Students, Migrants or Citizens: the Violence of Liminal Spaces

For the past ten years I have been involved in research on the topic of Indian student-migrants in Australia. What started in India in 2004 with the ostensibly simple questions why there was such a surge in Indian students’ enrolments in Australia, turned into a study which had the question of migration at the heart of its investigation. Realising that the majority of Indian students based their decision for Australia on the relatively easy pathway the country offered towards permanent residency (PR), my research focused on understanding how such trajectories from student to migrant took shape. However, as I argued in Imagined Mobility (Anthem Press, 2010), while the propensity to apply for PR may be high, permanently residing in Australia was often not the objective. Instead many Indian students saw a PR as facilitating the start of a transnational existence. In this paper I will draw upon a vast collection of newspaper articles as well as ethnographic material collected over this period in order to produce a personalised account of how I, as an academic researcher, observed the discourse about Indian students in Australia ‘migrate’ from them being welcome international students and would-be migrants to unwelcome profiteers whose reason for being in Australia was highly contested. Questions I will focus on are: how did the violent attacks and subsequent debate about their racist nature impact the lives and trajectories of Indian student-migrants as starting transnationals; how did they themselves reflect on these attacks especially in relation to them being ‘permanent residents’; and finally, what role do ‘Indian students’ continue to play in Australia’s skilled migration debate?

This paper analyses the impact the phenomenal growth (2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009) and rapid decline (2010)(2011)(2012) of Indian student numbers has had on the city of Melbourne. Specifically addressing the way the debate developed over the allegedly racially motivated attacks on students in 2009 the paper examines how conflicting narratives on Indian students could emerge presenting them as 'victims' and/or 'profiteers' . Making use of an analysis of over a thousand media reports as well as drawing on ethnographic material the paper argues that the way the debate about the racist character of the attacks unfolded in popular media is revealing of the way the growth in Indian students in Melbourne has been experienced and perceived over time. In particular the entanglement of education and migration in Australia, allowing Indian students to become permanent residents by graduating from low-quality institutions, contributed to the perception of them being low-skilled migrants and as such 'profiteers' . As a result the paper not only shows how a rapidly growing and highly commercial education industry was able to influence the dynamics and socio-cultural make-up of the city of Melbourne but also how the entanglement of education and migration produced a volatile situation with ultimately far reaching social and economic consequences for the city.

2011

During mid-2009 there was a substantial amount of media and political attention to the issue of physical attacks on international students in Australian cities. Controversy surrounded the claims by victims and their representatives that the attacks were racist, especially those attacks against students of Indian background. Some police and political leaders stated that the attacks were the 'usual' sorts of assaults and incivilities typical of the night-time economies of modern Australian cities. It was suggested that international students may be especially exposed to such violence because of their high dependence on public transport, their use of that transport in the late evenings, their penchants for expensive gadgetry, and perceptions by muggers and bullies that they were passive or soft targets (see critique in Dunn et al., 2011; Jakubowicz and Monani, 2011). As part of their research on the experiences of international students Marginson et al. (2010) observed some of ...

Journal of Intercultural Studies, 2011

The so-called Indian student 'crisis' of 2009 and 2010 is often analysed in the context of how the violence against students challenged Australian multiculturalism and revealed both underlying racism and

While considerable attention has been given to the spate of attacks on Indian students in Australia in 2009 and 2010, less attention has been paid to how the students who were at the centre of the furore perceived the violence. In this paper we explore the perceptions of Indian postgraduate and undergraduate male students studying in Melbourne, Australia, based on data gathered in focus groups. Analysis revealed four broad themes in students’ explanations for the attacks: race hate versus opportunism, intercultural issues, systemic ineffectiveness, and media reporting. Students’ perceptions of the reasons for the attacks were divided in some areas and aligned in others. There was divergence among students about whether the attacks were race hate crime or opportunistic, and about intercultural issues. Students’ perceptions were aligned on issues of systemic ineffectiveness and media reporting. In the current context of decreased international enrolments from Indian students, in which we seek to better understand them, the findings provide implications for international student policy and planning priorities.

The International education-crime nexus: Australian and UK perspectives, 2013

Creating a bridge between nations and peoples, international education has also created divisions between national leaders and communities within and between cultures. Like globalization, it “divides as much as it unites; it divides as it unites” (Bauman, 1998, 2). For decades, many have sung the praises of international education, particularly in Australia, which has fared well from the process. Currently, the tide has turned because Australia is now seen to have less to offer in terms of permanent residency, monetary exchange rates and safety. Monetary exchange rates and visa conditions are often cited as the reasons for the downturn in student numbers to Anglophone countries. In Australia, however, the main reason is thought to be safety concerns stemming from a series of assaults on Indian students in Melbourne in 2009 (Siegmeire, 2011). Not surprisingly, the issue of safety rates highly when students consider their study destination (Marginson, et al., 2010). Indeed, in 2007 sa...

On 8 December 2013, a group of foreign construction workers (FCWs) were involved in a confrontation with the police in the Little India neighbourhood of Singapore after the death of a worker in a vehicle accident. The confrontation was framed as the 'Little India riot' in The Straits Times, the most widely read newspaper in Singapore, often referred to as a state apparatus serving as a tool for nation building. Drawing upon framing theory, we analyze articles published in The Straits Times covering the 'Little India riot' over the period of a year. Our thematic analysis suggests that the newspaper framed the workers as 'rioters', connecting the riot to alcohol and street justice as a trait of the Indian culture, offering a cultural explanation for the underlying factors stirring and shaping the confrontation. The framing of the workers as criminals also justified increased surveillance and control of FCWs as safety measures to preserve Singapore's security and national image as an investment and tourism destination. The news stories also presented multiple viewpoints regarding the handling of the riot and subsequent policy responses, allowing room for contesting opinions in the mediated public sphere. Left absent in the frames were the alternative narratives grounded in the voices of the FCWs. On 8 December 2013, a conflict broke out between foreign construction workers (FCWs) and the police in the Little India neighbourhood in Singapore—an area with mostly Indian and Bangladeshi shops,

Postcolonial Studies, 2018

This article takes up issues 1 around questions of minority, agency and voice in relation to the student protests sparked off in the capital city of India, Delhi, in 2016, with other student protests reverberating in the background across India on different campusesin the east, at Jadavpur University in Kolkata, and in the south, at Hyderabad University. Focusing on the moment at midnight 2 March 2016 when the student leader Kanhaiya Kumar was released on bail and returned to Jawaharlal Nehru University campus to address a large gathering, the question is formulated here with respect to how the students of India, who are citizens of the country but who were in a minority in relation to the reigning political dispensation, were treated by their own government almost as stateless migrants are by the nation-states that seek to contain them. This moment of protest and agitation, beamed across the country on television and carried in newsprint and on social media is read here through song, metaphor and the notion of the stateless, reflecting on how the postcolonial was reconfigured when agency was snatched back by students repudiating the subaltern categories into which they had been corralled by the state.

2022