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This article examines the relationship between the legal status of citizenship and psychological research about blended identity in diverse societies such as Australia. A blended identity could include Australian national identity as well as other identities relevant to a person’s self-definition. Analysing the link between citizenship law and the psychological enjoyment of blended identity is important after the reforms to Australian citizenship law in 2007. [1] As discussed below, the former Liberal-National Government introduced a new citizenship knowledge test for citizenship-by-conferral applicants. In doing so, that government expressed strong beliefs about the power of a shared, unitary, national identity. It also supported calls for citizenship applicants to sign a statement of Australian values (different to the citizenship pledge) and to complete an English language test. In light of the reforms and political debate, we attack the suggestion that blended identification (for example, as a Greek Australian) is somehow inconsistent with true Australian national identification and citizenship, and moreover we argue that a single national identification sits uneasily with the legal acceptance of dual or multiple citizenship in current Australian legislation.
We first discuss the concept of blended identity from a social-psychological perspective. Then we examine the details of the 2007 Australian citizenship law reforms, bearing in mind that the Rudd Labor Government recently released the report of the independent committee reviewing the Australian Citizenship Test and the government response to the report. [2]
Legal notions of citizenship and the psychological experience of blended identities can often be in tension. This is understandable since legal and psychological concepts of national identity are but two ways of conceptualising relevant self-definitions shaping social existence and belonging in diverse societies. We do not believe that the legal identity or citizenship always completely defines the self in practice. However, we argue, as do other researchers,[3] that citizenship law and psychological identity are in a relationship of mutual influence creating expectations about and reactions to legal treatment.
Notions of citizenship and associated assumptions about psychological identification that are legally endorsed in diverse societies have the power to legitimise as well as de-legitimise the desired enjoyment of self. Indeed, salient identities shape the perspective from which many people will either support or challenge citizenship law and decision-making processes. The extent to which the 2007 Australian reforms may have (de-)legitimised desired self-definitions will be examined in the final section of this article. Another way of addressing this issue is to consider whether citizenship law and application processing satisfy the basic human need for inclusion and for adequately expressing and enjoying all aspects of a blended identity. [4]
This section begins by describing a process-based understanding of social identification. For example, an unsuccessful citizenship application results in particular self-definitions. So too could the existence of an official policy that treats different classes of citizens in different ways, such as testing only civics knowledge, values and language skills for particular citizen applicants and not, say, for Australians who are citizens by birth.
These situations can make a single identity salient and relevant for self-definition. However, sometimes such contexts can make a more complex blended social identity salient. For example, an instance of discrimination against Arab Australians could be relevant for their self-definition when reacting to felt discrimination. For example, this inter-group discrimination could result when an intelligence-gathering or policing decision is based on the assumption that one aspect of a person’s identity (for example, their country of birth and/or religion) threatens national security by weakening their allegiance to Australia in some way. These assumptions and comparisons cause people to self-select identity or identities. However, context and comparisons can also cause people to be treated by others in terms of an identity even when they do not wish to so identify.
Both of these identity processes—self-definition and ascription of identity by others—narrow the number of identities used for self-definition. They render other aspects of self (for example, other identities based on, say, religion, gender, race, residence or political orientation) less relevant for shaping the immediate perspective from which people make social judgments, decisions or policies. This selection of relevant (or ‘salient’) identity by the social context has been demonstrated primarily by research focusing on changing operative social comparisons, but also by the nature of the normative content or ideologies related to salient identities. [5]
These contextual changes create identity management challenges for the social perceiver, helping them determine the psychologically best way to self-define or to respond to an (often unwanted) ascription of identity by another. Extending these process-based theories of single-identity salience to the study of the simultaneous salience of many aspects or dimensions of self-definition [6] constituting one blended identity is important for understanding citizenship and identity in diverse societies.
[1] See reforms as discussed below. Note also that on 24 January 2007, the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs was renamed the Department of Immigration and Citizenship.
[2] The Minister for Immigration and Citizenship established an independent committee to review the Citizenship Test in April 2008 (see < http://www.citizenshiptestreview.gov.au/ >).
[3] Dauvergne, C. 2005, Humanitarianism, Identity and Nation: Migration laws in Canada and Australia, UBC Press, Vancouver, pp. 166–221; Mamdani, M. 2001, When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, nativism, and the genocide in Rwanda, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, p. 22; Purvis, T. and Hunt, A. 1999, ‘Identity versus citizenship: transformations in the discourse and practice’, Social and Legal Studies, vol. 8, no. 4, pp. 457–82; Reicher, S. 1986, ‘Contact, action and radicalisation: some British evidence’, in M. Hewstone and R. Brown (eds), Contact and Conflict in Intergroup Encounters, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 152–68; Ramos, E. Rivera 2001, The Legal Construction of Identity: The judicial and social legacy of American colonialism in Puerto Rico, American Psychological Association, Washington, DC.
[4] Abu-Saad, I. 2006, ‘State-controlled education and identity formation among the Palestinian Arab minority in Israel’, American Behavioral Scientist, vol. 49, no. 8, pp. 1085–100.
[5] Oakes, P. J. 1987, ‘The salience of social categories’, in J. C. Turner, M. A. Hogg, P. J. Oakes, S. Reicher and M. Wetherell (eds), Rediscovering the Social Group, Blackwell, Oxford; Oakes, P. J., Turner, J. C. and Haslam, S. A. 1991, ‘Perceiving people as group members: the role of fit in the salience of social categorizations’, British Journal of Social Psychology, vol. 30, no. 2, pp. 125–44.
[6] Where a broad range of personal aspects, including affiliations with groups, may help define a collective or blended identity: Simon, B. and Hastedt, C. 1999, ‘Self-aspects as social categories: the role of personal importance and valence’, European Journal of Social Psychology, vol. 29, no. 4, pp. 479–87. See also Simon, B. 1997, ‘Self and group in modern society: ten theses on the individual self and the collective self’, in R. Spears, P. J. Oakes, N. Ellemers and S. A. Haslam (eds), The Social Psychology of Stereotyping and Group Life, Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 318–35.