Research has found that there is more to being Australian
than a citizenship test.

Being Australian is a complex and passionate issue that cannot be reduced to twenty questions on a citizenship test, says La Trobe University social scientist Dr Anthony Moran.

Dr Moran, co-director of Nations and Identities in La Trobe's recently re-named Thesis Eleven Centre for Cultural Sociology, has just completed an in-depth study of first and second generation immigrants that explores their feelings and ideas about being Australian.

The study comes at a time when the new Rudd Labor government is reviewing the controversial citizenship test. It shows that the connections people make to Australian culture are emotional ones and that it is insulting for the government to challenge the allegiance of people to their new country with a test.

'I don't see the point of a citizenship test,' says Dr Moran. 'In the '80s we seemed to take the opposite view. The government wanted to encourage people to be citizens. Why turn around the other way and test people to see if they're good enough to be citizens?'

Australian identity is a contentious issue. Some studies have suggested that a dominant racialised Australian identity still sits beneath our multicultural posturing which excludes immigrants. The La Trobe study – part of a large interview project conducted by Dr Moran and Professor of Politics, Judith Brett – one of the few empirical investigations of concepts of 'Australianness', does not support this view.

Participants were asked questions like: 'When you think of Australia, what images come to mind?'; 'Do you feel patriotic or proud to be Australian? At what times or in relation to what things or events?'; 'Is there a typical Australian?'; 'What does being an Australian mean to you?' Only five of the 27 respondents said that they did not identify as Australian. Another five expressed feelings of being torn or ambivalent about their identity. The remaining 17 identified as Australians, many of them strongly.

Dr Moran recently presented a paper that outlined the range of responses to this complex issue of identity. Even those who still identified with their former cultures, incorporated some Australian values, he says.

One woman who called herself Croatian said she liked the 'friendliness', 'informality' and humour of Australians, especially the ability to laugh at themselves: 'And what I really like about Australians is when you meet someone, you can automatically start stirring them up. Like you can really take the Mickey out of somebody that you've just met. I reckon that's fantastic,' she said. Dr Moran suggests that she calls herself Croatian, not because of any racist overtones to Australian culture, but because Croatian culture and tradition formed her.

One of the most clear-cut of the non-identifiers was Angelo who arrived in Australia as a young adult in the 1950s. Australian society was ill-formed when he arrived, he said, and he felt it was part of his destiny to make it into a better, more sophisticated place.

'Dual identities reflect the growing inter-connectedness of the world.'

Carla, a 26 year old nurse of Austrian background, 'felt different' to the other children at school, because of her European heritage but she conceded that she didn't mind the 'free and easy attitudes of Australians'.

Dora, Australian born of Chinese background, and Nina, born in Sri Lanka and having migrated to Australia as a young girl, did not see themselves as Australian, but they did not identify as Chinese or Sri Lankan either.

'I don't think I have a national identity to tell you the truth. I don't think I'm Australian and I don't think I'm Sri Lankan as in the sense that, you know, culturally or anything else, religiously,' Nina said. Dora said simply: 'I just feel like a person really, not an Australian.' Neither Dora nor Nina expressed any desire for a stronger or more coherent identity. Nina felt that if you'd never had a national identity then you can hardly miss it.

'It wasn't experiences of exclusion or racism that made both of them reject an Australian identity. It was more a case that Australian identity had no imaginative hold over either of them,' Dr Moran concludes.

'The point about all the non-identifiers is that none of them overtly expressed feelings of being rejected by Australia, or of being excluded by Australian identity.'

Those who embraced Australian identity did so with varying degrees of passion, he says. Frieda, an Italian dressmaker from Trieste, when asked what images came to mind when she thought of Australia, emphasised the freedom. 'I feel that living in Australia there is no barrier to the wishes of an individual, for a human being of wanting to develop, in every way. There are no barriers, you really are free.'

Another young woman, Helen, of Lebanese Muslim background and Australian born, said 'I always identify myself as Australian.' She said that calling herself Australian caused some stir among her migrant friends.

Susan, who had migrated from the Philippines in 1988, and worked in a call center, stressed that she felt very Australian. She had taken out Australian citizenship because she wanted to make sure that she could serve in the armed forces if Australia needed to be defended.

'I got my Australian citizenship done in case Australia needs me, if there was a war, then I'd be there which I think is fair enough. I'm from Asia but I'm now Australian.'

Sometimes respondents expressed a complex sense of identity – for example, feeling that parts of themselves were Greek, or Vietnamese, or Lebanese – but nearly all of these also said that, fundamentally, they were Australian.

'These expressions of dual identities reflect the growing interconnectedness of the world, and the opportunities for peoples to connect with ethnic and national origins in a more intense and ongoing way, through the media, the internet, the telephone and visits to homelands. They show that identity can be a hybrid phenomenon, rather than an exclusive, monolithic one.'