Studies in Transnationalism – serie

Adopting a political and legal perspective, Redefining Citizenship in Australia, Canada, and Aotearoa New Zealand undertakes a transnational study that examines the demise of Britishness as a defining feature of the conceptualisation of citizenship in Australia, Canada, and Aotearoa New Zealand and the impact that this historic shift has had on Indigenous and other ethnic groups in these states. During the 1950s and 1970s an ethnically based citizenship was transformed into a civic-based one (one based on rights and responsibilities). The major context in which this took place was the demise of British race patriotism in Australia, English-speaking Canada, and Aotearoa New Zealand. Although the timing of this shift varied, Aboriginal groups and non-British ethnic groups were now incorporated, or appeared to be incorporated, into ideas of citizenship in all three nations. The development of citizenship in this period has traditionally been associated with immigration in Australia, Canada, and Aotearoa New Zealand. However, the historical origins of citizenship practices in all three countries have yet to be fully analysed. This is what Redefining Citizenship in Australia, Canada, and Aotearoa New Zealand does. The overarching question addressed by the book is: Why and how did the end of the British World lead to the redefinition of citizenship in Australia, Canada, and Aotearoa New Zealand between the 1950s and 1970s in regard to other ethnic and Indigenous groups? This book will be useful for history and politics courses, as well as specialised courses on citizenship and Indigenous studies. 'This meticulously researched book will be a must-read for scholars interested in national identity, political and legal history, and the history of indigenous resistance.'—Ann McGrath, Australian National University'This book is a groundbreaking comparative study of Canada, Australia, and Aotearoa New Zealand and the shift from ethnic forms of British-based national identity to civic and potentially more inclusive varieties during the 1960s and 1970s…An impressive addition to the literature on citizenship studies, Indigenous peoples, and racialized peoples.'—David B. MacDonald, University of Guelph'This book is essential reading for students of the political history of British settler states… and will be invaluable for citizenship specialists, especially with expertise in ethnic and indigenous studies, still debating whether the British World is being revived or is irretrievably lost.'—David Pearson, Victoria University of Wellington'Mann does a fine job of illuminating and explaining the various legislative changes that have affected citizenship as a status and as a set of rights in Australia, Canada and Aotearoa New Zealand.'—Yasmeen Abu-Laban, University of Alberta'Mann's valuable study enriches our understanding of how citizenship laws changed in response to the passing of the British World and gestures towards some of the motivations behind early Indigenous activism for distinctive citizenship rights.'—Harry Hobbs, University Technology Sydney'At a time when the rights and responsibilities of citizenship are frequently in the news, this is a timely study across three of the five core Anglosphere countries...This comparative analysis of citizenship across three countries is an invaluable contribution to our understanding…A major strength is its analysis of the respective efforts made to be properly inclusive of indigenous populations.'—Patrick Coleman, Lincoln University‘The book is a window into current issues relevant to legislation and policies around citizenship in the twenty-first century and valuable for those interested in the history of citizenship in Commonwealth countries.’—Kim Rubenstein, University of Canberra

The early years of the East Indian Indentureship system in the Caribbean saw experiments on "coolie" laborers under the British Empire. Colonial Trinidad was one of the main sites for this experiment. This book foregrounds one of the earliest cases (1846) of occupational and physical cruelty against East Indian indentured laborers in Trinidad within this very early period of experimentation. It presents and analyzes the full transcripts of an inquiry concerning the ill-treatment of "coolie" laborers and the severe punishment and death of one laborer, Kunduppa, by a Scottish planter in Trinidad. Drawing on the concepts of discipline, governmentality, and Orientalism, the main argument of the manuscript is that within the early experimental period of Indentureship, the figure of the "coolie" and disciplinary tactics of bodily torture were instrumental to redrafting and stabilizing the colonial governance of contract labor. It also argues that Crown investigations of "coolie" abuse and death became occasions for establishing a new colonial order, in which the disciplinary powers of planters were curbed in the interest of protecting and "caring" for the "coolie" —a discourse that was crucial to re-inventing colonial rule as benevolent. As such, the author’s analysis of colonial violence has crucial implications for critically re-thinking colonial liberalism and its legacies in the present.

The White Men's Countries explores how a shared ideal of race united the American and Australian governments during World War II and the early Cold War periods. This interpretation places cultural and ideological factors alongside the traditional emphasis on pragmatic economic and security considerations in explaining why two nations whose objectives in the Pacific region were often at odds were able to craft one of the most enduring diplomatic relationships of the twentieth century. It examines not only official policies and attitudes but also emphasizes the shared views on race carried by both American and Australian citizens that helped to ameliorate, and at times complicate, the bond between Washington D.C. and Canberra. This work also places greater emphasis on the post-World War II relationship as being the most crucial time in the shaping of the alliance. The White Men's Countries serves to help broaden our understanding of how racial ideology played a powerful role in the transnational relationships formed by the United States and Australia in the mid-twentieth century and how influential ideological factors became an international diplomacy.

This book explains how and why, Australian governments shifted from their historical relationship with Britain to the beginning of a primary reliance on the United States between 1942 and 1957. It shows that, while the Curtin and Chifley ALP governments sought to maintain and strengthen Australia’s links with Britain, the Menzies administration took decisive steps towards this realignment.There is broad acceptance that the end of British Australia only occurred in the 1960s and that the initiative for change came from Britain rather than Australia. This book rejects this consensus, which fundamentally rests on the idea of Australia remaining part of a British World until the UK attempts to join the European Community in the 1960s. Instead, it demonstrates that critical steps ending British Australia occurred in the 1950s and were initiated by Australia. These Australian actions were especially pronounced in the economic sphere, which has been largely overlooked in the current consensus. Australia’s understanding of its national self-interest outweighed its sense of Britishness.

Since the publication of Phillip Buckner and R. Douglas Francis’ ground-breaking Rediscovering the British World, there has not been a collection of essays that looks at the history of the British World from an all-round thematic perspective. This edited collection defines the British World as a global community in which members identified themselves predominantly as British and considered the United Kingdom (UK) to be at its centre. The chapters in the volume focus upon diverse aspects of British identity and its interrelation with the history of Britain’s former settler-colonies and other regions of British settlement. Drawing upon new research from established scholars, early career researchers, and doctoral students, the edited collection aims to offer new voices and perspectives to the study of the British World. The book will appeal to both scholars and students of the history of the British World and British imperial history, as well as the national histories of Australia, Canada, Aotearoa New Zealand, India, and the UK.'In this timely collection, new voices enliven and enlarge British World scholarship, nudging the field towards postcolonial concerns with critique and power while disassembling distinctions between transnational and nation-based modes of analysis.'—Philippa Mein Smith, University of Canterbury, Aotearoa New Zealand'Revisiting the British World provides us with a series of essays that both challenge and expand our understanding of what it meant to be British, both in the United Kingdom and overseas, during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Written by a mixture of established scholars, early career researchers, and doctoral students, the essays bring new voices and a fresh perspective to the field of British World Studies and show its continuing importance.'—Phillip Buckner, University of New Brunswick'This edited collection, ranging widely in its conceptual and geographic scope, offers fresh perspectives on an important field. It not only revisits the British World, it enlarges it.'—Felicity Barnes, University of Auckland'As the editors point out in their deftly context-setting, elegant, and insightful introductory and concluding remarks, the authors have used a range of different approaches to elucidate their subjects, from life-writing and critical discourse analysis to geopolitics, constitutional and political history, and through to the emerging fields of the history of celebrity and of humour. This fine collection is a resounding testimony to the continuing usefulness, fecundity, and depth of work on the significance of the British World moment.' —Carl Bridge, King's College London'…reintroduces the British World as an idea to be historicized; a scale of inquiry; and a category of analysis in global, imperial, national, and transnational studies in history and political science...This collection will intrigue scholars interested in complicated histories of Britishness that happened outside of Britain and how the question of Britishness shaped developments in Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, and Canada.'—Danielle Kinsey, Carleton University'The unique selling point presented on the back cover is that such a collection is the first since Phillip Buckner and R. Douglas Francis' Rediscovering the British World was published back in 2005...Each chapter opens a fresh vista that can be a starting point for further research, or, conversely, confirms theories about the British World generated elsewhere.' —John Griffiths, Massey University'The well-researched chapters are broadly chronological in sequence, in that the first chapter concerns separatist impulses in colonial New South Wales from the 1820s and the last chapters deal with citizenship and the Cold War re-orientation of foreign policy among Tasman nations...this collection is engagingly written throughout.'—Marcus Harmes, University of Southern Queensland

Adopting a transnational lens, Immigrants’ Citizenship Perceptions: Sri Lankans in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand investigates Sri Lankan immigrants’ complex views towards their home (Sri Lankan) and host (Australian or Aotearoa New Zealand) citizenship and the factors that affect them. The book argues that the existing citizenship policies and popular discourses towards immigrants have a strong nation-statist bias in which native citizens believe that they know how exactly immigrants should behave or feel as host citizens. The book problematises this assumption by highlighting the fact that it represents more how immigrants’ citizenship perceptions should be while ignoring how they actually are. Unlike native citizens, immigrants must balance two different positions in how they view citizenship, that is, as native citizens of their home countries and as immigrants in their host countries. These two positionalities lead immigrants to a very different perspective of citizenship. Deliberating on the complexities displayed in Sri Lankan immigrants’ views on their home and host citizenship, the book presents a critical analysis of citizenship views from immigrants’ standpoint. This book will hence be useful for policy makers, students, and researchers in the fields of migration and citizenship as it looks at immigrants’ contextual realities in depth and suggests an alternative approach to understanding their perceptions of citizenship.“The study is an in-depth exploration into what makes ‘citizenship’ meaningful to Sinhalese and Tamil Sri Lankans living in Australia and New Zealand. Dr. Pavithra Jayawardena presents a rich body of ethnographic material to argue that immigrant citizenship is a specific human condition which cannot be stereotyped as it often happens to immigrant communities from the global South to the global North. Her analysis is built on a study of the phenomenology of immigrant experience in relationship in a transnational space. It draws the reader’s attention to the need for a nuanced and empathic understanding of the issue of immigrants’ longing for citizenship in a host country. This is a work that certainly helps formulate better government policy towards immigrant populations in host countries.Immigrants’ Citizenship Perceptions: Sri Lankans in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand is a pioneering contribution to the South Asian scholarship in the field of South Asian studies.”—Jayadeva Uyangoda, Emeritus Professor of Political Science, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka"This is an innovative and—given our contemporary world—timely contribution to scholarship on citizenship. Exploring ideas of citizenship from the perspective of immigrants, Dr Jayawardena presents a sensitive and nuanced discussion of the range of material and affective factors that impact on how people navigate living in and belonging to different national communities. Dr Jayawardena’s approach is well explained and justified. She highlights the importance of exploring citizenship beyond binaries of ‘host’ and ‘home’ countries and ‘instrumental’ versus ‘patriotic’. By foregrounding the voices of immigrants themselves she effectively demonstrates the complex and interconnected nature of these relationships. Well-grounded in existing debates and literature, contextually detailed and rich, this book is an excellent resource for those working in migration, citizenship and diaspora studies."—Kiran Grewal, Reader in Human Rights, Department of Sociology, Goldsmiths, University of London

What is the role of literature in the Transtasman region? Brigid Magner shows us the richness and variety of the Transtasman literary region, which extends between Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, including lutruwita/Tasmania. She draws attention to the region’s quiet persistence despite its apparent fragmentation across national borders. By performing close readings of contemporary texts in which the shared boundary of Te Tai-o-Rēhua/Tasman Sea features powerfully, Magner illuminates what these works of fiction ‘know’ about life in this cross-border zone, with topics ranging from deportation and abortion, to coercive control and shearing. The featured authors treat Transtasman mobility as textually meaningful and gesture towards a literary world that is hidden in plain sight. The literary forms they employ both reflect and in some cases create connections that move beyond their nations of origin. This book offers new understandings of the ways in which Transtasman literary works may be downplayed, ignored, or claimed by one nation, instead of being seen from a more generative transnational perspective.In The Transtasman Literary Region Brigid Magner re-imagines, through lenses provided by a close reading of a dozen literary texts, the sea boundary between Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia as permeable, indeed porous, ambiguous, and sometimes dangerous too. It is a ground-breaking work which introduces us to something more fluid, generative and unpredictable than the brittle pieties of nation states with their borders and their bureaucracies: a living membrane through which people, books and ideas pass and repass, exchanging intelligence - Martin Edmond, New Zealand writer and independent scholar