Not Another Multicultural Story: The Ethnicisation of the English in Australian Multiculturalism

Jon Stratton, Cultural Studies, Curtin University

tstratto@cc.curtin.edu.au

This tells the story of Australian attitudes to English/British migrants (I acknowledge the colonial complexity of disentangling 'English' from 'Scottish', Welsh', 'Irish' and the further complexity of 'British') from expecting them to simply 'fit in' during the era of assimilation to seeing them as automatically part of the 'Anglo-Celtic' core of official multicultural Australia. I end by discussing the beginnings of a self-ethnicisation of the English and the gradual assertion of a multicultural identity by English/British migrants, an assertion which undermines the core/periphery organisation of multiculturalism. This assertion takes many forms. For example, there are: the English/British festivals, known as Britfests, in Sydney and Melbourne; the rise of specialist, gourmet, English foods such as up-market fish'n'chips; the use of soccer; and English-themed pubs. Some of these intersect with the growing commodification of ethnicity.