Immigration and Ethnic Diversity in a Cosmopolitan Society

MP3 audio recording, recorded 23 August 2007. Physical copy held by UTS Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Research Centre, City Campus, UTS SydneyThis seminar is Part 1 of Seminar 6 of the 2007 Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Lecture Series. “How do we approach the study of immigrant communities in Australia with a framework of Cosmopolitan Civil Societies? In my view the cornerstone of a cosmopolitan and civil society is equality. In Australian society the main sources of cultural diversity come from its indigenous first peoples. This leads to a number of important questions. The first central question for our group is thus: How can we reconcile the elitist with the egalitarian view of cosmopolitan society? The second, related, question is how does civil society contribute to a cosmopolitan egalitarian society? In other words, what role does civil society play in multicultural societies like ours? The third central question is how do immigrant communities contribute to a cosmopolitan egalitarian society? The fourth question is to what degree do we have equality in Australian cosmopolitan society? The fifth question centres on the tensions between minority immigrant and indigenous communities and their place in multicultural or cosmopolitan society. A final question relates to research: what research agendas emerge in relation to immigrant diversity and cosmopolitan civil society? In order to answer this question I would like to draw on some current and future research agendas and research projects that I am involved in and to draw a link from this research to the conceptual research framework of the new UTS Centre for Cosmopolitan Civil Societies.