalisation of discursive racial scripts that impact Black Africans in Australia. In the next chapter, we survey the existing literature in further depth to consider how the experiences of exclusion and bordering practices, and racial indignity and misrecognition impact Black Africans in Australia.

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Chapter 4

Boundaries of Belonging: Misrecognition and Challenges of Representation

Abstract In the wake of mediatised ‘moral panics’ regarding the supposed criminality of African migrants, claims about their inability to ‘integrate’ successfully into Australian society have frequently been summoned to rationalise and explain their exclusion from mainstream Australia. Drawing particularly on theories of representation and belonging, this chapter offers a theorisation of how experiences of exclusion, racial indignity and misrecognition impact Black Africans in Australia. The chapter surveys existing literature highlighting how mediatised moral panics perpetually construct Black Africans as ‘strangers’ who do not belong in Australia. We examine how the ‘single story’ of Africans created by these dominant discourses leads to widely shared misunderstandings of Blackness and Africanness translated through language. The chapter also examines how these discourses operationalise representational discourses that justify ‘moral panics’ and institutionalise the ‘misrecognition’ of Black bodies.

Introduction Social anxiety in regard to immigration is not a new phenomenon in Australia. As a settler-colonial society, Australia has a long history of exclusion and marginalisation towards Black, Indigenous and other people of colour. Despite this historical context, the promotion of migration over successive decades in the latter part of the twentieth century led to significant demographic change as the nation became highly culturally and racially diverse. Amid this increasing diversity, concerns about crises of immigration were publicly summoned from the late 1990s by populist political figures whose fantasies of the restoration of a white Australia were eventually co-opted by mainstream conservative political actors and commodified for political leverage (Udah & Singh, 2019). Contemporary cultural and political discourses on immigration in Australia continue to indicate how power is used to discipline and control the ‘other’: bodies that are deemed dangerous, different, deviant and unassimilable. Moral panics, stereotyping, prejudice and discrimination directed against Black Africans rest conceptually upon historical and contemporary constructions of Indigeneity and Blackness within Australia’s colonial projects and in global narratives © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 K. Gatwiri and L. Anderson, Afrodiasporic Identities in Australia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-4282-2_4

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of anti-Blackness. Moral panics flourish in times of heightened anxiety as they obscure meaningful critical analysis of the validity of these panics and instead allow for a projection of racial fears onto racialised others (Falkof, 2020; Hall, 1997). Despite periodic waves of concern about the supposed inherent criminality of African migrants being proven erroneous (Majavu, 2020), there is a continued reemergence of moral panic over Black criminality, which is indicative of these discourses’ and representational systems’ power. Therefore, labelling the Black body through criminalised lenses functions as a key tool of ‘othering’. Within this context, the Black African body remains political as it occupies a contested space. The confluence of Blackness and criminality positions Black people as a threat to the safety inherent within white communities. Media representations and everyday racism directed towards Black Africans following these entrenched labels preclude other aspects of their identities from being recognised and celebrated. For example, some studies have demonstrated that as a society, we dissociate criminality from ‘Australianness’ and instead attribute criminality to ‘Africanness’, rather than critically consider the role of Australian social and cultural practices and institutions in the marginalisation of Black African individuals and communities (Benier et al., 2018; Windle, 2008). In this chapter, we survey the existing literature on representations of Blackness in Australia and the deployment of such representations as tools that reinforce boundaries of belonging through mediatised moral panics. We argue that misrecognition is a constant challenge for Black Africans in Australia, and belonging is fundamentally conditional in this context. We further posit that the conditional acceptance of racialised bodies within Australian spaces is contingent upon not unsettling white hegemony. We conclude by considering how to expand the boundaries of belonging in Australia through alternative representations.

Colonial Projects and Bordering Processes Australian society is still grappling with the legacy of unresolved past and continuing injustices as a colonial state. The invasion and systematic dispossession of First Nations peoples, who were racialised as ‘Black’ through colonisation, functions as the foundation of this nation’s contemporary social and political landscape. Through colonisation and entrenchment of white supremacist ideologies, a dichotomy of racial identification was established. As Moreton-Robinson (2004) argues, ‘modern-day racialisation dynamics in Australia is, therefore, a product of modernity and colonization, [where] Australian Anglocentric whiteness is predicated on racial difference and domination’ (p. 87). She asserts elsewhere that: Race is implicit in the construct Aborigine but not identified as being implicit in the category European Australian. In contrast to whiteness, Aboriginality as a racial construct is identified with blackness … [it is] socially constructed by whiteness as representations of what it is not … race continues to belong to the Indigenous other and whiteness remains hidden. (Moreton-Robinson, 2009, p. 82)

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The historical (and ongoing) racialisation of Frist Nations Australians’ Blackness is emphasised here because of its implications for migrants to Australians who are similarly racialised as ‘Black’. We are, however, conscious of the imperative to avoid ‘subsuming indigeneity under the broader rubric of race’: we acknowledge that ‘while race is a key feature of settler–indigenous relations, it also sidesteps processes of dispossession where the principle site of difference for indigenous people under white-settler arrangements is the indigenous relationship to the land within the settler colony’ (Soldatic, 2015, p. 57). It is important instead to recognise that colonial projects in Australia proceeded through the dual means of dispossession of First Nations peoples’ lands and simultaneous depredations upon their culture and identity (Grieves, 2008; Soldatic, 2015; Watson, 2016), including through their subsumption into colonialist racial hierarchies. Further, it is important to state here that we do not posit First Nations peoples of Australia as equivalent to or interchangeable with racial ‘minority’ groups: they are the sovereign owners and custodians of the land that all subsequent settlers occupy. Instead, we seek to draw attention to how processes of colonisation and racialisation attempted to compartmentalise Indigeneity and Aboriginality within colonial demarcations of racial categories. As such, while racialisation impacts migrants to Australia who are identified as ‘Black’ within this settler-colonial context, they are not subject to the systematic injustices concerning sovereignty and connection to the country that First Nations peoples endure. However, it is crucial to highlight that the discourses, imagery and stereotypes associated with ‘Blackness’ in Australia draw together representational forms specific to this context—that is, influenced by the colonial project of First Nations dispossession and racialisation—and elements of an international representational lexicon in association with Blackness. For example, Moreton-Robinson (2004/2011) argues that the modernist assumption of human universality was reconciled with the categorisation of racial difference through a ‘racialised distinction between the animal and the human’ (p. 77). When whiteness is normalised as the marker of ‘humanity’, this effectively ‘locate[s] the racialised other in the liminal space between the human/animal distinction’ (Moreton-Robinson, 2004/2011, p. 77). This process of dehumanisation through racialisation impacts both First Nations people and non-Indigenous people who are identified as ‘Black’ in Australia. Similar to Moreton-Robinson’s articulations of race, Majavu (2020) illustrates how associations of Blackness and criminality deployed in Australia ‘draw from the global racialised archive of information about Negroes’ (p. 35). Constructing Blackness through these frames operates as a form of ‘misrecognition’. That is, hegemonic forces ascribe to ‘Blackness’ racialised individual or group characteristics, producing a racial identity that those categorised and labelled as ‘Black’ may not themselves ‘recognise’. The racialisation of Black bodies serves specific functions within the Australian nation-state. While ‘all bordering processes are a combination of ordering and othering … [that] differentiate “us” and “them”’ (Yuval-Davis et al., 2019, p. 5), categories dividing people into identity-based groups—especially those based on race—frequently have a history that is intimately connected with colonialism and

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the establishment of contemporary global hegemonies. Therefore, the borders established between us and others operate to protect hegemonies and privilege some groups over others. Critical perspectives on bordering as a colonial practice also emphasise that borders are not only drawn on the land but also in our minds and bodies. For example, in her landmark work Borderlands/La Frontera, scholar and author Gloria Anzaldúa (2007) explored the significance of ethnicity, gender and sexuality and their intersections with various political and cultural boundaries through the creation of a complex ‘borderlands biography’ that illuminated the layering of contested meanings within the personal and physical borderlands she inhabited. As Leanne Weber (2020) observes, intersectional ‘markers of difference and exclusion’ produce hierarchical ‘categories’ of citizenship: Markers of difference and exclusion are often associated with hierarchies of citizenship. These hierarchies, whether legally defined or socially produced through the structural effects of colonization, gender, race, class or nationality, effectively sort populations into categories marked (to varying degrees and in particular contexts) as either full or partial citizens. (p. 73)

In the Australian context, asymmetry regarding the rights of particular groups to police and maintain boundaries of belonging frequently plays out in relation to racialised discourses about Australian identity that are implicated in colonial narratives (Weber, 2020). These rights are asymmetrical, as the ability to grant or deny claims of belonging within the Australian socio-political milieu is ‘claimed by those who are in a dominant position and can lead to minoritised individuals or groups being silenced and positioned as “other”’ (Spaaij, 2015, p. 305). Similarly, Ghassan Hage’s (2000) theorisation of ‘governmental belonging’ explores how boundary work projects are enacted by those who can assert ‘proprietorial’ or ‘governmental’ rights to belonging and ‘Australian identity’ within various contexts. Hage argued that through greater congruence with the dominant (white) national culture, some are better positioned than others to accumulate national capital and, if suitably motivated, to accumulate and stake claims to what he termed ‘governmental belonging’. It is ‘governmental belonging that gives one not only the position of cultural dominance within the field but also … the power to position others within it’ (Hage, 2000, p. 55). The rights to ‘who calls Australia home is inextricably connected to who has possession [of land], and possession is jealously guarded by white Australians’ (Moreton-Robinson, 2017, p. 7). Some have therefore argued that ‘Australians of white settler-colonial heritage are … uniquely articulated as “locals” within national and localised spaces, enabling them to simultaneously reject the prior claims of possession by Indigenous Australians and any subsequent claims to belonging’ (Anderson et al., 2019, p. 27, emphasis added). Claims of belonging by those who are ‘othered’ within the Australian context are heavily constrained and policed. Cultural and racial differences must be carefully managed within Australian civic spaces in a way that does not destabilise white racial comfort or proprietary claims to belonging; otherwise, even tentative claims to belonging within these spaces can be denied or even retracted. For example, Anderson and Gatwiri (2020) have probed how harshly Black women are policed and disciplined through the mainstream Australian media if they provoke racial discomfort.

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Punishment for those who transgress is often ‘deployed in a brutal, complex array of socially-sanctioned patterns which include penalization, retaliation and ostracization’ as a way of delineating the boundary lines they must toe while simultaneously reminding them of the power of white hegemony to silence (Anderson & Gatwiri, 2020, p. 57). As such, acceptance of racialised bodies and voices within Australian public spaces is always contingent upon granting such ‘rights’ by the dominant hegemonic groups. The complexities of Australia’s settler-colonial history shape contemporary projects of border control. Tying together decolonial concerns and the historical complexities of national, cultural and personal borders enables an understanding of emerging migrant experiences of border-crossing and belonging. When Black Africans migrate to Western and settler-colonial societies, the relegation of individuals from various cultural, ethnic and national backgrounds to the singular category of ‘African’ strips them of both individual and national identities. The next section explores the constituents of common representations of Africanness in Australia and later considers how these are mediatised and deployed as ‘moral panics’, with significant impacts on Black Africans in Australia.

The Single Story of Africa[ns]: Challenges of Representation In a national consultative process engaging over 2,500 African Australians, most participants reported ‘that having a “visibly different” appearance did impact their everyday experience’ (AHRC, 2010). Many studies documenting Black African migrants’ experiences of prejudice, discrimination and exclusion highlight the strong relationship between these experiences and the persistent negative stereotypes that drive them. For example, Cox et al. (1999) reported that a majority of participants in their research project highlighted an ‘ignorance of things African’ and the ‘sense that Australian-born people associated being black, or Black Africans, with being ignorant or primitive’ (p. 48). Others reflected that ‘a lack of housing, limited employment opportunities and access to education were barriers to successful settlement and social inclusion and that these challenges were overwhelmingly heightened for Africans due to ‘negative stereotypes, prejudice and racism’ (AHRC, 2010, p. 8). Other more recent research points to the persistence of negative stereotypes among the general population in Australia. In a large research project commissioned by a public broadcaster, 21% of total participants reported agreement with the claim that ‘African refugees’ increased crime in Australia and 16% of respondents self-reported negative feelings towards ‘African Australians’ (Blaire et al., 2017, pp. 5, 8). Further, many participants in a large community consultation project by the AHRC (2010) ‘expressed concern about the negative coverage their communities received in the mainstream media, often triggered by comments from public figures, which influenced overall perceptions of their communities and undermined their relationships with the broader Australian community’ (p. 8). International literature shows that African migrants in comparable societies report similar outcomes in North America (Asante et al., 2016; Showers, 2015), Canada (Madut, 2019), Ireland (Joseph, 2019),

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Norway (Ibrahim, 2019) and New Zealand (Tuwe, 2016). While much of this literature has theorised how race and racism negatively impact Black African migrants within white-majority societies, documentation and understanding of the global scale of these issues appear to have had little impact in producing concrete antiracism programmes that foster any meaningful improvements in the experiences and settlement outcomes of Black African migrants. Han and Budarick (2018) described the negative representations as harking back ‘to a long history of the Western media’s depiction of the African continent resulting from the legacy of colonialism’ (p. 216). The role of the media in disseminating and perpetuating negative and harmful stereotypes of Blackness, Africa and Black Africans has long been highlighted in academic research on Black Africans in Australia. Udo-Ekpo (1999) writes: The media portrayal of Africans as unwanted migrants, as refugees, as victims, and as fraudsters does nothing to encourage the acceptance, understanding and integration of Africans into Australian society. Rather, it perpetuates a certain stereotyped view of AfricanAustralians that may take a long time to change … [because] such wrong stereotypes elicit an immediate conditioned response from the public. (p. 179)

Recalling his experience shortly after immigrating to Australia with his family in the 1990s, Wakholi (2019), an African Australian scholar, writes that the ‘discourse about Africa through Australian media and the fundraising publicity by agencies such as World Vision focused on the negative presentation of Africa as a continent of war, poverty, disease and starvation’ (p. 71). He adds that his family ‘did not anticipate the negative media reporting on Africa and its impact on [their] selfconcept and esteem’. The negative homogenisation of ‘Africanness’ in media and public discourse exemplifies what acclaimed Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has described as the ‘single story of Africa’. Locating the ‘single story’ as dangerous, she states: A single story of catastrophe. In this single story, there [is] no possibility of Africans being similar … [to White/Western people] in any way, no possibility of feelings more complex than pity, no possibility of a connection as human equals. (Adichie, 2009)

This ‘single story’ is a long-standing, dominant narrative that significantly impacts the settlement experiences of Black African migrants and their communities. It draws on colonial representations of Africa as the ‘dark continent’ and has been a representational landscape for many people of African heritage. The layered discursive meanings attached to the characterisation of Africa as the ‘dark continent’ especially warrants further critical exploration, as it indicates conflicting narratives about Africa’s historical, political and cultural complexity and reflects its relegation to a position of global subordination. The naming of places is not contextually or theoretically empty, and as the African continent is ‘exceedingly diverse in terms of religion, language, climate, topography, economy, governance and culture’, defining what ‘African’ is can produce significant theoretical challenges (Morrell & Ouzgane, 2005, p. 1). This complexity shows how the location of this continent in dominant global discursive structures and hierarchies of power and influence can inform how Africans experience their Afrodiasporic identities.

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Rather than receding over time, recent research indicates that the ‘single story’ of Africans as presented by the mainstream media not only continues to have salience into the present day but has intensified in the past few years (Macaulay & Deppeler, 2020). This repertoire of negative representation is consistently leveraged to malign and position Black Africans predominantly through a deficit lens, denying them the privilege of being multi-storied—to be complex and have other competing or contradictory identities. It also obscures the significant contributions African diaspora communities make in Australia, as emerging research is beginning to document (Hiruy & Hutton, 2020). Mediated discourses are key catalysts and determinants for social issues that are considered ‘political’, and as outlined in the previous chapter, Afrodiasporic experiences are always political. As Manuel Castells (2007) observed: What does not exist in the media does not exist in the public mind, even if it could have a fragmented presence in individual minds. Therefore, a political message is necessarily a media message. And whenever a politically related message is conveyed through the media, it must be couched in the specific language of the media. (p. 241)

The media’s significance in transmitting ‘politically related messages’ is problematic regarding the representation of minorities. In reviewing the weight of literature on media representation, Merskin (2017) has argued that ‘in general, minorities are underrepresented; when they are represented, the media rely on negatively associated characteristics, there are few positive associations, stories tend to be told in terms of problems, and many perspectives are missing’ (p. 1099). The way individuals belonging to minoritised groups in society are represented in the media influences self-image and others’ perception. This assertion is well supported in the literature on media representation of Black Africans in Australia (Farquharson & Nolan, 2018; Han & Budarick, 2018; Weng & Mansouri, 2021), which shows that the media has a significant role not only in creating, reinforcing and transmitting stereotypes but also in delineating the social norms governing attitudes and behaviour towards specific outgroups. As Weng and Mansouri (2021) state: When media engages in negatively framed reporting of particular outgroups, it not only engenders and permits short-term spikes in racist attitudes … but because of the cumulative nature of such representations, it also contributes to more entrenched, longer-term discrimination that is justified with non-factual knowledge. (p. 3)

The longevity of these stereotypes and their wide-ranging impacts on Black African migrants is disturbing. In the AHRC (2010) report, In Our Own Words: African Australians, many participants emphasised that ‘news reporting of incidents, or comments by high-profile figures, can act as a “trigger” to acts of discrimination and racism’ (p. 31). The existing gap in research about the importance of racial dignity, recognition and belonging for Black people living in predominantly white spaces contributes to the prevailing meanings/misunderstandings of Blackness and Africanness, which, in turn, inform prejudice, marginalisation and exclusion for Africans in Australia. We argue that these issues must be addressed urgently and through a racially and sociologically nuanced framework.

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Racialised Criminality and Moral Panics Stuart Hall (1997) contended that representation produces meaning, which shapes and constructs reality. The politicisation and commodification of racism frame Black Africans through a routined silencing of African ontological and epistemological experiences. These shared meanings/misunderstandings of Blackness and Africanness are translated through language to operationalise representational discourses that justify ‘moral panics’. They also produce ‘a turbulent and exaggerated response to a putative social problem’ that feeds off and disseminates ‘popular demonologies’ at various interconnected local, national and international levels (Welch, 2013, p. xi). In reviewing the proliferation of literature invoking the concept of ‘moral panics’, Falkof (2020) writes that ‘a heightened sense of fear is a standard feature of our times’ yet, simultaneously, ‘often the causes of our anxiety are invisible, creating the sense that we are at the mercy of a global system that we do not fully understand and cannot hope to influence’ (p. 233). In such a context, moral panics flourish because they effectively obscure meaningful critical analyses of the validity of these panics. Racialised moral panics have long functioned in Australia as a way of policing and patrolling the borders of belonging. For example, in the past two decades, there has been a succession of moral panics about criminality and violence associated with African migrants (Windle, 2008). The resurfacing of this moral panic in mid-2018 led to the hashtag #AfricanGangs trending in social and popular media discourse. Conservative political and media figures utilised a range of inflammatory and inaccurate statements about the supposed criminality of African migrants, with a focus on Sudanese refugee communities, to achieve political mileage. The city of Melbourne was positioned as a ‘terror zone’, and sensationalised news coverage fostered the perception that violence perpetrated by so-called African gangs was so widespread that it sparked questions about deportations. In reality, the periodic waves of concern about the supposed inherent criminality of African migrants have been disproportionate and proven inaccurate (Majavu, 2020). Although a moral panic, by definition, is subject to ‘ebbs and flows’ and the anxiety produced through such episodic outpourings of concern may have little to no basis in reality, ‘it typically leaves in its wake long-standing institutional changes that continue to affect adversely the marginalized’ (Welch, 2013, p. xii). Negative representations lead to further policing, profiling and scrutiny of African diaspora communities and solidify the synonymy of Africanness and Blackness with negative racial codes and cultural meanings (Weber, 2020). These representations were also demonstrated through efforts to contain coronavirus outbreaks in Australia, resulting in the over-policing and stigmatisation of migrant individuals and communities in particular (Murray-Atfield, 2020; Smee & Meade, 2020). Widespread anxieties subside once the focus of media shifts to alternative targets and then reappears. As Falkof (2020) reminds us, ‘certain folk devils or types of deviance are so potent that they repeatedly reappear even though no real proof is produced of the danger they are thought to pose’ (p. 232). Black Africans who are represented as having fixed identities within dominant white societies are harmed

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by these tropes—they cannot be good; they are dangerous and to be feared. Falkof (2020) has also pointed out: The morality of the moral panic can cement the imagined community … when something outside of us is bad or evil or dangerous, it may allow us to create positive collective identities by defining ourselves in distinction to the people or circumstances that imperil the stability of our moral worlds. (p. 231)

By projecting criminality onto the ‘Africanness’ of these communities and individuals, ‘mainstream’ Australians can be shielded from the need to grapple with the reality of racism and its impacts.

Policing the African Body In their research with young people from South Sudanese backgrounds, Weber (2020) documented how following mediatised stigmatisation and increased policing of this particular community, participants reported that ‘enforcement officers on public transport and private security guards’ also began to police their movements (p. 79). Weber (2020) wrote that ‘police participate in … the politics of belonging when their [mis]treatment of migrant groups conveys messages about belonging to the wider population’ (p. 83). Such experiences of ‘unfair targeting’ are interpreted as placing Black Africans ‘outside the boundaries of “secure belonging”’ (Weber, 2020, p. 83). Racialised anxieties fuelled through such moral panics also can potentially impact anyone who is identified (correctly or incorrectly) as Black and/or African through an increase of ‘everyday racism’ experiences (Essed, 1991). Such personal experiences of hyper-scrutinisation and violent policing, or legitimate fears about these practices, can also impact mental health (Gatwiri & Anderson, 2020a), parenting practices and intergenerational relations within migrant communities (Gatwiri & Anderson, 2020b). Over-policing of Black communities in Australia has a long-standing history, given the settler-colonial context outlined above. Two men of African descent were among the 13 people acquitted for treason following the 1854 Eureka Rebellion, and throughout this period, people of Black African heritage ‘often appear in newspaper reports and anecdotal stories’, especially in regards to criminal cases, ‘possibly because they were conspicuous rather than numerous’ (Atkinson & Roberts, 2008, p. 77). Cunneen (2020) argues that many of the characteristics associated with high rates of crime and incarceration for racialised peoples in countries such as Australia are ‘long-term outcomes of colonial policies’, with criminal justice processes working as ‘a way of “weeding out” those who fail the test of (White) social conformity’ (p. 528). Windle (2008) also argues that the history of racism in Australia and dominant narratives about the ‘gang culture’ of Black people inform fear discourses directed towards Africans in Australia. Regarding this, Windle states (2008):

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4 Boundaries of Belonging: Misrecognition … Racialisation of African refugees in the Australian media appears to find its proximate source in the activation of race as an explanatory category amongst police, giving license to a xenophobic minority. This activation draws on the history of racism in Australia, on wider colonial narratives about primitive Africa, on the perennial discourse of dangerous youth, and even on fears about American cultural imperialism (in the form of black ‘gang culture’). As with Indigenous Australians, the dominant frame is one of underlying societal risk. (p. 563)

This perspective is supported by the results from the AHRC’s (2010) consultation with African community members, which reported that ‘entrenched stereotypes among police—often perpetuated by the media—of young African Australian men belonging to gangs … had been a significant factor in undermining relations between police and African Australian communities’ (p. 30). Over-surveillance and policing of Black people indicate that they remain overwhelmingly constructed as ‘perpetual suspects’ or ‘persons of interest’. Majavu (2020) has demonstrated that tropes and discourses about Africanness in Australia draw on long-standing colonial narratives that constitute ‘a racialized library about Negroes’ that casts Black Africans as ‘naturally prone to violence … unruly and inherently dangerous, and thus in need of civilizing by white society’ (p. 35). This discourse can function as a justification for over-policing Africans in Australia. Some recent research critiques, however, have suggested that the widespread and systemic over-policing towards African migrant communities in Australia may not be due to racial bias (e.g. see Shepherd & Spivak, 2020). Perceived over-policing and over-scrutinisation and the severe impacts this creates remain an undeniable and consistent characteristic of research with Black Africans in Australia and point to the need for further research. We return to some of these in further detail in later chapters. Experiences of racism contribute to poor mental and physical health outcomes, which ‘highlight the need for interventions to protect racial and ethnic minority communities’ (Ferdinand et al., 2015, p. 7). Windle’s (2008) study also reported the mental health impact of misrecognition and racial profiling for Sudanese youth in Melbourne was significant. The Sudanese youth reported feeling consistently unable to protect themselves from negative media and felt unworthy of being included in mainstream Australia. Participants in another study also emphasised the burden of the emotional toll of such experiences. They stated that these experiences were wearing them down, draining them and impacting their health and wellbeing (Benier et al., 2018). As discussed in Chapter 2, William Smith (2008) describes the significant negative physiological, psychological and health impacts of the ongoing onslaught of racism as racial battle fatigue (RBF). In the next section, we discuss how the rhetoric of Black strangerhood is constructed and reinforced in Australia.

Perpetual Strangerhood and Conditional Belonging Conditional belonging has been an increasingly prominent feature of the globalised world in the past 20 years, as securitisation agendas construct ‘foreigners’ or

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‘strangers’ not only as ‘a threat to the cohesion of the political and cultural community but also as potential terrorists’ (Yuval-Davis, 2006, p. 213). Yuval-Davis (2006) emphasises, ‘the politics of belonging has come to occupy the heart of the political agenda almost everywhere on the globe, even when reified assumptions about “the clash of civilizations” are not necessarily applied’ (p. 213). Black African migrants often confront a complex postcolonial enigma of navigating anti-Black rhetoric of ‘belonging’ based on ‘borders that are inherently porous, of colonial origin, and paradoxically symbolic of sovereignty’ (Alfaro-Velcamp & Shaw, 2016, p. 986). Proprietary belonging by Australians of white settler-colonial heritage can also be ‘reflected in the traditional vigilance and policing of boundaries between “locals” and “Others”’ (Anderson et al., 2019, p. 27). One of the most ubiquitous ways this boundary is policed in Australia is through the racialised question, ‘Where are you from?’ (Udah & Singh, 2019). As Kwansah-Aidoo and Mapedzahama (2018) have noted, this question, repeatedly directed towards Black Africans and other visibly different immigrants, ‘imaginatively dislocates them from “here” and makes them strangers in a familiar land’ (p. 108): They add: The question symbolically deports [the interrogated person] back to the faraway places ‘where they are from’ … they are not authentic Australians because their visible difference (attributable to their skin colour) impedes their inclusion in the imagined Australian nation. Yet they are not authentic foreigners because, apart from having Australian citizenship, some of them have been here too long to be bona fide foreigners. (Kwansah-Aidoo & Mapedzahama, 2018, p. 108)

Udah and Singh (2019) also argue that this question reminds Black African migrants that they are not locals who are perpetually ‘considered as strangers born in some far-away place’ (p. 855). Nyuon (2019) articulates the implications of such symbolic deportation by wondering ‘what it would feel like to feel Australian but happen to be Black’. She asks, ‘how do you hold on to a sense of belonging when it is so often assaulted by racism?’ (Nyuon, 2019). In her recent National Press Club address, Nyuol (2021) stated: The truth is, I am afraid to even mention these incidences [of racism] because many people expect that because of what Australia has given me, I should simply be grateful. Discussions about race and racism are seen as biting the hand that fed me. But to me, these attitudes reveal and reflect the enduring conditional acceptance of immigrants and the constitutional status of our citizenship. While criticism of Australia by other citizens is seen as part of the standard political discourse or even welcome as an indication of their desire to improve their country, criticism by people like me, people who look like me, is seen as a sign of our potential disloyalty. We should go back to where we came from if we do not like Australia as it is. In this way, we are conditioned to expect less and, by extension, to demand less than the full privileges of our citizenship and the enjoyments of belonging

While Australians of African descent may live in Australia as law-abiding and productive citizens, the ongoing scrutiny, questioning and unending construction of their status within the nation-state and within ‘local communities’ may nevertheless position them as ‘perpetual strangers’. They are marked as ‘visibly different’; they are ‘recognizable as different from the white, Western-clad, and English-speaking

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majority in various ways’, including phenotype, attire, accent or a combination of these ‘visibilities’ (Colic-Peisker & Tilbury, 2007, p. 61). A dominant theme of the literature on African diasporic experiences in Australia is how visible differences conjure racialised coded scripts that can lead to high unemployment and underemployment levels and a loss of post-migration occupational status (Udah et al., 2019). The labour market can structurally exclude Africans from the job market through policing of English proficiency, lack of recognition of international qualifications and restrictions on accessing relevant Australian experience, which contributes to a downward socioeconomic spiral (Gatwiri, 2021; Udah et al., 2019). The preference for Western expertise assumes those not from Western countries are ‘strangers’ to Western knowledge, regardless of their training and experience. This means that even when they acquire work, Africans are more likely to experience subtle, persistent and normalised racial microaggressions or biased assumptions about their ability to do the job as well as white Australians (Gatwiri, 2021). Another form of policing and patrolling of borders of belonging in Australia is the significant backlash Black people can face when they speak publicly of their racialised experiences. This racial backlash is heightened when it intersects with social identities such as gender and migrant identity (Anderson & Gatwiri, 2020). Nyadol Nyuon (2020), a Sudanese-Australian lawyer based in Melbourne, has publicly documented the significant impacts of cyber-bullying she has experienced as a result of speaking out on racism. African migrants are expected to perform perpetual gratitude towards Australia for ‘letting them in’, while representatives of dominant social groups, under the guise of ‘free speech’, are licensed to debate the very existence of racism and deny how racial discrimination and colonial violence fuels the toxic racialised violence Black people experience (Anderson & Gatwiri, 2020). Always required to be cognisant of their skin colour’s hypervisibility, Black African migrants can come to terms with the difficult and transcendental migration journeys by embracing their Blackness, resenting it, or feeling separated from it. This can be a liberating experience, but it can also foster a deep sense of exclusion in acknowledging that to be fully accepted and exist with racial dignity in Australia is to be white.

Exploring Recognition and Misrecognition and Its Impacts on Racial Dignity As established in this chapter, the ‘misrecognition’ of Africans has a detrimental impact on maintaining cultural and racial dignity. Honneth’s (1996) recognition model recasts and advances understandings of the centrality of felt experiences of being loved, respected and cared for, both at individual and structural levels. Recognition theory argues that identities are largely shaped and mediated by positive recognition. This is a complex process through which one is accorded value, dignity and respect. Conversely, misrecognition can cause people to ‘suffer real damage and real

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distortion if the people or society around them mirror back to them a confining or demeaning or contemptible picture of themselves’ (Taylor, 1994). At a personal level, the theory focuses on the role of love and care in enhancing emotional resilience and wellbeing; at the political level, it is concerned with how structures, systems and policies accord dignity, respect and worth. The combination of these two levels of recognition informs how an individual should be affirmed personally and structurally in a manner that allows them to gain the confidence to develop their relational capacity and contribute their skills and talents to their social and community life. The concept of recognition is applicable in conceptualising the racialised experiences of Black people due to its focus on the impact of positive individual and systemic misrecognition for people who are systemically marginalised. Racial dignity is both an individual and relational experience that can be developed through interdependence and reciprocation of respectful personal and social relationships. Gatwiri and Mapedzahama (2022) have argued that racial dignity is the ‘immutable, unconditional worth of Blac/k people as human beings, to be treated with respect and honour in an inclusive society’ (p. 5). This has particular relevance within the Australian context, where racialisation processes have been dominated by misrecognition perceptions that construct Black people, especially Black African migrants, as a ‘burden’ and ‘social problem’. Honneth’s (1996) theoretical framework of recognition and misrecognition advances understandings of how relationships, recognition practice architectures expressed through structures of care and dignity can inform and enhance the experiences, self-identity and racial dignity of Black people. Constant misrecognition, which produces experiences of racism and prejudice, has significant negative impacts. Evidence from health and social research supports the inference that racism is a social determinant of health and it contributes to disproportionate health inequality and poor access to services for racialised populations (AHRC, 2005; Durey, 2010; Williams et al., 2003). Recognition principles are also evident in the health definition provided by the National Aboriginal Health Strategy for Indigenous peoples, which states: Health is not just the physical wellbeing of the individual, but the social, emotional and cultural wellbeing of the whole community ... [it is] a matter of dignity, of community self-esteem and of justice. It is not merely a matter of the provision of doctors, hospitals, medicines or the absence of disease and incapacity. (as cited in AHRC, 2005)

Therefore, continually highlighting inequalities facing Black people without a critical theorisation of misrecognition practices perpetuating dominant narratives that pathologise Blackness is a form of racial gaslighting (Mapedzahama & KwansoAidoo, 2013, 2017; Gatwiri & Anderson, 2020a; Gatwiri et al., 2021). We argue that for Black people to overcome personal and structural experiences of misrecognition, it is more beneficial to develop and maintain a wholesome and dignified identity; that is, a way of being attuned with oneself and others so self-respect, self-confidence and self-esteem can flourish. It is through positive personal and structural recognition that experiences of racial dignity can be cultivated. Transforming misrecognition into positive recognition requires several steps. First, it requires an acknowledgement that different forms of oppression combine and contribute to wellbeing, including

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poor health and chronic physical and psychological ailments that are suffered by racialised peoples in Australia and globally (Durey, 2010; Durey & Thompson, 2012). Second, as Ferdinand et al. (2015) suggest, it requires acceptance that ‘preventing racial discrimination will be a more constructive approach to protecting the health of racial and ethnic minority communities’ in Australia than mediating the impacts of unabated racism (p. 12).

Concluding Thoughts We have argued in this chapter that as ongoing conversations and debates about migration are complicated by the rising influence and amplification of nationalist discourses in the context of international border closures and rising social anxiety, it becomes imperative to share and document the stories and experiences of Africans in Australia with a dignified sociological nuance. We conclude this chapter by considering the words of Falkof (2020), who emphasised that moral panics have ‘ideological motives, they are stories that we tell ourselves and each other to help us make sense of insecurity and social change’ (p. 220). This means there are ways to tell new stories about what it means to be Australian that can be affirming and decolonial. This approach can be beneficial and adaptive for the health and wellbeing of all members of our community, rather than the current continual recycling of divisive, racialised moral panics of one form or another. To accommodate the diversity of Australian culture and subjectivity of different experiences of belonging, a significant re-imagining of the Australian community is required: one that can own up to the past and current realities of racism and its impacts and find a place for those historically constructed as ‘strangers’ within the nation. This is a challenging proposition, but this nascent potential is within our grasp. The remainder of the chapters in this book explores the primary research with Black African skilled migrants.

References Adichie, C. N. (2009). The danger of a single story. TED Talk. Alfaro-Velcamp, T., & Shaw, M. (2016). ‘Please go home and build Africa’: Criminalising immigrants in South Africa. Journal of Southern African Studies, 42(5), 983–998. Anderson, L., Cumings, R., & Gatwiri, K. (2019). ‘I’m a local…’ Negotiating belonging with former refugees in regional Australia through inclusive partnerships. Cosmopolitan Civil Societies, 11(2), 21–36. Anderson, L., & Gatwiri, K. (2020). On ‘getting Yassmined’: How the mainstream Australian media polices the bodies of women of colour. In M. Bashri & S. Ahmed (Eds.), Minority women and Western media: Challenging representations and articulating new voices (pp. 61–80). Lexington Books. Anzaldúa, G. (2007). Borderlands/La Frontera: The new mestiza. Aunt Lute Books.

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Grieves, V. (2008). The battlefields: Identity, authenticity and Aboriginal knowledges in Australia. In H. Minde (Ed.), Indigenous peoples: Self-determination, knowledge, indigeneity (pp. 287–312). Eburon. Hage, G. (2000). White nation: Fantasies of white supremacy in a multicultural society. Routledge. Hall, S. (1997). Representation: Cultural representation and signifying practices. Sage. Han, G.-S., & Budarick, J. (2018). Overcoming the New Kids on the Block Syndrome: The media ‘endorsement’ on discrimination against African-Australians. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 32(2), 213–223. Hiruy, K., & Hutton, R. A. (2020). Towards a re-imagination of the new African diaspora in Australia. African Diaspora, 12(1–2), 153–179. Honneth, A. (1996). The struggle for recognition: The moral grammar of social conflicts. MIT Press. Ibrahim, H. (2019). Racism in Norway: Africans and Norwegian-Africans understanding and experiences (Master’s thesis). Norwegian University of Life Sciences. Joseph, E. (2019). Discrimination against credentials in Black bodies: Counterstories of the characteristic labour market experiences of migrants in Ireland. British Journal of Guidance & Counselling, 47(4), 524–542. Kwansah-Aidoo, K., & Mapedzahama, V. (2018). Black bodies in/out of place? Afrocentric perspectives and/on racialised belonging in Australia. Australasian Review of African Studies, 39(2), 95–121. Macaulay, L., & Deppeler, J. (2020). Perspectives on negative media representations of Sudanese and South Sudanese youths in Australia. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 41(2), 213–230. Madut, K. K. (2019). Experiences of disadvantaged African-Canadian migrants in Ontario Canada. Human Geographies, 13(1), 61–78. Majavu, M. (2020). The ‘African gangs’ narrative: Associating Blackness with criminality and other anti-Black racist tropes in Australia. African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal, 13(1), 27–39. Mapedzahama, V., & Kwansah-Aidoo, K. (2013). Negotiating diasporic Black African existence in Australia: A reflexive analysis. Australasian Review of African Studies, 34(1), 61. Mapedzahama, V., & Kwansah-Aidoo, K. (2017). Blackness as burden? The lived experience of Black Africans in Australia. SAGE Open, 7(3). Merskin, D. (2017). Media representation: Minorities. In P. Rössler (Ed.), The international encyclopedia of media effects (pp. 1096–1106). Wiley Blackwell. Moreton-Robinson, A. (2004/2011). Whiteness, epistemology and Indigenous representation. In A. Moreton-Robinson (Ed.), Whitening race: Essays in social and cultural criticism (pp. 75–88). Aboriginal Studies Press. Moreton-Robinson, A. (2009). Imagining the good Indigenous citizen: Race war and the pathology of patriarchal white sovereignty. Cultural Studies Review, 15(2), 61–79. Moreton-Robinson, A. (2017). The white possessive: Property, power, and Indigenous sovereignty. University of Minnesota Press. Morrell, R., & Ouzgane, L. (2005). African masculinities: An introduction. In L. Ouzgane & R. Morrell (Eds.), African masculinities: Men in Africa from the late nineteenth century to the present (pp. 1–20). Palgrave Macmillan. Murray-Atfield, Y. (2020, July 5). Melbourne public housing tower resident says community is being ‘treated like criminals’ amid coronavirus lockdown. ABC News. National Press Club of Australia. (2021, June 21). Nyadol Nyuon: Australia re-imagined. Nyuon, N. (2019). Her mother’s daughter. In M. B. Clarke, A. Yussuf, & M. Magan (Eds.), Growing up African in Australia. Black Inc. Nyuon, N. (2020). The real bullies who spread hatred and division aren’t on Twitter—They’re in plain sight. Opinion: Online Abuse. Shepherd, S. M., & Spivak, B. L. (2020). Estimating the extent and nature of offending by Sudaneseborn individuals in Victoria. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 53(3), 352–368.

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Showers, F. (2015). Being black, foreign and woman: African immigrant identities in the United States. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 38(10), 1815–1830. Smee, B., & Meade, A. (2020, July 30). Naming Brisbane women risks ‘a second wave of COVIDrelated racial hostility’: Commission. The Guardian. Smith, W. A. (2008). Higher education: Racial battle fatigue. In R. T. Schaefer (Ed.), Encyclopedia of race, ethnicity, and society (pp. 615–618). Sage. Soldatic, K. (2015). Postcolonial reproductions: Disability, indigeneity and the formation of the white masculine settler state of Australia. Social Identities, 21(1), 53–68. Spaaij, R. (2015). Refugee youth, belonging and community sport. Leisure Studies, 34(3), 303–318. Taylor, C. (1994). The politics of recognition. Princeton University Press. Tuwe, K. (2016). The African oral tradition paradigm of storytelling as a methodological framework: Employment experiences for African communities in New Zealand. 21st century tensions and transformation in Africa, 38th African Studies Association of Australasia and the Pacific Conference, Melbourne. Udah, H., & Singh, P. (2019). Identity, othering and belonging: Toward an understanding of difference and the experiences of African immigrants to Australia. Social Identities, 25(6), 843–859. Udah, H., Singh, P., & Chamberlain, S. (2019). Settlement and employment outcomes of Black African immigrants in Southeast Queensland Australia. Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 28(1), 53–74. Udo-Ekpo, L. T. (1999). The Africans in Australia: Expectations and shattered dreams. Seaview Press. Wakholi, P. M. (2019). Migration and making sense of place: Against a backdrop of negative media discourse about Africa. In M.-C. Patron & J. Kraven (Eds.), Intercultural mirrors: Dynamic reconstruction of identity (pp. 71–82). Brill. Watson, I. (2016). First nations and the colonial project. Inter Gentes, 1(1), 30–39. Weber, L. (2020). ‘My kids won’t grow up here’: Policing, bordering and belonging. Theoretical Criminology, 24(1), 71–89. Welch, M. (2013). Foreword. In G. Morgan (Ed.), Global Islamophobia: Muslims and moral panic in the West. Ashgate. Weng, E., & Mansouri, F. (2021). ‘Swamped by Muslims’ and facing an ‘African gang’ problem: Racialized and religious media representations in Australia. Continuum, 35(3), 1–19. Williams, D. R., Neighbors, H. W., & Jackson, J. S. (2003). Racial/ethnic discrimination and health: Findings from community studies. American Journal of Public Health, 93(2), 200–208. Windle, J. (2008). The racialisation of African youth in Australia. Social Identities, 14(5), 553–566. Yuval-Davis, N. (2006). Belonging and the politics of belonging. Patterns of Prejudice, 40(3), 197–214. Yuval-Davis, N., Wemyss, G., & Cassidy, K. (2019). Bordering. Polity.

Chapter 5

Devaluation of Black Expertise: The Workplace as a Racial Battleground

Abstract This chapter is the first of five data chapters presented in this book. It will draw on the three preceding contextual and theoretical chapters to give voice to the contemporary experiences of Black Africans in Australia. This chapter focuses on the experiences of Black Africans in the workplace. Our findings reveal that the often-accepted narrative of race-free or even race-neutral Australian workplaces is not supported by Black African experiences. Participants in this study reported constant, subtle and covert patterns of racial microaggressions in the workplace. Even though many participants spoke of the love of their jobs and occasional instances of support and belonging at the workplace, all but one spoke of the ways that subtle (and not so subtle) racial microaggressions dominated their experiences at work. These included experiences of social exclusion, gatekeeping of professional opportunities, accent discrimination, presumed incompetence, excessive scrutinisation and constant inferiorisation of Black knowledge and expertise in the workplace. To overcome these microaggressions and maintain their career development, many participants perceived that they had to work ‘twice as hard’ as their white colleagues do to ‘prove’ their competency and expertise.

Introduction When I am at work, I do have juniors who are Caucasians working under me, and I think that role difference makes them doubt, [and think] ‘Oh wow, you are a Black woman who is in charge, and we Caucasians are working under you?’. So, until they … see my badge to clarify that I am actually a registered nurse, then the respect starts; but before then, they are doubting. I always feel like that—they are doubting me. (Wanjiru)

This is a reflection from one of the participants in this study. It makes visible the often insidious acts of racial microaggressions manifested in the form of doubt, suspicion, constant scrutiny and questioning experienced by Black Africans at their workplaces. The excerpt describes how patterns of bias and disrespect at the workplace are often manifested through subtle and seemingly harmless yet highly racially coded interactions. Wanjiru’s experience of being racialised and doubted at work exemplifies

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 K. Gatwiri and L. Anderson, Afrodiasporic Identities in Australia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-4282-2_5

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how race and racial difference interact with the racial ignorance of white institutions to produce experiences of othering and inferiorisation of Black expertise. As Mapedzahama et al. (2012) argue, engaging the racialised categories of ‘Black’ and ‘African’ within work contexts can summon experiences of racism for those identified by these labels. As such, racism in the workplace can be deployed in a wide variety of ways, including the devaluation of ‘skills, intelligence and professional identities in a process of inferiorization’ (p. 154). Theorising how race and Africanness intersect in the professional lives of Black African immigrants in Australia can provide a nuanced understanding of how racial identities shape their professional identities and workplace experiences. For example, the literature suggests that the migration and acculturation experiences of white and/or Anglophone skilled migrants are considerably better than those of Black and Francophone migrants from African countries because their whiteness allows an easier ‘blend’ within the Australian sociocultural fabric (Forrest et al., 2013; Kwansah-Aidoo & Mapedzahama, 2018b). In the last two decades, the number of African migrants in Australia who are neither refugees nor displaced persons has increased significantly. When relocating to Australia, voluntary migrants, including skilled migrants, often enter demanding and high-pressure work environments with significant skills shortages or needs for particular expertise that has facilitated the migration process. Understanding the Afrodiasporic experiences of work under these conditions and the implications for creating safe and diverse workplaces in this context is essential. Flahaux and De Haas (2016) suggest that to understand the nuances of the experience of Africans’ movement to different countries, we must ‘move beyond views of (African) migrants as objects which are passively pushed around by external “push” factors such as poverty, demographic pressure, violent conflict or environmental degradation’, and see immigration as a natural ‘function of people’s aspirations and capabilities’ (p. 4). However, despite significant levels of expertise, highly skilled migrants face significant challenges relating to racism and discrimination, unemployment and underemployment, and challenges of fitting in. These intersecting factors can significantly impact mental health, performance at work and the holistic wellbeing of African migrants.

African Migrants and Employment in Australia Even though migration has long been recognised as key for the Australian economy— particularly the potential for skilled migration to fill gaps in the labour market—the skills and expertise of Black Africans remain undervalued and underused. Australia’s points-based immigration system, pioneered in the late 1970s, has enabled selection of potential migrants in terms of their potential to make a significant economic contribution based on their expertise (Ressia et al., 2017). This system has facilitated the migration of highly-skilled migrants from African nations to fill critical gaps in the Australian workforce over recent decades. Upon arrival in Australia,

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employment then becomes a crucial tool to measure ‘successful’ relocation (Fozdar, 2021). This is because it provides an income and a sense of security and stability and encourages the development of cultural skills and social networks in the destination country, which are vital for integration (Colic-Peisker & Tilbury, 2007). However, appropriate employment post-migration remains one of the greatest barriers facing African migrants in Australia (Kifle & Kler, 2008; Udah et al., 2019a, 2019b). In Australia, the Department of Jobs and Small Business (2019) indicated that immigrants from North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East experience the highest levels of unemployment compared to other immigrant groups. As identified by the Department of Jobs and Small Business (2019), barriers to employment include age, English proficiency, a lack of Australian work experience or references, and the length of time since arrival in Australia. Language proficiency, including verbal and English fluency and ‘desirable’ accents, has been identified as a significant barrier for African migrants in Australia in relation to entering the workforce. African cultural norms such as avoiding eye contact and greater use of gesticulation and expressive ways of communication (Colic-Peisker & Tilbury, 2007; Hebbani & Colic-Peisker, 2012) are non-verbal elements that can also work against job candidates. Specifically, Black African men may be perceived as aggressive or intimidating due to the expressive characteristics of their communication styles. As such, racialised assumptions can emerge as central issues relating to migrant jobseeking and may preclude African migrants from finding jobs or securing advancement within their fields of expertise (Abdelkerim & Grace, 2012; AHRC, 2010; Hebbani et al., 2013; Majavu, 2015). Other challenges identified by several studies have also demonstrated the problem of qualification recognition for African migrants (Abdelkerim & Grace, 2012; ColicPeisker & Tilbury, 2007; Udah et al., 2019a, 2019b). Lack of recognition of overseas qualifications results in downward mobility, as migrants who were professionals in their home countries may be forced to take lower-status, lower-paid or menial work to survive. To be competitive in the job market, some may be required to re-enrol in formal education to obtain Australian qualifications, at significant costs in terms of time and money. Studies also indicate that the inability to provide Australian references and ‘experiences of discrimination when applying for jobs and during interviews’ represent significant barriers to migrant employment (AHRC, 2010, p. 10). Lack of knowledge and experience in local employment contexts also means a lack of access to formal and informal employment networks, local advice and references, which may adversely affect employment outcomes (Abdelkerim & Grace, 2012; AHRC, 2010). Majavu (2017) asserts that while ‘good’ high-paying jobs are available in Australia, they are mostly accessible via white social networks or social capital, to which many African migrants have limited access. Majavu (2015) adds that ‘Western societal institutions often use factors such as nationality, English proficiency, race and immigration status to rationalise social inequalities, as well as to force migrants to work in society’s dirtiest, hardest jobs’ (p. 64). As such, covert institutional racism may be disguised through ‘legitimate’ reasons, such as lack of localised experience, to

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pass Africans over for job opportunities for which they are qualified, thus contributing to significant downward occupational mobility. Downward occupational mobility and consequent skills wastage, or even deskilling, are key issues for many migrant workers (Udah et al., 2019a, 2019b). Groutsis and Arnold (2012) point out that even though a migrant’s skillset may grant them access to Australia, they do not necessarily grant them access to meaningful work in the labour market. This may suggest the system’s focus on promoting skilled migration over other forms of migration is rendered less useful if the skills of migrants selected in this manner are then underutilised or rendered irrelevant upon their arrival in Australia. In situations where gaining employment relevant to qualifications is difficult or impossible, migrants may take forms of ‘survival employment’, thus reinforcing the processes of downward mobility and deskilling (Creese & Wiebe, 2012). Over two decades ago, Udo-Ekpo (1999) found that: Black African immigrants work in conditions which do not comply with basic industrial awards. On a practical level, they have little negotiating power to ensure they have the benefits other workers enjoy. Consequently, their concentration in poorly paid jobs reflects their relative lack of economic clout, their powerlessness, and their low status in Australian society. (p. 14)

These issues remain a continuing concern for Black African migrants even when they enter the country as highly skilled workers. The concern is especially pertinent in a post-pandemic context where skilled migration is expected to expand significantly (Greber, 2021). As Colic-Peisker and Tilbury (2007) state, ‘securing a job appropriate to one’s qualifications, skills and experience’ is critical for integration and successful settlement in a new country (p. 3).

Racial Microaggressions in the Workplace The ‘changing face of racism’ suggests that experiences of racism in contemporary settings now constitute racial microaggressions. These are often performed as ‘brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioural and environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights … put-downs, or a pattern of disrespect’ (Sue et al., 2007, p. 271). Microaggressions are symptoms of broader systemic and structural problems, can take covert or subtle forms, and may be conceptualised as ‘everyday’ or ‘passive’ racism. Unlike explicit and overt forms of racism, which are obvious and more easily seen and named, racial microaggressions are benign, hidden and implicitly ‘coded [and] embedded in the commonplace ordering of things’ (Mapedzahama et al., 2012, p. 156). Tatum (2003) suggested the nature of this benevolent form of covert racism is ‘like smog in the air … sometimes it is so thick it is visible, other times it is less apparent, but always, day in and day out, we are breathing it in’ (p. 6). Put simply, microaggressions often ‘signal that the target’s racial group is highly visible to the perpetrator’ (Kim et al., 2019, p. 75) and can be enacted through comments,

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jokes, humour and other ‘harmless’ interactions that leave people feeling exhausted, humiliated, confused, slighted or disrespected. Racial microaggressions are some of the most common incidents of racism experienced by Black, Indigenous and other people of colour in reflections on their workplace experiences (Gatwiri, 2021). Kim et al. (2019) differentiated workplace racial microaggressions from other forms of hostile workplace behaviour. They argued that hostile work behaviours such as bullying, harassment and abuse have a clear intent to cause harm, whereas racial microaggressions consist of subtle but hostile behaviours that are ‘enacted based on the target’s race’ but not always intended to cause harm (Kim et al., 2019, p. 76). In the American context, Sue, Capodilupo, et al. (2008), Sue et al. (2008)) found that Black Americans tend to experience six main types of microaggressions: (1) assumption of intellectual inferiority/incompetence, (2) second-class citizenship, (3) assumption of criminality, (4) assumption of inferior status, (5) assumed universality of the Black experience and (6) assumed superiority of white cultural values/communication styles. In the Australian workplace, the tropes of assumed incompetence, intellectual inferiority and superiority of white expertise also dominate Black Africans’ experiences (Gatwiri, 2021; Mapedzahama et al., 2012). The challenge with recognising and responding appropriately to microaggressions is largely because their identification relies on self-reporting by victims, as these actions are mostly invisible to the perpetrator. The unintentional and unconscious nature of microaggressions causes them to be ‘invisible to others who believe that they are just, unbiased, and nonracist’ (Sue et al., 2007, p. 280). The other challenge lies in the ‘invisibility of the harm caused’. Because microaggressions are subtle and their harm is often indirect or cumulative, it can cause the victim to downplay their impacts or risk being gaslit if they report. This places them in a complex ‘position of a catch-22’ (Sue et al., 2007, p. 280). Despite their hidden and subtle nature, microaggressions are not really micro in their impact due to the macro nature of their implications. Indeed, some studies have shown a significant correlation between increased ‘depressive symptoms and negative affect’ among racially minoritised groups in racially unsafe settings (Nadal et al., 2014, p. 57). A study by Root (2003) found the most common symptomology associated with employees who experience chronic microaggressions in the workplace included ‘anxiety, paranoia, depression, sleep difficulties, lack of confidence, worthlessness, intrusive cognitions, helplessness, loss of drive, and false positives’ (as cited in Holder et al., 2015, p. 165). These are factors likely to significantly impact the short- and long-term productivity and capacity of individuals, teams and workplaces. Microaggressions become especially harmful in the workplace as most working adults spend significant proportions of their lives at work. Race-based stereotypes and exposure to the benign but compounding daily assaults of racial microaggressions in the workplace have significant negative impacts on Black people’s careers, mental health, productivity and morale (Holder et al., 2015). They also contribute directly and indirectly to Black people feeling unsafe at work and experiencing a general sense of not belonging (Gatwiri, 2021). In predominantly white workplaces,

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where white expertise is assumed and normalised as the standard, microaggressions are likely to go unrecognised by white supervisors and colleagues, who may unintentionally and unconsciously express racial bias in verbal and non-verbal cues in their interaction with Black African colleagues. The findings from the broader study informing the discussion in this chapter reveal that Black African immigrants’ experiences do not support the often-accepted narrative of supposedly race-free workplaces in contemporary Australian society. Below we discuss the most common forms of racial microaggressions in the workplace as experienced by the participants.

Subtle Acts of Exclusion One of the most common reflections from Black African professionals in this study described experiences of subtle acts of exclusion (SAE), which left most feeling ‘out of place’, inflating a sense of ‘conditional belonging’ in their workplaces. Most participants reported experiencing relentless patterns of racialised microaggressions at work, which they described as sometimes being so subtle that it made them question whether it was ‘all in their mind’. These subtle acts of exclusion sometimes involved being excluded from group activities, not being included in important correspondence, not being informed of promotion opportunities, or not being offered mentorships that may have been available to others. It also comprised team members not engaging with or responding to their ideas or contributions in meetings or team activities. These acts, though seemingly benign in and of themselves, compounded to produce significant psychological and mental impacts. For example, Mpenda talked about how he believed his expertise in the workplace was seen as a ‘threat’ and ‘intimidating’ to white colleagues, so his work was slowly sabotaged through subtle acts of exclusion to give the impression he was not a ‘team player’: Coming to work in Australia, I guess it was a challenge. I could not get a job [initially] but I eventually went on to get one. I was offered a senior role, that was not taken well by other [white] people in the same managerial positions as I was, so it was challenging in that regard. They just felt intimidated; most of them just had diploma degrees and certificate degrees, whereas I am coming with a full degree and a lot of experience from [another Western country], so they did not take it well, I started being excluded, it was sad, but I got used to it. (Mpenda)

Research on racism in workplaces, such as by Deitch et al. (2003), argued that racism in organisational contexts ‘is not disappearing, but rather is being replaced by less overt forms, termed, [as] “modern racisms’” (p. 1302), which are enacted through subtle discriminatory behaviours. Similarly, Essed’s (1991) work on ‘everyday racism’ acknowledges the everyday-ness of racism present within macro- and microstructures, which are manifestations of systemic racial inequalities. In later theorisations, Essed (2008) argued that in everyday life, in both private and public spaces, Black people manage complex racial relationships and situations that are ideologically mediated and intrinsically interwoven in past, present and ongoing projects of racial marginalisation and problematisation of racial identities. Therefore,

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to ‘focus solely on major discriminatory acts is insufficient to capture the experience of discrimination’ (Deitch et al., 2003, p. 1301). Understanding the contemporary expressions and impacts of harmful racial attitudes suggests ‘subtle racism’ has as much impact as overt racism. In our research, John, a senior finance expert, described how this ‘subtlety’ contributed to the difficulty of ‘naming the problem’: There are some subtle discriminatory behaviours. They are so subtle that sometimes you question your mind whether ‘Am I really seeing these or not?’. They are simple things. For instance, there are times when you walk into a meeting; others are acknowledged when they walk in, you are not acknowledged. Very, very subtle…Sometimes, you want to give your contribution, and when you start giving your contribution, everybody is dead silent, and you are thinking: ‘What happened? Why is the whole place all of a sudden pin-drop quiet?’. They are very, very subtle. (John)

John added that sometimes the behaviours were subtle and hostile, but still within the parameters of what is considered appropriate within a work culture. He stated: Say, you are in a meeting, everybody is contributing, and when you start to contribute, all of a sudden, everybody is criticising your contribution. When everybody else was giving their contribution, there were additions to what they were saying. But when you start to give your contribution, all of a sudden, your contribution is being criticised and shut down … Or you start to give your contribution, and you are cut off like you do not know what you are talking about. (John)

Vera, a senior social worker, expressed that for her, microaggressions were performed through exclusionary behaviours that underscored her sense of being invisible within the workplace. These acts ranged from avoidance of contact to being explicitly excluded from workplace group activities and correspondence. She reflected: Sometimes … you [are] in a meeting, or in a group of people, and people are having conversations, but people … sort of look through the group and do not look at you. Sometimes I wonder what that is all about, and sort of, ‘Am I not part of this group?’. We had somebody who was in our team and then left, went onto another organisation … when she left she maintained contact with all the others. She is having a baby shower, but what I have just observed in the office is this card that is going on being signed to go to her baby shower, which I have not been included in. (Vera)

The ambiguous nature of subtle acts of exclusion at workplaces places the burden of interpretation of these myriad subtle acts of exclusion onto those on the receiving end. Trying to ‘ascertain the meaning of the communication, whether the incident was intentional or unintentional’, is a confusing and burdensome process (Sue, Capodilupo, et al., 2008; Sue, Nadal, et al., 2008, p. 335).

Microinvalidations Microinvalidations are patterns of disrespect that negate, minimise or scrutinise with suspicion the expertise, thoughts, feelings or experiential reality of Black, Indigenous and other people of colour (Nadal et al., 2014, p. 57). Microinvalidations are

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frequently enacted through adherence to the notion of ‘colour blindness’. The insistence that it is possible ‘not to see colour’ and, by extension, the denial that racism exists erases the experiences of Black people in the workplace. In this study, participants reflected on constant communication undertones that invoked the ‘unknowing, uneducated’ African tropes regardless of their expertise and seniority. Participants highlighted how racial microaggressions informed the invalidations of their expertise by being overlooked for promotions at work while less-qualified white colleagues were promoted. For example, Julia reflects on continuously being passed over for promotion to senior positions despite having the expertise and capability for those roles. She states: Every once in a while, you will find someone in a certain position going on holiday or on annual leave, and they would be looking for someone to fill that position for a moment. Normally, when that position is a senior position, you would think that if you have been at a certain place for a while and to the best of your ability, you have been fulfilling all the requirements, you would think that you would be asked automatically to fill that role for a month until this person returns. Now, that is normally not the case … those opportunities are not very easily given to people of colour. I can tell you this, many a time, you find people coming from other places to come, fill that position for a month, and go back while you were there, and you are thinking, ‘I could do this role’. So, it tends to make you feel a bit not valued … and you kind of resolve back to doing the bare minimum because you feel like you may not want to do more because there is no reason for you to do that. (Julia)

Other participants, Patrick and Odera, reflected on similar experiences: I have had a situation where I have actually acted in a position. So, this person wanted a maternity leave for more than a year, and I was acting in that position for six months. Then, they put an internal advertisement for the position to be filled temporarily. I applied for the job for six months. I was a sort of, more than 100% that I would get it. So, I went for the interview. There were other two [white] people who had not done the job before, but one of them actually got it. So, I went back just to get feedback on what can I improve next time in the interview ... The lady said, ‘you are qualified for the job, but someone else got it, sorry’. (Patrick) I was nominated to attend a high-level leadership training that I was nominated me for. I went through screening to be able to get in, and when I got into the final round, someone said I should be grateful. There was a lot of training required, and I passed all of it. The final stage was for my CEO to sign off, but they declined. Panellists said: ‘This person has outstanding quality, and they will make a difference’, but my own department refused for me to go on that program. What is that about? (Odera)

The gatekeeping of opportunities for Black Africans denies them access to middleclass ascendancy. Majavu (2015) has argued that because white people are more likely to be in decision-making capacities in Australia, they are consequently the gatekeepers of job opportunities and will ‘generally perceive other white [people] as more intelligent and more motivated than Africans’ (p. 66). Sometimes the denial of job opportunities to Africans can be traced more broadly to racial assumptions, whereby they are assumed to lack the competency, proficiency and other ‘appealing’ factors for employability despite high tertiary-level qualifications. Other forms of racial microinvalidations are observed when Africans in senior positions are not afforded the respect their colleagues in similar positions receive.

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They are patronised and infantilised, for example, assumed not to know English and not understand simple tasks, the roles and responsibilities of their positions or even basic things like how to use computers or coffee machines. Milly, a senior financial manager, reflected on her experience: When I started at [name of a banking corporation], this lady who was told to induct me and show me how to do things … came in and she switched off the computer and started to show me how to switch on a computer. So, she powered it on and said, ‘This is a computer. When you come in, you press this button, and the computer will come on’. So, I played along, I said, ‘Wow, that is impressive’. She said, ‘So you start doing this and that…’. So, I pretended I did not know, and one of our colleagues said to her, ‘Hey, you are being played’. She had just assumed that because I was African, I did not even know about a computer. It did not matter that I had been employed in a senior role to do a very complex job at that bank, and she was my junior.

Milly also recalled being ‘constantly criticised’ even though she exceeded all her key performance indicators. She added: I could not understand why the other managers in the other teams were sending their people to me to train them for the systems, and I was recording higher outcomes in everything, clients were calling me, we were giving mortgages, everything was settling in time, yet my boss did not have anything positive to say about me, and I was so confused.

Other microinvalidations are enacted when overseas qualifications and expertise from ‘non-Western countries’ are misrecognised or invalidated. Various studies have demonstrated the scale of the problem regarding lack of qualifications’ recognition for African migrants (Abdelkerim & Grace, 2012; Udah, Singh, & Chamberlain, 2019a, 2019b; Udah, Singh, Hiruy et al., 2019a, 2019b). As established earlier in this chapter, the lack of recognition of international qualifications can result in downward mobility, as highly skilled migrants are forced to take on manual work or re-do courses to obtain an Australian qualification enabling them to be competitive in the job market or even just ‘employable’. Mukisa, a medical doctor trained in an African country, stated: You will also have to do your exams again because even though you are qualified from your country, you need to do them again in Australia, so I had to read, and I had to work and look after the family. It was difficult. I finally passed my exams … which was good because things started to change. I was able to apply for permanent residency and once I became a permanent resident, that made things easier, so income improved, I could buy a house and things became lighter.

Patrick and John reflected on similar experiences: The fact that you may be so well educated, but when you come here, none of that is recognised. Yes, it is recognised when you are doing your Visa applications, but in getting a job, your overseas qualifications may really not be considered and … you got to go back to school to get that Australian education to be able to get a job here. So, I find that being overlooked in that way challenging. (Patrick) My last job back home was as a Chief Financial Officer. And when I got here, I literally started as a clerk. For me to expect to be placed at a similar level was probably being overly ambitious. I realised that the environments were totally different, the business mechanics are totally different …[but] let me put it this way: I have never had a pay raise since I came to

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5 Devaluation of Black Expertise … Australia. I am still being paid less than what I was being paid [back home]. That pay has not changed. All the jobs I have got, the pay has been just wavering somewhere [near] what I used to make … the difference is in the quality of life and what that similar pay offers you over a time. (John)

Jenny also highlighted how microinvalidations could be manifested in how and who people ‘assume’ is in a position of power. She reflected: I have had had so many instances where a client’s family would come in and you are sitting in the office, but because you are not an Australian, they will walk right past you and go to the junior who is a carer but is Australian, because they assume the African is the carer and the white Australian is the nurse. I normally just laugh because I know they will come back and knock on my door.

Repeated microinvalidating experiences can be a significant driver of ‘misrecognition’, where the capabilities and expertise of African professionals are inferiorised through the deployment of stereotypical assumptions about Africans or nonAustralian training and experience rather than based on their accomplishments and talents. Recognition theory emphasises that secure and fulsome identities are shaped through positive validation and recognition, where an individual’s value is affirmed, respected and dignified. Participants in this study reported patterns of misrecognition where the people ‘around them mirror[ed] back to them a confining or demeaning or contemptible picture of themselves’, which produced a diminished sense of worth in the workplace (Taylor, 1994, p. 25). Microinvalidations are also enacted based on accents, indicating that African accents are considered undesirable in the workplace. People with non-Australian accents may be excluded from social events as they are assumed to be ‘hard to understand’. In this study, even though participants were fluent in English, lacking the ability to speak Australian colloquial English functioned as a disadvantage for many within the workplace because stereotypes of the unknowing, backward African can be summoned through speech (Mapedzahama et al., 2012). Benji, a senior academic, narrated his observations of how reactions to his accent operated as a tool for invalidating his expertise: There are times when you may be speaking in a meeting, and because your accent is African, you can tell that as soon as they hear you speak, you know, you know they are quizzical. Looking at some people’s faces, sometimes you just get a sense that probably you know they are not taking what you are saying as seriously as they should, or they are not taking it to be as important as it is supposed to be, and you cannot help but notice some of these [responses].

Accent discrimination is a well-documented phenomenon that can close economic doors, especially for immigrants of colour whose first language is not English. Specifically, ‘African accents’ are viewed as a negative attribute for African migrants trying to enter the Australian workforce. As accent becomes a measure of articulation and professionalism, language and race are summoned as tools for monitoring the speech of racialised populations (Hill, 1998). Through this process, ‘white’ ways of speech are elevated and indexed as the standard and preferable form of expression.

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Microinsults Racial microinsults are specific patterns of disrespect and insensitivity that degrade a minoritised racial groups’ racial heritage or identity (Nadal et al., 2014). According to Sue, Capodilupo, et al. (2008), and Sue, Nadal, et al. (2008), microinsults can be performed in various ways: 1) through ascription of lower intelligence or capability (e.g. assigning low intelligence to a racial group), 2) where members of the minoritised group are overtly treated as second-class citizens or 3) pathologisation or criminalising the values and communication styles of particular groups. Participants in this study shared experiences of repeated and frequent experiences over scrutiny layered with unspoken suspicion. Racialised suspicions towards Black Africans at the workplace are informed by ‘attitudes and understandings that are so embedded in the everyday life of a racialized culture, that members of that culture … do not even recognise themselves as making decisions based in a racialised history’ (Stratton, 2006, p. 662). The narratives from the participants located the workplace as a place of constant surveillance where they were often assumed to be incompetent or ‘out of place’. Wanjiru, a senior generalist nurse, reflected on the nature of suspicion and scrutinisation at work: When [I] report to work, I will introduce myself … [and say]: ‘I am so-and-so, and I am working in this ward this afternoon, or this morning, or this night’—and they already know that, as they already know a registered nurse is coming. But you still find them questioning, which I do not see happening—you know … maybe I am just being paranoid, but this is an observation I have made—but I do not see that happening with Caucasian nurses, but they will question me two or three times. And even to make sure that I am [a] registered nurse, they will check my badge to see if my initials read ‘registered nurse’, so I still feel like they do not believe me … like, ‘Oh wow, you are a black woman and a registered nurse?’. (Wanjiru)

Millie reflected on her experience of racial suspicion: When I moved to the [government department] as a relationship manager, I travelled around Australia teaching the taxpayers—mostly companies, wine companies, beer, everybody in the alcohol industry—how to comply with tax. It was interesting because you would go and people look at you a bit surprised, it is like, ‘Who are you and what are you doing here?’.

Whiteness’ social location as the norm in Australia’s landscape underpins the normalisation of racial suspicion in the workplace. As organisational attitudes about race are summoned, the ‘hegemony of white ways of knowing, white ways of being, white ways of emoting, characterising, seeing, not seeing, terrorising, policing, mythologizing’ act to scrutinise and occlude non-white others (Yancy, 2004, p. 12.) Wanjiru reflected that constant surveillance and policing are often enacted within workplaces because Africans ‘are always viewed from the point of deficit’ and therefore have to prove themselves despite their qualifications or expertise. Consequently, because Black people are often positioned as a ‘problem’ group in predominantly white spaces, clients and colleagues may feel justified to humiliate, question or challenge their expertise at work. Mukisa, a medical doctor, narrated how when he first moved to a regional hospital for work, patients openly refused to have him as their doctor. He said:

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5 Devaluation of Black Expertise … The issue was, at work, patients were refusing to see me because I am black … They questioned my training. It was a long time just adjusting, so I had to prove myself to be that kind of a doctor I am. So, initially patients would refuse me to see then, but as time goes on, people started to accept us in the community.

Through the refusal to be treated by a Black doctor, white patients assumed a racial authority that inferiorised Mukisa’s expertise by assuming that a Black body could not possibly embody the medical knowledge required to treat a white body. The assumption here is that due to their Blackness, Africanness, or both, they are simply incapable of matching the expertise of a white doctor. These racialised patterns of behaviours are carried within a symbolism of white supremacy and deployed, not necessarily by ‘mean spirited racists’, but by those whose ‘entire epistemic grid for deciphering social data [is] too white to empathise with and comprehend the [Black] experience’ (Yancy, 2004, p. 144). Such mono-racial views of the world, which are layered with wilful ignorance of the other, produce these racial suspicions. The persistent undermining of African skills, unless they are ‘Western-based’, is another form of professional microinvalidation. Interestingly, racialised suspicions are somewhat alleviated when Black Africans reveal their professional training was conducted in Australia, Europe, America or other Western countries. Paul and Wanjiru, both senior nurses who trained in a Western country, reflect on this by saying: Many times, the patients will ask … ‘So where did you do your training?’ … Trust me, the moment you say ‘in [a western country]’, you can see the relief and admiration. [Suddenly] they want to know about your life there, exactly: ‘what state did you live in, how long were you there?’. Everything changes, their tone—everything changes, and you are accepted. They are suddenly like, ‘You are not like the others. You, you are different, thank God. You are not like those other ones.’ (Paul) You are coming from the point of doubt all the time … I always have to add that I did my training in [a western country] and then you feel like they are like ‘okay, now we will trust you’. Dare you say, ‘I did my training in [an African country]’, then they are like—oh my goodness—‘Does she know what she is doing? Does she know her drugs well? Is she going to give me the right injection?’. You know! (Wanjiru)

Jenny, a senior registered nurse who trained in Australia, speaks to similar experiences: For me, I still have … people wanting to know where I got my qualifications once they see I am their nurse. Like yesterday, somebody asked me, ‘Where did you do your training, your nursing?’. I told him, ‘I did it here in Australia.’ He was like, ‘Oh, okay’. You could see how relaxed he got.

As Paul says, his training in a Western country granted him acceptance, trust and respect from white patients and colleagues because it made him more like them and ‘less African’ in their eyes (read as less likely to be inadequate). The white ideological stance rests on the assumption that good expert knowledge is white and Western and that non-Western knowledge needs to be scrutinised and policed within Western standards and epistemologies. Racialised microinsults are also expressed in the workplace when assumptions are made that Black people in senior positions are hired to fill a diversity quota, not

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for their merit and expertise. The underlying assumption here is that Africans are underqualified and incompetent as a default, and the only way to have attained such positions in the workplace is as a ‘policy requirement’ or ‘diversity’ hire. Awinja recalls a comment made to her and another colleague of Asian descent after they were hired to head various diversity programmes in a well-known organisation: Someone told me and another lady from an Asian background, she told us, ‘You two are very lucky to be managers ... in this organisation’ … Yes, a Caucasian told the two of us that we were very lucky. We were actually the only non-white managers at that time. She said, ‘You are very lucky to be here’. I said, ‘Are we lucky or are we skilled?’. Right now, it is much better than it was before. In the beginning, I think, they saw me as an African or a CALD person who had just been given a job. (Awinja)

Other participants, such as Patrick, reflected on the various times colleagues assumed he could not speak English despite being in a senior role: I am in a senior position, but sometimes, they [white colleagues] think I do not know English. So, people sometimes make some kind of comments, which when you think about it, when you are driving back home, you are ‘okay, what was that about?’. In which, if you have to pursue, it is outright discrimination, but sometimes, it is a sort of just leave it …[better] not to go there. So, in a way, overall, it is very disappointing in this day and age, there is a lot of discrimination at work, and our expertise is looked down upon.

Africans’ knowledges and expertise are constantly scrutinised through white ‘ways of knowing’ and speaking. Racial microinsults performed through jokes about ‘diversity hires’ are normalised as a reminder that Black bodies are ‘out of place’ in white organisations and can only exist in such spaces as a ‘favour’. Ongoing experiences of white insubordination and disrespect summoned at the workplace through such inferiorisation contribute significantly to the hard work and expertise of Black people at work being erased or minimised. It becomes easier to overlook their achievements whilst they are still expected to ‘prove’ they ‘deserve’ to be there and provide expressions of perpetual gratitude.

Racial Microburdens As explored earlier in this chapter, trying to decode the meanings behind racial microaggressions and subtle acts of exclusion is an emotionally and psychologically taxing and confusing process that negatively impacts Black people’s physiological and mental wellbeing. Participants in this study reflected that it is especially challenging to transcend Blackness in the white Australian workplace when you are viewed as always being ‘guilty until proven innocent’. Some participants reflected on this ‘burden of proof’, where they struggled with the ongoing burden of having to prove they are worthy of the respect and acceptance their white colleagues get at work. Reflecting on this ‘racial burden’ Mukisa stated: When I was in [a regional town], it took about 12 to 18 months to prove that I had the skill equivalent to my colleagues or better than my colleagues, so it takes that long. I always say

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5 Devaluation of Black Expertise … if you are an African, you need to do things 10 times better than the locals do for you to do well. When you train overseas and come here, your colleagues do not know how you are trained, so initially they do not accept you. They always look at what you do over your shoulder to make sure you do the right thing; and until you prove yourself, they do not get off your shoulder.

The process of having to work twice as hard to prove competency and expertise also produces increased anxiety, self-doubt and imposter syndrome. Sally, a microbiologist, explains how this hyperawareness of her Blackness puts burdensome pressure on her to prove she is not an imposter: I am also very aware of the fact that being an African, so at times you feel as though you have to work extra hard to prove yourself. You know, you have to make sure you are on top of your game all the time. And sometimes [when] somebody says something, you think, ‘Oh! is this because I am African?’, and it just brings that extra pressure even when people do not [mean it] negatively. But because you are always conscious of that fact, it puts a lot of pressure on you as a professional.

Jenny, a senior nurse, also agreed that Black Africans have to ‘prove themselves, I think, 150 times more than Australians. And the constant madharau [disrespect] is on things that cannot be proven’. Speaking of a similar experience, Nkandu, a senior accountant, also reflected on this burden: When you are black and you are a professional, you have to prove yourself kind of. But any person sometimes has to prove themselves, even white people have to prove themselves at work, but I think the biggest difference is with Africans or black person like myself, you always have to keep proving yourself, and sometimes is [not enough] because people are always doubting you.

John, too, argued that after years in his current workplace, he is finally starting to experience some glimpse of acceptance and respect: So, do I feel valued in my workplace? I think after four years, I am starting to feel I have probably proven my worth being there, but the question I am saying is, it does not need to take me four years to prove or for anyone to give me a sign of respect when everybody did not have do that.

Coming to terms with what it means to be Black in Australia means to recognise that the Black body is historically and globally constructed as inferior. Mapedzahama and Kwansah-Aidoo (2017) argue that, for Black people, the ‘very colour of their skin … which follows them everywhere causes them to be seen and treated in negative ways that often causes them discomfort’ (5). The racialisation of Africans in Australia complicates their efforts to gain meaningful work, and when they do, they have to confront various obstacles to prove they are ‘just as good’ as their white Australian counterparts. As Black African professionals constantly reflect on the many racialised interactions they experience at work, the ‘Black body/mind becomes a battleground where a war of self-examination and questioning of one’s abilities and being is constantly waged’ (Kwansah-Aidoo & Mapedzahama, 2018a, p. 102).

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Discussion: Blackness as a Battleground in the Workplace The subtle and covert experiences of workplace racism, comprising constant patterns of racial microaggressions, are dominant in Africans’ experiences in the workplace. Microaggressions are mediated via institutionalised racism (i.e. structures, systems and processes), and even though they may seem individually small and benign, their cumulative effects on wellbeing, health and economic and social outcomes can be significant. Therefore, Black Africans are often forced to perform whiteness as a way of fitting in and to minimise racial microaggressions. Wilson (1990) states that the ‘burden of blackness’ produced by racial microaggressions in white spaces means ‘to have your integrity chronically under question, to always have to somehow verbally or nonverbally, communicate convincing reasons for being where you are’ (p. 36). In an essay, The Burden of Being Black, Austin (2004) argues that ‘the problem is not being of African descent or having a certain skin colour and hair texture, but being black’ (p. 10). He adds: The word black is synonymous with negative things in our culture, from death to dirty, from foul to unholy. This word, which is basically a curse, is then placed upon a whole group of people. Each time the negative associations are presented, we, the culture and society, become more and more ‘conditioned’ to prejudice. Each time, we begin to subconsciously transfer the ‘evils’ of blackness to the person and the group. (Austin, 2004, p. 12)

To put this in context, the inferiorisation of the Black body globally and within all social, economic, political and cultural contexts through the absolute power of whiteness renders it a site of ostracisation (hooks, 1997). The dominant discourses of Blackness in Australia are underpinned by white Western ideological imaginations, which inadvertently function as tools of institutional racism gatekeeping. These racial scripts shape boundaries of power that govern social systems and organisations (Doane & Bonilla-Silva, 2003). The hypervisibility of the Black body and the dominant deficit discourses on Black Africans inform a racialised consciousness about Blackness in Australian society and culture. In this sense, ‘Blackness’ in a whitemajority society depends on how being Black is seen and defined within that context. In Australia, as we argued in Chap. 4, singular ideas of Blackness and Africanness mean Blackness is always discussed in comparison and contradiction to whiteness, which denies Black people the opportunity to have other competing or contradictory identities. Given this context, Mapedzahama and Kwansah-Aidoo (2017) argue that it is important to depart from deficit discourses that ‘problematise Africans … as lacking in something’. Since racialisation processes in Australia have been dominated by misrecognition perspectives that construct Black people, especially Black African migrants, as a ‘burden’ and ‘social problem’, this creates particular challenges for providing safety in predominantly white workplaces. As Honneth (1996) has argued, recognition practice architectures expressed through structures of care and dignity can inform and enhance the experiences, self-identity and racial dignity of Black people. Since securing appropriate and rewarding employment has consistently been identified as critical to migrants’ successful relocation and resettlement, applying such

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frameworks in the critical analysis of workplace diversity and inclusion practices has significant potential for making positive contributions to the transition experience of Black African migrants.

Concluding Comments Many participants in this study stated that the constant acts of overt and covert microaggressions and relentless questioning and challenging of their expertise, knowledge and skills compromised their experiences of belonging at the workplace. Utilising critical race theories that make every day experiences of racism and ‘benign’ racial microaggressions visible, we have argued that the ‘burden of Blackness’ at the workplace leads to RBF and complicates the professional identities of Black professionals in Australia. RBF intensifies in predominantly white settings where racial hostility is normalised. The findings from this study reveal that Black African immigrants’ experiences do not support the often-accepted narrative of supposedly race-free workplaces. These findings provide practitioners, employers and policymakers with a critical understanding of the various challenges facing African professionals in the workplace and how processes of racialisation may impact psychological safety at work. By unveiling these invisible microaggressions, this chapter has probed how the Black body is a worn burden that produces psychological distress and RBF at the workplace. It is important to learn how to work and engage professionally with others through culturally safe and sensitive ways in an increasingly multicultural world. In the next chapter, we move from the professional to the personal as we explore how skilled Black African migrants experience the changing dynamics in their families following their relocation to Australia.

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Chapter 6

Families Growing Through Change: Dynamics in the Afrodiasporic Family

Abstract This is the second in a series of chapters in which we report on the data from a study exploring the experiences of highly skilled Black African immigrants in South Australia. This chapter reports on our participants’ insights and perspectives on the impact of migration on the dynamics within their family units. Changes in family dynamics have been documented as a challenge—and at times also an opportunity— for migrants relocating to a new country. This is accentuated for cohorts for whom the salience of family and collective values is very high, such as for migrants from African nations when relocating to a country characterised by an individualistic, Western culture like Australia. This chapter explores how skilled migrants who migrated to Australia from various African countries experienced and adapted to changing family dynamics. This is considered through a discussion of four main themes: perspectives of family and intergenerational dynamics, gender role changes, loss of social capital and families growing through change. Despite the significant challenges posed by changing family dynamics, participants emphasised how they productively worked through difficulties, differing perspectives on family, and changing intergenerational and spousal dynamics to grow together as a family.

Introduction Relocation to a new country can be driven by a range of push or pull factors and may be voluntary or involuntary, but will always involve affective charges and significant changes that impact the family structures within which migrants are embedded. Understanding the impact of migration on changing family dynamics for migrants, specifically from skilled migration pathways, has significant policy and practice implications for various disciplines and fields of research and practice. It is broadly evidenced through current literature that migration to another culturally dissimilar country can present a range of challenges and opportunities. These challenges and opportunities can impact migrants not only at the individual level but also at the familial level. Specifically, changes in family dynamics have been documented as a challenge—and less frequently as an opportunity—for international relocation for many cohorts, with research highlighting the heightened impact of migration on © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 K. Gatwiri and L. Anderson, Afrodiasporic Identities in Australia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-4282-2_6

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families for migrant groups when the salience of family and collective values for them is very high, as is the case for many migrants from African nations (Ayika et al., 2018; Boehm et al., 2011). This is in addition to other relocation challenges that may or may not be anticipated, such as difficulties securing appropriate housing and employment in the new environment. Migrants inevitably experience loss and separation from immediate and extended family and community members, and coping with this rupture in both the short- and long-term can have substantial affective and economic impacts on both those who have migrated and those who have remained (Babatunde-Sowole et al., 2016). Boehm et al. (2011) observed that ‘in a global context, relocation can be associated with profound pain and suffering: separation, distance, loss, nostalgia and longing characterise migration ruptures’, yet there is also a ‘continuity of the everyday’ that connects family even across vast distances, including expressions of love and devotion, and varying forms of economic support that may flow in both directions (p. 15). Highlighting the importance of understanding the centrality of family and the impact of migration on family units in a diasporic context, international research indicates that concern for the present and future wellbeing, security and opportunities for children and young people within an extended family are among the most significant motivators for highly skilled migrants to relocate (Babatunde-Sowole et al., 2016; Betancourt et al., 2015; Boehm et al., 2011; Kuyini & Kivunja, 2020). Even when a family group can migrate together, there are likely to be changed to family dynamics that require adaptation to the new environment. For example, different economic and social contexts may necessitate significant adjustments in the division of labour or decision-making processes required within households. Challenges in securing appropriate employment for male ‘breadwinners’ or the need for both spouses in families to work and contribute to domestic responsibilities have all been identified in the literature as issues contributing to changes in family dynamics for African migrant families, particularly regarding changing gender roles within the family unit (Fisher, 2013; Kuyini & Kivunja, 2020; Mugadza et al., 2019; Renzaho et al., 2011; Wali & Renzaho, 2018). The emotional impacts of separation may also be experienced differently by certain members of the household, dependent on different aspects of their identity. For example, some women may experience positive impacts and empowerment related to differing gender norms in the destination country, or to achieving financial independence from their spouse and extended family (Fisher, 2013; Kuyini & Kivunja, 2020). Conversely, some research has indicated that other women may be less prepared for the increased responsibilities in decision-making following the transition to a new country and can consequently experience heightened feelings of overwhelment, especially if they retain the role of primary caregiver for children, yet simultaneously have reduced support from extended family (Babatunde-Sowole et al., 2016). Some studies have indicated that relocation is more challenging for men if their perceived role as ‘head of the family’ or primary income earner was disrupted (Fisher, 2013; Kivunja et al., 2014; Mugadza et al., 2019; Wali & Renzaho, 2018). Other studies have reported intergenerational differences in acculturation, with children and younger family members experiencing more accelerated, but not necessarily smooth

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transitions to the new environment (Babatunde-Sowole et al., 2016; Betancourt et al., 2015; Mugadza et al., 2020). In combination with the loss of extended family and community support for domestic duties and child-rearing, uneven acculturation and adaptation to the new environment by different family members can lead to significant tension and sometimes familial conflict. They may also ultimately result in positive adaptation to these challenges and the emergence of new familial roles and dynamics (Wali & Renzaho, 2018), often in conjunction with efforts to establish extended social networks in the destination country to compensate for the loss of family and community in the countries of origin (Mugadza et al., 2019). Changes to family dynamics may also be exacerbated when there are significant differences in culture and way of life between the origin and destination countries. A critical aspect of cultural difference relevant to post-migration family dynamics is often the transition from collectivist to individualistic cultural environments. Wali and Renzaho (2018) state that ‘migrants from non-Western and non-English speaking backgrounds mostly come from cultures that value collectivism, characterised by interdependence, and harmonious blending within a community and family’ (p. 2). This difference influences the cultural shock experienced by most migrants from African nations to Australia. Although there is immense cultural and social diversity within and between African nations, collectivist cultural values and practices and the extended family system is widespread across rural and urban areas of Africa and within African diaspora communities. Central to this system is a broad perspective of ‘family’ that extends well beyond the bounds of the Western ‘nuclear’ or immediate family (Babatunde-Sowole et al., 2016; Mugadza et al., 2020). Wali and Renzaho (2018) argue that: Within collectivistic cultures, people identify themselves with their family, extended relatives and friends and community; the perspective of family extends beyond the immediate family to include close uncles, aunties, cousins, brothers, sisters and relatives; and there are defined hierarchical role divisions within families. Post-migration these cultural values are replaced with individualistic culture valuing individuation and autonomy. (p. 2)

Following migration to a Western nation such as Australia, ‘the pre-migration system that places “family” as both a responsibility and source of mutual support and close interaction … is replaced by a welfare model that facilitates migrants’ access to health services, housing, English classes, employment opportunities and schools’ (Renzaho et al., 2011, p. 229). The replacement of extended family support with varying levels of state support and intervention that may or may not be appropriately targeted and delivered, and challenges to traditional hierarchical roles within the family, can heighten tension around adaptations (e.g. differences in parenting frameworks and policies of child protection). The tensions between the opportunities presented by migration and the disruption of familial and community connections can add to the ‘acculturative stress’ migrants experience (Mugadza et al., 2020, p. 4). It can also provide opportunities to envision new ways of bonding, belonging and contributing to the family. Understanding the impact of migration on changing family dynamics for migrants, specifically from skilled migration pathways, has significant policy and practice implications for a range of disciplines and fields of research and practice.

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Previous research on changes to family dynamics for migrants from African nations has largely focused specifically on refugee resettlement (Fisher, 2013; Kuyini & Kivunja, 2020; Renzaho et al., 2011) or cohorts from multiple migration pathways (Mugadza et al., 2020; Wali & Renzaho, 2018). Given the study participants of this research all voluntarily migrated to Australia, often as part of a pre-existing family unit, and often had substantive social and economic capital in their home countries, this influences both the experience of challenges concerning their relocation and their resources and strategies for coping with and resolving such challenges. These complexities are considered in this chapter through a discussion of four main themes: perspectives on family and intergenerational family dynamics, gender role changes, loss of social capital and families growing through change.

Perspectives on Family and Intergenerational Family Dynamics Participants in this study strongly emphasised the loss and value of integration within an extended family system with collective values. Extended family in this context might include immediate biological family, but equally, family ‘members who are not biologically related, or an extensive network of cousins, grandparents, uncles, aunts and the immediate community identified by tribe or clan’ (Mugadza et al., 2020, p. 15). Upon migration, the support of an extended family network was often lost in the immediate sense, but this broader perception of the family was reported as remaining pertinent to most participants in this research. This created some challenges, but it also proved a source of strength in migrating families who ‘created family-like relationships’ with other African migrant families in an attempt to build a new support network to navigate the complex changes following relocation. In reflecting on the ways their family dynamics were impacted through the transition to living in Australian society, several participants emphasised how much perspectives on family differed between Australia and their countries of origin in Africa by contrasting collectivist and individualistic values. For example, Maurice noted that ‘what things normally happen in the African family … is different from the other families’. While noting African values included ‘respect the elders’, he also emphasised that ‘what we talk about is about family, not individual’, and so it was important that children, in particular, understood that what ‘affects one person will affect the entire family’. Awinja observed that ‘some of the good values of our culture’, such as an emphasis on sharing, were rooted in being ‘community-oriented and family-oriented and … not individualistic’. Participants frequently returned to and emphasised their efforts to maintain ‘the good values of our culture’ within the family in the context of significant changes to family dynamics precipitated by migration.

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However, in sharing their awareness of different perspectives on the value of family, participants sometimes reflected on there being positive aspects to this difference. For example, Kwame reflected that: There are things that African culture teaches, like [it is] family-oriented, not only mother and the nuclear family, but an extended family approach … we endorse that, you know ‘no man is an island’—that is why you are born into a family. We are all connected … we raise [children] not to be independent of the family. And there are things in this [Australian] culture that we think is good—like self-actualisation and to stand up for what you believe.

For some participants, an awareness of the strengths of differing perspectives on the family and the need to adapt to changing circumstances could lead to a productive synergy that assisted in the resettlement process, especially regarding how approaches to intergenerational family dynamics had to become more adaptive. As Banji reflected: In the way we deal with our children, we find ourselves leaning a bit towards the African way that we have been brought up with, but we have also learnt, you know, that we need to adapt to the times because, you know, our children are not growing up in Africa, so we are very cognisant of some of the differences we find in an African setting as opposed to here and the Western setting, and so we have been very flexible in that regard.

John and Julia also spoke about how they have adopted the synergy ‘between both’ cultural influences: One of the things that we have strictly adhered to is the principle that we will stick by the good things that Australia provides, and we will stick by the good things that our African heritage provides. I am very, very inflexible in some things, and they are certain values that a family we believe in, and we will always try and inculcate those values [in our children]—values like respect for adults and respect for authority.

Although many participants signalled an aspiration to find a harmonious and positive blend between different perspectives on the family and creatively harness the opportunity to adapt effectively to their changed context, this was not always a straightforward process. It required some significant alterations to familial dynamics, including parents’ need to recognise the differing parenting context. For example, Jenny and Patrick, a couple, emphasised that ‘it is very tricky because we live in Western society, but we try to balance the two and see okay, which one can we leave as a tradition and which one can we carry on with the Western culture’. This meant changes to behaviour and attitudes, such as not hitting children and needing to ‘be careful … in terms of managing dispute’. Similarly, Awinja described how following relocation to Australia, the relationship between her daughter and her husband ‘became really problematic because they were just butting heads all the time’ as her daughter entered her teenage years and became more independent and self-determining. Awinja was required to intervene and suggested to her husband that he ‘change the way he communicates’. She added that she told her husband, ‘you know, you must realise this is a very different environment and [she] has grown up here … the way you communicate is actually setting her off, so we need to become democratic and negotiate things’. Thus, as children

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accultured to Western perspectives on appropriate family dynamics at a different rate than older family members—a phenomenon well documented in other studies with African migrant families in the West (Babatunde-Sowole et al., 2016; Betancourt et al., 2015; Mugadza et al., 2020)—there was a process of transition and adaptation that appears to have been relatively successful over time for most participants in this study, albeit not without its challenges.

Notable Shift and Changes in Gender Roles and Expectations In addition to the perceived need to balance positive aspects of African and Western perspectives on the family in intergenerational family dynamics, which had significant flow-on effects requiring attitudinal and behavioural changes, participants in this study emphasised that relocation to Australia required significant changes to spousal relationships. Fundamentally, the transition to a new life in Australia requires considerable adjustment for all migrants and can be expected to significantly impact the relationship between partnered migrants. The adjustment included but is not limited to the reconfiguration of gender roles, which are generally explicitly defined in Africa but more nebulous and fluid in Australia. Consistent with key findings from the literature surveyed above (e.g. see Fisher, 2013; Kuyini & Kivunja, 2020; Mugadza et al., 2019; Renzaho et al., 2011; Wali & Renzaho, 2018), participants reported that changes related to the metamorphosis of gender roles and consequent shifts in partner dynamics significantly impacted their family dynamics. Initially, men seemed to struggle more than women, as they viewed the loss of their hierarchical, patriarchal status as ‘the head of the house’ as relegation to an ‘inferior’ feminised role. This phenomenon is well documented in the literature. For example, Muchoki (2013) reported that African male participants in their research related that after migration, they often felt relegated to the bottom of the food chain, stating that unlike ‘back home’, in Australia they saw themselves as coming last, after ‘women, children, dogs and cats’. However, the participants in this study emphasised that although there was an initial period of significant adjustment, for the most part, these challenges were successfully navigated over time. Revisiting gender roles within the family tended to be particularly triggered by changes in working arrangements and the loss of extended family and paid domestic support. Julia reflected that gender roles in her house were ‘reversed completely’ following migration, as her husband John had to ‘get up, get the girls up and take them to school’, because she was the first to find employment when they moved to Australia. She stated: I would come home sometimes at 11 pm, and I would find that [my husband] had picked the girls from school. They have cooked. They have showered. So really, the household chores became his responsibility, whereas back home, that had never happened. So that was totally a new thing for us, and we had to really adjust.

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Some female participants emphasised the positive adaptation of their male partners through this process. For example, Amani explained that ‘the family dynamics had changed’. Her husband had to take on ‘all the cooking and all the caring for the children’ while she was studying and working night shifts, and this was successfully managed because ‘I have been very, very lucky because I have a very supportive husband’. Kissa similarly recalled that immediately following their relocation to Australia, her husband experienced significant issues securing his registration as a surgeon. As a result, ‘I had to work twice as much, so he had to stay at home and look after the kids. That is the role he never played, but I must say he was very mature and very good about it’. Other participants noted the strain that adaptation to changed familial dynamics placed on their relationship initially. Vera emphasised that in her country of origin, ‘husbands in our community … do not end up in the kitchen but here sometimes they have to do more work, and my husband has to be cooking’. This created challenges for her family because ‘all these dynamics were very new to both of us, and we did not know what to do with them’. Amani also describes the challenges of this transition where her partner needed to ‘relearn how to do things’, noting that after arriving in Australia, she had to take shift work to support the family, and they no longer had domestic help, which she acknowledged ‘can cause rifts’. Therefore, necessity forced this change in gender roles, with ‘my husband was the one picking our children from school and ensuring the kids had their dinner … so he had to learn how to do that’. Amani reflected on how different this was from her country of origin, and on how domestic work was shared there: Back home, men just go out after work, and they give excuses like traffic jams … they will go to the pub until late, coming back at 1 am in the morning and … finding everything has been done for them.

As well as adjusting to taking on traditionally constructed feminine tasks within the household, the transition to life in Australia placed other strains on marital relationships. John also reflected on the forms of strain on relationships that the nature of work in Australia could exert: With that transition and that change, conflicts are bound to arise, and it arises in different forms. One of the forms that it arises is because lifestyle has changed; things like intimacy also becomes a problem. Before [my wife] had never worked nightshifts—but now she was working at night. She has never slept out of my bed, for God knows, all the time we were together. All of a sudden, I am sleeping alone at night. They are simple things, but they have got serious psychological input.

Upon relocation to Australia, African men also had to consciously renegotiate their partner, fatherhood and masculine identities, as they recognised the impossibility of maintaining the division of gender roles and familial dynamics that prevailed in their countries of origin. Sally stated that the changes to family dynamics concerning gender roles were very significant for African migrant families because ‘living in the West sort of redefines those gender roles’, and couples had to learn to recognise that ‘it is impossible for one person to do it [all]’. Several of the male participants

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reflected on their own process of understanding that changes to gender roles were a difficult but necessary adaptation for successful resettlement. Benji said: Coming from a very conservative African family … cooking, cleaning up of children if they mess themselves up, cleaning in the house are predominantly for women. But since we moved first to [another western country] and then here, you realise that you don’t have a lot of support from domestic labour here and don’t have the privilege of having family, friends, or relatives coming to help out. You rely on each other, and so you have to help each other out, and so we have for a long time had a situation where both of us are doing full-time work and so you need to share responsibilities

Another participant, Abasi, reflected: All of a sudden, we are here and we have no helper. We have no house help. It is just her and me and so you know, you only need to be human to know that this lady needs help and because it is a family, so I guess that some of the things are just illogical to maintain that you cannot do, because you are a man.

Patrick further reflected on his realisation following migration that ‘as a married man here in Australia, you cannot just come home, sit and wait for your wife to finish her shift at 11 pm at night, to come and cook for you’. He added the need to re-evaluate traditionally ascribed ‘masculine roles’: Here it is about sharing the work … because you do not have a houseworker or house girl to do some of these things for you … if she is cooking, then I am doing the washing of the clothes. If she is doing the other thing, I have done mopping the house. So, we have to balance things like those because it is not okay if I just sit back.

For many of the male participants in this study, adapting to the new familial dynamics in their family and successfully navigating the change in their own sense of identity was facilitated by the primary roles they began undertaking in parenting their young children. John and Odera reflected on how the changing family dynamics meant relearning how to be a father: As men, we are not socialised to hang around kids, sit with them and tell stories, or hang around them and clean them up and get them ready to go to school … let alone get into a kitchen to cook for them. One of the jokes I always say is until I got to Australia, only then did I realise that if I did not cook, my children would sleep hungry … for the first time. It never occurred to me before that I need to cook for them. But when I got here, all of a sudden, I realised that if I did not cook, my children would sleep hungry. (John) What you know about being a father is not what it means to be a father in Australia. So you find yourself becoming a new student when you are supposed to have a PhD in being a father because you have known how your dad, how your mum raised you, but you have a kid here, and you do not know what to do. (Odera)

Migration experiences could have significant long-term impacts on men’s perspective on their role in the home and with their children. For instance, Kwame described how after four years of working in a role in Australia that required him to be away from his family frequently, he decided to change his employment situation to spend more time with his children: ‘I realised that … the important thing … is the time for me to build a relationship with the children before they grow, because [otherwise] they grow

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apart’. The findings here demonstrate that despite significant adjustment challenges, participants in this study had worked successfully through these challenges to find new strengths within their relationships. As Jenny reflected, ‘if we did not break up then, I do not think we are ever going to break up’.

Loss of Class Privilege and Community Networks Most of the participants immigrated to Australia following immensely successful careers in their home countries. Most described the process of navigating the loss of their previous status, social standing, social networks and capital to be a significant challenge. Awinja observed that the sense of profound loss that often accompanies migration into a new country was ‘quite challenging’, reflecting that she ‘almost went into depression’ due to intense feelings of loss and grief for her ‘former self’ and the prominent financial status she held in her home country. She reflected: One time I was stacking books [in the library I was volunteering at] and I just started crying. One time I was doing washing … and everyone has gone, my husband to work and the kids to school. I was just hanging clothes outside, and I just started crying. I almost went into a depression, to be very honest with you, because I just had this feeling of losing everything … I would say I lost my financial independence because for me being on that high level [in my country], I did not have to ask for money. My husband was very supportive because I had his credit card [in Australia]. I would spend the money, but it was not my money, and I always felt that I was really going to the lowest of my lowest because I have my pride as well.

Participants also talked about the loss of supportive networks from community, family, friends and live-in help. Sally noted that back home in Nigeria, she had live-in domestic helpers who assisted with household chores such as cleaning, cooking and childminding, whereas in Australia, ‘it is just the two of you and you both have to do everything’. Similarly, other participants reflected on the loss of their extended family and the social capital they provided, as well as the financial and social standing their family had in their communities: We had all the house support and the support of our nieces, nephews, back home. Here, you are expected to do anything and everything … [Also] the very high-profile companies do pay school fees for their children, so back home, our children’s school fees were being paid for in very good private schools … It was difficult to adjust, you know, back to making payments such as those, which we [had] not been doing [back home]. (Awinja) The issue was we did not have any support network [in Australia], so in [country of origin], we would have some workers looking after kids when we are not there, and picking up kids after hours when we are working, but here we did not have any family, we did not have anybody to do that for us, so everything that you do, we had to pay for it, so it is quite different, much easier with family. (Jabali) Back home, [my children] had their cousins … when I was away, there would always be someone in the house together with the house help, so they were helping with the kids. I

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6 Families Growing Through Change … would get help in parenting back home, so there is all the support. I was a full-time worker, working very, very hard, extremely hard, and then I come home, I find the children are fine, they are well fed, they are happy, they are playing … but when I came here, the parenting is all up to me. The school might do their part, but it all was done by their dad and myself. (Amani)

This demonstrates that loss of class privilege from the home country can influence the migrant experience, with people grieving for what they have lost. Skilled migrants navigate the loss of the networks of support and community as well as their previous social and financial status in their country of origin.

Families Growing Through Change As with Mungai and Pease’s (2009) findings, while some men expressed feeling displaced by the new roles they occupied in the home, they were willing to adapt despite the discomfort of change. John likened the process of embracing the new changes to a ‘psychological battle’ where, as a man, he had to learn the things he had never needed to learn in his country of origin. He reflected: I think for me, there were a couple of things. One was the harsh transition, a transition where … all of a sudden you are finding yourself doing all the stuff that you have never done or have not done in a very long time, so it was more of a psychological battle. It was more of a psychological war than really a physical burden.

Patrick and Jenny also added that learning to share parenting and domestic work effectively was the main reason their family could withstand the challenging transition to Australia. They attribute the current strength of their relationship to the ‘partnership’ they have created, arguing that sharing household chores functions as an important bonding factor and a way of finding ‘balance’ in their home. Patrick added that the transition to Australia, which facilitated his renegotiations with fatherhood and masculinity, has been ‘a positive shift’ for him and his family. He reflected: I can appreciate the change because I guess marriage is about equal partners. It is the two of you getting into these things together—as you are called partners. It is not about you being the dominant or you giving directions. To be quite honest, I feel that I am a more responsible dad now than I was to be in Kenya because I look after my kids and see them seven days in a week … By Friday, there is no catching up with my boys or my friends like we were used to doing … by Friday, I come home … to be with them … and I really appreciate that.

Similarly, Banji reflected that the changes in family dynamics had strengthened his relationship with his children and his wife as he was more involved in the ‘running of the house’, which helped him recognise the immense labour that goes into managing a household. He adds that this ‘makes you really understand and acknowledge what your spouse goes through’, and that understanding ‘brings you closer as a family’. Many other male participants noted that their attitudes around housework and parenting had changed. They normalised doing traditionally ascribed women’s roles, including housework and childcare and embraced different expressions of their

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masculinity, where they could engage, play and develop more profound, intimate and loving relationships with their children and spouses. As John stated: This looked like a hard thing then, but right now, as I sit and speak to you, for the last seven years, there is nothing I have loved more than spending time with those girls. I have the chance now to cook for them, hang around them, take them places. I realised one other fundamental thing—that [back home] I had kids but I actually never spent time with them because I was just ‘the figurehead parent’. I never saw them … I was so used to being in an environment where things just happened in the home, and I did not think about it.

Changing African masculinities and their attached cultural meanings required African men’s ideas of gender identities to be reconstructed and reproduced within the new Australian diasporic space. Men who were able to cope with the challenges and difficulties associated with these changes tended to thrive more and adjust better in Australia. These accounts run counter to stereotypes of African men as being stubbornly resistant to changes in gender roles and family dynamics.

Discussion: Families Growing Through Change This discussion focuses on contextualising the participants’ cultural shifts in behavioural roles and attitudes that enabled successful family change adaptation. For context, in sub-Saharan African countries, where the current study’s participants originate, the communities are generally patriarchal and strongly hierarchical, with power and dominance often invested in men rather than women and children in the family, contributing to known gender inequity in these regions. In the current study, participants explained that significant shifts had taken place since migrating to Australia, with men (husbands) often taking over the caring responsibilities at home while their wives worked to earn and provide for families. The stories from the current participants demonstrate that male participants were able to adapt their cultural norms by adopting traditionally ascribed ‘feminine roles’ and worked in partnerships with their female partners to survive in the new environment together and for the betterment of their families. Theoretically, this change in role-taking may signify a double cultural identity and double consciousness. That is, while individuals understand the importance and relationship between their original culture and historical contexts, they were also compelled to accommodate the current, new experiences in the diaspora as alternative realities. Hall and Du Gay (1996) state that cultural identity is negotiated through a process of becoming. Adopting new gender and cultural roles and identities whilst retaining positive connections to their preexisting culture and identities helps provide stability for African migrants, enabling them to function and mobilise the resources necessary for successful settlement and integration. Some studies of African migrant communities in Australia and other Western migrant destinations report heightened marital discord or separation during relocation and resettlement (Kuyini & Kivunja, 2020; Okeke-Ihejirika & Salami, 2018), sometimes associated with intimate partner violence (Fisher, 2013; Ogunsiji et al., 2012; West, 2016). In contrast, participants in this study appeared to be navigating changes

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in their family dynamics without sustained high levels of marital discord or violence. Thus, our research suggests an alternative narrative that indicates that contrary to the dominant representations of African migrant families experiencing high levels of familial conflict and even violence following relocation, the skilled Black African migrant families involved in this study were able to successfully adapt and change their behaviour and attitudes leading to new family dynamics that strengthened familial relationships. This included marital relationships and parent–child relationships (the latter of which will be explored in further depth in the next chapter). In some cases, this adaptability could be linked to participants’ experience of voluntary migration, high levels of education, and pre-migration social and financial capital, in contrast to studies where the participants experienced forced migration, limited social and financial capital, and more reliance on the welfare state (perceived to exacerbate undermining of traditional gender roles through direct remittances to women and children) following migration (Fisher, 2013; Kuyini & Kivunja, 2020; Muchoki, 2013). While cultural considerations—such as a reluctance to identify or report family or intimate partner violence, and community and societal disapproval of divorce and separation—must be considered as potential underlying factors leading to underreporting of conflict and violence in research with African migrant families (Fisher, 2013; Muchoki, 2013; West, 2016), it was clear that this dynamic was not raised or apparent in this cohort. Rather, on balance, the insistent focus of many participants on the way they productively worked through challenges, differing perspectives on familial values and changing family dynamics to grow together as a family, and the frank and informed discussions of contrasts between Australian legal and social norms and traditional African attitudes towards physical disciplining within family environments reported in the next chapter, seem to underscore the positive dimensions of acculturation at the familial level during the process of relocating to and settling in Australia for this cohort.

Conclusion Navigating the impact of loss regarding social capital and major changes in family dynamics are well documented in the literature as significant challenges migrants must navigate in relocating to a new country. For African migrants, who are predominantly migrating from collectivist cultural environments with highly defined and hierarchical gender and familial roles, these challenges can be heightened when relocating to a Western country such as Australia, where cultural norms prioritise the individual over the family, gender roles are more fluid, and the different economic and material conditions may require fundamental shifts in the division of paid and unpaid work within households. In this chapter, we explored how skilled migrants who migrated to Australia from African nations experienced and adapted to changing family dynamics through the discussion of four main themes: perspectives of family and intergenerational dynamics, gender role changes, loss of social capital and families growing through change. Despite the significant challenges posed by changing

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family dynamics and the loss of social and familial capital they experienced through this transition, participants emphasised how they productively worked through difficulties, differing perspectives on family, and changing intergenerational and spousal dynamics to grow together as a family. In the next chapter, given the significance of changing intergenerational dynamics within migrant families alluded to above, we delve into more detail on the parenting experiences of skilled Black African migrant families.

References Ayika, D., Dune, T., Firdaus, R., & Mapedzahama, V. (2018). A qualitative exploration of postmigration family dynamics and intergenerational relationships. SAGE Open, 8, 1–10. Babatunde-Sowole, O. O., Jackson, D., Davidson, P. M., & Power, T. (2016). ‘Coming to a strange land’: The West African migrant women’s establishment of home and family in a new culture within Australia. Journal of Transcultural Nursing, 27(5), 447–455. Betancourt, T. S., Abdi, S., Ito, B. S., Lilienthal, G. M., Agalab, N., & Ellis, H. (2015). We left one war and came to another: Resource loss, acculturative stress, and caregiver-child relationships in Somali refugee families. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 21(1), 114–125. Boehm, D. A., Hess, J. M., Coe, C., Rae-Espinoza, H., & Reynolds, R. R. (2011). Children, youth, and the everyday ruptures of migration. In C. Coe, R. R. Reynolds, D. A. Boehm, J. M. Hess, & H. Espinoza (Eds.), Everyday ruptures: Children, youth, and migration in global perspective (pp. 1–19). Vanderbilt University Press. Fisher, C. (2013). Changed and changing gender and family roles and domestic violence in African refugee background communities post-settlement in Perth. Australia. Violence against Women, 19(7), 833–847. Hall, S., & Du Gay, P. (1996). Questions of cultural identity. Sage. Kivunja, C., Kuyini, A. B., & Maxwell, T. (2014). Settlement experiences of African refugees: A case study of the Armidale, Tamworth and Coffs Harbour regions of New South Wales, Australia. Journal of Asian and African Studies, 49(1), 64–79. Kuyini, A. B., & Kivunja, C. (2020). African refugee spouses’ experience of resettlement in regional Australia: Disempowering and empowering narratives. International Social Work, 63(4), 431– 444. Muchoki, S. M. (2013). ‘[In Australia] what comes first are the women, then children, cats, dogs, followed by men’: Exploring accounts of gender relations by men from the Horn of Africa. Australasian Review of African Studies, 34(2), 78–98. Mugadza, H. T., Akombi, B. J., Tetteh, V. W., Stout, B., & Renzaho, A. M. N. (2020). Engaging sub-Saharan African migrant families in Australia: Broadening definitions of family, community, and culture. Community, Work & Family, 24(1), 435–454. Mugadza, H. T., Mujeyi, B., Stout, B., Wali, N., & Renzaho, A. M. N. (2019). Childrearing practices among sub-Saharan African migrants in Australia: A systematic review. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 28(11), 2927–2941. Mungai, N. W., & Pease, B. (2009). Rethinking masculinities in the African diaspora. In M. Donaldson, R. Hibbins, R. Howson, & B. Pease (Eds.), Migrant men: Critical studies of masculinities and the migration experience (pp. 96–114). Routledge. Ogunsiji, O., Wilkes, L., Jackson, D., & Peters, K. (2012). Suffering and smiling: West African immigrant women’s experience of intimate partner violence. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 21(11– 12), 1659–1665.

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Okeke-Ihejirika, P., & Salami, B. (2018). Men become baby dolls and women become lions: African immigrant men’s challenges with transition and integration. Canadian Ethnic Studies, 50(3), 91–110. Renzaho, A. M. N., Green, J., Mellor, D., & Swinburn, B. (2011). Parenting, family functioning and lifestyle in a new culture: The case of African migrants in Melbourne, Victoria. Australia. Child & Family Social Work, 16(2), 228–240. Wali, N., & Renzaho, A. M. N. (2018). ‘Our riches are our family’, the changing family dynamics & social capital for new migrant families in Australia. PLoS ONE, 13, e0209421. West, C. M. (2016). African immigrant women and intimate partner violence: A systematic review. Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma, 25(1), 4–17.

Chapter 7

Parenting Black Children in White Spaces

Abstract This chapter employs a critical race theory perspective to probe how Black African migrants parent Black children in Australia, a predominantly white country. The data revealed two principal themes highlighting the importance of race dynamics and how culture informs parenting approaches. The first theme explores how many participants emphasised the importance of explicitly teaching children about their Blackness and fostering positive racial identities within a whitemajority society. The second theme reflects the complexities for families attempting to navigate between ‘African’ and ‘Western’ values and the need to develop intercultural parenting approaches that effectively incorporate elements from diverse cultural influences. Participants demonstrated high levels of awareness of intercultural parenting approaches and a desire to blend the best aspects of African and Australian cultural values in their own parenting practice. A significant paradox was also apparent in the tension between parental desires to inculcate pride in African ancestry and culture while simultaneously encouraging children to ‘curate’ their Blackness to minimise experiences of racialisation. This chapter offers a perspective on the parenting experiences of skilled African migrants and how they creatively manage the tensions and change emerging from this process. For context, however, the families represented in this study do not necessarily represent the dominant narrative associated with refugee communities, who may need significant support in family programs.

Introduction Parenting in a different cultural context has been described as ‘one of the most pressing challenges faced by African migrant and refugee parents’ (Renzaho & Vignjevic, 2014, p. 71). This chapter focuses on the experiential knowledge of Black parents in Australia by acknowledging that their subjective parenting experiences are racially layered and racially coded and may at times contradict the hegemonic (white) narratives of ‘good’ parenting. These experiences can impact parenting practices and intergenerational relations within African migrant communities with implications for research and practice in various fields, including social work, education and health. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 K. Gatwiri and L. Anderson, Afrodiasporic Identities in Australia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-4282-2_7

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Responding to concerns regarding African parenting and influencing how social and educational services engage with and support migrant families in other contexts must be understood critically within the context of the cultural complexities that underpin the child protection policies and layers of normalised whiteness that can function to inferiorise parenting strategies within non-white communities. African migrant parents need to learn about and navigate an entirely new social, cultural and political context within which they parent their children. Renzaho et al. (2011) conclude that when migrants from collectivist cultural backgrounds relocate to countries that have a significantly different culture, they are less likely to radically transform their child-rearing styles; rather, they become more authoritarian and rigid in their pre-existing approach over time. Adjei and Minka (2018) suggest that authoritarian parenting can be punitive and domineering, yet can function as a coping mechanism deployed strategically ‘to reinforce cultural identity and instil culturally endorsed behaviours’ (Renzaho et al., 2011, p. 229). Since overly authoritarian parenting can adversely impact child wellbeing and migrant family dynamics (Banerjee, 2018), a nuanced understanding of parenting approaches of Black African migrants in Australia needs to be established. International literature on experiences of African migrants in regards to parenting has focused on participants from refugee backgrounds (e.g. see Deng & Pienaar, 2011; Merry et al., 2017; Salami et al., 2020), although some include participants from a mix of migration streams (e.g. Salami et al., 2020). Research on the experiences of migration and settlement for Black Africans in Australia has similarly focused mostly on people from refugee backgrounds (e.g. Anderson et al., 2019; Khawaja et al., 2017; Kuyini & Kivunja, 2020; Ramsay, 2016; Renzaho et al., 2011; Rivalland, 2020), demonstrating a research gap on the experiences of different migrant cohorts. This chapter specifically looks at the parenting experiences of skilled Black African migrants and calls for more research on the experiences of people and communities from diverse Afrodiasporic backgrounds. We suggest that this understanding helps to expand knowledge on the complexity of parenting in multicultural, transcultural and intercultural contexts. In mainstream articulations and at times in research, deficit discourses can lead to all Black people of African heritage being assumed to have experienced trauma prior to migration and stereotyped as lacking in education or complex thinking in professional or personal relationships (Udah & Singh, 2018). The above stereotyping of African families may inform how social and educational services respond to parenting strategies in Black African families, as the key concerns are often discussed through frameworks of ‘community deficiency, rather than strength, particularly when communities of colour are being examined’ (DePouw & Matias, 2016, p. 237). Therefore, decolonised research and practice must acknowledge the damage of ‘single stories’ on immigrants and ‘move away from deficit-focused discourses of acculturation’ (Ayika et al., 2018, p. 8). Consistent with findings from Salami et al.’s (2017) synthesis of international research on African migrant parenting, our participants reported integrating ‘physical discipline, cultural values, and religious practices into their parenting practices’ (p. 20). The stories presented in this chapter provide examples of positive adaptation in

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parenting approaches that contradict well-worn stereotypes about migrant familial dynamics and highlight significant experiences of racialisation for children that are under-addressed within existing systems. Both point to areas for future research and practice to consider.

Critical Race Parenting in Australia: Theoretical Considerations This chapter employs the framework and key elements of critical race theory (CRT) to conceptualise African migrant experiences of parenting Black children in Australia. As a theory, CRT makes the invisibility of whiteness visible and highlights the normalised and standardised Eurocentric parenting practices within Australia. More significantly, CRT provides a platform through which a society’s assumed ontological and epistemological norms, values, beliefs and accepted behaviours can be interrogated to reveal how they function in creating blind spots for racism. While emphasising the importance of viewing child welfare policies within a critical cultural, historical and political context, CRT in the Australian social work context probes the various ways childrearing practices among Black immigrants are influenced by seemingly ‘colour-blind’ and ‘race-neutral’ practices, policies and institutional structures. According to Sólorzano et al. (2005), CRT is comprised of five key elements: (1) recognition of the centrality of race and racism in our societal structures; (2) the challenge to dominant ideologies, including critiquing notions of colour-blindness and race neutrality; (3) a commitment to social justice and praxis; (4) the centrality of experiential knowledge; and (5) historical contextualisation and interdisciplinary perspectives. Within CRT, critical race parenting is a conceptual approach that DePouw and Matias (2016) argue includes ‘a critical analysis of systems of oppression, including institutional racism, and [how it] is embedded within the lived experiences, knowledge systems, values, and pedagogies…of families and communities of color’ (p. 237). Articulations of race within parenting dynamics mean Black parents have to consider how race affects their children’s identity, perception, opportunities and wellbeing. Thus, parenting moves beyond teaching children how to be happy and to thrive, but also how to survive racism and thrive in spite of it. DePouw and Matias (2016) add: To literally survive racism and the violence brought about by White supremacy, communities of color have long recognized the need for instilling in their/our children a critical understanding of institutional racism, as well as the strategies and identities essential to collective and individual health, safety, and endurance. (p. 237)

As hooks (1994) writes, for Black, Indigenous and other people of colour, race plays a central role in the formation of identity and determines important aspects of their lives, including work, relationships and education. Therefore, employing a CRT framework allows us to contextualise institutional and everyday racism as the milieu

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within which African parents must negotiate the challenges of raising Black children who are marked as ‘different’ within predominantly white spaces. Ndhlovu (2014) argues that the ‘physical appearance and cultures of [Black Africans] are perceived as not fitting within mainstream normative conceptions of Australian identity’ (p. 102), thus inviting additional layers of scrutiny and exclusion upon members of Black African communities. The label ‘African-Australian’ tends to be used reductively in Australia to designate only people who have continental African ancestry and present as phenotypically black. This homogenisation through the application of a continental designation assumes ‘racial, ethnic and cultural uniformity’ (Gebrekidan, 2018, p. 126) and carries with it pejorative layers of negative stereotypes associated with being Black and African. The Australian media plays a significant role in constructing the identities of those marked as ‘Black Africans’ through deficit discourses (Anderson & Gatwiri, 2020), often ‘associating them with inferiority and pathologizing and problematizing them as lacking in something, as morally suspect and crime-prone or easily falling foul of the law’ (Udah & Singh, 2018, p. 37). Research on the experiences of migration and settlement for Black Africans in Australia has also similarly focused mostly on people from refugee backgrounds (e.g. Anderson et al., 2019; Khawaja et al., 2017; Kuyini & Kivunja, 2020; Ramsay, 2016; Renzaho et al., 2011; Rivalland, 2020), demonstrating a research gap on the experiences of different migrant cohorts. Previous studies have documented the profoundly negative impacts of racial profiling and racial scrutiny of Black Africans, their families and communities (Benier et al., 2018; Gatwiri, 2021; Weber, 2020). More specifically, Ramsay (2016) has explored how anti-Black biases can lead to the removal of Black children through the child welfare system, revealing the ‘institutionalised logics of whiteness and the intersecting assumptions of race, culture and class that these encompass’ (p. 332). To date, young Black, Indigenous and other people of colour—including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in particular—remain significantly overrepresented in the Australian out-of-home welfare system and juvenile justice system (Cunneen, 2020). Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are 11 times more likely to be placed in out-of-home care in Australia than non-Indigenous children (AIHW, 2019; Gatwiri et al., 2019). Colonial practices that involved forceful removal of children based on Indigeneity continue to have a profound impact on First Nations communities and families (Gatwiri et al., 2019). As Oates (2020) states: Historically, Australian Indigenous people have not had a positive relationship with child protection services … [they] have been subjected to government policies that dislocated [them] from their land, culture, traditional parenting and other social and economic practices … Indigenous children [were] removed from their families as a result of these policies are commonly referred to in Australia as the ‘Stolen Generations’ … Many of the Stolen Generations were subject to ongoing sexual, physical and psychological abuse and severe neglect in state-run institutions and foster homes, in addition to the trauma experienced as a result of removal from their families and communities.

Another study by Harnett and Featherstone (2020) has shown that decisions to remove First Nations children can be ‘false positive errors’ whereby the removal of children can be actioned within ‘families who are providing an adequately safe and nurturing

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environment’ (p. 1). Mugadza, Mujeyi et al. (2019), Mugadza, Stout et al. (2019) have similarly argued that in the Australian context, dominant Eurocentric ideologies and definitions of childhood and ‘best interest of the child’ discourses can be useful in furthering child safety, yet they sometimes ‘overshadow how cultural beliefs, practices, and tradition affect children’ and inferiorise parenting styles from nonwhite communities (p. 520). When Black and Indigenous parents strive to protect their children from unfair racial targeting, profiling and discrimination, it may involve strategies of control that are viewed as inappropriate from a Eurocentric perspective. Yet, hypercriticism of Black parents means authoritarian parenting can be reductively presented as a preference even when it is not. Responding to concerns regarding Black African parenting and influencing how researchers and practitioners engage with and support migrant families must be understood critically within the white-dominant context that underpins Australian educational and social services practices and child protection regimes in particular, and how that can function to inferiorise parenting practices within non-white communities.

Parenting Black Children in White Spaces Participants in this study were asked about their parenting experiences as Black African migrants in a white, Western culture such as Australia. Of the total participants in this study, 25 had children, although specific demographic details about their children were not collected. Participants were invited to reflect on their parenting experiences following migration to Australia and share the meanings they attached to those articulations, allowing the opportunity to centre African voices in intercultural parenting research. Two key themes emerged from this question: the need to explicitly teach children about race and racism and foster positive racial identities, and the complexities of navigating tensions between ‘African’ and ‘Western’ cultural values. For context, however, the families represented in this study do not necessarily represent the dominant narratives of parenting challenges associated with refugee communities, who often need significant support in family programmes. Upon migration, African parents who may have come from Black-majority societies where processes of racialisation are not a prominent feature of day-to-day experiences must confront the reality that for children of colour in white spaces, ‘racialized discrimination and stigma are considered part of the normative ecological context’ (Samuels, 2009, p. 83). Indeed, the centrality of race can be apparent in their children’s experiences even when parents and other people in their lives attempt to screen out or ignore the impacts of racialisation; for example, through appeals to notions of colour-blindness. Our participants’ experiences of parenting their Black children in white spaces are explored below through analysis and discussion of three sub-themes.

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Teaching Black Children About Race and Racism Mapedzahama and Kwansah-Aidoo (2013) argue that diasporic identities are marked through race, where the ‘process of becoming Black and the contradiction of blackness’ becomes a significant factor in the racialisation of Black immigrants in Australia (p. 68). In this study, many parents described the experience of realising that their child was highly visible within white contexts, and then needing to develop strategies to discuss and explain racial differences and identity with their children. Julia discussed her concerns with taking her young daughter to childcare because she was ‘very, very openly … the only Black child in that child care’. Similarly, Kissa recalled how her children ‘went to schools where many times they were the only children of colour’. She adds, ‘I just need[ed] to look on the field, and I could pick up my son because of the colour of his skin, straight up. And the reality is—if I can see that, the world also sees that’. She described how she and her partner were engaged in an ‘ongoing conversation’ about racial identity with their children and what racial expectations would be placed on them as Black children within an Australian context: They need to understand … that they are people of colour and for people of colour, there are things that are acceptable and things that are not acceptable. So for example, we would say to our sons if you went out with your [white] friends, there are some things [they] will do and would be acceptable, but if you did that, it would be unacceptable. (Kissa)

Kissa emphasised that her children were both Black boys, which was a source of particular concern for her due to the gendered aspects of racialisation in Australia. She highlighted that even though her children are adults now, her concern for their wellbeing and inclusion remained strong. This concern was not misplaced; even parents of young adults reported incidents such as Awinja’s son being refused entry to a pub because the bouncer told him, ‘we do not allow your type of people to come here’. Most participants in our study emphasised their strong belief that Black children in Australia needed to be taught that societal expectations placed on them were different to those placed on white children. Awinja reflected on a conversation she overheard between her daughter and her white friends that exemplified the burden of race and racialisation for Black Africans in Australia: This week I heard her tell one of her friends, no one day passes without her thinking about this [race]. Yeah, and her friends were really, really … shocked, they said they do not have to think about it. Then, she said ‘every day when I get on to the bus, you know, I think about who I am and if somebody is going to say something, when I am on the streets, you know I think about what will somebody think or say or do’.

Other parents also highlighted how their children were expected to be faultless, work extra hard and be exemplary representatives of African and Black communities. Citing the challenge of Africans being ‘tarred with the same brush’ in the media, Kissa explicitly discusses the responsibility of positively representing all ‘Africans’ with her now-grown Black sons. She tells them:

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Because you are a young African male, a 20-year-old, it is important for you to know that everywhere you go to, you are representing us positively … we speak to our boys about adding value to the community. They need to be always conscious, wherever they go, wherever they are.

Wanjiru and Paul similarly argued that it was important to teach their boys about their racial and cultural identity. They asserted that explicitly teaching their children about race was necessary for survival in this context ‘because colour and race will always come into play when you are in a country like Australia’. They also emphasised the need for their children to be positive exemplars and the belief that different expectations of behaviour would be applied to them, noting they ‘always have to work harder, and … behave in a certain way’, a prescription they believed was unnecessary for white children. Teaching children about their Blackness also entailed educating them about standing up for themselves when they confront implicit or explicit racism. Wanjiru and Paul reflected that they incorporated ‘teachings of race’ in their parenting, arguing this was a necessary tool for empowering their children through knowledge. They explained that this approach was important ‘because[if] you prepare your child and you empower them … [then] they already know who they are’. They argued that with this preparation, ‘if someone tries to use their Blackness in a negative way’, their children would be better equipped to respond appropriately. Many participants described numerous experiences of supporting their children in dealing with experiences of racism and teaching them how to respond with confidence when they encountered it. For example, Awinja explained how she taught her daughter it was always important to ‘call out’ racism when she hears her (white) friends making racist remarks, while reassuring her that she, herself, had to learn how to do that in professional and personal situations. In addition to supporting children to respond to and deal with racial slurs and microaggressions, parents had to support children who experienced what might be described as ‘positive discrimination’ through exotified blackness. Julia shared her concern over her daughter’s experiences of exotification: She told me that there is a girl in her class who keeps calling her ‘Black Beauty’ and she does not like it. I proceeded to ask how many times she had been called this. She said, ‘Oh! All the time, mom. She just keeps calling me “Black Beauty”, and you know I keep telling her, “my name is Sherry*”, and she still keeps calling me Black Beauty’.

Liu (2017) reports that Black women must ‘contend with physical and psychological stereotypes that exoticize and dehumanize their bodies and their identities’ (p. 534). The erasure of the child’s wishes to be referred to by her name rather than the exotifying nickname, and other reported experiences of unsolicited hair touching of children (especially for young girls), exemplifies some of the ways exoticisation can be projected onto Black bodies. Awinja also described her daughter’s experience of being tokenised due to peers perceiving her as a ‘cool person’ to befriend. This type of tokenistic friendship was premised on expectations that she would embody the looks and behaviours of famous African-American celebrities, ‘like Beyoncé’,

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and this created expectations that she would become what her mother described as a ‘person that she is not’. The experience of being ‘singled out’ and either discriminated against or tokenised due to aspects of their Black phenotypical characteristics, such as their skin or hair, or aspects of their ‘African’ culture, was reported to have significantly impacted the children of some participants in this study. This was expressed through the desire to obliterate their Blackness or Africanness in ways that would reduce their hypervisibility, such as through the effort to straighten their hair or put blond highlights in it, or refusing to eat ‘African food’ and expressing embarrassment at their parents’ accents or displays of African culture in social settings. This was reported as challenging for parents, who attempted to support their children through such processes as much as they could: I have seen my kids wanting to have different hair and they will be trying my hair products, so they can have spiky hair like their white friends in school and I have to keep explaining to them, ‘now, your hair is different and your hair will never be like your friend’s hair’, but not from a negative angle, but from a very positive angle. (Wanjiru)

This effort to support children through such experiences was frequently described as inspiring most parents in this study to be explicit with children ‘about what they looked like, how they are different to other people, and [that] people may want to point out those differences’, and built upon their desire to emphasise pride in their African heritage and ‘the good things and not so good things’ from both cultures their children were exposed to, as Sumbo phrased it. However, other parents interviewed in this study emphasised that children ‘do not see race’ or, if they did, were not concerned about it until others used it as a negative point of difference. Therefore, some of these parents decided ‘not to make race an issue’ unless it was necessary to do so. These parents appeared to avoid discussing race and racism with their children. For example, Mukisa commented: Race has never been an issue, and we always taught our children race is not an issue. We are all the same, so it was easy for them to fit in. Interestingly with kids, they fit in easily because kids are not racist.

Ajoba, in particular, reflected that she believed ‘when it comes to my children, they do not really have that idea of … “I am a certain colour” … we have not had that conversation because there has been no reason to—we are people, we are not “coloured” people’. Other parents explained a similar emphasis on avoiding racial identification through references to Christian values of ‘sameness’: We believe that everybody is the same in the eyes of God and that is what my kids have grown up knowing. And when they are with their white friends, they actually think they are the same, they are exactly the same, so they consider themselves the same as everyone else. (Amani)

This could be understood as a form of ‘colour-blind’ parenting, where there is a strong identification with mainstream Australian and Christian discourses that all people ‘are all the same’. It can be coupled with the contention that racism is not a significant issue in contemporary, multicultural Australian society. Yet, as some parents in this

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study reported, even young children could notice racial difference and would begin commenting on it, even when the parents did not draw attention to this difference. As Abasi reflected, ‘we took [our son] to a kindergarten, and at the kindergarten obviously, some kids would call him Black, so he started realising that people have colour’. Colour-blind discourses can therefore serve to obfuscate and minimise the continued existence and effects of racism for those who are impacted by it. Following Mapedzahama (2019), we contend that mainstream discourses of colour-blindness can be interpreted as forms of racism that situate racial discrimination as a thing of the past without contemporary relevance.

Teaching Black Children About Racial Dignity and Self-Worth A majority of participants reported that a significant aspect of teaching children about their Blackness was simultaneously teaching them about racial dignity and self-worth. This is because Blackness is often inferiorised within white-dominant contexts, and as such, Black African children can grow up internalising feelings of inferiority due to their race. Paat and Pellebon (2012) state that ‘newly arrived immigrant children, in particular, need strong encouragement from their parents to explore their identity affiliation and combat the risk of stigma or stereotypes’ (p. 138). Some participants supported this approach strongly. Sally explained: We have conversations about what they look like, how they are different to other people, and people may want to point out those differences. Being different does not mean being inferior or anything like that ... we talk to them to be confident about who they are and to be proud about where they have come from and their African heritage.

Sally argued that it was important to teach children about race before they start internalising any negative messaging about race. Other parents reported different ways of affirming their children’s identities, although some families particularly emphasised instilling positive African cultural identities to support the development of positive self-worth through dignifying African culture. Wanjiru and Paul reported that giving their children African names was a way to emphasise that they were ‘Africans first’ and a decolonising parenting strategy to ‘move away’ from the colonised mindset of Africans needing to bear English names. Teaching racial dignity and self-worth was considered necessary because most participants reported that their children faced prejudice and discrimination, although to varying extents. Odera pointed out that in the schooling system, ‘there are a lot of in-the-face conversations that the kid cannot avoid’—issues of which other white children in Australia need not even be aware. He described instances where his son had been called ‘a nigger’ and threatened with violence, as well as needing to fight for his daughter’s right to wear her Afro-natural hair in braids in school. Such incidents significantly impacted their family: It put a lot of pressure on them and on me as a parent to explain without creating differences between them and the white kids. [It] is really important that they do not feel inferior or

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anything. We create a lot of explanations and conversations around who [they] are … so it is harder to parent in Australia. (Odera)

This was a common theme for participants in this study. Other parents also discussed being highly aware of the need to prepare children for the possibility—or indeed likelihood—that they would experience race- or culture-based discrimination. In some instances, they reported that this created a significant burden and strain for their families.

‘Getting a PhD in Parenting’: Preparedness Among Parents Given the context of race relations in Australia described above, it is crucial that racialised migrants feel prepared to support their children within this context. Odera mentioned that he had to re-learn parenting all over again in Australia: What you know about being a father is not what it means to be a father in Australia. So you find yourself becoming a new student when you are supposed to have a PhD in being a father … People are looking at the kid, and they are different, and so you have to start educating the kid to understand that and believe in themselves. So it’s more than just being a father.

The extent to which race would become such a defining marker, and the visibility of Black children within white spaces, appeared to be unanticipated by some parents surveyed in the study. For example, Vera reflected she ‘had not even prepared’ for the complexities of parenting a Black child in Australia. She pondered whether it would have been more beneficial if she had highlighted to her children that they ‘are different … [because] they are children of colour’. Other participants, such as the couple Wanjiru and Paul, who had prior travel and work experiences in Western countries, appeared better resourced to prepare their children for the racial experiences they would encounter as Black children moving through white spaces. They described the elaborate preparation they put into teaching their children about race before their arrival in Australia, which included visiting historical sites in the United States that were relevant to the civil rights movement. Paul explained: I wanted them to see, to be exposed to it, to understand the evils of slavery. Not so that they can hate or dislike anybody, but it is an important part of who they are … I want them to understand that this is what white people did to Black people … to children, mothers, fathers, the Black people who were nobody—that is an integral part of their history.

They believed this preparation helped cushion their children from the impacts of racism, arguing that ‘no one can use Blackness against them’ when children had a strong sense of who they were and positive self-worth. Their efforts could be interpreted as not only building a positive identity for their children within the Australian context but also moving towards the development of a transnational Black identity within their family.

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Negotiating Western Versus African Parenting Styles Collectivist Versus Individualistic Values Collectivist cultural orientations play a significant role in parenting approaches within most African cultures. When people migrate from collectivistic to individualistic countries, they undergo a complex acculturation process ‘that can impact on decisions parents make about managing parenting in a diaspora situation’ (Renzaho et al., 2011, p. 238). Themes about ‘community’ expectations arose in the context of ‘preserving’ key ‘African values’ that parents felt were important but were missing in Australia. For example, John and Julia reflected: There are certain values that as a family we believe in and will always try and inculcate those. These are just certain fundamental things that we try to instill on the kids because we realised that the environment is too relaxed. This environment does not teach persistence and the environment does not teach resilience.

A more prominent feature of the data from this study was the emphasis on navigating intercultural parenting dynamics and partnered parents having to work closely and support each other because they had no other assistance. The majority reflected that ‘back home’ they had extensive community support in the form of domestic live-in help, extended family support and social networks. Therefore, isolation was reported as challenging for many of these couples. Yet conversely, it often represented a unique opportunity for positive changes in gender dynamics and parenting styles within their families, with low reporting of protracted marital and familial conflict. Participants also reflected on how they navigated the complexity of the cultural distance between their collectivist upbringing in Africa and the individualistic values that dominate in Australia. In collectivist cultures, the value placed on the family and community is higher than on the individual. Framing the focus on the family as a strong aspect of African cultures, Maurice said, ‘what we talk about is about family, not individual’, emphasising that what ‘affects one person will affect the entire family’. Similar sentiments extolling the value of African collectivist cultural traditions were shared by Awinja: You know in this house, we share. If you cook, we all eat; if I cook, we all eat. I said [to my son] I do not mind you doing it [differently] out there, but when it comes to my house, there are values that must remain in the house. I made it really clear that we cannot negotiate those things and those are some of the good values of our culture of sharing. You know that we are community oriented and family oriented and we are not individualistic.

For collectivist cultures, cultural values are often employed as the referential context for parenting. When ‘African values’ were invoked strongly by our participants, they emphasised their efforts to preserve what Awinja had described as ‘the good values of our culture’ within the family in order to maintain the ‘collective integrity of the community rather than protecting individual rights’ (Mugadza, Mujeyi et al., 2019; Mugadza, Stout et al., 2019, p. 2933).

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Role of Christian Values Another way parents reported adapting their parenting styles was by blending African and Christian values to various extents. Due to increased secularisation in the West, the influence of religious beliefs on the parenting practices of migrants has generally been under-researched (for exceptions, see Betancourt et al., 2015; Habecker, 2016). Yet Horwath and Lees (2010) argue that ‘rather than religious beliefs and practices disappearing, the ways in which beliefs are demonstrated appear to be changing’ (p. 84). Many respondents in this study described religion as not only a belief system but an extension of their identity, a coping mechanism and a framework with which to parent. The majority viewed the Bible as the ultimate guide for parenting their children. For example, Milly stated, ‘I’m a Christian, a believer, and born again, so that has been what has guided the way I have parented my children’. Kwame and Ajoba also reported that their parenting values came ‘straight from our Christian background’, had ‘nothing to do with’ African values and reflected a strict adherence to what ‘the scriptures say’. Other parents reflected on the interface between religion and corporal punishment. Some participants interpreted disciplining a child by ‘smacking’ as a Christian duty and demonstration of love. Wanjiru and Paul added that due to their faith, they ‘believe in spare the rod, spoil the child’. They admitted that administering discipline this way ‘is very difficult’ because it is painful for the child and ‘you feel it too’. Yet, they believed discipline is crucial because ‘if you neglect to discipline them, the system will discipline them’. This concern with needing to protect their children from extrafamilial sources of discipline (e.g. at school or through policing) by enforcing very high standards of behaviour through strict discipline, was particularly pronounced for parents of boys. Parents also used their Christian values to encourage and instil self-worth and confidence in their Black children who might struggle with feelings of low selfesteem due to experiences of racism: We have had instances … where he has sort of alluded to the fact that somebody told him ‘you are black, you are not like us, so you can’t fit in’, and we have taken that up very quickly with the school authorities, [but] we have [also] tried to tell him in a soft way…being African does not make him inferior. That is the way God created him and we invoke Christian beliefs in encouraging him. (Banji)

Through utilisation of creation narratives of ‘sameness’ and the notion that ‘everybody is made in the image of God’, Christian migrant parents can employ a religious framework to empower Black children to grapple with issues of racism. This approach aligns neatly with the dominant sociocultural framework in Australia that posits the inherent equality of all humans while potentially downplaying the real impacts of racism, illustrating a complex attempt to harmonise disparate cultural influences on parenting practices for some of the participants.

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Intercultural Parenting—Accommodating Multiple Value Systems Participants reported many instances in which they creatively accommodated and blended multiple value systems within their own approach to parenting in Australia. Although in the literature, ‘intercultural parenting’ often refers specifically to parenting in multicultural, multiracial or multi-faith households (Bhugun, 2017), we deploy this term intentionally to highlight the many ways African parents chose and applied what they perceived as the ‘best of both’ values systems, thus capturing the spirit of contemporary definitions of ‘interculturalism’ (Mansouri, 2017). A systematic review of literature by Mugadza, Mujeyi et al. (2019) (see also Mugadza, Stout et al., 2019) found that African migrant parenting styles are generally characterised ‘by very high parental expectations of children … imposing obedience and respect for elders with harsh punishment for deviation … and using corporal punishment as a method of discipline’ (p. 2928). This may cause ongoing conflict between African migrant parents (who may be determined to preserve collective cultural integrity) and their children (who may be determined to seek individual autonomy). For many parents in this study, potential conflicts were resolved or navigated through careful attempts to strike a balance between different cultural influences. Jenny and Patrick reported it had been ‘an ongoing battle to let go of what we are used to’, with their child sometimes threatening them with ‘dialling 000’ if they were perceived as being excessively harsh. Jenny favourably contrasted her disciplining style—which might sometimes include what she described as a ‘smack’— with the abusive physical disciplining she experienced as a child. Yet, as a couple, they reflected that getting the balance right was ‘very tricky’. They added that when their son responded to discipline by telling them ‘you have to stop, you cannot do that’, it caused them to worry that ‘very soon, he might tell me I will put you to the police if you do this again’. This led them to ‘be careful on what to do … in terms of managing dispute’. Guidelines and regulations of child protection and the boundaries of what constitutes child abuse or maltreatment in Australia were also a key area of concern for other participants. For example, Amani emphasised that ‘there is a big difference parenting here and back home, especially … with the Children’s Protection Act’. She noted this was a significant adjustment, as in her home country, ‘if I did not use a cane for my child when they have been naughty, I would be looked at like a bad mother—like I am not teaching the child in the right way … the community would ostracise me’. Jabali and Milly emphasised that their accommodation of some Western values did not mean erosion of their ‘strong African background’. They cited the acceptance of homosexuality in Australia as a cultural value ‘they have to accept’, not because they agreed with it but because ‘here we will have to be careful and treat everyone equally’. Reflecting on the complex negotiations, changes and adaptations required in intercultural parenting, they added: We needed to be cognisant of the fact that we live in a different community and different country with different values, so the values that align with ours are accepted [by us], and we

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ignore the values that do not align with ours … for example, I do not allow my children to call me by name because I am African. There are other things we struggle with … things that in my culture [are not accepted].

Despite the challenges participants reported regarding navigating and adapting their parenting approach, they demonstrated high levels of awareness of different parenting practices and the ability to deploy a nuanced and blended parenting approach that incorporated a meld of the best of what they saw from African and Western parenting styles. For example, John and Julia described how they ‘have strictly adhered … to the good things that Australia provides’ while also respecting the positive values of their African heritage. Similarly, Jenny and Patrick reported that they ‘try to balance the two’ and have found a strong, workable blend they consider ‘60% African and 40% Australian’. Other participants described themselves as preferring to parent ‘the Western way’ because they were preparing their children to ‘live here and not Africa’. Odera illustrated this by suggesting that ‘you are not just thinking about parenting, you are preparing your kid to be stronger because there are a lot more layers in living here’. He added that while he did think it was okay for African migrants to ‘stick with the African way’, he believed that approach to parenting would ‘create a lot of issues’. Odera’s narrative demonstrates the paradox of parenting Black children in white spaces. Parents might attempt to teach their children how to wear their African ancestry with pride, yet, at the same time, encourage them to adopt as much ‘Australian-ness’ as possible to minimise the ‘issues’ they have to confront due to the hypervisibility of their skin colour. This sentiment was supported by John and Julie, who added that even though their children have ‘essentially grown up here’, they occasionally had to remind them ‘the truth of the matter’—that being Black in Australia works against them. They advise their children that they have to minimise the experiences of racism through ‘colour[ing] your colour by being the best’, because the best opportunities in Australia ‘will always be granted first and foremost to white Australians’.

Discussion: Black Children in a Racialised Context Among the significant challenges facing migrants who have relocated to Australia from African nations are issues of parenting and changing familial dynamics. Previous research has pointed out the need for sensitivity to different parenting values and cultural practices among health and social services providers (Ayika et al., 2018; Ramsay, 2016). Since many of these studies have focused on refugees, further studies such as this one that explore the experiences and challenges of different migrant cohorts are necessary. Some of the extant literature, while highlighting the challenges for parenting, has also been reserved in theorising how negative labelling, racialisation and racism inform parenting experiences for Black African migrants.

Discussion: Black Children in a Racialised Context

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However, research shows that Black Africans are more likely to have higher exposure to racism and other forms of discrimination than people from different ethnic groups (AHRC, 2010; Markus, 2016). This has emerged as a primary concern for participants in our study. In schools, sporting grounds, public transport, shopping centres and their neighbourhood, young Black people can experience racism and discrimination that negatively impacts health and wellbeing. For example, Priest et al. (2019) found youth from ‘visible minority’ groups experienced high levels of racial discrimination, and ‘combined, cumulative exposure to racial discrimination and bullying victimization significantly worsen socioemotional difficulties’ (p. 357). In recent years, negative stereotyping of Black Africans in Australia has been heightened through the intense scrutiny applied to African diaspora communities following a series of racialised panics regarding the supposed criminality of youths from African backgrounds (Majavu, 2020; Windle, 2008). The negative impacts of social exclusion and discrimination on health and wellbeing can undermine the sense of belonging that Black African migrants are able to establish (Benier et al., 2018; Udah & Singh, 2018; Weber, 2020) and lead to a sense of perpetual strangerhood in Australia. Given the prevalence of racial discrimination in Australia reflected in the anecdotes reported by many of our participants, ‘it is imperative that immigrant parents are educated about the salience of race and the realities of being a minority group for the sake of their children’ (Paat & Pellebon, 2012, p. 138). However, some parents in our study reported feeling unprepared to support their children through experiences of racialisation, racism, criminalisation and exotification, indicating key implications for education and health. Many participants highlighted that supporting children to develop the courage to call out racism and racial microaggressions was a significant parental challenge. However, since the burden of educating white people about race tends to be placed solely on the shoulders of people of colour, it can intensify feelings of racial battle fatigue (RBF). The constant expectation to calmly manage and respond to racial microaggressions can lead to various forms of emotional, mental and physical distress (Gatwiri, 2019; Smith et al., 2006). A significant paradox was also apparent in the tension between parental desires to inculcate pride in African ancestry and culture while simultaneously encouraging children to ‘curate’ their Blackness to minimise racialisation. Additionally, a gendered dimension to experiences of racialisation was apparent, with parents reporting more concern with potential criminalisation and racial profiling regarding male children and exotification and tokenism with female children. These concerns were sometimes linked to physical disciplinary practices that may not be considered entirely appropriate within the child protection context in Australia. These challenges point to key areas where social workers and other professionals working with migrant children and families may require a more nuanced grasp of racialisation’s intersectional complexities, including those related to gender, religion, visa status and class. As Renzaho et al. (2011) suggested, migrants from African communities require culturally sensitive support ‘to help them negotiate nuances and differences in parenting practices’ in the new environment (p. 236).

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Conclusion This chapter has highlighted the complex interface of race and parenting in Australia. Although the chapter reveals existing tensions ‘between the old collectivist and new individualistic social structures’ in migrant parenting dynamics (Renzaho et al., 2011, p. 238), participants in our study demonstrated a sophisticated awareness of intercultural parenting practices, high-level understanding of the Australian legal context, and the boundaries between discipline and abuse. Our research indicated that most skilled African migrant parents in this study successfully managed the tensions of raising children in complicated transnational, multicultural and intercultural environments, and showed a willingness to temper and adapt their parenting styles accordingly. In contrast to the experiences reported in other research with African migrant families in Australia (Kuyini & Kivunja, 2020; Muchoki, 2013), families in this study appeared to be adapting successfully to changed familial dynamics and developing parenting approaches that were responsive to their changed circumstances and environment without significant, sustained levels of familial conflict. Participants shared their sense of parenting and intergenerational family relations as a ‘battle’ at times, and reported some significant challenges in adapting their parenting approaches and supporting their children to thrive and grow as Black children in a white context. Yet overall, parents appeared confident that they had successfully weathered these challenges and done the best they could in raising confident, well-adjusted children with whom they had strong relationships. However, this observation highlights a need for further research on African migrant families from a child-centric position, as the absence of children’s perspectives is a limitation of the current study. Contrary to dominant representations of African migrant families as experiencing uniformly high levels of post-migration familial conflict and even violence and having a propensity towards authoritarian parenting, the skilled African migrant parents in this study reported being able to respond creatively to their changed circumstances and successfully adapted and changed their behaviour and attitudes. As reported in the previous chapter, this was often founded in the emergence of very different family dynamics post-migration, which sustained healthy and adaptive familial relationships during relocation. Therefore, it should not be assumed that all migrants from African nations are unaware of Western parenting practices and dominant child protection laws and norms, or are ‘set in their ways’. More research is needed to investigate how the development of Afrodiasporic identities among migrant families informs their parenting experiences, belonging and integration, and explore its relevance in various associated fields, including education, health, community and social work. However, the next chapter further explores some of the impacts and complexities of changing intergenerational relationships within the family for African families following migration to Australia. It provides an in-depth consideration of how men reflected on, reviewed and reconstructed their masculinity and views on gender roles post-migration, partly associated with the particular impact that changed relationships with their children had on them during this process.

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Chapter 8

Afro-Masculinities in an Australian Context

Abstract This chapter discusses a significant theme that emerged from this study on the Afrodiasporic experiences of skilled Black African migrants in Australia. It concerns African men and their changing masculine identities. The chapter employs a critical framework to probe how African men’s gender identities are produced and (re)produced, constructed and (re)constructed following their immigration to Australia. Findings showed that Black African men who migrated to Australia experience feeling symbolically expelled from the masculine hegemony in which they previously accrued patriarchal dividends in their countries of origin. Their relocation to Australia led to a reconfiguration of the meanings attached to their competing (old and new) masculine identities while actively and consciously employing various strategies to retain dignified masculinities within their families and community.

Introduction Within many African nations and Afrodiasporic communities, the domination of men in public spaces allows for the assumption that research and knowledge about African men and African masculinities would be a well-advanced field. Although substantial work has been written about African women and women in Africa (e.g. see Amadiume, 1997; Gatwiri, 2019; Kanogo, 2005; Ogundipe-Leslie, 1994), the experiences of African men, men in Africa, male African migrants and concepts of African masculinities are under-theorised and remain at the periphery of global work on masculinities (Ratele, 2020). In researching African men and their gendered experiences, it is crucial to think about ‘Africa’ contextually—politically, historically, culturally and as a geopolitical space (Gatwiri, 2019). The naming of places is not contextually or theoretically empty, and with the continent so ‘exceedingly diverse in terms of religion, language, climate, topography, economy, governance and culture’, theoretical complications in understanding what is meant by the label ‘African’ can arise (Morrell & Ouzgane, 2005, p. 1). Compounding all the images and stereotypes attached to understanding what it is to be African, the layered discursive meanings about Africa as the ‘dark continent’ warrant further critical explorations regarding its historical, political and cultural © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 K. Gatwiri and L. Anderson, Afrodiasporic Identities in Australia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-4282-2_8

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complexity and its global insubordination. However, the focus of this chapter is not to contextualise the meanings of Africa itself as a place or space as an objective in and of itself, but rather to draw on this complexity theoretically to show how African diversity informs African men’s identities and adoption of plural masculinities. The social construction of masculinity is influenced by articulations of gender produced by the culture within which one is located (Dover, 2005). Various manifestations of masculinity are compounded by the fact that ontologically, it is impossible to singularise and universalise the experiences, existence or reality of men’s expressions of masculinity. Therefore, this chapter does not attempt to position African men through a singularised and essentialist formulation of masculinity as there is no universality in any social constructs, including masculinity. The identities African men embody are an amalgamation of various subjectivities, and as such, it is essential to avoid a reductive construction of ‘African masculinity’ as if it were a monolithic concept. As Barker and Ricardo (2005) posit: There is no ‘typical’ young man in sub-Saharan Africa and no single African version of manhood. There are numerous African masculinities, urban and rural and changing historically, including versions of manhood associated with war, or being warriors and others associated with farming or cattle herding. There are indigenous definitions and versions of manhood, defined by tribal and ethnic group practices, and newer versions of manhood shaped by Islam and Christianity, and by Western influences, including the global media. (v)

This chapter employs a hegemonic masculinity framework to probe how Black African men’s gendered identities are produced and constructed, and then (re)produced and (re)constructed following their immigration to Australia. It argues that the complexity and plurality of African masculinities are informed by their diversity, including their class, religion and race. Findings from this study align with Barker and Ricardo’s (2005) argument that the masculinities of African men who have relocated to Australia are ‘(i) socially constructed; (ii) fluid over time and in different settings; and (iii) plural’ (p, v). As male migrants name and attach different meanings to their new and emerging masculinities in the diaspora, they are also actively engaging in the process of negotiating ways they can retain a degree of control through the creation of what Pasura and Christou (2018) refer to as ‘dignified masculinity’ (p. 522).

Contextualising African Masculinities in Australia The AHRC (2010) found that one of the most significant issues confronting African men in Australia was navigating anti-Black discourses and racialised attitudinal views on Black African men. These attitudes were perceived as having prevented them from finding work, attaining promotions, acquiring appropriate housing and integrating successfully into Australian multicultural society. The racial trauma spilling from these experiences into the personal and professional lives of Black African men can have significant consequences, including, but not limited to, increased incidence

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of depression, mental health breakdowns and suicidality (AHRC, 2010), increased domestic violence and substance misuse, and poor employability (Udah et al., 2019). The experience of immigration is complex and often includes the reconfiguration of old and new identities in an attempt to ‘fit in’ and acculturate to the new cultural context. One of these changes is the renegotiation of gender and identity roles. When men move from one country to another, they migrate with a whole set of assumptions, beliefs and practices associated with the characteristics of desirable and idealised masculinity in their home culture (Mungai & Pease, 2009). Immigration to Australia has occurred in ‘waves’, with large-scale African immigration being relatively recent. However, as Hibbins and Pease (2009) state, ‘each wave has been associated with xenophobia … racism, prejudice and discrimination’ (p. 8). As such, mainstream representations of African masculinities in Australia are predominantly bound up with racism and racialised discourses. African men have reported facing discrimination on multiple fronts from people assuming they are violent, threatening or dangerous, while simultaneously experiencing over-sexualisation due to racial tropes surrounding Black men’s sexuality (Majavu, 2018). Mutua (2006) argues that migration is a gendered and racialised experience articulated through hegemonic social systems that are hierarchical and stratified by race and class. This diasporic experience significantly impacts Black African men’s identities and subjectivities. On a global front, the position of the African male has also been diminished by colonialism and capitalism. For example, globalisation and transnational movement have informed how African men who move to Western countries navigate the variances of old and emerging masculinities (Mungai & Pease, 2009). As Black African men enter colonial, white-dominated spaces like Australia, where they are relegated to the margins due to race, class and immigrant status, the contours of their existing masculinities are defied and challenged. Due to the hierarchy of hegemonic masculinity and the deficit racial imagery of Black masculinities in Western discourses, African men in Australia are culturally dethroned from the patriarchal hierarchy they were likely to have occupied within their countries of origin. In terms of Connell’s (2005) theoretical categorisation of masculine hierarchies, in their new country, they are symbolically ‘expelled from the circle of legitimacy’ (p. 79) and must adapt to a position of ‘subordinated masculinity’. With many African men growing up in social contexts that imbue manhood with cultural notions of superiority (Uchendu, 2008), this is a significant challenge, as upon relocation to Australia, male Black African migrants must summon alternative forms of inviting respectability and dignifying their marginalised masculinities. African masculinities are often comprised of fragments of pre-colonial African cultures in combination with and influenced by ‘colonialism, neoliberal capitalism, and Pentecostal Christianity’ (Pasura & Christou, 2018, p. 525). Through the colonial process, migratory labour systems in Africa forced men to abandon their families, move into the city and produce underpaid labour for the colonial project. Under the colonial gaze, African men became the primary labourers for capitalist projects where the discourses of gender superiority were entrenched through their synonymisation with work (Gatwiri, 2019). Although the ‘notion of a male breadwinner was a colonial creation achieved through a migrant labour system and cash crop

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production, which targeted men’, the loss of men’s status and position as breadwinners in the current day can nevertheless still cause a ‘rupture of their sense of masculine identity’ (Pasura & Christou, 2018, pp. 525–529). As Mungai and Pease (2009) have reported, some African men in Australia have indeed experienced changed economic circumstances and familial dynamics with significant and varied impacts upon their life including their gender identity. Among these impacts are struggles to renegotiate their masculine identity away from a patriarchal view of manhood as ‘breadwinning’ because their ability to provide was conflated with cultural meanings of manhood and worth. As a disruptive ideology, colonialism positioned African men outside the masculinity hegemony and left them ‘without a place to stand’ (Ratele, 2020, p. 7). Upon relocation to Australia, African men often report that their authority as ‘heads of the household’ has diminished, and their roles as men are not as clear cut as they were in their home countries. However, while there were clear gendered roles and hierarchies in their original homes, African masculinity in its postcolonial expression has also been criticised for embodying homophobia, misogyny and lack of acknowledgement of how it reproduces the exploitation of the African woman due to the patriarchal order (Mungai & Pease, 2009). For example, Mungai and Pease (2009) argued that men in their research acknowledged that the subservience of their female partners prior to migration was linked to financial dependence on their partner’s wage. This means that when women gained employment or welfare support through social services agencies in Australia, men suffered a loss of power and experienced a destabilisation of their male identity. The men in Mungai and Pease’s (2009) study expressed feeling displaced or being replaced by supports such as Centrelink, with some expressing that they had been relegated to the inferior role of ‘woman’, which they perceived as a form of emasculation. In this way, Australian social welfare institutions are seen as affecting African masculinity. They disrupt the traditional family dynamics that normalise and naturalise men as providers and ‘breadwinners’, and challenge men’s expectations of women’s obedience, servitude and domesticity as an indicator of respect. However, as we explore in this chapter, the picture for emerging masculinities in Afrodiasporic contexts is highly complex, and men’s experiences are not always uniform or their experiences consistently negative. The ideas explored within this chapter suggest that African men may ‘positively extend’ their understandings of masculinity during immigration. Yet, this contention is not deployed uncritically to suggest that ‘masculinities in Australia were better’; rather, a different cultural and social space can allow migrants the opportunity to ‘see’ and assess alternative ideologies on manhood and incorporate the aspects that best served themselves and their families in their daily lives.

Theorising Masculinities: Hegemony and Intersectionality Utilising Connell’s (2005) hegemonic masculinity theoretical framework, we probe how Black African skilled male migrants to Australia interpret their own identity and

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view gender roles as a way of interrogating the attitudes and meanings they attach to their masculinities. Although contested, the theory of hegemonic masculinity is widely used to define and discuss how masculinities across the world are socially constructed. Hegemonic masculinity as a system of power ‘separates those men in a dominant position, who are able to live up to the cultural ideal and attain hegemonic status from those who are subordinated and marginalised by it’ (Coles, 2008, p. 233). Hegemonically, masculine identity is constructed discursively through the subordination of other men/masculinities. It is also commonly understood to be a pattern of practice that justifies and rationalises men’s dominance over women and subordinated or marginalised men. Connell and Messerschmidt (2005) argue that it is the most idealised way of being a man, and the one that accords the most significant social benefits and status to those who meet those norms. As such, it requires all other men to align and position themselves in as relationship to this category. This means ‘it embodie[s] the currently most honoured way of being a man, it require[s] all other men to position themselves in relation to it, and it ideologically legitimate[s] the global subordination of women to men’ (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005, p. 832). Although Australia is a country characterised by multiple legal and social commitments to gender equality, hegemonic masculinity remains a significant factor in the constructions of gender norms, pressures on identity formation, and a range of social issues, including workplace culture, differential health and wellbeing outcomes for men and women and incidence and experience of gendered violence (Flood, 2020; Our Watch, 2021). In other words, hegemonic masculinity is an ideologically legitimised enactment of power over other men, women and children. The concept of hegemony is rooted in the work of Italian theorist Antonio Gramsci, who argued that there exist commonly accepted ideologies that are seen as natural and inevitable, which underpin power structures that produce patterns of dominating behaviours. This conception can be understood in the context of the production of dominant ideas promoting versions of masculinity that benefit some while oppressing others (Jewkes et al., 2015). In hegemonic masculinity, men accrue benefits by entering a space of cultural archetype that regulates ‘ideal’ masculinity tropes. Ideal masculinities are therefore constructed based on cultural and social contexts. For example, white masculinities are contextualised within discourses of race, whereby white men benefit from idealised versions of good masculinity while Black men are subordinated and delegitimatised by it. In an African context, class, ethnicity, tribe or religion replaces the context of race as the location within which ideal masculinity is positioned. As Connell and Messerschmidt (2005) argue: Hierarchy of masculinities is a pattern of hegemony, not a pattern of simple domination based on force. Cultural consent, discursive centrality, institutionalization, and the marginalization or delegitimation of alternatives are widely documented features of socially dominant masculinities. Also, well supported is the original idea that hegemonic masculinity need not be the commonest pattern in the everyday lives of boys and men. Rather, hegemony works in part through the production of exemplars of masculinity (e.g., professional sports stars), symbols that have authority despite the fact that most men and boys do not fully live up to them. (p. 846)

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According to Connell (2005), ‘non-ideal’ masculinities are constructed in three categories: (1) subordinated masculinities, (2) complicit masculinities, and (3) marginalised masculinities. Subordinated men—for example, gay men or gender non-conforming men—have traditionally been barred from the hegemony as their expressions of masculinity can be interpreted as diminishing the legitimacy of the ideal masculinity. By de-legitimising subordinate masculinities, hegemonic masculinity asserts (and reasserts) its superiority, legitimacy and authority (Lusher & Robins, 2007). Complicit masculinities consist of men who do not actively seek to reproduce hegemonic masculinity ideals yet still benefit from it. Such men may view hegemonic masculinity as ultimately powerful and seek an alliance with it. They gain from hegemony and accrue the material, physical and symbolic benefits of patriarchy. Lusher and Robins (2007) argued that it is through their alignment with the category of complicit masculinity that ‘the majority of men ultimately provides general legitimacy for hegemonic masculinity’ (p. 403). Marginalised masculinities consist of men who belong to social groups dominated by other more powerful masculinities and are not permitted to aspire to the masculine hegemony. These intersections may include Black men, poor men or men with disabilities. Essentially, their ‘type of masculinities’ are seen as ‘problematic’, so they are socially and culturally expelled to gatekeep the hegemony of ideal masculinity. Emphasising the importance of intersectional understandings in masculinity studies, Yep (2010) wrote that ‘intersectionality offers a deeper and more embodied exploration of the complex particularities of individual lives and identities associated with race, class, gender, sexuality and national locations’ (p. 173). Recognition of hegemonic masculinities’ intersectional pattern reveals how masculine subjectivities are organised and mediated through the subjectivities of race, class, sexual orientation and disability, exemplifying how varied hierarchies of social differentiation inform the experiences of manhood (Hibbins & Pease, 2009). Drawing on Connell’s (2005) categorisations of masculinities, expressions of African masculinities in Australia tend to occupy forms of masculinities that are not hegemonically ideal. As they attempt to find a place in the hegemony, their former masculinities are challenged and forced to change, and new ones are acquired and adopted—but this still is no guarantee of acceptance into the masculine hegemony in Australia. As will be discussed in the findings, these changes play a ‘significant role in promoting a “de-gendered” social realm in which the dynamics that maintain gender relationality and hegemony are obscured’ (Budgeon, 2014, p. 325).

Masculine Identity Development Participants in this study were asked about their perspectives on whether the understanding of their masculinity has changed since immigrating to Australia. They were tasked with reflecting on how and why their perspectives on their masculinity and gender roles may have changed due to the experience of relocating to a new country. Below we offer an analysis of three dominant thematic categorisations

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evident in the narratives men shared following their reflection on the research questions under investigation. These include: (1) an analysis of how men described the development and construction of their pre-migration masculinities, (2) an analysis of how they described the changes and loss that forced a reconstruction of their old masculinities into new masculinities, and (3) a review of how they viewed these new and emerging masculinities. Participants proffered powerful reflections on how their masculine identities and meanings attached to who they were ‘as men’ were intimately intertwined within the context they grew up and were embedded within. Identity development is mainly concerned with the reproduction of ‘the hegemonic ideal’ (Hinojosa, 2010, p. 180). As Hibbins and Pease (2009) argue, many men never get the opportunity to consciously construct their masculinity, as it is progressively predetermined for them by hegemonic social and cultural factors prevailing in their environment. In this study, men were offered an opportunity to think and reflect on where their ideas and attitudes about manhood and masculinities emerged. It has been argued that fatherhood, in particular, is a critical element in the construction of masculinities for young boys, and the absence of paternal figures in boys’ childhood can impact their development, self-esteem and lead to a ‘crisis of masculinity’ (Morrell, 2006; Wood & Brownhill, 2018). Fatherhood shapes early-onset ideas about masculinity in young boys as it ‘impresses on them, directs and orients them’ (Berggren, 2014, p. 246). This is because ‘gender roles, gender ideals, and gender identities are largely taught and passed on within the family structure and taught to us through observation, conversation, and parent–child interaction’ (Kannan, 2018). As fathers and other men express their own masculinities shaped by their culture, family context and the overarching social fabric within which they live, they wittingly or unwittingly transmit the expectations of the masculinity hegemony to their sons. Some participants in this study indicated that the way they understood their masculinity and manhood was informed by their fathers or the men they looked up to as young boys. Others emphasised the dominant cultural expectations of manhood within the context they grew up in or their families and religion as the predominant influences on their development of ideas about masculinity and male identity. The influence of male paternal figures is generally seen as critical in constructing masculinity and informing the nuances of manhood. Men raised without consistent and present male figures as models may experience unique challenges in constructing their masculine identities and the meanings they attach to them. For example, Paul, a senior specialist nurse, stated that he lacked a ‘father figure’ due to his father’s absence during his formative years as a boy. According to him, this left him at odds with what ‘being a man’ really meant: When I grew up most of my life, my dad was not there … So, all that I saw was mum. So, I did not have any idea of how a man and woman live together … [I had] to discover for myself as I went through the different stages. The big part of not having my father at home as a father figure [is] I had my own issues. So, of course, I grew up knowing that, yes, I am a man and I have got to be this but did not even know what that should look like. I did not have a pattern of what that was what, so I ended up picking up cues here and there.

The contention that male paternal figures are instrumental in creating masculine identities appears to be supported by Paul’s reflection on his need to actively construct a

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masculine identity in the absence of a present father figure. However, other participants presented differing perspectives. Jimmy stated that being raised by a single mother helped him ‘feel comfortable with women’s authority’ and ‘soften’ his masculinity, which he argued was a positive attribute in a man: I was raised by a single mum and what happens to a lot of men that are raised by single woman, is we tend to become very, very soft, soft in terms of like, we tend to be very, very protective over the women in our lives, and then we tend to be quite comfortable being with a powerful woman, because the concept of having a woman in authority is not foreign. In fact, the only authority that I have had is mainly a woman because my mum has been the main caretaker for every chunk in my life. (Jimmy)

Other participants reflected that the organisation of gender roles within the microcosm of their family contributed significantly to how they understood gender identities. While the patriarchal culture they were raised in informed and sometimes dictated the roles they undertook, the family unit and their parents’ attitudes about those roles significantly contributed to their understanding and resulting attitudes towards them. For example, Nkandu stated that being raised by a single mother meant he was involved in all the domestic aspects of the household alongside his sisters, which helped to develop a positive attitude towards roles traditionally seen as ‘feminised’: With my mum, nothing was attached to ‘this is the man’s thing’ or ‘this is the women thing’. So, I didn’t have all those attachments in one sense, I guess the way they are there, but nothing obvious per se. But even in the home, three boys and one girl, so my mum would be like ‘All of you: you cook, you clean, you do everything’. So, coming here and doing everything for myself was nothing unusual, or even … washing the dishes, clothes and doing this … that would not be unusual for me. Obviously, you will be happy if your wife cooks for you, you know, but there is nothing wrong with me doing it. So, I think it comes down to I think our upbringing.

Maurice also reflected on his upbringing at home: The way I see myself as a man probably has to do with the way me and my siblings were brought up … I am constantly amazed because when I sit down today and reflect, I see how … my mum and dad had completely different views of boys and girls in the world. Dad was very strict. He was like, ‘You are a boy, this is what you are supposed to be as a boy; and you as a girl, this is what you are supposed to do as a girl’. But Mum did not follow that prescription.

Thus, within this group of men, numerous different perspectives on the way masculine identity could be transmitted were presented. Many indicated that within their early childhood contexts, they were already exposed to non-hegemonic articulations of masculinity that sat alongside or at odds with dominant norms and expectations of gender roles in their countries of origin. Another powerful inscription tool of masculine identities among African men was religion. Many participants reflected that religion played a significant role in how they ‘saw’ themselves as men. For example, Paul indicated that due to lacking a father figure at home to model his behaviour on, he embraced the type of masculinity modelled by Jesus, who he regarded as the ultimate embodiment of a ‘good man’. He reflected that his Christian influence and the pursuit of theological articulations

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of manhood have helped answer his lingering questions about what it meant to be a man: For me, the Christian perspective brought my first sense of ‘who do I want to become?’. I wanted to be a godly man … that was my default. Then I asked myself, who is a man according to God’s ways? ... I was looking for a standard that I had to measure up to. By doing that, I had to subject my [country of origin], my Africanness to the concept of Christianity because some cultural traits of manhood or masculinity from there would have been seen as a too big contradiction.

For many African male migrants, their varied masculinities are often comprised of aspects of pre-colonial African culture and a confluence with ‘colonialism, neoliberal capitalism, and Pentecostal Christianity’ (Pasura & Christou, 2018, p. 525). To put this in context, Paul asserts how his national and ‘African’ identities had to be subjected to a process of subordination through his adoption of a (foreign) Christian masculinity, illustrating the inherent contradictions these different strands of his identity could present in the task of constructing a coherent masculine identity. Other men in this study also discussed how their masculine identities were influenced by perceived religious duties to protect, provide for and sacrifice on behalf of the family. Jimmy described his masculinity as a ‘Christian commission’ to his wife and his family. He perceived his role as a man as intrinsically linked to service, as per Christian teachings. He says: I see the role of a man for me obviously [as one] based on Christian commission. The man that is willing to sacrifice for the family, someone who is willing to protect the family, someone who is willing to bring out the best of the people in the family. That is what I feel like I am able to do for my wife ... I do not want to be that guy who wants to get complemented for doing what he is supposed to do, like I have made a lot of sacrifices for my wife.

Similarly, Jabali’s interpretation of his Christian masculinity was also framed through the notion of servanthood. He interpreted the traditional division of gender roles with the man ‘as the head’ and the woman ‘as the helper’ through a different lens, arguing that God created a woman to help the man with things he should already be doing. He argued that a man was only deserving of help if he was already ‘doing the work’ of leadership. He reflected: I think for me masculinity is really being a servant leader, and I hope that what I practice can help my kids, especially the boys so that when they do get married someday, to look at their wives as helpers … When God created a man, he created the woman as his helper. When I do dishes, I am not really helping my wife. What the Bible says is that she is actually my helper.

Other men in the study reinforced that they constructed their masculinities from diverse influences, which enabled them to embody multiple ideas of masculinities and be open to the changeability of their old masculinities. Paul reflected: I have been influenced by other cultures. My first encounter with the West, also you know brought a different picture for me. You suddenly realise there is a [variety] of manhood or masculinity is interpreted across different cultures. I became [more] aware, so there have been changes, you know, asking myself who am I, what kind of a man do I want to be? How do I fit into society? What do I need to take on? What do I need to shed off as I go along this personal journey?

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Paul’s narrative exemplifies that masculinities are contextual, fluid and elastic. Masculinities are not singular or homogenous; they occupy differences across space and place and these diverse influences profoundly impact the epistemologies of masculine identities. Masculinities are developed through power and influence from ‘outside’, and they are performed through a constant contemplation of whether that performativity will enable one to ‘fit in’. Hibbins and Pease (2009) support these assertions, contending that masculinities are significantly transformed, reaffirmed and reconfigured by global processes such as transnationalism and global movement. As discussed in the next section, African men who have relocated to Australia demonstrate that interactions within alternative cultural contexts enabled parallels and contradictions with different masculinities to be drawn. This informs new ontological and epistemological expressions of masculinity or provides spaces within which they could bring to the fore alternative masculine identities that had been nourished within familial environments in their countries of origin—in particular, female-headed single-parent families, as several of the participants had been raised in such contexts.

Reconstructing New Masculinities Through Change and Loss In this study, many men showed how they adapted to the renegotiation of the ‘self’ and the gender roles that occurred upon relocation to Australia. In doing so, they articulated and emphasised how the sense of loss of professional status, class privilege and the systemic privileges that came with being a middle-class man in Africa were at the heart of their experiences. It has been argued that men in Africa are ‘irrefutably the favoured class’, and systemically, they occupy a significantly higher social, political and economic ontological space than women (Pasura & Christou, 2018, p. 525). Leaving a system that placed them at the top of the hierarchy, Black male African migrants relocating to Australia enter a new society that is also characterised by male hegemony, but within which they were relegated to the margins as a result of other aspects of their identity, within race being the most salient of these. This transition rendered a significant loss of privilege, status and identity that consequently impacted their formulations of masculinity within the new diasporic space. For example, John moved to Australia with his family as a highly skilled migrant leaving behind a very prestigious job in a multinational corporate organisation. As a man working in ‘big finance’, he was used to the ‘high life’ in his country of origin. After he relocated to Australia, all the class privileges that came with his position and career achievement in his home country disappeared. Through an arduous, painful and complicated process, John explained how he had to rethink who he was as a man outside of that privileged bubble. As Coles (2008) states, when men find themselves subordinated or marginalised by the hegemony of masculinity, they must reformulate ‘what masculinity means to them so [that] they are able to feel that their masculine identities are still valid in the context of their everyday lives’ (p. 246). To exemplify

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this, John talked at length about his personal process of change and reformulation of his masculine identity, which he referred to as a ‘psychological war’: There are a couple of things that happen when you start to reflect [on your masculinity]. I want to talk to you first about the reaction, and then I will talk to you a little bit about the reflection. For me, the reaction was: ‘Why do I have to do this? I have never had to do this. This is not what I signed up for’. But there are a couple of things that happened during the process which were helpful. We had the opportunity to visit people … and one very significant characteristic that we saw was how the men and their wives work together around the house. It was not something to be ashamed about. There was nothing to hide, and this, to me, was the beginning of my psychological opening … [in] that psychological war that I was fighting. I felt, ‘It is okay. It is okay to do it’. After that moment, things started to get better.

Connell (1987) theorised that the hierarchical process of constructing and reconstructing masculinity was similar to ‘ideological warfare’ due to the unsettling of what has been normalised as a ‘natural order’ (p. 186). John’s narrative suggests that transforming gender relations in the diaspora is possible, but ‘these changes are not without resistance, negotiation, and conflicts’ (Pasura & Christou, 2018, p. 529). As established, there are deep complexities and contradictions inherent in stepping outside the normalised stereotypical masculine roles and adopting other roles and identity expressions fundamentally located outside the hegemonic ideal. As Pullen and Simpson (2009) argue, during this change process, men may work to resurrect their former ontologically secure position by first rejecting the new status. Paul reflected on his observation of why many African men struggle with this ontological resistance: Men expect to find the jobs that require you to wear a suit and tie, but here they don’t recognise your background or experience. So, men get stuck in that mentality, that you need to be a certain thing … I know many families that have come here … and the woman adjusts very quickly. [But] the men are not used to power-sharing when it comes to decision making … [they] are not even used to not being the ‘head’ and sometimes men don’t know how to react to that.

When African men arrive in Australia, where patriarchal hierarchy may be somewhat diminished compared to African nations through more porous gender roles, or where men may have been expelled from hegemonic masculinities in various ways, men’s masculine identities are also disrupted, leading to the ontological resistance and ‘psychological warfare’ that John previously described. In some instances, men who lose their status will work to reaffirm their masculinity in atypical ways as a technique to modify their wounded manhood (Ralph, 2018). This means that during this process of ‘grief’ and ‘loss’, men can summon stereotypical or even violent ascriptions of hegemonic masculinity to ‘demand respect’ for their manhood within the family, which might lead to family breakdowns or domestic violence (Ogunsiji et al., 2012). This demonstrates that the dislocation experienced through immigratory processes is not just a loss and reconfiguration of class, place and space, but also masculinity in crisis. Despite the challenges reported by men in this study in renegotiating their gender identity, status and roles, violence or coercion were not reported as strategies

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employed to reassert a perceived pre-migration identity or status within the family by any male or female participants. Some participants described other ways their gender and sexual identity were externally framed very differently in Australia, impacting their performance of masculinity. For example, Nkandu referred to this issue delicately, saying that ‘the African male is often viewed as a sex symbol in one sense’, rather than as a complex human being. To be repeatedly confronted with simultaneous over-sexualisation and hyper-scrutiny due to the convergence of Western stereotypes about African male virility and threat could pose significant challenges in terms of evaluating the appropriate guidelines for the performance of masculine identities that manage these conflicting stereotypical representations. The other challenge to the process of analysing, reflecting on and adapting to new gender roles, and masculine identities was the policing that participants reported experiencing from other men from within African diaspora communities or extended family and community networks in their countries of origin. For example, Patrick reflected on the negative reactions he often received from other African men when he engaged in ‘feminine chores’: In fact, one of my friends, I used to work with him … I think he saw me taking a diaper from the car because I was going to change my daughter in the car and he was actually shocked that I was changing the diaper. He was shocked that I was changing my baby’s diaper. He could not believe it, and I challenged him and told ‘I do it all the time, because these are my kids, and I will do it again and again, it would not stop’. The reactions from other men and from my family can be like that. Unless you step out of it yourself, you will just be caught up in that web of thinking, [that] this is the right way of being a man. (Patrick)

As Reigeluth and Addis (2021) state, ‘despite historical shifts in some parts of the world indicating greater openness to more fluid and less restrictive notions of “manhood”, boys [and men] continue to experience significant pressures to conform to dominant masculine norms through policing of masculinity’ (p. 306). This policing is a way of ensuring the hegemony of masculinity is not disrupted. Jabali also shared his experience of being policed by other men when he got involved in ‘kitchen’ duties after relocating to Australia: Our first trip … was a culture shock to our friends [in African nations]… In here, when we eat, you normally walk up and take your own plate to the kitchen. We tried that ... one time and our friend told us, ‘You leave your manners in Australia. This is Kenya’. Because in Kenya you should not do that.

Policing masculinity includes watching the behaviours of other men to assess if they deviate from accepted gender roles under the prevailing patriarchal structures. John shared an experience of being policed by his community on social media: A few years into being in Australia, remember we were hosting friends at our home and we happened to be taking photos and taking videos, and I remember we posted those photos and videos on social media and I think someone back home, a friend … saw the photos and immediately asked, ‘What was John doing in the kitchen?’. It is still very frowned upon. And I think we actually had to explain to the friend that I was actually doing the dishes.

As Reigeluth and Addis (2016) argue, policing masculinity begins in childhood and adolescence, when ‘boys are prone to vigilantly watch for deviations of gender norms

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in their peers’ behaviour … [and] are likely to deliver negative consequences (i.e. forms of punishment) when such deviations are perceived to have taken place’ (p. 75). These patterns are then replicated into adult relations, modelling and mimicking the relations that were formative upon the early development of these norms and consciousness of the need to strictly comply to maintain a dominant masculine identity. Considering Connell’s (2005) theory of hegemonic masculinity discussed earlier, men who ‘display idealized masculine behaviours and characteristics generally accrue higher amounts of social status and power’ (Reigeluth & Addis, 2021, p. 307) and those who do not are scrutinised, policed and chastised. Despite the resistance and challenges faced, men’s ideas of masculinity are not static and are amenable to change. Connell (2005) argued that masculinities are not essentialist; they change and evolve across time and are mediated relationally. Ratele (2013) adds that the socially constructed ideas of masculinity are ‘internally unstable [and that] masculinity is always under construction’ (p. 145). John demonstrates how he was able to move through the grief and loss of his ‘old’ masculinity into a version of masculinity he terms ‘improved’: I look at how my mind has been shaped by the ‘macho-ness’ of a typical man. I think my mind has evolved quite significantly. And there are a lot of things that I do now that when I look at them, I think, are much better than what I used to do before. The mind frame of, ‘I am the man, I have got to do everything, everybody is going to rotate around me, life must be what I say is what happens, my word is a command that everybody else dances to, everybody else should be seen not heard’, is changing. I think when you put all those things in context, you realise that they actually have no place in the normal environment where people live in a civil manner. I actually look at [the change] as a way of having improved my masculinity … of having improved my view and my perception, and my approach to how actually men need to carry themselves out and how men need to treat people around them. So, for me, it is a blend of the two in terms of what good can you get from the transformation that actually helps you do what you are supposed to be doing better. What good can you get from the transformation that helps you be a better person?

Similarly, Jabali adds that change is necessary and important, especially for migrants who move from one cultural context into another: I’ve lived and interacted with many people now to know that it’s not a given that the woman should cook. And that becomes another big challenge because when some men are removed from the position of being breadwinner, the bread earner, to the position of being an equal, they say, ‘I didn’t come to Australia to be the maid, while my wife works’ … When we migrated to this country, we were very much aware of the very different culture, we’re not going to reproduce little Africa … we are keen to see what Australian men are doing. I think I’m best to do some things around the home, and she’s best to do some things. So, it’s really just sharing roles according to our ability.

John’s and Jabali’s narratives illustrate that the diasporic space is a site where the ‘reordering of social categories and social status as well as negotiating respectable forms of masculinities’ is necessitated (Pasura & Christou, 2018, p. 531). It also illustrates that despite the discomfort and resistance initially accompanying such changes, with time, the right environment and an open attitude, African men may continually reconstruct their masculinities, leading to the adoption or foregrounding of different versions of masculinities they might find more dignifying. In the theme

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that follows, we discuss how, following the reconfiguration process of developing new masculinities (despite the challenges and the ‘psychological warfare’ experienced in this process), African men found that the new places they emerged into as men, husbands and fathers, were more fulfilling and beneficial for their wellbeing and that of their family.

Alternative Masculinities Through Embracing Change Critical studies of men and masculinities contend that men, particularly men assigned to or identifying with subordinated and marginalised masculinities, are often thinking through the various ways they can achieve ‘relief’ from the stringent expectations of masculine hegemonies. This can be because they may perceive the overbearing and stringent expectations such hegemonies place upon them but also recognise that it can delegitimise them. In writing about the socialisation of Nigerian boys, Adichie (2014) has argued that dominant masculine identities can form a ‘cage’: We do a great disservice to boys in how we raise them. We stifle the humanity of boys. We define masculinity in a very narrow way. Masculinity is a hard, small cage, and we put boys inside this cage. We teach boys to be afraid of fear, of weakness, of vulnerability. We teach them to mask their true selves, because they have to be, in Nigerian-speak, a hard man. (p. 11).

In the Australian context, traditional and dominant masculine identities can similarly be experienced and function as a ‘cage-like structure’ hedging growth, change and the performance of alternative identities. The pre-eminent researcher on men and masculinities in Australia, Michael Flood (2020), has described traditional masculinity as prescribing men with a ‘Man Box’ of norms. Flood’s (2020) research demonstrated that ‘men who feel greater societal pressure to behave in ways that are consistent with Man Box attitudes show higher personal endorsement of Man Box attitudes’ (p. 11). Men who more strongly endorsed Man Box attitudes, including approving rigid gender roles, were more likely to experience adverse health impacts; be perpetrators and recipients of violence, bullying and harassment; and more likely to engage in violence, bullying and sexual harassment of women. Pullen and Simpson (2009) suggest the process of negotiating a release from the expectations of masculine hegemonies can involve the (re)creation and (re)negotiation of specific social expectations. An example from our research is provided by Banji, a senior academic. Banji stated that by not holding on too firmly to the cultural expectation of men being the sole providers, he had significantly benefited from the added financial security his family enjoys due to the substantial income his wife was able to earn. He also felt less pressure from being the sole financier of all expenditures while living in an expensive country such as Australia. He states: Definitely, I think I have changed for the better because a lot of these [changes]. You know, I think it was just stereotyping in terms of what you can and what you cannot do. For instance, in a very conservative African culture, women are not expected to go and earn an income,

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so the husband needs to go and sweat and come back [with money]. But here we have the situation where, you know, women work as well and so the burden is lightened financially which is a plus. Of course, then as a man, you also do all those duties that in Africa you would not do. I think it has been a change for the better for me.

Men who were more open to changing and reconstructing their pre-existing idea of manhood and masculinities reflected feeling more liberated and less ‘put in a box’. For example, Jabali revealed that being outside his original culture, living in Australia, somehow ‘liberated him’ enough to engage in tasks he would have never ‘been allowed’ to perform back in Africa due to the intense social scrutiny and cultural policing. He said: [When we arrived in Australia] we used to have this friend who loved cooking, sharing duties with his wife - he was always cooking. He was washing dishes. So, I was like, oh, it’s just like a liberation for me, it’s nothing to do with being a man, an African man. It’s just dishes.

Others reported that loosening or changing their ideas about ‘what a man should do or be’ enabled them to develop better intimacy and closeness with their partners and children because their partners felt more supported and their children more loved. In a particularly powerful reflection, Patrick said: I feel more like a man here even though I do all those jobs (i.e., domestic chores). Absolutely, 100%. In [country of origin], kids are being brought up by others because as ‘typical ... men’, we just catch up with friends in the evening [after work] and maybe get home by midnight or maybe 2 am in the morning. The cycle is just like that for the whole week. So, we do not actually see [our] kids. By the time they are teenagers, you do not know them … So, I would do this again and again. If I was to go back...I will continue being the man and father that I have become. In fact, when I call my brother or even my mum, I tell I have just finished cooking for the kids, and they ask me where my wife is—and I say these are my children, I can do it.

For Patrick, the process of ‘undoing’ his sense of being a typical man for his country of origin meant rethinking his sense of masculinity and revising it through practice to suit his family’s wellbeing within an Australian context. Similarly, Odera talked about how his increasing awareness of gender roles has transformed his parenting approach. He stated: For me, my gender is something that I do not see always, but something that I work on to be aware of. For example, as a parent now, when my son said ‘I don’t like this, that is for girls’, I said, ‘If you don’t like it, then you don’t like it—let it end there’. As for my daughter, I will let my daughter climb trees like the boys. I don’t try to single her out by saying ‘Hey … be careful sweety’, and then saying to my son, ‘Hey, you are doing well’. I said to both of them, ‘you both are doing well’, as a way neutralise the gender in their experiences.

Undoing the cultural imprints attached to their masculinities required both Patrick and Odera to challenge the existing social prescriptions and associated discourses on their prior masculine identities, which enabled them to ‘disrupt and challenge’ gendered differences within their own families (Pullen & Simpson, 2009, p. 566). Through this process, both were able to tap into aspects and nuances of their masculinity that were stringently policed by the cultural hegemony of masculinity in their home countries, and that they recognised as creating and maintaining emotional and physical distance within their families.

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Discussion: Broadened understandings of Afrodiasporic masculinities As we have emphasised in this chapter, many of the participants in this study already had an awareness of non-hegemonic masculine identities stemming from being raised in female-headed single-parent households. They were also aware of fluid masculinities, given that masculinity is not static—as described in these narratives, it changes according to space and place. So, while participants may not have been completely untethered from patriarchal norms, through the experience of migration, some were able to perceive and benefit from an expansion of the different expressions of masculinity determined by the different spaces being occupied. Thus, we can argue that it is not necessarily relocation to a white Western context—much as it may inaccurately imagine itself as a non-patriarchal paragon in contrast to racialised and cultural others—rather, it is a function of the diasporic experience and the challenges and opportunities this transition presents. However, through the creation or performance of different (non-hegemonic) masculine identities, some men surveyed in this study were able to adapt more successfully to their new context and achieve depths of intimacy with their families in a way their previous habitual expressions of masculinity would not have permitted. As Patrick reflected, if he were still in his country of origin, ‘it would be different because … the environment would not allow me to be the kind of man I am here’. This illustrates that it is necessary to broaden the understanding of Afrodiasporic masculinities, as reconstructions of gender roles, norms and identities that may be necessitated through relocation to a new country can be a positive process. However, it must be noted that there are some inherent issues built into the skilled migration system in Australia where the priorisation of skill categories often align to traditional women’s work, such as care and health work. This means that skilled migrant families often enter the country on the basis of professional women who are constructed as ‘carers’, which poses significant issues for how this re-entrenchment of Black women’s care responsibilities can still result in positive outcomes for their male family members and what the impact is specifically upon women’s experiences of immigration. We also note that while studies on Black masculinity since the 1970s have aimed to dismantle both white male supremacy and white racism and rebuild the dignity of the Black man (Macqueen, 2018) with time, Black masculinities have also been documented as adopting the violent tools, patterns and tactics of white supremacy, which maintain dominating ideologies over women and other disenfranchised men. However, the results from this research indicate that the reassertion of hegemonic, violent masculinities as a result of relegation to marginalised masculinity in an Afrodiasporic context is not a given. Rather, study participants reported reflexive and adaptive changes to their masculine identities, which frequently emphasised notions of Christian servanthood and deep, caring relationships with the women and children in their lives as a source of strength in (re)negotiating more adaptive masculine identities. Therefore, while investigating how the complexity and plurality of Black and African masculinities are informed and subjugated by the systems of

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colonisations, capitalism and neoliberalism, further research is needed to explore the theoretical and literal criticisms and scrutiny Black masculinities have attracted over time (Maluleke, 2018).

Concluding Comments This chapter has argued that African masculinities evolve in cultural and social contexts and have implications for men and the families they manifest within. Findings show that one of the underlying challenges for many African migrant men is coping with the change associated with the loss of status formerly attached to their middle-class, top-of-the-patriarchal-hierarchy masculinities in African contexts. The findings indicate that Black African men who immigrate to Australia may experience feeling symbolically expelled from the hegemony in which they previously accrued patriarchal dividends in their countries of origin. Following their relocation, they can attempt a reconfiguration of the meanings attached to their competing (old and new) masculine identities while also actively and consciously employing various strategies to navigate through these changes in a way that enables them to retain dignified masculinities. The findings reveal that because masculinities are socially constructed, they can be successfully deconstructed and reconstructed. The men who were more willing to broaden their meanings of masculinity were those who experienced a lessening of pressure to perform the expectations of the idealised hegemonised masculinity. As all participants in this study migrated to Australia as highly skilled workers, their high levels of pre-migration social capital, education and status may have been protective factors in their successful transition to this new context. They may also have been factors in enabling them to resist and minimise policing of emerging expressions of their post-migration masculinities. The findings showed that modifying previous cultural constructions surrounding hegemonic African masculinities enabled African men to feel more connected to their partners and children. In thinking about how African masculinities intersect with constructions of Blackness, Africanness, religion, colonisation and immigration, we argue that racial, immigrant, class and social positioning disadvantages African men in Australia, as they are subordinated, minoritised and disenfranchised by the masculinity hegemony. Although hegemonic masculinity may prevail in many sociocultural settings within broader Australian society, the specific challenges and experiences of migration and isolation from pre-existing communal and social structures—which took time to rebuild in the new context—could provide unique opportunities for re-evaluating and changing ingrained patterns of gender performance and thinking. As demonstrated in this chapter, it can provide some men with an opportunity to break from the confines of institutionalised patriarchal performativity and open up other ways of experiencing their manhood.

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Chapter 9

Resilient Narratives: Telling Our Stories, Our Way

Abstract This chapter discusses how individual and community resilience factors supported the successful migration of highly skilled Black Africans to Australia and the mechanisms of coping demonstrated. Existing research on migration concerning African diasporic experiences has been associated with deficit-focused approaches. Our research indicates that participants saw three main attributes as the source and sustenance of their and other African migrants’ resilience: their capacities for excellence and willingness to work hard; their social capital through community and family support networks; and their strongly held African and religious cultures and values. Findings revealed that many participants were proud of their contributions to Australian society and their desire to contribute to changing narratives of what it means to be an African in a country like Australia. Understanding how migrants adapt and acculturate within destination countries post-migration is an emerging field of research with significant implications for policy and healthy resettlement.

Introduction Throughout much of its history, Australia has offered opportunities to migrants from across the world to relocate and work in building the nation (Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS], 2019; McDonald, 2015). Today, nearly 30% of the resident population were born overseas (ABS, 2022). The increased migration of Africans to Australia diversifies the groups of migrants who seek opportunities by temporarily or permanently relocating to Australia. In recent years, migration to Australia by Black Africans has increased due to policies designed to attract skilled migrants with experience in areas where there is a shortage of skills through Australia’s skilled migration program (Gatwiri, 2021). The skilled migration programme began to grow apace in the early 2000s and, for most of the past 20 years, has well exceeded other visa streams in terms of the intake of migrants to Australia (McDonald, 2015). Although population migration creates opportunities, it is also known to pose various challenges for both the migrating and host communities, making it necessary to conduct research studies to inform policies and practices for regularly evolving situations (Ziersch et al., 2020). Significant challenges to permanent relocation to © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 K. Gatwiri and L. Anderson, Afrodiasporic Identities in Australia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-4282-2_9

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Australia by African migrants have been identified in the literature, including difficulties securing employment and experiences of racism, discrimination and social isolation (Gatwiri, 2021; Udah et al., 2019). These challenges can negatively impact relocation outcomes, including health and wellbeing. However, limited research has examined protective and resilience factors that specifically help highly skilled African migrants mitigate the aforementioned challenges in Australia (Fozdar, 2021; Mwanri et al., 2021). This need is underscored by projected significant increases to Australia’s skilled migration intake in a post-pandemic context (Greber, 2021). Prior research on migration in relation to African diasporic experiences has been associated with deficit-focused approaches that portray African migrants as a threat and liability (MacDonald, 2017; Majavu, 2020). International research in this field has suggested that ‘migration research could benefit from using a strengths-based approach, such as resilience, in understanding the experiences of migrants’ (Babatunde-Sowole et al., 2016). Understanding more about skilled African migrants’ resilience provides evidence and a significant resource to inform policies and practices that can support the health and wellbeing of this population and their Australian host community’s prosperity.

Social Resilience Frameworks Resilience is an important aspect of life adaptation and is necessary for human existence and survival. Abstractly, it can be ‘conceptualised as the ability to overcome life challenges and transform such challenges into positive growth’ (BabatundeSowole et al., 2016, p. 947), yet it has been a surprisingly limited area of focus for researchers to date. As a framework, social resilience is understood as the ability of community groups or communities to withstand external shocks and stressors without significant disruption of their social fabric (Luthar et al., 2000). Social resilience comprises community dynamics and processes of positive adaptation when facing significant adversity (Adger, 2000). There are varying perspectives on what community is, but in the context of this chapter, ‘community’ is seen a gathering of people with shared attachments, bonds, value systems, and have connecting needs and interests that support experiences and identities that are collectively shared. Community is known to provide a space within which members develop a sense of attachment while engaging in networks that function to cushion and support them to ‘bounce back’ from adverse experiences. Characteristics of community structures and interactions have been identified as complex, but overall, members of shared communities share common traits that build resilience through ideas, experiences, skills and knowledge. These characteristics have been reported to assist individuals, families and communities in overcoming shocks and stresses, including changes in government policy, civil strife or environmental hazards and resources (Walsh, 1996). For skilled African migrants in Australia, social communities and communities of attachment, inculcating a sense of ‘feeling at home’ can provide the foundation for a successful new life in Australia.

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The importance of using a strength-based approach such as social resilience in understanding the experiences of migrants has been recommended to improve the knowledge about how communities deal with adversities or major life-changing challenges, which migration to and resettlement in new countries constitute. In addition to the everyday challenges of resettlement anticipated for any migrant to a new sociocultural setting, Black African migrants face additional obstacles to resettlement in an environment where race has particular salience. Within the Australian context, Black Africans are ‘marked’ as different from the white, AngloSaxon heritage majority through a combination of ‘visibilities’ including race, dress and accent (Gatwiri & Anderson, 2021). Black Africans in Australia are ‘hypervisible’ and are constructed as perpetually outside the boundaries of mainstream normative conceptions of Australian identity. Therefore, these factors can contribute to over-scrutinisation and marginalisation of Black African communities (Gatwiri & Anderson, 2021). Moving away from deficit-saturated approaches, applying Afrocentric epistemologies can offer a powerful alternative to and critique Eurocentric perspectives and discourses on resilience (Amo-agyemang, 2021). Utilising paradigms that privilege African ways of knowing, being and doing to solve human and social problems is a valid form of interpreting social and psychological issues affecting Africans in order ‘to create relevant approaches of personal, family, and community healing and societal change’ (Bent-Goodley et al., 2017). Afrocentric-informed research offers an innovative approach to exploring challenges for Afrodiasporic communities in Australia. It identifies and utilises the community’s knowledge, resilience and expertise to inform knowledge and design its own solutions. It is also critical to recognise that African cultures and identities draw on a complex amalgam of pre-colonial African traditions, philosophies, cultural practices, religious traditions and colonial European and modern Western influences (Pasura & Christou, 2018, p. 525). Afrocentric frameworks recognise the resilience of Africans who have survived immense challenges, undergone recovery (including healing from the wounds of colonisation, racism and discrimination) and demonstrated self-determination and agency. In this study, participants were not directly questioned about ‘resilience’ but were encouraged to reflect critically on how they navigated the transition to living in Australia and identify factors that facilitated a successful relocation. Findings show that despite a mixture of relocation and environmental barriers—including limitations in employment opportunities, experiences of discrimination and subtle racism—participants demonstrated strong resilience and the ability to cope with the challenges they encountered during their journey to re-establish themselves in the new host nation. The resilience factors identified included: (1) capacities for excellence, including willingness to take any available opportunities to achieve their goals; (2) social capital through community and family support networks; (3) strongly held African and religious values; (4) pride in contributing to Australian society; and (5) desire to change the narratives about Africans in Australia. These themes are presented and discussed further below.

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Willingness to Work Outside Existing Expertise A significant theme referred to by several participants was the exceptional work ethic and capacity for professional excellence among African migrants. The challenges in securing appropriate (in terms of skills, education, ability and expectations) job opportunities were partially mitigated by their willingness and readiness to work hard and take any available opportunities. One participant, Jimmy, stated, ‘Africans will do anything, they will figure out anything that they can do—and do it, and they will work as hard as possible, they will pick fruit from the trees if they have to’. Mukisa also noted that despite being based in a specialist urban medical centre, ‘I still go back and cover doctors who are on leave in the rural clinics and I worked hard’. African migrants were keen to show how hard they were willing to work to obtain a better life for themselves and their families. Strong work ethics, hard work, determination and perseverance were described as important in obtaining and sustaining job opportunities. For example, Amani noted she was the only candidate from her workplace to receive an ongoing role after a round of interviews. The feedback she received from the hiring managers was that she demonstrated an excellent work ethic through her extensive preparation for the interview, which was why she got the permanent role. She also noted that her ‘persistence’ in taking the steps towards promotion led to more senior roles, even though many of her ‘Caucasian’ colleagues ‘gave up along the way’, because they felt the process was ‘too strenuous’. She added, ‘I had talked to [African] friends … who have been in even more senior positions [in Australia] than they had been, in their own countries, and going into skills or jobs that they have never done before’. Participants emphasised that Africans in Australia ‘just wanted a chance’, and if given the opportunities they deserved according to their qualifications, work ethic and ability, they could make even more significant and positive contributions to Australian society. Wanjiru exemplifies this by stating: You know, we have hard working people. We just want what everyone else wants, what most people want. Just give us a chance. We want what everyone else want, best for our kids, to better our lives … I want when someone sees me, they [see a] hard working woman who has travelled far away to come and work hard for her family and make a better life for herself and for her family members.

A theme that was less explicitly emphasised was the observation that because nonmigrant Australians already had existing social capital and networks, and African migrants often did not have this benefit, they could not rely on what Awinja described as waiting for ‘someone else to come and … fish you out’ for opportunities. Instead, she emphasised that for skilled African migrants, ‘it is really for us to position ourselves really well and advocate and become our own self-advocates’.

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Social Capital Through Community and Family Support Networks Family and community support networks were strongly highlighted by participants as a factor in building resilience and perseverance while managing the challenges of migration and relocation in Australia. Although extended families were a clear source of support, African migrant families already settled in Australia but not related or previously known to each other formed a supportive network for newer arrivals. John and Julia noted how the value of community in facilitating relocation was evident ‘right the day we came in’ when African families who were already settled in Australia welcomed them at dinner and social events. This network of African families, not previously known to the participants, provided extensive support for this family over the critical first three months of arriving in Australia. They reflected: That support saw us through and I think that is a very important point to put across. The family literally took us by [our] hands and they were in our house literally every day for the next three months. If there was an activity in Adelaide, they came and picked us. If we were going shopping, they came and picked us. If there was visiting anyone, they came and picked us. So, in three months, we had met so many people [Africans] and that kind of things made it very easy and comfortable for us. (John and Julia)

Kissa also reflected on a similar experience: There was a small African community in [town in South Australia], they came around, they supported. I would say so far, I had an amazing journey, basically because I met amazing people, people that have extended warmth, love, and support and understanding.

Some participants provided examples of how family members from their country of origin travelled to Australia to provide essential support at critical times. For example, Wanjiru discussed how necessary such support was when she was a new mother and studying full time: Our family gave us much support during that time when we were going to nursing school. My sister came from [country name] and she lived with us for a whole year while we were going through school. Our babies were so young then, so she helped with babysitting, and without that kind of help, oh my goodness, I don’t know how we would have pulled through the nursing school! So, we cannot forget the family support.

Within family units that had migrated together, new levels of cooperation and support were also required to achieve a successful migration experience. For example, Banji noted that ‘I have a very supportive spouse and so we tend, you know, to help one another’. Wanjiru and Paul similarly emphasised the value of support within their family unit. They described how as ‘a family we really, really, really had to learn how to work together. We form[ed] our own identity–so to speak–as a family, to help us cope with the challenges that we thought of or felt’. In addition to family support, formal organisations were also identified as a significant source of support, as most participants were members of one or more community organisations. Some participants singled out the role of such associations in building resilience and experiencing belonging in the new country. This included regional or

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country-specific associations, faith-based organisations, church congregations and, to a lesser extent, government-initiated settlement programmes. For some, work colleagues, especially those who were introduced immediately upon arrival or who eventually became friends, provided a supportive structure for their relocation and enabled the building of resilience and a sense of community. For instance, Kissa mentioned that at her first workplace immediately after arriving in Australia: There were some amazing people there that made me welcome, I went to their home to eat, they would invite me, others will invite me over with my little son, almost every weekend to come and spend time with them.

Some participants described how the South Australian Government’s settlement program for skilled migrants was highly supportive when migrating. Initial formal government support was critical in building participants’ resilience and providing a springboard for their new life in Australia to take off: The South Australian Government program back then really looked after new skilled migrants and helped them settle. They organised a house at subsidised rent for us for the first three months. We had a two-bedroom house, which was good for us. The house was next to the school where our kids were going, so we did not have to walk far. It was next to a tramline, so we did not have to bother about having a car initially, so the entire program was a really good one … I think our great experience is one that is highly supported by the program. Without the program, I think we will be talking about totally different things altogether. (John and Julia)

Although they did not go into further detail, the emphasis on helpful government support for skilled migrants being provided ‘back then’ suggests an assumption that this type of assistance was not necessarily available to contemporary migrants.

Religion and Faith as Protective Factors Spirituality and faith were important determinants that provided mechanisms to cope with challenges for many participants. Religion is a well-recognised factor that functions both as an intrinsic and extrinsic marker of individual and population resilience. The social connections present in organised religious settings are often acquired through shared social experiences, such as praying together, attending religious services or other social displays of faith, which form an element of cultural and social capital. One participant concurred with these assertions, stating that ‘my family gets support—and a lot of it—from our church’. Other participants reported that going to church was an important ritual for them as it enabled them to set one day off work each week to attend community service, providing them with an opportunity to connect and build friendships with others with similar values. For Banji, religious faith acted as a cushion for his family during their resettlement years: Having good support at church are a crucial factor that have helped in terms of settling down. So, we were very strong in terms of being involved in an active church … This really helped in the way we have settled down in Australia … I guess you know those three factors–work network, church network and also network of friends–have really helped in settling down.

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Jimmy also supported religion as a protective element in these communities when he stated, ‘most Africans have a Christian or another form of faith—and that is where they find support’, implying, like Amani and Banji, that religion plays a significant role as a coping tool and is utilised as a strong resilience mechanism in overcoming adversities.

Pride in Significant Contributions to Australia Participants emphasised pride in their contributions to Australian society. This pride was linked to their contributions in professional excellence, expertise and economic contributions through dutiful payment of taxes. Other participants nominated specific aspects of their area of work expertise as advancing Australian society, of which they were justifiably proud. For example, Sally, nominated her studies and the specific scientific research she had conducted in Australia as having made a significant scientific contribution. Mukisa, a medical doctor with a special interest in skin cancer and family medicine, noted that ‘I worked hard … providing my skill to Australians and making sure that whatever I do, I do it at a high-level of skill and I think that has been the biggest contribution’. Other participants spoke with pride of their success in advocating for more diverse and culturally aware perspectives and policies: I can claim that I have done [a lot] to advocate for cultural issues being prioritised. I have managed to move the government away from sideling some communities, who have dealt with issues that needed certain support to be able to move up. Groups which have less resources, less networks, more disadvantage compared to the main stream, can now have more support and the government is ready to accept that, and we have seen so many resources coming and I am grateful for that. (Maurice)

Paul similarly highlighted that African migrants add significant cultural value in Australia: When we come here, we bring cultural diversity … we educate the people of this country on who we are, we expose them to other cultures because I think it is unfair when all their knowledge about us comes from National Geographic.

Most participants singled out how their financial and career success also benefited Australians, especially through paying taxes and bolstering the Australian economy. For example, Jimmy noted, ‘I have been working for the last 15 years and earning good money and paying taxes [and] investing [in] property’. Kissa, Maurice and Awinja all discussed their various economic contributions to Australia, as illustrated below: Me and my husband [both senior medical consultants] generate a lot income, but we also support the government by paying taxes, which helps to actually do a lot of the other projects … [so] many Australians would benefit from our tax. (Kissa) We have contributed financially and economically, being in real estate. We have investments in not 1, 2, 3, or 4 places. Our properties are scattered around, and we employ the real estate

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managers to manage the properties. In that way, they get money for managing our properties. We pay high taxes and we have helped the South Australian economy—we can say yes, we have done that. (Maurice) I am an investor here … we do have many property investments, so our contribution is in terms of contributing to the housing market…in fact all our properties have Aussies in them. So, I think we are contributing in that sense. We are also tax payers … both of us are on high incomes, which means our tax is very high … so I think that is a very big contribution we are making. (Awinja)

Jenny and Patrick also explicitly linked the payment of taxes to the value they added to Australia in terms of what that sum would mean in their country of origin: ‘Let me tell you the tax we pay between us, is enough to feed my whole village for a year. We have a right to be here’. Nkandu similarly emphasised that ‘the majority of Africans or migrants are working hard, they are paying their taxes and not being a burden to society’, yet he noted how this reality was at odds with the dominant Australian public discourse constructing migrants primarily as welfare recipients: I hear Australians say all these things about migrants and think, ‘who do you think pays for all these stuff (Medicare, Centerlink)?’. It is the working people, and the big chunk of that working people are migrants. So, I think if there is a story to be told [it] is the contribution that migrants [make] to this country. It is just everyday people, waking up every day in the morning, go to work, obey the laws, they are peaceful with everybody, I think that is the greatest story to be told. (Nkandu)

He further believed that ‘Australians would be shocked that there are a lot of white Australians on welfare benefiting from [African] migrants going to work’. Participants also described how they managed to put the disadvantages they faced aside to focus on their main intention for migrating—that is, ‘to work hard, and find effective opportunities for themselves, their children, and communities’. They were also able to demonstrate considerable flexibility that supported the development of resilience and aided successful relocation to Australia: I think it is important for us to be open to be willing to integrate and embrace the new culture that we find ourselves while not losing our own. We can learn what to take and what to reject from this culture and we can still embrace it and bring the positives from our own culture and the positives from this culture and make it better. (Kissa)

Despite the challenges encountered in migration to Australia, participants reflected on their commitment to remember where they came from and who they were as Africans. Although they exemplified a deep commitment to integrating and abiding by Australia’s culture, they also agreed on the importance of upholding their own culture and retaining their Africanness. The commitment to retaining their Africanness in a society that covertly promotes ideologies of assimilation aligns with the broader messaging of Sancofa, which is an African philosophy that loosely translates to ‘it is not wrong to look back’. Sally narrates: I will not change being an African or anything. It comes with its challenges, but you know what, I love it. I love being African and I hold no apologies for being African. So, if I am here as an African, I can equally contribute to the society as anyone, so I believe in myself.

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I am very aware and I set my identity fully. That is the starting point. You need to believe yourself and accept your identity fully, with the accent, with the colour, with whatever, fully. It should not matter and you need to believe that you are in this for the long haul.

As reflected in this quote and other responses in this study, through flexibility, positivity and enthusiasm, many migrants were able to develop a thoughtful appreciation of the positive aspects of both African and Australian cultures and consider ways to selectively draw on these resources to support their aspirations for resettlement in Australia.

Reframing the Narrative on Africans in Australia Pursuing excellence and acknowledging the challenges of migration and adapting were identified as key factors of how participants in this study wished to reframe the narrative of the ‘abject African’ in Australia. In many instances, participants indicated a desire to change negative narratives of what it means to be an African in Australia. Further suggestions included a need for advocacy and more accurate and positive representations of African migrants and communities that challenged dominant mainstream narratives about ‘Africanness’ in Australia. As Jimmy stated: I would like to see the image of Africa change a bit more, I would like to see people [not see] Africa as a place where there are needy people, I would like the people see Africa as a potential partner, as a power house, as a place of great ideas have come from.

As much as participants called for more inclusion and a broader narrative shift in the Australian public discourse on Africans, many emphasised that African diaspora communities were required to ‘step up’ and actively work to change that narrative by ‘pursuing excellence’. Kissa reflected: Australia is a beautiful country. We are absolutely proud to be a part of it, but as people of colour, we should look for opportunities to add value. We should be people of excellence. We should stand for excellence and also in particular we need to start thinking aggressively about the next generation. As the first generation of African immigrants, we need to make sacrifices for the next generation and we must not miss that point, it would not be all about us. We got to think about 10, 20, and 30 years from now, where would we like to be in the Australian society.

This emphasis on acting as advocates and positive role models for African communities echoes the participants’ observations that African migrants come to Australia lacking networks and pre-existing social capital. As such, there is a greater need for migrants to create their own opportunities rather than waiting for their excellence to be recognised and rewarded by others. Other similar ideas about how Africans in Australia can help change and reframe negative narratives predominantly by bolstering their self-confidence and not internalising any negative assumptions about Africans that might circulate in the media or in mainstream (white) Australian culture were also widely shared. Jimmy advised Africans in Australia to ‘come here with something to offer’. He adds, ‘if you are here as a skilled professional who is going

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to make a contribution to this country, see yourself as of that, do not see yourself as a poor African when you go to meetings’. Others cautioned Africans not to adopt a victim mentality, as they considered that this reduced the capacity for resilience and excellence. Amani advised: Let’s not pity ourselves, let’s not feel sorry for ourselves … what helps is for us to go out and explore, so it is up to us really to position ourselves. It’s not up to anybody else to do that for us … I am a senior social worker, and it doesn’t come easy … I would encourage everyone to work hard, but not pathologise ourselves and don’t, don’t join people in pathologising us.

While supporting this position broadly, Sally observed that believing strongly in yourself in a diasporic context did not always come easily. Although she proudly described herself, and African migrants more generally, as being part of ‘a group of people with great tenacity, great intelligence’, she also reflected that ‘we need to start believing in ourselves more and come together in a unified way to say that we are here to stay and we are not going anywhere, and we are a force to be reckoned with’. She added: If all of us are working together … celebrating one another and helping and lending a hand to one another and just be ourselves and be proud of who we are and also just give the best of ourselves to this country because really, this is home even if it doesn’t feel like so for a long time, but in this moment, right here, right now, this is home. (Sally)

Sally’s reflection can be understood as both a recognition of how challenging relocation from an African nation to Australia is and a subtle questioning of whether individuals can foster this change on their own without an Ubuntu and collective mentality (for discussion on Ubuntu, see Chap. 3). Instead, her emphasis is on the need for collective action to achieve these goals, an observation that underscores the value of community and collectivist values.

Acknowledging and Adapting to the Challenges of Migration Despite the challenges many had encountered, participants refused to see themselves as victims. They seemed to have chosen to look for the positive opportunities that Australia offers and opted to focus on what was necessary to achieve their goals of having a successful life in Australia. Many described the initial challenges and how they overcame them with a focus on their family betterment: I felt my status become really low. My status [in original country], came with a lot of respect. So here, I just felt like I lost my status. But I do not know whether you call it resilience or what it is, I thought, you know what, this is a new beginning and I said, ‘This is a new beginning, because this is a new world’, and I focused on the children. (Awinja)

Julia added: It has been an interesting journey, it has had its ups, but it also has its downs. What I can say is the opportunities for the children here are much better. So, if someone wanted to come, just have your goals set out. Just be clear on what you really want because if you are coming

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because you want to make a lot of money very quickly, you might be very disappointed. You have got to learn to look at those positives around. If you want your children to have a better life, then you need to clearly know that you would have to sacrifice a lot, on your part as a parent … I think that was the main reason why we decided to come, because at a certain time in your life, it stops being about you as a parent and it is about your children and if you can focus on that, then you would save yourself a lot of heartache.

The emphasis on the decision to migrate and persevering in building a new life in Australia driven by the desire to improve the present and future wellbeing, security and opportunities for children and young people within the family is strongly supported in international migration literature and is not unsurprising in the context of this study (Babatunde-Sowole et al., 2016; Betancourt et al., 2015; Boehm et al., 2011; Kuyini & Kivunja, 2020). Participants frequently presented a perceived need to integrate within Australian society as part of their commitment to building a new life for themselves and their families in Australia. While they seemed adamant they did not need to fundamentally change who they were, many also argued that they should adapt to some degree to social norms in the new host nation: I think you need to integrate when you move to a country, you need to integrate with citizens of that country … Friends for me come from any group, so I integrate with everybody and I think integrating makes a big difference. Because then, you do not feel isolated. You will find if you keep to your [country of origin] community, you talk about [country name] social issues rather than connecting on the issues that are happening here … you will become homesick, you will always think about [country name]. (Jabali)

Jabali added that in the relocation process, ‘what worked for us is to integrate with the local community, that made a big difference’, thus emphasising the need to build connections with Australians from diverse backgrounds as an ‘essential part of successful resettlement’. An additional aspect of this theme was participants’ belief that integration should be a two-way process and not a unidirectional or assimilatory process. This would require the host community to adapt by understanding some African cultural values and ways of life. A two-way process, they argued, would have bi-directional benefits for both African migrants and mainstream Australians. Several participants also considered that since Australia was already a settler state strongly reliant upon migration, they were deserving of the opportunity to relocate as migrants because they were determined to contribute to building and developing their new country. Sally reflected: Africans are equally deserving to be here, we have equal rights to be here. But I think Africans need to be internally strong … because the challenges will come. It is not about if they will come, but when they will come, and when they do come, what are you going to do with it. Will you let those challenges pull you down? Or, you are going to let those challenges even make you stronger, and more determined that you are here, and you are going to benefit from being here and also contribute.

The determination and optimism Sally expressed were mirrored by other participants who added that their excellence and deservedness to be in Australia contributed to their successful migration and relocation experiences.

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Discussion People migrate for various reasons, including access to new employment or education and better opportunities (Gatwiri, 2021), and to escape civic unrest or conflict (Hutchinson & Dorsett, 2012). The increases in ease of movement and global migration have led to changes in sociodemographic dynamics and the makeup of societies and communities across many nations, including Australia. Although there is now a significant emerging body of knowledge on African migrants in Australia, most of these studies have focused on refugees, so the focus of this study on skilled migrants addresses a significant gap in the extant literature. Despite the significant challenges the literature reports as dominating the experiences of African migrants during their relocation and resettlement—including racism (Kwansah-Aidoo & Mapedzahama, 2018), conditional belonging (Gatwiri & Anderson, 2021), difficulty accessing employment (Udah et al., 2019), discrimination (Gatwiri, 2021) and intergenerational conflict (Mwanri et al., 2018)—most draw positivity and optimism from religion, faith, hope and community-oriented attitudes, which appear to nurture resilience and social connections. For participants in the current study, the intention to migrate to Australia seemed based on providing better future opportunities for their children and families. As noted in their narratives described elsewhere in this chapter, the emphasis on the positive contribution made to Australian society emerged as a strong theme. It is reasonable to hypothesise that collectivist value systems inform these attributes, as embodied in the Ubuntu philosophy discussed in Chap. 2, but also partially as a response to dominant and harmful narratives about African migrants in Australia, which are frequently deficit focused and connected to negative racialised stereotypes. Consistent with previous study findings and the journeys of this study’s participants, migration promotes a different ecological environment that fosters cultural diversity with an interweaving of different ways of life that include changes to views, systems, values and aspirations (Gatwiri et al., 2021). The findings in this study demonstrate that participants displayed significant resilience that enabled them to cope effectively with migration challenges in Australia. Resilience has been described not only as an individual psychological trait but also as a social phenomenon that is mediated by individuals’ cultures and social ecology (Adger, 2000). This enabled the participants to positively contribute to the Australian socioeconomic and ecological systems. Individual resilience (personal qualities/traits, education, skills, ambition, etc.) and the availability and accessibility of resources such as community and government support contributed to reducing resettlement challenges. Therefore, the social resilience framework provides a robust understanding of the mechanisms that foster resilience through multi-layered factors. Supporting the observations of our participants in relation to religion, a multitude of research studies have identified religion, faith and prayer as protective factors that mitigate the adversities of migration and build resilience (Gatwiri & Anderson, 2020; Lunn, 2009). While resilience is a psychological process, it is an outcome of social processes that exist in relationships between people, systems, institutions (such

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as churches), organisations and networks. For our participants, the social aspects of church attendance, participation in faith-based organisations and related activities, and activities within their own and other families provided a positive source of resilience-building through interpersonal connections. Similar observations have been made in the literature, identifying these components as among the protective factors that enable positive adjustment to migration (Kawachi & Berkman, 2001; Lamba & Krahn, 2003). Supplementary forms of social support provided by other families, African communities, organisations and other social networks were acknowledged as a significant source of cultural safety, fulfilment and belonging, which is consistent with African cultural norms of collectivism and Ubuntu philosophies. The thematic display of social support and social networks in participants’ narratives underscored the value of community that was not necessarily based on close familial ties, but which exemplified the value of the Afrocentric philosophical frameworks of Ubuntu. This African philosophy relies on prioritising collectivist and group identity values compared to individualistic values within Western societies (Nussbaum, 2003). Ubuntu philosophical perspectives bolster our understanding of the importance of supportive communities in the development of resilience, health and wellbeing in Afrodiasporic communities. The role of social support derived from families, communities and community organisations is well recognised in research as crucial in facilitating healthy resettlement among migrants (McIntosh et al., 2019). Collectivist and family-oriented values were also demonstrated through the principal reasons for migration identified by most participants, which were not motivated by personal gain but creation of a better future for their children, their communities and future generations, which is consistent with prior research (Babatunde-Sowole et al., 2016; Mwanri et al., 2021). It is also worth noting that participants were both ready to integrate and align with the host community’s norms and continue to maintain their African identity and cultural perspectives. These dichotomous perspectives correspond with the Sancofa principles: while these participants looked forward to a bright future in Australia, they also needed to nurture their African heritage in Australia, thus exemplifying the notion that ‘it is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten’. Through these noted attributes of collectivism, flexibility and positivity, it is plausible to posit that many skilled African migrants were able to develop a thoughtful appreciation of the positive aspects of both African and Australian cultures and selectively and intentionally drew upon these resources to support their aspirations for a successful relocation to Australia. It is also important to acknowledge that not all migrants may aspire to permanent relocation but may instead harbour desires to return ‘back home’ at some point—even though this desire was not explicitly articulated by participants in this research. However, as we emphasised earlier in this book, ‘belonging’ is defined in our work in line with the theorisation of Nira Yuval-Davis (2006), who locates belonging as an ‘emotional attachment, [and] about feeling at “home”’. As Spaaij (2015) has emphasised, this may encompass having ‘a sense of being part of the social fabric’ rather than necessarily the attainment of formal markers of belonging such as citizenship. However, what is crucial is that being able to live a dignified

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existence and engage productively and reciprocally in the society within which one lives is an important constituent component of a generalised form of social belonging and wellbeing. Many participants also placed significant trust in Australian colleagues and friends and held the belief that in general, Australian people were ‘good’. This comfort was drawn from choosing to believe in and see people’s intrinsic goodness and trusting this collective goodness would cushion them from extreme negative experiences. For some participants, work colleagues extended positive relationships. This familiarity, trust and synergy in the workplace encouraged a sense of belonging and helped minimise the complexities of social issues of isolation. Additionally, connections within specific ethnic communities and within the broader Australian community offered practical and emotional support in building a new life. This affirms the consensus in the literature on the importance of strong social ties and social capital in supporting quality health and wellbeing outcomes (Almedom, 2005; Uchino, 2006). It is important to re-emphasise participants’ pride in their decision to relocate to Australia, their strong professional identity and their admirable qualities. Some participants described in detail their achievements at work, their contributions to the Australian economy, their investment successes and their creation of employment and other opportunities for the wider Australian community, highlighting the significant strenghts and contributions of skilled migrant workers to Australia.

Conclusion Technological developments and increased ease of communication and mobility have enabled a wider variety and number of people, including those from African nations, to relocate and settle in Australia. The study findings revealed a mixture of migration experiences for participants. Relocation challenges were observed as barriers to fully meeting the expectations of emigration. The findings demonstrate that despite challenges experienced in relocating to Australia, skilled African migrants’ resilience, ambition and determination were significant enablers to healthy relocation, contributing effectively to social, economic and cultural expectations and subsequently meeting most of their own migration intentions. These findings suggest that resilience factors identified in the study are key elements of successful migration. These include personal qualities, education and skills, positive attitudes, family ties, religious and cultural values, communities of attachment and social connectedness. This study highlights how resilience is enacted among African migrant families and communities and brings to light their capability to face migration challenges and effectively contribute to the Australian economy and social and cultural structures. The importance of African migrants’ resilience and Afrocentricity to the subsequent welfare and healthy integration of their families into a new culture—and indeed, the benefits to the new communities—cannot be overemphasised. The study provides

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significant information that can be used to inform knowledge about positive relocation of groups of new migrants, applicable to Australia or in similar settings, and validates the supplementation of research approaches and methodologies with Afrocentric frameworks (Gatwiri, 2020).

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Chapter 10

Conclusion: A Way Forward for Policy, Practitioners and Researchers

Introduction Increases in ease of movement and global migration have led to changes in sociodemographic dynamics and the makeup of societies and communities across many nations (ABS, 2016; Jakubowicz, 2010). A significant number of people from diverse racial and cultural backgrounds have made Australia their new home country. The migration of Africans to Australia diversifies the groups of migrants who resettle in Australia. Understanding how migrants adapt and acculturate within destination countries post-migration is an emerging field of research with significant implications for policy, social cohesion and healthy resettlement. As depicted in the participants’ narratives in this book, many skilled African immigrants are grateful for the opportunity to build their lives in Australia through hard work due to their skill and expertise. Despite this, it is apparent that African migrants still experience levels of exclusion and discrimination, and their contributions to Australian society are less valued than is merited. This text contributes to the discourse on the migratory experiences of Black Africans in Australia. New understandings of difference and race that we engage with in this book have expanded on existing Afrodiasporic studies and provided scope for the theorisation of specific and nuanced articulations of anti-Black discrimination and racism experienced by Black Africans in Australia. Research on this population has previously been understood predominantly within the realm of ‘white interpretation’ explaining the Black experience. In the last decade, the strong voices of Afro-scholars such as Gatwiri, Kwansah-Aidoo, Mapedzahama, Majavu, Udah and Ndlovu (e.g. see Gatwiri, 2021; Kwansa-Aidoo & Mapedzahama, 2018a, 2018b; Majavu, 2018, 2020; Mapedzahama & Kwansa-Aidoo, 2013, 2017; Ndlovu, 2013, 2014; Udah, 2018) have established authority on Afrodiasporic studies in Australia, providing valuable ‘Black expertise’ and theoretical insights into the processes of anti-Black racism and racialisation. The research presented in this book, co-authored by women respectively from Black African and white Australian backgrounds, which foregrounds the perspectives of Black African skilled migrants through Afrocentric © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 K. Gatwiri and L. Anderson, Afrodiasporic Identities in Australia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-4282-2_10

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and Black theories and philosophical positions, contributes to and extends this new direction in scholarship on Afrodiasporic experiences. This book has woven together theoretical arguments with qualitative research, drawing on existing and emerging conceptualisations of race to highlight how these inform experiences of belonging, racial safety and racial dignity. The knowledge developed within this book responds acutely to concerns about Africans as a ‘problem group’, one that is supposedly difficult to integrate within the Australian social and cultural fabric. It addresses a critical knowledge gap concerning the challenges of racial dignity for Africans in Australia and the implications for integration and belonging. As issues relating to problems of integration for Africans continue to occupy national interest in Australia, how we respond requires innovative and evidence-informed practices that are informed by Afrocentric ways of understanding the lived experience of Black Africans, who are seeking to understand their place within the Australian community. The lived experience, personal narratives and cultural wisdom produced within this body of work, if carefully utilised, can inform professional expertise and research-enriched practice as well as culturally informed policy development. The evidence and arguments presented in this book bridge the existing gap in knowledge through a careful multi- and inter-disciplinary approach that gathers different sociological theorisations and ways of ‘knowing’ together to reconfigure the understanding of race—and in particular anti-Blackness—in Australia. Similar to Hiruy and Hutton (2019), our work: Not only deconstructs and diversifies the public profile of Africans in Australia, but also invites the reader to re-imagine the African, and their very idea of diasporas, in a more critical light ... [and] unpack[s] the layers of complexity that underlie many of our findings, particularly concerning the impacts and lived experience of the African image in contemporary Australia. (p. 21)

Australia now has an opportunity to lead global efforts to progress knowledge about cultural safety, racial dignity and belonging for Black people, especially in light of the global outcry about the lack of racial safety amplified through the #BlackLivesMatter movement (Gatwiri & Townsend-Cross, 2022). Indeed, extending the theorisation of Blackness and Africanness to encompass multiple and fluid expressions of identities that challenge the dominance of the ‘single story’ (Adichie, 2009) about Black Africans was made necessary by the clear shortfalls and significant policy, social cohesion and practice implications.

A Summary of Key Lessons To this end, there are significant lessons that have become apparent while writing this book and through listening to the narratives of the participants informing this research. These key lessons are summarised below.

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Black Africans Experience High Levels of Anti-Black Racism and Racial Indignities This research has demonstrated that the racial indignities that greet the Black body in Australia are exacerbated by the racialised social constructions of Blackness deployed by the media through a deficit lens. The perception of race, Blackness and Africanness has real consequences for Black Africans. Specifically, Black Africans in Australia have attracted mediatised attention, with questions about their supposed ‘lack of capacity to integrate and assimilate’ being summoned through repetitious negative profiling of Black African individuals and communities. In this research, racism and processes of racialisation emerged as one of the key experiences that underpin many of the challenges facing Black African migrants in Australia. This study highlighted that Black Africans experience heightened and constant micro and macro levels of racial indignities that impact their mental wellbeing, career advancement and sense of belonging. For most, Blackness is experienced as a burden, whereby ‘the symbolic burden arises out of the abstract pain and difficulty of dealing with the unseen messages and connotations attached to the color of their skin’ (Mapedzahama & Kwansa-Aidoo, 2017, p. 5). Others have argued that to be Black in white spaces is to have one’s humanity and dignity chronically under threat (Gatwiri & Mapedzahama, 2022) and to live in daily effort proving your right to belong. bell hooks (1992) summarises the essence of racial indignity and the fatigue that follows by writing: Even though I live and move in spaces where I am surrounded by whiteness, there is no comfort that makes the [burden] disappear. All black people in [white societies], irrespective of their class status or politics, live with the possibility that they will be terrorized by whiteness. (p. 317)

Participants in this study reported comparable outcomes to the findings of Sue et al.’s (2007) research on racial microagressions—that there were constant acts of overt and covert microaggressions, and relentless questioning and challenging of their identity, expertise, knowledge and skills compromised their experiences of belonging at the workplace. These experiences of racialisation impacted their psychological safety at work, leading to significant implications for career progression and promotions. Similar outcomes were highlighted by Udah and Singh (2018), who found in their research with Black Africans in Australia, regardless of their reasons for migration and backgrounds, African migrants frequently experienced reductive assumptions that singularised their identities. As established within this book, in Australia, Black Africans are ‘marked’ as different, and this difference ‘follows’ them in their daily experiences (Gatwiri & Anderson, 2020). The book has also investigated in depth the unspoken but normalised and standardised Eurocentric practices regarding how ‘Australianess’ is measured through ‘colour lines’ and the significant impacts this has on Black Africans in Australia. Discourses of the ‘ideal’ Australian identity are still seen through the white racial frame, which subsequently locates Blackness and Africanness as existing perpetually outside the boundaries of mainstream normative conceptions of Australian identity.

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Consequently, Black African migrants may face repeated racial microagressions and reminders that ‘Australia is not home’. Mapedzahama and Kwansa-Aidoo (2017) have argued that ‘skin color is broadly accepted as a conspicuous marker of difference and racial belonging’ and ‘Black embodiment imposes a burden that those with black phenotype cannot escape’ (p. 1). They state that: The ongoing and constant experience of discrimination, marginalization, and disempowerment by those racialized as ‘black’ imposes on them a unique kind of burden which is both ‘symbolic’ and ‘material’, derived from the notion of black or blackness as ‘a cultural trope and a set of subject positions’ … this burden of blackness [i]s a fully embodied and affective experience which is represented by negative experiential and intersubjective processes, and which is negotiated by drawing on a variety of symbolic, material, and discursive resources to live a life that challenges the definitional markers of negativity enshrined in and attached to the word black. The symbolic burden arises out of the abstract pain and difficulty of dealing with the unseen messages and connotations attached to the color of their skin. (Mapedzahama & Kwansa-Aidoo, 2017, p. 5)

This identified racial burden is a form of racial indignity. It produces experiences of lowered self-confidence, self-loathing and low self-esteem due to the ascribed negative and undignified cultural and social meanings attached to Blackness. Slaughter (1977) has argued that ‘the duress of racial domination [is a] two-pronged process of externally imposed inferiorisation and subsequent internalisation of that inferiority’. There are numerous negative impacts of racial indignities and racial discrimination— such as un/underemployment, difficultly acquiring housing, racialised experiences in health and education sectors—which all interfere with social inclusion, integration and belonging. Participants in this study demonstrated that their experiences of being racialised made them aware of the ways their Black bodies carry a predetermined ‘racial code’ that lowers their value in society and in particular, in workplaces. This process of becoming Black in the workplace fosters a ‘realisation of the meaning and significance of black embodiment in a white dominated society, [and how] the …black skin locates them into the racialised category, ‘black’, with all its implications for their professional identity’ (Mapedzhama et al., 2011, p. 157).

Black African Migrants’ Expertise Is Undervalued Within the Australian Context Similar to findings in this research, Benier et al.’s (2018) research with young people of South Sudanese backgrounds demonstrated that achievements by people within the community were lauded as evidence of their ‘Australianness’, whereas any ‘wrongdoing’ was ‘rarely associated with Australian culture, policies, institutions or systemic barriers to social inclusion…instead, it was attributed to the “Africanness” of perpetrators’ (p. 32). International literature on skilled migration has previously focused on macro contextual issues such as brain drain and migrants’ remittances, but this has left a knowledge gap about skilled migrants’ self-initiated and self-identified contributions to the host environment. This study demonstrated

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that successful migration benefits (socially, economically and culturally) both new arrivals and receiving communities, as demonstrated in the current study. Contrary to the myth that ‘Africans are highly dependent on welfare’ in Australia, our study shows a counter-narrative to the dominant perceptions of Africans regarding work ethics and contributions to the Australian economic landscape. In our study, participants described in detail their achievements at work, contributions to Australia, investment successes, creation of employment and other opportunities for the wider Australian community. They reflected on their participation in developing small businesses and dutiful payment of taxes contributed significantly to Australia’s economy. For example, Maurice stated: We have contributed financially and economically, being in real estate. We have investments in not 1, 2, 3, or 4 places. Our properties are scattered around, and we employ the real estate managers to manage the properties. In that way, they get money for managing our properties. We pay high taxes and we have helped the South Australian economy—we can say yes, we have done that.

Reflecting on the importance of multiple stories about Africans, many participants stated that they wanted to live in country where their contributions and full humanity were seen, fully acknowledged and recognised.

Cultural Diversity Does Not Translate to Belonging for Black Africans Diversity is being invited to the party, Inclusion is being asked to dance, and Belonging is dancing like no one is watching (Unknown)

This study found that in addition to the everyday challenges of relocation and settlement, Black African migrants face additional obstacles to belonging in destination counties where race has particular salience, such as Australia. To date, there is a lack of consistent understanding within policy and public discourse in Australia about what belonging entails. In relation to immigrants, references to belonging are often synonymised with concepts of inclusion, social cohesion and community harmony. But as we have emphasised throughout this book, belonging can also be construed as an ‘emotional attachment, [and] about feeling at “home”’ (Yuval-Davis, 2006). However, belonging is an enmeshment of multiple factors, including structural positioning (citizenship, agency and identity), as well as an emotion (safety, ease). It is the intersection between the structural and emotional dimensions that foster dignity (the right to be). We have demonstrated in Chapter 3 that it is possible for people to be ‘included’ and still feel like ‘strangers who do no not belong’ (e.g. see Gatwiri & Anderson, 2021; Mapedzahama & Kwansa-Aidoo, 2013; Udah, 2018). Our findings show that despite the strong emphasis on ‘celebrating diversity’ and ‘inclusion rhetorics’, Africans in Australia continue to be positioned as perpetual foreigners, resulting in racial/minority stress being woven through their daily existence. While the law can legislate for inclusion, it cannot facilitate belonging, because

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belonging is not merely a matter of ‘including others’. Participants in this study reported that even though Australia was multicultural and diverse, Black people’s experiences are still at the margins of Australian society. For this reason, many are not able to build a national identity based on ‘membership’ of belonging in the ‘in group’.

Black African Migrants Are Harmed by Negative Media and Misrepresentations Participants from this study suggested that negative media and racialised stereotypes functioned as tools through which daily racial indignities emerged. Indicative of their hypervisibility, the label ‘African-Australian’ tends to be used reductively in Australia to designate only people who have continental African ancestry and present as phenotypically Black. This homogenisation through the application of a continental designation assumes ‘racial, ethnic and cultural uniformity’ (Gebrekidan, 2018, p. 126) and carries with its pejorative layers of negative stereotypes associated with being Black and African. The Australian media plays a particularly significant role in constructing the identities of those marked as ‘Black Africans’ through deficit discourses (Gatwiri & Anderson, 2021), often ‘associating them with inferiority and pathologizing and problematizing them as lacking in something, as morally suspect and crime-prone or easily falling foul of the law’ (Udah & Singh, 2018, p. 37). The hypervisibility can contribute to the over-surveillance, policing and institutionalisation of Black Africans, indicating that they remain overwhelmingly constructed as ‘perpetual suspects’ or ‘persons of interest’. Participants in the study echoed their frustration with mediated constructs of Africans. They argued that the media’s hostility towards Africans intensifies or increases their experiences of discriminatory attitudes projected towards them by the public. For example, Kissa stated that ‘when you listen to the news, about a crime in Melbourne; you will always know if it involves a person of colour’. This is because race will always be summoned as a criminalising factor in such reporting. Another participant placed this racialised dog-whistling in a historical context, arguing that every immigrant group has endured migrant victimisation at the hands of the media. Most participants agreed that the moral panics surrounding the discourses of #AfricanGangs, for example, demonstrate how mainstream media reporting of an event can reduce, dehumanise and influence the public’s negative opinion of Africans. One participant added that negative media representations of Africans harm the community and poison mainstream Australian society against Africans who are doing their best to contribute to Australian society. They explained: When Africans do well, it is not publicised as much as when somebody does something [bad] and is African. The profiling needs to stop. It is always about, ‘Oh, an African man committed this crime, or an African woman blah blah blah’, but if it were in a different race, they would not have emphasised that it was a White Australian man. So why is it that because it is African, they need to identify that person with that crime and their race?

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Therefore, for Africans in Australia, their Black embodiment and the associated racialised scripts they encounter can lead to Racial Battle Fatigue (RBF) and minority stress being interwoven through their daily life. Studies show that ongoing racial discrimination is a social determinant of health inequities among racially minoritised communities (Elias & Paradies, 2016). This research affirms that mainstream articulations of Blackness and Africanness utilise deficit discourses that can lead to all Black people of African heritage in Australia being seen as synonymous with refugees, assumed to have experienced trauma, and stereotyped as lacking in education, professional expertise and English proficiency (Udah & Singh, 2018, p. 37). This homogenisation may inform how social and educational services respond to challenges experienced within Black African communities as the concerns can be framed through frameworks of ‘community deficiency, rather than strength, particularly when communities of colour are being examined’ (DePouw & Matias, 2016, p. 237). Decolonising laws and policies ensure an acknowledgement the damage of ‘single stories’ about African immigrants and would be a good direction in attempting to ‘move away from deficit-focused discourses of acculturation’ and assimilation (Ayika et al., 2018, p. 8).

Black Africans Are Resilient in the Face of Personal and Structural Challenges of Resettlement Despite the invisibility of African diversity and African contributions to Australia, and the profound obstacles to relocation that were emphasised both in the literature and by participants in this research, Hiruy and Hutton (2019) found evidence that their participants believed ‘holding a united African voice was in the greater interests of the community … in this sense, “African-ness” functions as a platform to stand together in the face of systematic challenges, particularly when trying to influence policy’. This means members of the African community ‘undergo a “juggling act” between their personal and experiential distinctiveness, and a ‘collective struggle for unity’ (Hiruy & Hutton, 2019, p. 14). Collectively, despite the challenges many had encountered, participants in this study refused to see themselves as victims and continually saw the ‘positives’ in living in Australia and the opportunities this country afforded them. Therefore, resilience frameworks in migration discourses, particularly those that theorise experiences of Black migrants, need to employ strength-based and non-deficit approaches while also acknowledging the additional challenges that relocation to predominantly white contexts presents. In their research, Hiruy and Hutton (2019) found that: Despite facing significant systemic barriers to accessing the Australian labour market, our participants relayed stories of setting up their businesses, forming community organisations, and participating in global outreach projects. This entrepreneurial culture has undoubtedly generated significant economic and socio-cultural spillovers benefits for the nation but has narrowly escaped mainstream recognition (21).

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The lack of recognition is often influenced by the prevalent negative stereotypes surrounding Africans in Australia, who are often presented in dominant discources as having little to offer the host country. Given that many Africans enter Australia as skilled migrants, the majority of participants in this study echoed the pride they felt through the significant contributions they have made to the Australian economy and social fabric despite the social and cultural challenges that contribute to experiences of ‘everyday racism’.

Recommendations for Policy Makers and Practitioners For the policy makers, social and educational services sector workers concerned, understanding the practices, values and cultures of migrants helps to expand knowledge on the complexity of research, policy and practice in multicultural contexts and to illuminate the ways Australia at large manages the tensions emerging from this process. Below we highlight key issues that, if actioned, we suggest would make a significant difference for Afrodiasporic communities in Australia.

Afrocentric Frameworks Are Recommended to Inform Policy and Practice Afrocentric frameworks facilitate understanding the complex nuances that foster and/or hinder integration for members of African communities in Australia. Afrocentric theories also offer an innovative strategy for exploring Afrodiasporic challenges in Australia. They provide a strong commitment to identifying and utilising local knowledge, local expertise and local ways of doing to solve the social problems affecting such communities. This is consistent with the sociocultural ontologies and norms shared throughout much of the African continent, including but not limited to a focus on collective perspectives on community and the family rather than individualistic perspectives. Unfortunately, Western-oriented policies and intervention approaches that focus on the individual have so far failed to address some of the emerging social issues in African diasporic communities. Although the literature is clear on the importance of adopting Afrocentricity in community practice with Africans—in Africa and in diasporic contexts—there is a ‘glaring reluctance on the part of contemporary scholars and practitioners to integrate this approach into practice, and research’ (Bent-Goodley et al., 2017, p. 2). When African values or ways of knowing, being and doing are inferiorised, it erodes the strengths of the cultural collectivist pattern that holds African communities together (Gatwiri, 2020). Afrocentric frameworks of practice are likely to provide the urgently needed solution-focused Afrocentric

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knowledge to policy makers and practitioners, with a view to reduce their social, cultural and economic disadvantage for this community. However, the Afrocentric paradigm is not just about adding local knowledge; rather, it affirms and integrates cultural experiences and values shared by people of African descent. Theoretically, it is a viable and innovative way of helping practitioners utilise African philosophies as a starting place for interpreting social problems affecting Africans, to create long-term and sustainable community healing and societal change (Bent-Goodley et al., 2017). African philosophies of Ubuntu and Sancofa (see Chapter 2) are particularly useful to enhance understanding of the challenges affecting Africans in Australia, and also preferred, as they utilise strength-based, culturally appropriate perspectives that recognise African indigenous collectivist values, spirituality and interconnectedness (Gatwiri, 2020). To address modern and social challenges affecting Africans in Australia it is critical to utilise strength-based perspectives that recognise and are embedded within their indigenous cultures.

Recognition of the Significant Contributions of Africans in Australia Is Important African migrants work in various professions where there is a shortfall in the Australian workforce. For example, Hiruy and Hutton (2019) report that ‘ABS data shows that the number of African-born professionals working as medical practitioners and nurses proportional to the African-born population is higher than the general Australian population’ (p. 18). According to Department of Home Affairs (2018), as cited in Hiruy and Hutton (2019): The 2016 Census suggests that the labour force participation rate for recent migrants and temporary residents was 70% in November 2016, while the overall participation rate for Australia was 66%. Moreover, migrants who had obtained Australian citizenship since arrival had a higher labour force participation rate than permanent residents and temporary residents (80%, compared to 69% and 65% respectively. (p. 18)

As such, supporting migrant communities, including highly skilled migrants, to relocate and transition to appropriate work successfully, and acknowledging their vital skills and contributions is important for Australia’s economy and society.

Education and Recognition of the Importance of Racial and Cultural Safety The experiences of migrants in Australia are particularly relevant in regards to the need for decolonised, culturally safe practices. While working with migrants from diverse cultural backgrounds, we do not advocate for cultural competence as an overarching framework, but rather for practices grounded in the principles of cultural

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humility. Similar to Tascon and Gatwiri’s (2020) contention, practitioners may need to move away from cultural competency frameworks in certain contexts as they do not necessarily critique how ‘being part of a dominant culture instils values of superiority and imperialism in practitioners’ (p. 5). Approaches adopted by professionals who are trained in the Anglosphere are not culturally neutral, and they need to constantly be examined for how they may inadvertently perpetuate cultural dominance over non-white others. This critical approach takes the emphasis away from an individual’s ability to cope with daily stressors and places it on the social systems that uphold oppressive conditions that give rise to structural marginalisation (Gatwiri, 2019). Knowing what we know now, we also assert a corresponding need for culturally affirming theoretical frameworks and research methodologies that recognise the cultural strengths of migrating communities. We contend that this need can be addressed by utilising Afrocentricity to investigate Afrodiasporic experiences.

Promote a Shift from Inclusion to Belonging A distinctive approach that brings together African theoretical perspectives of belonging, where ‘African experiences are at the centre of “knowing belonging” and “talking about belonging”’, is necessary (Kwansah-Aidoo & Mapedzahama, 2018b). This emphasis can also be phrased as a question: How do Africans in Australia experience belonging and dignity? Shifting the focus from inclusion to belonging recognises that ‘belonging is a far more powerful force than any [diversity and inclusion] strategy could ever be. It’s a fundamental human need, that translates across any language or culture, and a feeling that every human is wired to want’ (Sands, 2019). To better understand this complex interface between diversity, inclusion and dignity, researchers, practitioners and policy makers need to recast these concepts through Afrocentric paradigms and theorisations informed by the needs highlighted by Africans within their communities. This will enable the development of alternative strength-based Afrocentric solutions that will be utilised in community and human service settings to promote better outcomes for Africans who struggle to ‘feel at home’, belong and integrate fully into Australian society. By applying an Afrocentric lens to our understanding of the ‘problem of Africans in Australia’, practitioners and policy makers can recast ‘inclusion’ through a more nuanced understanding of belonging and racial dignity.

More Research on Afrodiasporic Identities Is Necessary This study has also highlighted the importance of theorising African diasporic identities and their positioning within Australia. The invisibility of Afrocentricity in migratory studies can have unintended consequences for Black Africans, especially

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in Australia where conceptions of Africanness are discursively constructed as backward. Similar to research outcomes with African-Australians in Victoria conducted by the AHRC (2010), we found that one of the biggest issues confronting Africans in Australia was anti-Black and racialised views and discourses. These attitudes often prevent them from finding work, acquiring appropriate housing and integrating successfully into the Australian multicultural society. One participant in the AHRC (2010) study reported: The big problem is that, even if there is work or even if there are some houses, it is people and how they think about Africans that is a bigger problem. We get told that we cannot be trusted, that we are lazy. This is much harder to fight than looking for houses. (p. 8)

The systemic marginalisation of Africans in discourse has significant consequences, including but not limited to family and mental health breakdowns and suicidality (AHRC, 2010), substance misuse, poor employability (Udah et al., 2019), and challenges in parenting and in the workplace (Gatwiri, 2020; Gatwiri, & Anderson, 2020). All these issues are of concern to practitioners and policy makers who are interested in justice, advocacy, social change and ending disadvantage for all Australians. As far as Afro-families are concerned, understanding the impact of migration on changing family dynamics for migrants has significant policy and practice implications for a range of disciplines and fields of research and practice, due to the particular intersection between gender, familial relationships and the navigation of loss and change at the familial level during the resettlement process. Knowing the challenges impacting Black African communities in Australia, practitioners working with migrants can focus attention on building a network of resources. These could include but are not limited to personal resources, such as understanding appropriate culturally acceptable problem-solving skills, and cultural resources that help bridge them with their communities and mainstream Australia to alleviate feelings of loneliness and rebuild their social capital, which helps mitigate the severity of social disadvantage.

Where to Now? We conclude that critical race perspectives that speak to ‘everyday racism’, ‘racial battle fatigue’ and ‘racial microaggressions’ posit that the discourses of Blackness in Australia are underpinned by white Western ideological imaginations that justify Black inferiority in the Australian sociocultural landscape. Tascon and Gatwiri (2020) have argued that ‘race is one of the key features through which our social world is structured’ and that ‘race is used to control the future, limiting and controlling people’s political and economic possibilities’ for those who are racially marginalised (p. 2). We assert the current potential for positive change within contemporary Australian culture must be pursued through dialogue and conversation. This is especially essential at a time when discourse seems so reactive: Public culture is increasingly defined by intense conversations and dialogue that are cosmopolitan and potentially decolonising. Australia as an insular and contradictory

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nation, ideologically still meta-racially imagined as white, but experienced through colour and cultural diversity, is being radically re-oriented through the effects of its own selfunderstanding public culture, assisted by those from other traditions and ways of knowing. (Offord, 2014, p. 59)

Supporting migrant communities, including highly skilled new migrants, to relocate successfully is important for Australia to implement. This support is most effective and empowering when it is embedded in social and political practices to help new migrants mitigate migration resettlement obstacles, including challenges in employment and inclusion, and to improve their health and wellbeing in their new country.

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