Title: Identity formation among Chinese students in Australia in 1989 and 1990Submitted by: Gao Jia, Chinese Studies, MIALS, The University of Melbourne, AustraliaThis paper examines how and why Chinese students decided to stay in Australia after the June 4th Event in 1989, when there were about 20,000 Chinese students living in Australia. This was a special onshore migration intake, which once had a great impact upon Australian humanitarian and refugee immigration policies in the late 1980s and the early 1990s. This case provides a unique setting in which to study the onshore international migrants' decision-making process. This paper is to analyse the process by using a framework of current thinking on identity formation, especially on strategic identity or performativity. The discussion will focus on four features of the students' identity formation as onshore refugee claimants. These are (1) construction of identity at the level of primary social group, (2) the students' efforts to meet the criteria for a stay and strategic identity formation, (3) the students' interactions with three main agencies and performativity of identity, and (4) politics and organised form of performing identity.
'Return to Abstracts menuCarol Burnett Phone: 61 - 3 - 9349 1899 Email: c.burnett@asialink.unimelb.edu.au
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