‘There are times when I feel like a bit of an alien’: middling migrants and the national order of things

Abstract

This paper considers the value of using the experiences of what have been labelled as ‘middling migrants’ to explore the ways in which people continue to understand the world and their own place in it in national terms. It begins with a critical engagement with the literature on banal, hot and everyday nationalism, arguing for a more dynamic model that not only tracks the processes by which largely taken-for-granted forms and practices are opened up to scrutiny and vice versa but also their significance, as both mindful and mindless features of daily life. The second part explores how these processes may operate by focusing on a particular group of migrants; Britons in Australia. The experiences of these people are particularly useful in researching everyday nationalism’s evidence problem because they occupy an in-between space, not quite ‘us’ nor ‘them’, that can be used to reflect on the shifting salience, and significance, of the nation in daily lives. As well as noting how differences relating to language, food and interactions come to be framed as ‘national’, the study also shows the extent to which novel circumstances become part of the taken-for-granted lifeworld over time.

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