Full Description
Migration and refugee settlement policies have brought significant demographic changes to some regional centres over the past two decades and this book focuses on one such centre, a mid-size town in New South Wales. Historically, social relations in rural settlements have been enacted primarily within a "white/black" (Anglo/Indigenous) binary but in recent years this town has become home to several hundred refugees from Africa, South-East Asia and the Middle East.
Using interview, observational and documentary data, the book examines how multiculturalism is understood, valued and lived in the town's two public high schools. Schools are key sites for everyday interactions between people from diverse ethnic, cultural, language and religious backgrounds. Drawing on critical theories of discourse, space and race, the book examines a host of anxieties in the town and its schools about recent demographic changes revealing how notions of rurality, steeped in colonial narratives about European settlement, productivity and racial superiority, continue to shape how "difference" is perceived and experienced in regional communities.
Contents
Preface by Megan Watkins and Gregory Noble
Introduction: Rurality, Diversity and Schooling
1. Diversity as a Multiplicity of "Cultures": "Our Diversity is Great" (Part 1)
2. Policies, Discourses and Public Opinion: "Our Diversity is Great" (Part 2)
3. Researching Diversity in Regional Schools and Communities: Ends and Means
4. Names, Namings and Numbers: "Sprinkles of Everything"
5. Discourses, Affects and Sentiments: "Yes, but..."
6. Practices and Consequences: "Old Ways Die Hard"
Conclusion: Towards a Multiculturalism for All
Postscript
References
Appendices
