Contesting the Political Home: Liberal Multiculturalism, Political Alienation, and Conflicted Homemaking of Immigrants and Assimilationists in Australia

Australia is widely regarded as one of the most successful multicultural societies. Yet the resurgence of far-right politics and renewed contestation over immigration raise important questions about the long-term sustainability and feasibility of liberal multiculturalism as a shared basis for social and political inclusion in Australia. This paper argues that a multicultural political order can be simultaneously alienating for immigrants and for some members of the national majority, whom I describe as “assimilationists”. I conceptualise political alienation as an individual’s inability to meaningfully relate to the political order as an equal co-author. An individual experiences the political order as alienating when they are unable to see themselves as belonging within it due to a sustained loss of efficacy, denial of due recognition, or a perceived incompatibility between the political order and their fundamental political norms and beliefs. Immigrants and assimilationists, however, experience political alienation in different and opposing ways. On the one hand, immigrants may be politically alienated insofar as they are unable to experience themselves as equal political agents alongside members of the national majority despite formal inclusion. This may occur because they remain expected to conform to a public culture historically shaped by Anglo-Celtic norms while having limited influence over its formation and transformation. On the other hand, assimilationists may experience alienation insofar as they perceive liberal multiculturalism in Australia as departing from their exclusionary understanding of Australia’s national identity and normative foundations. If this is correct, immigrants and assimilationists are politically alienated for fundamentally different reasons. This distinction has important normative implications for how political orders should respond to competing claims of political alienation. Although there are no a priori grounds for determining whose experience of alienation is more valid or justified, claims of political alienation cannot provide a justification for denying the equal status and dignity of other members of the political community. Consequently, assimilationist projects of political homemaking may be justifiably rejected insofar as they seek to construct a political home through the exclusion or subordination of others.