‘WHO ARE STRANGERS?’: ‘ABSORBING ’ SUDANESE REFUGEES INTO

This paper analyses several newspaper articles which appeared in the media following the murder of teenager Liep Gony who had come to Australia as a refugee from Sudan, and the subsequent restriction on the African refugee intake made by the former immigration minister Kevin Andrews. The paper considers several discourses which appeared in these articles, and which were indicative of the wider press coverage following these events. These discourses centered on whiteness as the normative mode of belonging in Australia (as a result of the ongoing denial of Indigenous sovereignty over the land), and the desired absorption of any non-white refugees into the dominant white culture. The paper concludes that such constructions of white belonging in Australia further deny Indigenous ownership of the land, and attempt to override any perceived differences in non-white immigrants and refugees, whilst at the same time constructing the nation as generous and free of racism