Colombian Migrants in Australia: Their Positioning Processes and Identities in Narratives of Lived and Imagined Experience

Abstract

This thesis examines the positioning processes of forty-four Colombian migrants in Australia that traces their discursive construction of social, national and migrant identities in view of their stories of lived experience before and after their migration. It looks at the socio-historical contours of Australia as an increasingly preferred destination for Colombians, bearing in mind the country’s treatment of its Aboriginal people, its foreign labour force, and its immigrant population. This project offers an overview of the flow of immigrants from Colombia and the features that characterize them as a growing national group in Australia. They could be broadly divided between ‘old’ and ‘new’ migrants, but their wide range of personal stories of mobility and the dimensions that have accompanied their experience here require a further consideration of factors beyond ethnicity and year of arrival. The thesis explores these elements from extant research and official census data combined with details obtained through a preliminary ethnographic approach. Data were collected during 18 months of fieldwork which included an open survey for Colombians in Australia, personal interviews, observation of public events, focus groups, written narratives and further personal communications with participants. This research takes its theoretical base from a combination of standpoint theory, narrative theory, positioning theory, and Dialogical Self Theory (DST) to examine the discursive formation and views of identity that Colombians articulate at different times and in different spaces, be they part of fieldwork or observation of private and community events. Employing these theoretical frameworks, the thesis departs from a perspective that posits both Colombia and Australia as part of the geopolitical Global South, with a given composite of social order practices. The research attends to the key concepts of positioning and positionality to study the reflexivity of participants in their narrative performance. The thesis interrogates the scope of the multiplicity of identities that participants construct and how these are influenced not only by the social and economic conditions they find in the new country but also a number of shared understandings on Colombia’s past and recurrent social practices. This thesis maintains that Colombians in Australia mould their perceptions of citizenship and community in view of what they imagine these values are for Australians. Additionally, the study shows how features like employment mobility and relations with other Colombians effectively leave an imprint on the participants’ perceptions of their own community as fragmented and dispersed. Thus the forming of multiple identity positions or stronger and less volatile ones depend on the individual’s own early experiences as an immigrant, their reasons for leaving Colombia, and their own reasoning over the migration paths they have followed to date. As a result, the narratives examined here reveal how national identities in Colombian territory are intertwined with the participants’ reflections on their own socio-economic, educational and political background constructing at the same time an array of new positions that evoke a multiplicity of migrant identities.