SY2024:04
Ethnicity, Immigration and the Nation-State
Townsville
Prerequisites: SY1001 or SY1002
Inadmissable Subject Combination: SY3024
26 lectures, 24 tutorials. Second semester.
Staff: Dr J Coughlan and other staff.
The subject offers a sociological and comparative perspective on debates about ethnicity and immigration in Australia. The first part of the subject compares the experience of immigration in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. A particular focus is the location of migrants within the economic, political and social structures of their countries of emigration and immigration. The second part considers debates about ethnicity and multiculturalism in Australia against the background of Australia’s diverse immigration history. Central themes are the question of ‘Australian identity’ and its shifting relations with indigenous Australians. The final part considers the experience of immigration in Australia, the formation of ethnic groups and their relations to civil society and the state. Discussion links experiences in North Queensland to broader national and international patterns of change associated with the ideas of postcolonialism and postmodernity such as changing labour markets, class fragmentation and cultural representations of ethnicity, gender and identity.
Learning Objectives:
- understand the major factors that influence patterns of international migration;
- understand the major factors that shape the developing relations between immigration, ethnic diversity and multiculturalism in Australia;
- identify and distinguish between major sociological concepts and arguments used in the study of migration, ethnicity and multiculturalism;
- apply those concepts and arguments in the analysis of patterns in North Queensland and Australia more generally.
Assessment by tutorial participation (10%); brief literature review (15%); research assignment (35%); final examination (40%).
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