Events

This webinar is the fourth in the Australian Centre’s 2024 Critical Public Conversations series: Sovereignty and Solidarity: Redefining belonging in so-called Australia.

Stories of migration from the Mediterranean region to Australia have typically been framed within a settler national frame of historical analysis. That is, histories of Greek, Italian, Maltese, Cypriot, Turkish, and Lebanese migrant experiences are often positioned as stories of “struggle and success” in the national confines of Australian history. Such stories frame migrants from the Mediterranean region as a people who worked hard (often in small businesses or nation building infrastructure schemas) and then climbed the steep ladder of social mobility to become successfully assimilated, hyphenated Australians. Such historical narratives – which almost never centre First Nations people, Indigenous sovereignty, and Country – are frequently deployed by members of Mediterranean diasporas to claim an entitled sense of belonging to (so-called) Australia.

In this webinar, diaspora scholars Daphne Arapakis and Dr Andonis Piperoglou explore this (mis)using of the past. Illuminating the importance of the past in the construction of Greek diasporic identities today, they will explore how usages of migrant histories create culturally specific renderings of settler colonial culture, while also making space for anti-colonial activities that permit alternative, cross-border, senses of belonging.

ACCESSIBILITY

If you have any support requirements in order to participate fully, please let us know via aust-centre@unimelb.edu.au.

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The family can be conceptualised as both a private and public ‘space’ (Canagarajah, 2013; Lanza and Lomeu Gomes, 2020) that operates within a society. Family Language Policy (FLP) (King, Fogle and Logan-Terry, 2008) on language maintenance and development, therefore, would reflect social as well as affective factors (Schalley and Eisenchlas, 2020) that influence each other.

While Spolsky’s (2004) tripartite model of language policy, composed of language ideology, language practices, and language management, has been used in many FLP studies, the focus of FLP research has evolved from explicit and overt language planning and management to include implicit and covert ones through practices such as literacy and identity construction in recent years. However, there are still gaps in research.

This seminar draws on some of the findings from the Australian Network for Japanese as Community Language (ANJCL)’s nation-wide interview study on learners of ‘Japanese as Community Language’ (JCL) to interpret the dynamic functions of FLP and its impact on language maintenance and development. Analyses of interviews with 18 families that have raised JCL speakers to adulthood uncovered complex relationships among FLP factors, language environment and resources, and JCL maintenance into adulthood.

This seminar is delivered in partnership with Global Japan Office, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (TUFS).

Catering

We will serve lunch for this event with vegan/vegetarian/meat options.