Language, citizenship and inclusion
This theme brings together scholars from a range of disciplines, including languages and linguistics, historical and cultural studies, social sciences, and creative arts, to research the centrality of multilingualism, intercultural literacy, migrants’ living heritage, and creative practices, in promoting social cohesion in multicultural countries. The research aims to foster more inclusive, dynamic and constructive narratives about the nation and its citizens, through the recognition of the multilingual and transcultural nature of contemporary societies. Scholars working on this theme privilege multidisciplinary approaches to research. They work closely with migrant communities to develop participatory projects that influence and inform public policies and initiatives on social inclusion and social cohesion, at local, national and transnational level.
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Featured projects
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Youth in the City: One place, many cultures
“With this work we wanted to take back Prato, not just in a physical sense, but in a moral sense, through our own perspectives and imagination...” (Youth in the City – Exhibition Press Release published on “La Nazione”).
Youth in the City is an initiative led by scholars at Monash University and Aalborg University, in collaboration with the design and innovation studio Logic Moon. It aims to foster leadership for social change through creative practices and digital projects within superdiverse cities across the world. We focus on initiatives centred around young people of different cultural and linguistic backgrounds that will foster the development of leadership and communicative skills and build communities of practice. To date this research initiative has received funding from the National Geographic Society and the Scanlon Foundation.
'Youth in the city: La nostra Prato' is the first project we completed as part of this research initiative. It applies expertise in participatory mapping and digital storytelling, to develop collaborative work with secondary schools and community organisations in Prato, one of the most multiethnic cities in Italy. All the project outputs will be released soon, including a digital platform, media content about the project, and education guidelines on how to use or replicate the project to foster cultural literacy and leadership for social change.
Language and Political Participation Among Second- and Third-generation Italians
Emigration waves have increased the presence of transnational communities worldwide, resulting in institutions and programmes that help non-resident citizens to maintain their language and to actively participate in the life of their country of origin.
Dr Matteo Bonotti and Dr Chiara De Lazzari will conduct this project in 2021. The project is funded by the COMITES of Victoria and Tasmania (Comitato degli Italiani all’ Estero) and the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
This research project will investigate the impact of these policies by looking at the case study of Italy. It will focus specifically on the relationship between language proficiency and political participation. Since all Italians resident abroad have the right to vote in Italy’s national elections and referendums, the project will explore the impact that Italy’s language policies have on second- and third-generation Italians in Australia, particularly in Victoria and Tasmania, and whether and how they enable them to participate in political debate in Italy. Via a series of interviews and a survey, the project will aim to understand how confident second- and third-generation Italians in Victoria and Tasmania are in engaging in Italian political debate from abroad, and how effective Italy’s language policies are in providing them with the language skills necessary to understand and/or participate in that debate and be informed voters.
Civic Virtue in Public Life: Understanding and Countering Incivility
MMIC members Drs Matteo Bonotti and Steven Zech have been awarded a two-year grant to study 'Civic Virtue in Public Life: Understanding and Countering Incivility in Liberal Democracies'. The international project, led by the team from Politics and International Relations in the Monash School of Social Sciences, will examine the concepts of civility and incivility using a series of case studies in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia involving such key issues as extremist politics, hate speech, anti-migration discourse, and the environment. This is an urgent task given the growing presence of right-wing populist and far-right extremist groups that threaten the very foundations of the liberal democratic order.
This grant is funded as part of the Self, Virtue and Public Life Project, a three-year research initiative based at the Institute for the Study of Human Flourishing at the University of Oklahoma. The project is funded with generous support from the Templeton Religion Trust. Dr Peter Lentini (Monash University), A/Prof Emily Gade (Emory University), A/Prof Aurélia Bardon (University of Konstanz) and A/Prof Joshua Eastin (Portland State University) are co-investigators on the project.
For further information, please contact Dr Matteo Bonotti.
Communication Strategies and Approaches During Outbreaks
COVID-19 is likely to be the worst public health crisis in Australia since 1919. Effective management of the COVID-19 pandemic and future pandemics in Australia requires significant and sustained population-wide behaviour change. This can only be achieved through an effective public health mass media campaign that delivers well-designed and relevant messages to all communities in Australia. Of particular interest to this portfolio is understanding health information needs of specific vulnerable populations within our community. These vulnerable population groups include: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, deaf/hard of hearing community, aged care workers, those with disability and their carers, street-based sex workers and refugee and asylum seekers. Informed from these findings, relevant COVID-19 health messages will be designed and implemented in a helix counterbalanced randomised controlled trial, to assess the reach and uptake within each of the identified vulnerable population groups compared to “general” communication approaches used by government in a “common needs” approach. This research will help identify health communication gaps for vulnerable population groups as well as potential solutions for any gaps identified. For further information on this research please contact Professor Terry Haines.
Research Team
Chief Investigator: Professor Terry Haines
Monash University Co-Investigators: Professor Grant Russell, Professor Keith Hill, Associate Professor Cylie Williams, Associate Professor Elizabeth Callaway, Dr Jim Hlavac, Dr Louisa Willoughby, Dr Katrina Long, Dr Lauren Robins, Ms Megan Jepson, Mr Nathan Williams and Mr Matthew Loads.
External investigators: Mr Dwayne Pearce (Peninsula Health), Ms Stacey Aslangul (St Kilda Gatehouse), Ms Rachel Lennon, Dr Meredith Prain (Able Australia), Ms Thera Storie (Wallara), Mr Paul Ireland (Yooralla), Mr Rob Macindoe (enliven), Ms Natasha Wilkinson (Donwood Community Aged Care Services), Ms Louise Wallensky (Department of Health), Ms Jenny Taylor (Department of Health) and Dr Glen Whittaker (La Trobe University).
This project is funded by the Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF), Coronavirus Communications and Strategies Approaches During Outbreaks grant.
Webinar: Political Parties in Multiethnic and Multilingual Societies
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Friday, 3 December 2021
09.00-11.00am AEDT
Register free here.
Chaired by Dr Matteo Bonotti from MMIC, this webinar is structured over two panel sessions as a forum for the comparative analysis of the impact of ethnic and linguistic divisions and nationalism on party politics in a number of European and Asian countries. See panelist details and presentation abstracts below. Professor Rebecca Wickes, Director, Monash Migration and Inclusion Centre (MMIC) will provide the Acknowledgment of Country and a brief introduction to the MMIC. There will be time for audience Q&A at the end of each panel.
This webinar will first explore how the insights offered by the study of multiethnic settings can be drawn upon to better understand the possibility and (un)desirability of multilingual parties in deeply multilingual societies. Second, it will examine the implications of multiethnic and multilingual diversity for intra-party democracy and deliberation. Third, it will provide a forum for the comparative analysis of the impact of ethnic and linguistic divisions and nationalism on party politics in a number of European and Asian countries. And, finally, it will investigate whether and how centripetal institutions normally advocated to dilute ethnic politics in new democracies can also be employed to reduce growing partisan divides and political polarisation in established liberal democratic polities.
Speakers:
PANEL 1:
Nenad Stojanović (University of Geneva) – ‘Centripetal Institutions and Multilingual Parties: Switzerland and Beyond’
Abstract
The paper advances the thesis that the existence of multilingual parties in Switzerland has been strongly influenced by centripetal (i.e. non-consociational) institutions such as direct democracy and presidentialism. The paper draws inspiration from the Swiss case to explore the distinction between centripetal and consociational institutions in other deeply multilingual places - Belgium, Canada, the EU - and its impact on the emergence of multilingual rather than monolingual parties.
Cera Murtagh (Villanova University) – ‘Beyond the Binary? Civic Politics in Northern Ireland’
Abstract
This paper explores the place of civic politics in Northern Ireland post-Brexit. It considers the impact of Brexit and associated political developments of the last five years on actors and issues that lie beyond the ethno-national binary and rival the dominant unionist/nationalist discourse and the potential for its growth or decline in this context. As part of this analysis, the paper examines the increased salience of non-ethnic issues in Northern Ireland politics over the last 15 years, including those pertaining to socio-economic and liberal/conservative cleavages (such as abortion and marriage equality), as well as the rise of civic parties, most notably the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland. In particular, the paper explores how these parties have managed to survive and grow in post-Agreement Northern Ireland in the context of a consociational power-sharing system assumed to be inimical to their success. It assesses the opportunities and barriers civic parties have encountered in the post-Agreement political landscape and the strategies they have used to navigate them.
Wilfried Swenden (University of Edinburgh) – ‘State Narratives, Party Competition and the Dynamics of Territorial Politics: A Typology and Application to the Case of India’
Abstract
What is the significance of polity-wide parties’ understanding of state and nation for their ability and willingness to accommodate territorial diversity? To answer this question, I first introduce a typology containing four ‘ideal-types’ of state nationalism: dominant, integrationist, composite, and plurinational. Subsequently, I apply this typology to India, a polity with a very high level of ethno-linguistic fractionalization, but a relatively centralized federal system. I argue that this relative centralization is the consequence of a dominant state integrationist ideology in the process leading up to and during state formation. More recently this ideology has been challenged by the rise of dominant nationalism built around the idea of India as a ‘Hindu rashtra’ (nation). The analysis underscores how varieties of state nationalism inform the nature and evolution of the territorial constitution, in form and in practice, and the extent to which such shifts are linked to democratization (or a shift towards authoritarianism), party competition and changes in the party system.
PANEL 2:
Michael Breen (University of Melbourne) – ‘Political Parties in Federal Systems in Asia: Intraparty Democracy and Deliberation in Ethnic and Multiethnic Parties’
Abstract
The Asian region has been the site of considerable political and democratic reform over the past few decades. Political parties are integral to the success and failure of federal democratic change, particularly in deeply divided societies. This paper focuses in on one critical aspect of political parties in by looking at the differences between ethnic and multiethnic parties in federal countries in Asia, with a particular focus on internal democracy and deliberation. It is based on a comparative analysis of ethnic and multiethnic political parties in four multiethnic federal systems in Asia, namely India, Malaysia, Myanmar and Nepal. It tests hypotheses: that multiethnic parties have institutional conditions that are more conducive to democratic deliberation than ethnic parties; and that parties are more deliberative in practice at the local level than at the national level. Therefore, an ethnic party that is regional or local only, may also have a high level of deliberation in practice, and there is a causal link between deliberation and moderation. The research has supported the hypotheses, with one important proviso. That is, on average, ethnic parties are still not very democratic or deliberative even when they are small and operate only at the local level. There are some exceptions, but the differences between small ethnic and small multiethnic parties are substantial. These findings can inform political party engineering in divided societies, given the important link between deliberation and moderation, and future research into political parties in federal countries.
Madhavi Devasher (University of New Hampshire) – ‘From Inclusivity to Exclusivity: The Impact of the Bharatiya Janata Party on Cross-Ethnic Appeals among Opposition Parties in India’
Abstract
The growing dominance of the BJP has had a profoundly negative impact on the welfare and representation of Muslims in India. This paper argues that aside from the BJP’s own right-wing Hindu orientation, the weakness and complicity of other parties in India is also responsible for these outcomes. While in earlier years, the proliferation of political parties and heightened competition in many Indian states led to a growth in cross-ethnic appeals, in the last few years, the BJP’s dominance has reduced the incentives for such cross-ethnic overtures. The shrinking of political space for other parties and the formation of alliances to combat the rise of the BJP has meant that appeals to minority voters and especially Muslims have taken a backseat. Many regional and ethnic parties have been unable to serve as an effective check and opposition to the BJP, particularly because they have lost large numbers of their core vote base to the BJP. Instead, they have mimicked much of the BJP’s political platform. Ironically, the inability of these ethnic parties to hold on to their ethnic bases of support has made Muslim representation harder. Opposition parties have not even been able to project themselves as a more desirable alternative in the face of India’s ongoing COVID tragedy. I conclude that the prospects for Muslims in the near future are bleak while existing parties remain weak.
Benjamin Reilly (University of Western Australia) – ‘Cross-ethnic Voting and Political Parties’
Abstract
A major debate in political science circles over the past two decades has been the idea that ethnic politics can be moderated, diluted or transformed through inclusion in political parties or via electoral rules. While much of this debate has focussed on new democracies, at the same time the Western world has experienced a surge in political polarization, as new movements, mostly but not exclusively from the right, have pulled political debates away from the centre and towards the extremes. This paper examines attempts to ameliorate both forms of division by encouraging cross-voting, whereby members of one group are given incentives to vote for others in some form. These include vote-pooling using preferential rankings or geographic thresholds, the use of cross-regional party formation rules; mandatory ethnic diversity requirements for party lists; and various forms of ‘uni-directional’ vote-pooling in which seat reservations for specified minorities are elected by all voters rather than just the minority in question.