Iphones and “African gangs”: everyday racism and ethno-transnational media in Melbourne’s Chinese student world

Abstract

Based on an ethnography of young women from China studying in Melbourne, this article explores participants’ experiences of living in a super-diverse city, and questions whether extant theoretical accounts of everyday multiculturalism are adequate to understand the experience of these residents. In 2016, Melbourne’s Chinese student community was rocked by a prolonged spate of mobile phone thefts that Chinese-language social media framed as ethnically targeted attacks on Chinese people by “African gangs.” This article considers participants’ responses to these incidents, alongside the racialized reportage of them on the WeChat public accounts that are participants’ main source of local news. The article mounts a critique of the media ethics inherent in this form of news delivery. It extends the everyday multiculturalism framework with an example that deals not with a strongly hybrid migrant youth culture, but rather with young migrants socialized into a monocultural society encountering everyday life in super-diversity.

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