Citizenship and Identity: the Case of Australia

Abstract

National identity plays an important role in identifying who we are as individuals. However, we are not born with a sense of national identity, it has to be inculcated. What it means to belong to a particular nation, to have a sense of that identity, is constructed by a diverse range of forces, including governments, the media and the community lived in. This chapter sets out to explore how the federal government of Australia sought to construct national identity around a particular idea of citizenship in an attempt to construct an identity that recognized and was inclusive of the ethnic and cultural diversity that existed within Australian society.