Borderwork in Indigenous South-Eastern Australia

This article provides some reflections on borderwork derived from social anthropological research with Indigenous people in south-eastern Australia (S.E. Australia). In post-settler states, borderwork traverses a range of fields—employment, health, education and politics. It engages both Indigenous and the non-Indigenous who grapple with the issues associated with socially and culturally liminal spaces. Borderwork provides a focus on the way boundaries are continually constructed as well as dismantled and reconstructed as a result of historical, political and social change. The article draws upon the work of Bourdieu (2000) to interrogate the ‘naturalisation’ of conditions that give rise to particular interpretive frameworks and the specific relations of power that legitimate one interpretive framework over others. ‘First Nations people are border workers by the nature of their aboriginal claims and their persisting marginalization…’ (Celia Haig-Brown, 1992:230