Countering Islamophobia in the Victorian Population

Islamophobia underpins extremist verbal and physical attacks on Muslim communities. It has become widespread in Australian society, and normalised in everyday settings such as in mainstream media. There is general agreement among Australian researchers and community representatives that the concept of Islamophobia is a useful tool for understanding and developing ways to challenge anti-Islam attitudes. However, despite it becoming widespread, Islamophobia should not be treated as a singular problem as it takes many different forms (see Peucker and Smith 2019), which require targeted responses. This brief provides contemporary empirical insights into the extent of Islamophobia in Victoria, and how it is manifest, in order to help develop policy responses. In November 2019, we undertook an online representative survey of 4019 Victorians to examine Islamophobia in Australia. We asked questions about respondents’ attitudes towards cultural diversity, racial equality and privilege; trust and fairness; Muslims and Islam; and other ethno-cultural groups in Australian society; their experiences of racism and discrimination; their contact with Muslims and knowledge of Islam; their trust of institutions; political affiliation; and support for extreme politics (e.g., violence, non-democratic governance). To our knowledge, this was the largest representative survey undertaken in Victoria with the purpose of measuring Victorians’ perceptions of and attitudes towards Muslims and Islam. Based on respondents’ answers, we used latent class analysis to reveal groups in the Victorian population. Latent class analysis is an advanced statistical method that identifies related sets of responses in a dataset that may be hidden even from trained observers (Hagenaars and McCutcheon 2002; Uebersax 1993; Heinen 1996)

Understanding Varied Attitudes Towards Muslims

The focus of this research was to determine the prevalence and type of Islamophobia in the Victorian population. Islamophobia sentiment feeds the actions of right-wing extremist attacks on Muslim communities. But it has also become widespread in Australian society, and normalised in everyday settings, such as our mainstream media. Islamophobia cannot be treated with a singular approach or mode of intervention. Our study comes at a critical time; it provides empirical evidence on the extent of the problem, as well as documenting the varied manifestations of Islamophobic sentiment, with the view to developing potential action points and policy. In November 2019 we undertook a survey of 4019 Victorians. We asked questions on their attitudes towards cultural diversity, racial equality and privilege; trust and fairness; Muslims and Islam; and other ethno-cultural groups in Australian society; their experiences of racism and discrimination; their contact with Muslims and knowledge of Islam; and their political affiliation. To our knowledge, this was the largest survey undertaken in Victoria with the purpose of solely measuring Victorians perceptions of Muslims and Islam. Based on respondents’ answers, we used latent class analysis to segment the Victorian population. Five groups were generated: Islamophobic, Islamophobic with assimilationist tendencies, Undecided, Progressive with concerns about Islam, and Progressive. We then distilled the demographic and attitudinal attributes of these groups, with the view to identifying roles and drivers to help guide policy and intervention. We tested this five group segmentation with community organisations in Victoria working in the broad areas of diversity and multiculturalism, and with a particular emphasis on Muslim and non-Muslim relations. The groupings made sense on-the-ground, and they provided a strong pathway forward for program and policy design

MyVoice Pulse Survey of WSU Staff: Working Through the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic profoundly affected both staff and students in higher education institutions globally, with teaching and learning moving online, and research being suspended or adapted via videotelephony. Western Sydney University (WSU) surveyed its staff to develop a comprehensive understanding of the reported impacts of COVID-19 on both their work and life, and the strengths and challenges of utilising videotelephony for teaching and research. All WSU staff were surveyed via the MyVoice Pulse survey, with data collected by The Voice Project. A total of 2335 staff completed the survey, with a response rate of 86%. Permission was secured from 1695 (62.4%) staff for their responses to be included in this research. Out of these respondents, 59.6% identified as female, and 33.1% identified themselves as academic staff. Diversity related questions had Cronbach’s alpha of 0.63. All other questions when tested returned a Cronbach’s alpha of greater than 0.75 implying those questions were consistent. The current study provides valuable insight into the reported impacts of COVID-19 on the work and life of staff at WSU, as well as staff perspectives on some of the innovative practices that were adopted in response. The timeliness and the potential impact for informing University policy and practice are among the strengths of the study. The crosssectional nature of the data means that clear temporal associations between demographic factors and outcomes cannot be established. Additionally, it is important to note that results may be impacted by the uneven sample size in some groups. As COVID-19 transformed the work of the University and its staff dramatically, it appears that staff beliefs about the impacts of these changes varies substantially. If innovative practices such as remote teaching and HDR supervision, and videotelephony for research continue it will be important to conduct further research to identify exemplary practice given the current divide in staff opinion. Similarly, findings may serve as a catalyst for policies and practices that seek to address some of the inequities highlighted in staff voices

Racism in Australia : a protocol for a systematic review and meta-analysis

Background: Racism has been identified as a major source of injustice and a health burden in Australia and across the world. Despite the surge in Australian quantitative research on the topic, and the increasing recognition of the prevalence and impact of racism in Australian society, the collective evidence base has yet to be comprehensively reviewed or meta-analysed. This protocol describes the first systematic review and meta-analysis of racism in Australia at the national level, focussing on quantitative studies. The current study will considerably improve our understanding of racism, including its manifestations and fluctuation over time, variation across settings and between groups, and associations with health and socio-economic outcomes. Methods: The research will consist of a systematic literature review and meta-analysis. Searches for relevant studies will focus on the social and health science databases CINAHL, PsycINFO, PubMed and Scopus. Two reviewers will independently screen eligible papers for inclusion and extract data from included studies. Studies will be included in the review and meta-analysis where they meet the following criteria: (1) report quantitative empirical research on self-reported racism in Australia, (2) report data on the prevalence of racism, or its association with health (e.g. mental health, physical health, health behaviours) or socio-economic outcomes (e.g. education, employment, income), and (3) report Australian data. Measures of racism will focus on study participants’ self-reports, with a separate analysis dedicated to researcher-reported measures, such as segregation and differential outcomes across racial/ethnic groups. Measures of health and socio-economic outcomes will include both self-reports and researcher-reported measures, such as physiological measurements. Existing reviews will be manually searched for additional studies. Study characteristics will be summarised, and a meta-analysis of the prevalence of racism and its associations will be conducted using random effects models and mean weighted effect sizes. Moderation and subgroup analyses will be conducted as well. All analyses will use the software CMA 3.0. Discussion: This study will provide a novel and comprehensive synthesis of the quantitative evidence base on racism in Australia. It will answer questions about the fluctuation of racism over time, its variation across settings and groups, and its relationship with health and socio-economic outcomes. Findings will be discussed in relation to broader debates in this growing field of research and will be widely disseminated to inform anti-racism research, action and policy nationally. Systematic review registration: PROSPERO CRD42021265115

Performing Australian nationalisms at Cronulla

On the Friday before the Cronulla riots, Sydney's daily tabloid newspaper the Daily Telegraph (2005: 1) carried the banner headline: 'Not on our Beach: Cronulla police vow to defend Australian way'. The article was principally a report on how police would not tolerate violence on the beach, but the reference to the Australian way of life gave a clear sense that certain ideas about nationalism were at stake. The rioters claimed possession of key icons of Australian nationalism: the barbecue, the boxing kangaroo, utes, the colours green and gold, beer, national songs and sporting chants. These performances of nationalism, and the reactions to them, provide an insight into contemporary Australian nationalism and its future directions. In this chapter, I undertake a performative analysis of the everyday nationalisms in evidence at the riots and also apply this analytical frame to the 'revenge attacks' and the anti-racism initiatives that followed. The empirics for this chapter are the eyewitness reports as recounted in newspapers in the weeks after December 11, 2005. My aims are to demonstrate the utility of performative theory for analysing competing nationalisms, and to identify the progressive political resources within the riot and its aftermath. A handful of scholars have reflected on how, rather than indicating a failure of multiculturalism, the Cronulla riot has asserted its importance, and argued for its enhancement (Babacan, 2006)

Do Australians care about human rights? : awareness, hierarchies of sympathy and universality

This chapter provides insight into the views of Australians on the importance of human rights, how well people think they are currently protected and which human rights are most important to them. Research on human rights internationally has tended to neglect public awareness and support for human rights. The human rights of asylum seekers, and the attitudes and debates around that, as well as data on experiences of racism, are analysed in this chapter and demonstrate limited awareness, non-universality and a hierarchy of sympathy towards vulnerable groups

Contemporary racism and Islamaphobia in Australia : de-racialising a religion

The majority of Australians Muslims are non-marginal, non-disaffected and non-radicalized. Muslims mostly lead everyday and ordinary lives. This is not to suggest, however, that these lives are not diverse, nor is it to make invisible the extraordinary achievements of many Australian Muslims. However, the data on the experience of racism do not paint a picture of ordinariness. The rates of experience of racism are high, and ought to be an urgent public policy issue. Nonetheless, an evidence base for the presumed negative effects of racism on belonging has not been empirically established. There is no compelling evidence that the experience of racism automatically converts to non-belonging in Australia (Nelson et al., 2011). The above are valuable conclusions and findings for educating non-Muslim Australians about Muslims. The data in this chapter are a potential counterweight to those discourses about disaffection and radicalization that swirl in public commentaries, and which undermine trust between non-Muslims and Muslims

The transnational challenge and multiculturalism : comparing four immigrant groups in Australia

A transnational world – a world with transnational activity and where there are many people with transnational subjectivities – needs a multicultural policy to manage cross- cultural relations in order to ensure confidence and trust. In this chapter we present survey and interview data to support our assertion. We argue that an examination of transnationalism provides a very useful illumination of the utility and longevity of state policies on immigrant ncorporation and diversity management

Regulating online racism in the online age

Cyber-racism has become a major issue of concern for the world community, as it tests two sets of civic values: those of tolerance, respect and civility; and those of free speech1. In the big, and big business, world of Web 2.0 it is not clear whether the model of community monitoring which to date has been the overarching mechanism of managing internet behaviour, is the most effective means of ensuring civil and safe relations across the issues of cultural diversity. This article outlines the main findings of the Cyber Racism Survey conducted as a part of the ARC funded Cyber Racism and Community Resilience Project, in December 2013. Over two thousand Internet users across Australia were surveyed about their encounters with racism online, the impact of these encounters and their responses to same. The survey found that a significant number of internet users are at risk of harm as a result of racism, not only as targets but also as witnesses of racism online, and that a small but prolific group of users are publishing racist content on the internet and broadcasting to a wider audience than was ever possible before. There are similarities with non-online rates of racism but also some interesting differences in terms of action in response to the racist content encountered. When the Racial Discrimination Act (RDA) was developed, and even when the 18C provisions against racial vilification were added, it was not possible to contemplate the effects and importance of the internet and social media to relations across ethic and religious difference

Media representations of racism and spatial mobility : young Muslim (un)belonging in a post-Cronulla riot Sutherland

Young Australian Muslims living in Sydney have been influenced by the Cronulla riot. Online surveys (n: 76) and interviews (n: 10) reveal the impact on their engagement with the Sutherland region around Cronulla, detectable a decade after this event. The exclusionary intent of the rioters and their sympathisers was a racist form of spatial management that had both specific and general aims. The Australian news media contribute to the ethnic purification that was originally intended by the Cronulla riots. This reduces mobility among an 'ethnic other' in accessing spaces that have been portrayed as 'racist' - or, in the case of young Muslims, 'Islamophobic'. Findings demonstrate the ongoing consequences of a wide-scale racist attack, like the Cronulla riot, on urban citizenship. Representations of the Cronulla riot are a repertoire of learning for young Sydney Muslims that rehearse what has been conceptualised as pedagogies of (un)belonging by Noble and Poynting [(2010). White Lines: The Intercultural Politics of Everyday Movement in Social Spaces. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 31, 489-505]. We have extended the application of this concept to a specific space and point to the means by which constructions of unbelonging are reinforced and made material. Processes of repetition and accumulations identified by Butler and Essed highlight how this enduring pedagogy of spatial unbelonging is maintained by media representations of places as Islamophobic