Governing superdiversity: learning from the Aboriginal Australian case

Like many nations, Australia is becoming superdiverse. Influencedby international conflict, tourism, migration and other globaltransfers, minorities proliferate and enjoy multiple intersectingaffiliations associated with ethnicity, religion, language, class,transnational ties and more. Though in the everyday thisinterculturality works quite well, the multicultural mode ofgovernance is finding its limits insofar as minority groups liveparallel lives and drift to a separatism that can problematisenational cohesion. Indigenous Australians are a component of this,both of and not of the nation, the same as and different fromother Australians, and internally diverse. In their respect,multicultural governance predicated on bloc difference and asingular categoric subject is inadequate. That approach hasspawned policies, programs and practices poorly directed at thereal-life diversity. Examples include ‘Aboriginal learning styles’,cultural competence, ‘Aboriginalised’ workplaces and AboriginalChild Placement Principle. These policies are applied to apopulace that is differently Aboriginal and embedded in thenation around the country. I argue that multicultural governanceis having counter-productive consequences as a result of itsinadequacy to superdiverse realities and that reforms predicatedon Aboriginal bothness are critical for Aborigines and instructivefor the nation in governing superdiversity generally