Immigration, Indigeneity and Identity: Cosmopolitanism in Australia and New Zealand

This chapter explores cosmopolitanism across three thematic areas: immigration; indigeneity; and identity. It argues that thematic areas encompass issues in which cosmopolitan tendencies are at work in Australia and New Zealand, while they also serve to illustrate some of the contemporary challenges, social divisions, and points of conflict that confront both nations. The chapter considers the extent to which cosmopolitanism has the potential to address these challenges and tensions, and explores what the example of Australia and New Zealand can tell about the politics of postcolonial societies in the contemporary world. In both Australia and New Zealand the fact that both governments remain wedded to a neo-liberal political agenda makes the task of establishing a more cosmopolitan political compact. The conservative mindset of Australia and New Zealand's political elites to issues relating to ethnicity reflect those of an earlier generation of politicians, and their initial resistance to multiculturalism in the early 1970s.