This study investigates how immigration models of the post Second World War assimilation policy, subsequently replaced by the multiculturalism ideology, have been empirically perceived by Australian immigrants. Questions point to if modern day migrancy and immigration have transformed the ways in which the concepts are currently understood. Of particular interest is: are settlement, citizenship and assimilation an end point, or should migrancy be recast as a fluid phenomenon, privileged by greater freedom of ‘belonging’ afforded by transnationalism? Answers to these questions fill gaps in sociological knowledge. The social research project is anchored in a case study of mainly first but not excluding second and a few third generation Greek and Cypriot Australian immigrant respondents. Data gathering employs qualitative inquiry, applying a Mixed Method approach grounded in the Grounded Theory Method. Fieldwork data are generated by in-depth interviewing of respondents, and interpretation of their statements. Their verbal testimonials are analysed using the conceptually clustered matrix. In this approach text is assembled, sub-clustered, and broken into semiotic segments, permitting the researcher to contrast, compare, analyse, and recognise patterns. The strength of employing the Conceptually Clustered Matrix is that it serves the “conceptual coherence” of the data in this study’s single case inquiry. This study reveals how transnationalism has changed presumptions embedded in the policies of assimilation and multiculturalism. In assimilation, supposition of permanent settlement, and the question of ‘belonging’ has been resolved by the immigrants succeeding in effectively transplanting the former ethnic “I”, into becoming a new Australian “me”. Subsequent multiculturalism provides immigrants options in choosing their self-identity within the society at large and accepting that migrant minorities can subsist in discrete ethnic conglomerates clustered within the compass of wider Australian society. The contribution of this thesis to the body of sociological knowledge is that it investigated presently not or under-investigated scholarship how migrants perceive their diaspora existence, redefined by daily practices among migrants. In a transnational context, the research has focused on exploring post-immigration identity and ‘belonging’. Its findings have identified changing perception of migrancy and immigration, framed in terms of the core research question generated in this thesis, namely “after settlement, then what?
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/286056 |
| Creators | Ferdinand Brockhall |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Detected Language | English |
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