


































Refugee  youth  seeking  social  belonging  in  the  context  of  Australian
multiculturalism

Review by Fulya Pinar

Moran, Laura. 2020. Belonging and Becoming in a Multicultural World: Refugee Youth and the
Pursuit of Identity. Rutgers University Press.

Keywords: migration, multiculturalism, identity, youth, Australia.

Laura  Moran  presents  an  analysis  of  how  young  migrant  and  refugee  people  in  Brisbane,
Australia,  make  and  represent  their  identities  as  they  seek  to  belong  in  friend  groups  and
networks. Moran demonstrates how the multiculturalist framework in Australia exposes refugee
and  migrant  youth  to  a  variety  of  conflicting  expectations  about  self-representation.  More
specifically, while these young people are often expected to adapt and integrate into Australian
society, their identities are highly racialized and fixed as outsiders with an emphasis on tolerance.
Young refugees in Brisbane,  then,  absorb, negotiate, and respond to the competing messages
about  integration  and tolerance  and forge  a  sense  of  who they are  and  where  they  belong.
Asserting that children and youth are at the center of transnational migration and multiculturalist
inclusion,  Moran  seeks  to  depict  a  comprehensive  picture  of  how  young  refugees,  as  both
outsiders and insiders of the Australian society, form their identities and notions of belonging.

Throughout the book, Moran provides examples of how young migrants and refugees display
various forms of "dynamic responsiveness" (p. 17) by engaging with the conflicting expectations
and demands imposed on their lives through a level of awareness about the wider sociopolitical
context of Australian multiculturalism. Making use of these examples, Moran argues that young
refugees and migrants negotiate their belonging and identities through not only reacting against
overt racism but also navigating multiculturalist discourses (p. 18). In doing so, she contributes
to  scholarship  on  youth  as  global  social  actors  (p.  19),  identity  (p.  22),  and  migration  and
belonging (p. 24). Not surprisingly, Moran benefits extensively from Pierre Bourdieu's theories
on social power and its impacts on agency in the book.

In Chapter One, Moran provides the methodological and theoretical foundations of the book. She
conducted ethnographic research with refugee and migrant youth over a four-year period, during
which she served as an after-school program coordinator for a non-profit community center in
the suburbs of Brisbane. Through her employment, she designed and implemented a program
that students from various backgrounds could attend. As a program coordinator, she met thirty-
nine "key research participants," thirty-seven of whom were from refugee backgrounds (p. 15).
Her key research participants were aged nine to twenty years and mainly came from Sudan and

1



Burma. Moran provides detailed background information on the key research participants in the
book's appendix (pp. 151 - 158). To balance her role as researcher and as a program coordinator,
she made deliberate decisions not to cross the line between a research site and a place where
students come to relax and receive mentorship (p. 11-12). Moran also paid special attention to
the power dynamics and chose not to seek extensive information from her informants about their
refugee  status or journey to  Australia  (p.13).  Throughout  the book,  Moran demonstrates  her
conscious efforts to engage with self-reflexivity, balance potential power dynamics, and reveal
shifts and transformations in her research questions.

The book's second chapter provides information on the relation between Australian immigration
policies  and  the  multicultural  context.  In  this  chapter,  Moran  introduces  how  notions  of
integration and tolerance emerge out of a locus of whiteness, explaining how these notions are
not diversions from nationalism and racism but instead rely on them (pp. 34 - 38). Moran argues
that the reflections of colonial and anti-immigrant histories of Australia can be observed in the
everyday lives of young refugees. In the Australian social policies, whiteness has represented
power and a requirement for national belonging, both in the context of colonialism and "White
Australia Policy" during Australia's federation in 1901 (28 – 34). In the everyday encounters of
young  refugees  with  others  in  the  contemporary  multiculturalist  context,  integration  and
tolerance are often displayed through acts of downplaying the impact of race, stressing the anti-
racist rhetoric, and mainstreaming diversity (p. 41).

Moran untangles the conceptual framework and theoretical background of the book in the third
chapter. She argues that the ways in which young people talk about race and ethnicity are often
in line with how race has been governed in the Australian context (p. 49). Analyzing identity as
socially oriented assertions of sameness and difference from what is understood in the broader
social context (p. 51), Moran conceptualizes young people's practices of navigating the concepts
of racial "hybridity" and "essentialism" as forms of symbolic (or) multicultural capital (pp. 53-
61).  Through  making  use  of  these  concepts,  young  refugees  dynamically  respond  to  the
multicultural rhetoric and subtly claim belonging or not-belonging (pp. 63-64). 

The fourth chapter examines how justifications of engaging with certain social relations – such
as  friendship,  dating,  and fighting  –  serve  as  platforms for  young refugees  and migrants  to
emphasize  or  refuse  racial  and  ethnic  identities  and  social  belonging  (pp.  65-66).  Actively
stressing "choice" in some social settings and subtly stressing "circumstances" in others while
explaining why they were drawn towards social relations with certain racial and ethnic identities,
these young people were able to navigate in between downplaying and embracing their own
identities and differences (pp. 67-77). This way, they engaged with the ideals of both integration
(through demonstrating plasticity and "hybridity" of identities) and tolerance (through expressing
rigidity and "essentialism" towards identities), responding to and emphasizing their inclusion and
exclusion in the Australian multicultural context.

Chapter  Five  focuses  on  the  more  self-conscious  and explicit  ways  in  which  young people
projected and performed their identities. Claiming that young people's performances occur not
only locally but also globally in the contemporary world (p. 91), Moran analyzes how young
refugees  interacted  with  and  around  the  global  web  of  music  and  technology  with  specific
examples on their engagement with the American hip-hop culture (pp. 96-99). She argues that in

2



their performances, the participants of her research often portrayed their ethnic identities and
social belonging in primarily essentialized and racialized ways through claiming "authenticity,"
exclusion, and resilience (pp. 108-113). Demonstrating what they did not belong to and where
they were excluded from served as an opportunity for them to claim a space of belonging to their
local communities, Australian society,  and the global networks of resistance (p. 108). Moran
connects  these  performances  of  young  people  with  their  awareness  of  and  play  around
race/racism in the multicultural Australian and global contexts. 

In Chapter Six, Moran looks at  how young migrants and refugees discussed their  racial  and
ethnic identities while engaging with the formal political realm. She demonstrates that the young
people  were  aware  of  how they  were  framed  and  managed,  and  they  often  challenged  the
dichotomous ways they were understood in the Australian context (pp. 117-120). She shows how
young refugees often emphasized racial difference and collective belonging, displaying forms of
disregard towards the importance of citizenship, national identity, and static racial categories. In
so doing, Moran argues, young refugees find their  own ways to reframe and manipulate  the
multiculturalist  emphasis  on  their  status  as  outsiders  (pp.  122-135).  Moran  links  these
navigations  of  her  research  collaborators  with  the  interrelatedness  between  their  senses  of
inclusion/exclusion and the broader socio-political discourses surrounding their lives (p. 137).

The last chapter presents both a summary of the main themes of the book and a discussion on the
potential for refugee and migrant youth inclusion in multicultural societies. Considering that the
search for identity-making and belonging for youth occur as "dynamic responses" to the public
discourses  on  their  lives,  Moran  suggests  that  we  need  to  conceptualize  the  reframing  of
multiculturalist messages by the youth as forms of participation in the politics of belonging (p.
144). Doing so would allow for multiple forms of inclusion in multiethnic societies needed by
the youth (pp. 147-150). 

Instead of measuring the successes and failures of the multicultural ideals by expecting refugee
youth to prove their integration to society and participation in the tolerance rhetoric, the book
points out the importance of understanding the perspectives and frames of youth as forms of
participation. The book is exceptionally legible and accessible, is written clearly and concisely,
and  is  available  as  an  Open  Access  volume.  It  will  appeal  to  scholars  and  students  across
disciplines  –  such as  education,  anthropology,  sociology,  geography,  ethnic  studies,  political
science, social work, and public administration – as well as to a general public that is interested
in human rights, migration, youth, race, ethnicity, and multiculturalism. 

Fulya  Pinar is  a  PhD candidate  in  the  Department  of  Anthropology  at  Rutgers,  The  State
University  of  New Jersey.  Her  dissertation  is  on  alternative  economies,  care  practices,  and
sustainable futures built and imagined by refugee women in Turkey.

© 2021 Fulya Pinar

3


