'Everything creative is non Leb' : the creative vocational aspirations of Arab-Australian young men

Creative forms of labour, in fields such as film, music, and design, have become increasingly popular vocational pathways among young people in contemporary society (Haukka 2011; McRobbie 2004). They seemingly offer a chance for young people to engage in authentic forms of self-expression, to work in collaborative environments and perhaps avoid the monotony of older, traditional forms of labour. At present, academic literature has broken down some of myths of creative work in contemporary society by drawing attention to particular problems and challenges such as precarious working conditions (Ross 2008; Morgan et al. 2013), issues around social networking (Blair 2009) and other exclusionary practices (Gill and Pratt 2008; Christopherson 2009). Less is known about how creative aspirations play out in particular contexts among different groups of young people, or how aspirations develop over time according to the intersections between one’s gendered, classed and ethnicized identities. This research investigates the lives of Arab-Australian young men living in Western Sydney with creative vocational aspirations. It looks at how they develop interests in fields such as music, television, filmmaking, writing, design and multimedia. It examines the multilinear routes they take to turn these interests into vocational identities, especially in light of familial and communal dynamics, broader processes of racialization and class prejudice and the limitations of their socio-economic backgrounds. This thesis offers insights about how notions of gender, ethnicity and social class become reformulated specifically because of these young men’s creative interests. I also look at how creative vocational aspirations among these Arab-Australian young men reveal tensions between structure and agency in various contexts. Finally, this thesis offers an analysis of the discursive strategies employed by these young men in the course of their life history narratives to negotiate these challenges and issues. An overarching aim of looking at these issues is to gather an impression about the kinds of conceptualisations of creativity that emerge when situated within particular local, especially socio-economically disadvantaged, contexts