This research focuses on the cultural identity of Chinese Australian adolescents in Canberra between the ages of 18 and 21. Adolescence is a developmental stage in which young people feel a need to define their cultural identity. According to social identity theory, being a member of the group provides individuals with a sense of belonging that contributes to a positive self-concept. In particular, young people belonging to ethnic minority groups need a firm sense of group identification in order to maintain a sense of wellbeing (Tajfel & Turner, 1979). The purpose and significance of this study is to update our understanding of how adolescents from a specific ethnic minority group (Chinese Australian) adjust to the mainstream Australian culture. The information gathered will be significant to the wellbeing of these individuals in helping them to come to terms with their own identity. It will also provide useful information for effective cross-cultural interaction for a range of services such as education, law, health and social services. The quantitative and qualitative approaches employed in this study include a questionnaire and a semi-structured interview. The semi-structured interview complements the questionnaire in confirming the adjustments of these adolescents within an analytical framework that is a replica of Phinney's framework (1994). In her research on bicultural identity orientations of African American and Mexican American adolescents, Phinney categorised these adolescents under four distinct types of interaction with the mainstream culture. These are namely: separation (focus only on the ethnic culture), assimilation (identifying solely with the dominant culture), integration (relating well to both cultures) and marginality (relating to neither culture). In this dissertation the researcher also aims to determine the cultural identity of Chinese Australian adolescents in Canberra in the study using these four categories. The results of this study demonstrate that this framework is an appropriate analytical tool for the study of the cultural identity of Chinese Australian adolescents, most of whom classified themselves as integrated. Overall, Chinese Australian adolescents between the ages of 18 and 21 in the Canberra region were well adjusted and showed little tension or stress in relating to their ethnic culture or to the mainstream Australian culture.

This dissertation presents a study of Chinese diasporic narratives from Canada and Australia and examines the formation and negotiation of diasporic cultural identity and consciousness. Drawing upon theoretical discussions on diasporas in general, it investigates how the Chinese diaspora is imagined and represented, as a visible minority group, within the context of the multicultural nation state. This dissertation begins with a taxonomy of the modes of explaining diaspora and offers three ways of theorising diasporic consciousness. In analysing the filmic and fictional narrative forms of the Chinese in Canada and Australia, the practices of cultural self-representation and of minority group participation and enjoyment of the nation are foregrounded in order to advance critical analysis of the Chinese diaspora. While taking into account the heterogeneity of the imagined diasporic Chinese community, this study also contends that the formation and negotiation of diasporic consciousness and diasporic cultural identity politics is strongly and invariably affected by the multicultural conditions and policies of their host countries. The adaptation and manifestation of minority groups’ cultural practices are thus a matter of social, cultural and political contingencies more often aligned with dominant cultural expectations and manipulations than with the assertiveness of more empowered minority group participation. This dissertation therefore argues for a broader and more complex understanding of diasporic cultural and identity politics in the widespread attempts to merge and incorporate minority group narratives into the key foundational (‘grand’) narratives of the white nation state. The importance of reinscribing Chinese diasporic histories into the cultural landscapes of their receiving countries is moreover increasingly propelled by the speed and momentum of globalisation that has resulted in the growing number of multicultural societies on the one hand but also led to the homogenisation of cultural differences and diversities. In focussing on the fictional and filmic narratives from Canada and Australia, the diversity of the Chinese diasporic community and their conditions are emphasised in order to reflect upon the differences in the administration and practice of multiculturalism in these two countries. The comparative reading of Chinese-Canadian and Chinese-Australian novels and films locates its analysis of notions of ‘homeland’ and belonging, community and national and cultural citizenship within the context of the development and negotiation of diasporic identity politics.

Chineseness at the crossroads examines how Chineseness is negotiated by diasporic Chinese women in Australia. I question the essentialist notions of Chineseness by deploying Homi Bhabha's theory of liminality. This concept of being neither here nor there helped me examine the women's ambiguous experiences of acceptance and rejection, within and across marginal and dominant Australian circles. My position disrupts the binaric frames that divide the old from the new, and the eastern from the western practices for cultural appropriation. It recognises instead the past and the present in the creation of new but familiar versions of Chineseness. I argue that essentialist norms are commuilicated through cultural semantics to inform how Chineseness is rehearsed. I assert that liminality exposes the power structures that inform these cultural semantics by disrupting the naturalised norms. I posit that the diasporic women's awareness of these interdependent processes enables them to question their practices and ideologies. I used an autoethnographic technique to collapse the divide between the researcher and the researched. It created a liminal space between the researcher and the researched. This subverted norms of the researcher as the archaeologist of knowledge by enabling the other women's narratives to tell their stories alongside mine. This methodological frame also serves as a prism to examine the intersections of gender, sexuality, family, relationships, language, education, class, age, and religion with Chineseness in the lives of the 39 Malaysian and Singaporean women interviewed. My results indicate that Chineseness is precarious and indeterminate, and specific to the particular moments of articulation at the crossroads of geopolitical and socioeconomic factors. The versions of Chineseness rehearsed are complexly influenced by the various cultural semantics that impact on the women's negotiations of who they are as diasporic Chinese women in Australia. I conclude with a discussion of how these results challenge current curriculum and pedagogical practices in English classrooms. I argue that a re-examination of these practices will contribute to a more inclusive Australia.

This thesis contributes to the ongoing discussion of modern Chinese identity by pro-viding a case study of Cheok Hong CHEONG. It necessarily considers Australian atti-tudes towards the Chinese during the 19th century, not least the White Australia Pol-icy. The emergence of that discriminatory immigration policy over the second half of the 19th century until its national implementation in 1901 provides the background to the thesis. Cheong was the leading figure among Chinese-Australian Christians and a prominent figure in the Australian Chinese community and the thesis seeks to iden-tify a man whose contribution has largely been shadowy in other studies or, more commonly, overlooked by the parochialism of colony/state emphasis in many histo-ries of Australia. His role in the Christian church fills a space in Victorian religious history. Although Cheong accumulated great wealth he was not part of the Chinese mer-chant class of the huagong/huaquiao traditions of the overseas Chinese diaspora of the 19th and 20th centuries. His wealth was accumulated through property investments following the spectacular collapse of the Victorian banking system during the 1890s. His community leadership role arose through his position in the Christian Church rather than, as was generally the case, through business. His English language skills, resulting from his church association, were the key to his role as a Chinese community spokesman.¶ Cheok Hong Cheong left an archive of some 800 documents in the English lan-guage covering the major people, incidents and concerns of his life and times. His Let-terbooks, together with the archives of the various Christian missions to the Chinese in Australia in the 19th and early 20th centuries, shed light on one person’s life and more broadly, through his involvements on the complex relationships of Chinese emigrants, with the often unsympathetic majority of Australians.¶ This is a case study of a Chinese identity formed outside China and influenced by a wider set of cultural influences than any other Chinese-Australian of his time —an identity that justifies the description of him as an ‘Alien Son’. Cheong’s story is a con-tribution to the urban and family history of an important ethnic sub-group within the wider immigrant history of Australia.¶ While Cheong remained a Chinese subject his identification with Australia cannot be questioned. All his children were born in Australia and he left just twice after his arrival in 1863. He visited England in 1891-2 and in 1906 he briefly visited China. Identity and culture issues are growing in importance as part of the revived relation-ship between the Chinese of the diaspora and the economic renewal of the People’s Republic of China and this thesis is offers a contribution to that discussion.