The 'white worrier' in South Australia: Attitudes to multiculturalism, immigration and reconciliation

Abstract

In his analysis of ‘paranoid nationalism’, Hage (2003: xii, 2) coins the figure of the ‘white worrier’ to identify how white Australians marginalized by the inequalities of economic rationalism and globalization displace their anxieties onto even weaker ‘others’, Aboriginal people and migrants, particularly refugees. Hage’s ideas are applied to the discourses used by young South Australians when they discuss Australian multiculturalism, immigration and reconciliation. Hage’s suggestion that white worrying is the response of the white working class male to his economic and ideological marginalization is only partially supported in this sample of young people. While those from non- English speaking and Indigenous backgrounds are much less likely to be ‘paranoid nationalists’, fear and loathing of the other are expressed across the socio-economic spectrum of young ‘white’ Australians, with exposure to a university education, either on the part of respondents or their parents, being the main antidote to hostile attitudes to the ‘other’.