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How immigration is affecting countries national identity through implications of globalisation and multiculturalism?

How immigration is affecting countries national identity through implications of globalisation and multiculturalism?
Author: Holly Thornton
2 Commentries
Key words: Australia, United Kingdom, Globalisation, Multiculturalism, Immigration

Abstract: A numerous amount of countries around the world are slowly loosing there national identities due to immigration and a change of globalisation. Due to more countries now being multicultural it’s much easier to see the blend of different people living together in one society, but is this good or bad? This conference will compare Australia and the United Kingdom as case studies who both use different approaches towards maintaining their national identity.

Throughout the globe, countries have for many years debated the implications of immigration and multiculturalism and how they are impacting upon their national identity. Throughout this conference paper named case studies in specific countries will be used to discuss how they deal with immigration in the correct way and overcome social and political issues. The links of globalisation, multiculturalism and immigration, creates constant social and political debates on weather immigration should be allowed more freely or weather higher restrictions should be in place to try and reduce the number of people moving and living permanently in other countries.
Immigration is the main social and political issue within this conference paper which is described as foreign citizens who stay live permanently in a country with any purpose apart from tourism are considered as immigrants, (Triandafyllidou, 2007:155). Many countries around the world are now worrying that there national identity is slowly being taken away due to a multicultural society with many ethnic backgrounds living together as one union. Some countries are starting to fear that their country will no longer be seen as a place they come from and grow up at but instead just a place they live along with many other people from around the world.

Immigration and multiculturalism causes issues globally on a day to day basis with immigration playing a central role in the search for national identities with many countries around the world, (Grant, 1998:127). Throughout the years there has been a mixed number of attitudes towards ethnic minorities including ethno-racial and ethno-religious minorities and now due to this stricter control of immigration has taken place in many countries, (Lesińska, 2014:37). Immigration and multiculturalism do create social and political arguments in today society, but it is also the adaptation of globalisation that has problematized not only citizenship but also the issue of national identity, (Grant, 1998:127), together these three society issues are creating a mixed debate of discussions. Dual-citizenship is an on-going argument where many of us feel that we should all only belong to one single nation-state but others see it as a personal attribute to be used for the construction of self-identity and individual choice, (Gustafson, 2002:463).

Australia is one of the earliest countries to democratize and rejected everyone who did not belong ethnically to the model of the Australian nation. This involved not only the exclusion of ‘foreigners’ but also the exclusion of many of those who lived within the territorial boundaries of the state, (Grant, 1998:127). This saw characteristics of racism and created uproar of debates between immigrants who wanted to move to Australia on a permanent basis. Australia’s state wanted to maintain its racist approach to ‘outsiders’ and encouraged to discard their cultural identities and encouraged people to ‘become Australian’, (Grant, 1998:130). From a conducted survey, 43% supported the fact that they wanted a reduction to the current immigration level and intake in the country due to low levels of trust and safety, (Markus, 2014:10). The Challenging Racism project reported that in the Sydney Statistical Region, 56.6% of the population is ‘anti-Muslim’, compared with 54.4% in New South Wales and 48.6% in Australia. This is showing that Australia is discriminating against immigrants entering and living in their country which is seen as a concern to our society, (Markus, 2014:13).

Also known as the ‘community of communities’ the UK has worked closely towards a multicultural model than many other continental countries, (Lesińska, 2014:42). . In 2013, the new regulations stated that; “The English language requirement will be removed entirely for Tier 2 (Intra-Company Transfer) migrants. This change to the rules will mean that individuals who extend their leaves beyond a period of three years will not need to undertake an English language test”, (Lewis, 2013). Every year, the UK’s government seem to reduce the regulations even further to encourage more immigrants to live in the country, whereas in comparison to Australia they are actually making it much more difficult for immigrants to move to their country. New immigration in the UK of non-British citizens has been on the constant increase with the largest increase of 41% between 1996 and 2000, (Dell’Olio, 2004:109).

So is it best to be multicultural or limit immigration in countries around the world? The outcome of allowing immigration creates a positive ethnic image on the country that allows it and makes everyone feel equal and valued to be allowed to live in a country that they are not originally from. Even though this is the case, many countries now feel that they are losing their national identity as we are now all living as a blend of societies from different backgrounds. It’s important that the balance is there on letting immigrants into different countries but not allowing everyone and anyone so the national identity of the country doesn’t disappear.

Most Important References:

Grant, R. (1998). The implications of globalization in the construction of the Australian 'nation': multiculturalism and democracy. Contemporary Politics. 4 (2), 127-132.

Newman, J, B (2013). British Journal of Political Science. Cambridge: FirstView Article. 1-4.

United Nations. (2009). UN population estimates and projections, database query. Available: http://esa.un.org/unpp/. Last accessed 27/04/2014.
Commentary of the paper "How immigration is affecting countries national identity through implications of globalisation and multiculturalism"
Author: Quentin Leroy
I chose this paper because I found very interesting the idea to correlate the issues of immigration, multiculturalism, globalisation and national identity with tourism. Immigration, multiculturalism and globalisation indeed challenge the national identity of every country and in a world where everything is going faster and faster the issue of national identity is becoming central in our societies. I found it also very interesting because national identity is a very sensitive issue. On the one hand the debate on national identity is completely relevant but on the other hand it can quickly revive an underlying form of racism. Moreover, I think the choice to compare the United Kingdom with Australia to illustrate this conference is a very good choice because the approach of both of these countries to the question is completely opposed. As the author says the United Kingdom is a multicultural society whose immigration rates are constantly increasing whereas Australia is firmly fighting against any other form of culture which would not be part of its national identity at the risk of being sometimes borderline with xenophobia as it was the case in 2012 when a French tourist singing in French in the bus in Melbourne was threatened with death just because she was not speaking English.(1)

However, although it is very interesting and totally relevant, I think this paper is not correlated enough with tourism. It mainly deals with immigration and its impacts on national identity. The author seems to present immigration as a form of tourism which would have an impact on national identity. In my opinion we cannot consider immigration as a form of tourism even if immigration implies a form of travelling, this is not motivated by the same things than any kind of tourism.

I think the author could have questioned the impacts of the loss, or of the comodification, of a country's national identity on the tourism in this country. Indeed we could try to determinate the importance of a country's national identity among the different motivations of the tourists to visit this country. When visiting a foreign country, are people looking for this national identity ? Can they be disappointed ? I personally know a student from Singapore who told me that he was quite surprised when he first arrived in England. In his imagination he thought England was much more about “Englishness”, about the Queen, about tea and people with a very fair skin. This can obviously be considered as stereotypes but it was for him the national identity of England. The multicultural England he discovered was quite far from this and in a way he was a little disappointed at first.

Another way to link national identity, globalisation and tourism would have been to question the role of globalisation into the frame of tourism in the comodification of national identity. For example the development of fast-food chains in some destinations whose culture does not fit with this kind of restoration.


(1). Rourke, Alison. “Melbourne Racist Bus Attack Victim Speaks out.” The Guardian, November 22, 2012, sec. World news. http://www.theguardian.com/
Commentary on the discussion topic as: How immigration is affecting countries national identity through implications of globalisation and multiculturalism?
Author: Inga Kirspile
Selected discussion paper involved personal interest and also because nowadays this problem is gaining increasing attention among the governments which face the immigration issue and tourism organisations which are working on cultural identity preservation. Currently many countries are dealing with world crisis. This heavily impacts on residents of these countries and they are forced to fight for their existence. Therefore, people start looking for the ways of better life conditions and many of them consider moving to a country where the crisis is not that badly influencing is the best option.


The current discussion paper debates on globalisation, immigration and multiculturalism of the countries which follows after that and how strongly this concerns cultural identity. The author of this discussion paper stated that the residents are fearing of multiculturalism of their own counties because this changes the originality of their cultures and together with new ethical backgrounds brings in new cultural identities. Due to such process the cultures are losing their authenticities. Moreover, the author selected very good examples to compare with and these were Australia and the United Kingdom. Indeed, Australia and the United Kingdom are one of world’s most exposed countries to immigration. Further, the author made the investigation about is the immigration positive or negative thing and how it can be managed.


The discussion paper mainly describes the loss of cultural identity and how these governments are acting towards immigration. However, in my personal opinion to the discussion paper could be added general information related specifically to tourism. For example what the loss of cultural identity means to tourism industry and how it deals with it. According to Reisinger (2009) globalisation in tourism means standardisation of a tourism product and the loss of national, regional and local character. On the other hand, globalisation brings such benefits as increased trade, capital, human growth and creation of thousands jobs. The worst effects of globalisation on culture is cultural commodification; culture is modified for tourist consumption and transformed into a new inauthentic form in order to sell it. However, tourist consumption does not necessary destroy culture; high tourism consumption creates demand for culture preservation, conservation and revitalisation of local traditions. But the most important fact is that since different cultures are transcontextual and intermixed, there is not and will no longer be any pure or authentic culture that is distinct from others. Here comes another question, that maybe it is not necessary so strenuously retain cultural identity.


Australia’s strategy for preservation cultural identity is to encourage people who want to live on permanent basis to ‘become Australian’. Hence, how ethically this is to them and even if they do, this makes, in some point the loss of their own cultural identity. However, the UK is currently also actively fighting with immigration but unsuccessfully, due to EU human rights regulations (Swinford and Dominiczak, 2013). Moreover, the UK is more puzzled by immigration to overcome such major impacts as environmental, overcrowdedness, unemployment, rather to retain authentic culture for tourism industry. In conclusion, the author raised good discussion points which are relevant to the current situation. However, the discussion about immigration could be more linked to tourism industry, rather to describe singularly how much it affects cultural identity. Also this topic perfectly matches to the strand and can be further continued in debating.



Reference list:

Reisinger, Y. (2009) International tourism: cultures and behaviour. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.


Swinford, S. and Dominiczak, P. (2013) Stop unrestricted immigration from poor EU countries, David Cameron suggests. The Telegraph [online]. 13 December 2013. [Accessed 5 May 2014]. Available at:< http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/10517128/Stop-unrestricted-immigration-from-poor-EU-countries-David-Cameron-suggests.html>.