Lost between cultures or resisting racism?

Abstract

There is widespread popular belief, both among Sydney's Lebanese-Australian communities and Anglo-Australians, that second-generation immigrant youth of Lebanese background are 'caught between two cultures'. This is often held to cause a range of social problems involving these young people: from education to youth culture and the criminal justice system. A range of redemptive measures are prescribed by well-meaning and right-thinking experts: from reactionary to progressive. These comprise contradictory and complexly interrelating strategies of assimilation, conservative cultural maintenance, and liberal cultural pluralism. Yet the premise of two neatly bounded cultures with second-generation immigrant youth trapped in between does not accurately represent the lived reality of the young people, so these prescriptions are futile. Ethnocentrism in education and criminal justice systems is part of the problem. Recognition and provision of social space to develop cultural hybridities could be part of the way forwad. It is also necessary to deal with the realities of class inequality, including unequal means and power in the production and valorisation of hybridity.