Chantal Mouffe says: "The way we define citizenship is intimately linked to the kind of society and political community we want".1 Unfortunately, having a good definition does not ensure that it will be put into practice. Nevertheless, I think having a vision of citizenship which is fully equitable is crucial for those of us who are interested in, and work for, social justice.

Notions of belonging and boundaries are crucial to any present day discussions of citizenship. Both imply inclusion and exclusion, an 'us' and a 'them'; those who belong and those who do not. Throughout "white" Australia's history, people of Asian heritage have been treated in discriminatory ways and often denied rights and privileges that non-Asian people have taken for granted. In Australia recently, debates about who belongs and who does not have once again taken a racist turn.2

In her first speech in Federal Parliament, Pauline Hanson, a newly elected member, contributed to that debate. Presuming a consensus that many Australians would deny, she said: "I and most Australians want our immigration policy radically reviewed and that of multiculturalism abolished. I believe that we are in danger of being swamped by Asians. ... They have their own culture and religion, form ghettos and do not assimilate. ... Abolishing the policy of multiculturalism will save billions of dollars and allow those from ethnic backgrounds to join mainstream Australia, paving the way to a strong, united country".3

Until the 1970s, very few people from the different parts of Asia were allowed into Australia as migrants. Now, there is no official White Australia policy, yet it is not so simple for people of Asian heritage to 'join', that is be considered as belonging to, mainstream Australia. In discussions of citizenship, notions of inclusion and exclusion are generally conceived of in the broad sense of a person being a legal citizen of a country or not. However, such divisions also exist among those who possess formal citizenship status.4 Tuyet, a young women aged 22 who came to Australia from Vietnam when she was six, pointed out: ''Citizenship has different levels. At the paper work level I know I'm Australian. ... At the social level I don't feel very much like a citizen. ...Even though we accumulate the Australian way of speaking, the Australian slang and ... I really feel Australian, ... we still get people coming up to us and saying: "Where do you come from?" and 'Go back to your own country'. [They] really undermine my Australian-ness... I feel I'm just a half and not really a citizen". 5

Mai, also an Australian citizen from Vietnam, recounted a similar sense of ambivalent belonging as an Australian. When I asked her whether she felt Australian or Vietnamese, she told me: "I always say I'm Vietnamese, but I myself I think I'm Australian". When I asked her why she said one thing but felt another, she replied: "Because my face and my skin, I can't say that's Australian.. My thinking has become Australian. But its very hard when I'm talking to someone and I say 'I'm Australian' because I'm Asian".6

Mai's last comment could imply that she thinks that being Australian and being Asian are mutually exclusive. However, it appears that not all Australians of Asian origin would agree, as a letter to the editor in The Australian7 newspaper clearly demonstrates. Ruth Abbey8 points out that by his/her use of 'we' and 'us', the writer, Tsebin Tchen, who is associated with the Chinese Community Cultural Centre in Melbourne, assumes full belonging in Australian society with comments like "we must put things in their proper perspective ... we are one of the few genuine anti-racist countries in the world ... a few racists among us ... Hanson has done us a great service". Tchen also reverses the marginalization of Asian Australians with reference to Hanson and her followers as "a few blowflies on a summer day". However, Tchen does not trivialize them, as they have done to Asian-Australians. Rather s/he suggests 'we will be better off for it [the debate]'. Many Australians would disagree with Tchen's position believing that no useful purpose has been served by the debate which has given people with racist tendencies a licence to openly denigrate and insult Asian-Australians. The fact remains that despite the deconstruction of the "Hansonian" position by Tchen, as the African-American joke cited in Stephenson's paper poignantly reminds us, s/he is more likely to suffer racist insults than those who are non-Asian Australians.

Because of Australia's post World War II immigration programme, the composition of Australia's population has changed markedly. From a mainly Anglo population in the early 1940s, Australia is now one of the most ethnically diverse countries in the world. As Peter Cochrane insightfully commented in a recent article about racism in Australia : "Hanson represents the grief that goes with the loss of cultural centrality".9 By calling for the abandonment of multicultural policy,10 Pauline Hanson is hoping for a return to a time when things British were, in the main, unquestioned and commonly held in high esteem. In effect, she is attempting to take away the political potency of those she has positioned as not like her, because she fears that those like her, working class Anglo-Australians, have been left out of multicultural Australia. This is not the case, rather, to quote Cochrane again, 'Hanson's Anglo constituency has not been excluded but has lost its exclusive claim on this society and its resources'.11 It hardly needs being said that Anglo Australians still hold most of the cultural, economic and political power in Australian to day.

Hanson's claim that "billions of dollars" will be saved by abolishing multicultural policy suggests a misreading of the causes of Australia's economic crisis but she, like others before her, has chosen, perhaps because she knows no other way, to scapegoat those in our society who look different from European Australians.

Anna Yeatman's12 ideas about citizenship may provide some with a vision for a more equitable and less racist society. According to her, citizen participation forms the basis of a political society. Being part of a political community means entering into a 'relationship of co-existence' with others in the community. Entering into a relationship of co-existence with others entails working out how to live together which, she says, requires an acceptance of, and a need to work with, difference. It also requires a recognition that those we communicate with are both separate from, and equivalent to, us. This 'intersubjective orientation' demands that the existence of others be dealt with and the only way to do that is to 'enter into communication' with them. Effective communication involves not only speaking, but also listening, to the other as a 'separate being for whom we cannot speak but who must be enabled to speak themselves'. Another feature of an inter-subjective orientation is that the 'other' subject is also a 'like subject'. It is this 'complex relationship of likeness and otherness which permits subjects to identify with each other in, or across, their difference'

Working out the terms of our co-existence is not an easy political task. Communicating with others and accepting them as separate and equivalent, and as having both likeness to, and difference from us is challenging and will involve a clash of wills. Richard Sennett13 observes we feel most uneasy and most challenged by perceiving the 'otherness' of those around us and that we are often afraid of engagement with them, because of the pain that might result from such an exploration into the unknown. However, Yeatman suggests that when people engage in the political project of working out the terms of their co-existence, then despite it being challenging or painful, they form a bond of citizenship in which there is recognition of the other as a valued person and not an as object to be manipulated. I believe Yeatman's model of citizenship provides ideas which, if practised on a wide scale, could lead to a less racist society.

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