Performing Legal and National Identities: Australian Citizenship Ceremonies and the Management of Cultural Diversity
| Author | Anne Macduff |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/09646639221100494 |
| Published date | 01 April 2023 |
| Date | 01 April 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Performing Legal and
National Identities:
Australian Citizenship
Ceremonies and the
Management of Cultural
Diversity
Anne Macduff
ANU College of Law, Australian National University,
Australia
Abstract
Academic scholarship analyses how citizenship law reforms such as longer residency
requirements and tougher language tests reinforce culturally exclusionary national
narratives . Citizenship ce remonie s however, have largely esca ped schol arly attention .
Drawing on Australia as a case study, this article addresses that gap. After examining
how Australian citizenship is performed at ceremonies, this article argues that although
the government states that citizenship ceremonies should welcome new citizens, deep
suspicions about the cultural diversity of migrants are also conveyed. This paper contri-
butes to an understanding of how citizenship ceremonies reinforce culturally exclusion-
ary national narratives, even where the legal criteria for acquiring citizenship status is
non-discriminatory. This paper also illustrates how citizenship ceremonies are important
sites for the construction and communication of legal identities.
Keywords
Ceremony, citizenship status, cultural diversity, law, national identity, performance
Corresponding author:
Anne Macduff, ANU College of Law, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.
Email: anne.macduff@anu.edu.au
Article
Social & Legal Studies
2023, Vol. 32(2) 197–215
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/09646639221100494
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Introduction
Ceremonies play a significant role in social life. For both participants and observers,
ceremonies are events designed to trigger shared, emotional responses. Awards nights
are grand and joyful, remembrance days are sombre and reflective, while court pro-
ceedings are frequently solemn. Citizenship ceremonies are also socially significant
events, often designed to create feelings of affection and loyalty towards the new
nation.
Since the introduction of citizenship legislation in 1948, the Australian government
has sought to enhance the significance of citizenship ceremonies through increasingly
detailed directions. For instance, from the 1960s to the 1990s a short 10 page document
served to guide Local Councils on how to conduct citizenship ceremonies (Department of
Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, 1994; Department of Immigration, 1962; Department of
Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, 1978). By 2008, this document had expanded to become
a detailed 50 page ‘Australian Citizenship Ceremony Code’(Department of Immigration
and Citizenship, 2008) (the ‘Code’). The Code contains a summary of all the legal and
non-legal requirements that govern citizenship ceremonies. The Australian government
oversees compliance with the Code by controlling who is authorised to conduct citizen-
ship ceremonies.
Despite the potential of citizenship ceremonies to convey narratives about the nation
and citizenship norms, only a few scholars have examined citizenship ceremonies closely
(Aptekar 2012; Byrne 2014). Byrne and Aptekar examine citizenship ceremonies from a
sociological perspective in the UK and US respectively, largely focussing on the content
of the speeches made during the ceremony. This article builds on the work of these two
scholars, examining the recent changes to citizenship ceremonies in Australia. It also
extends their work, examining not only the speeches, but all the ceremonial elements
including the music, visuals and symbols, as well as the movement of participants in
space.
This article argues that critically analysing ceremonies allows us to see them as
important sites for the construction and communication of legel and national iden-
tities. In particular, citizenship ceremonies communicate culturally exclusionary citi-
zenship identities that would not be possible for liberal democratic nations to
explicitly include in their legal criteria for acquiring citizenship. Using Australia as
a case study, this article argues that the performance of Australian citizenship at
the ceremony conveys a suspicious attitude towards the cultural difference of
migrants. At the same time, the performance also proves that migrants can enact cul-
turally appropriate national citizen norms. This reassures the national public that
migrants will not challenge or change the homogenous existing national identity
when they become members.
The argument in this paper is structured as follows. First, the article outlines the inter-
disciplinary literature on performance and performativity and its growing use in critical
legal scholarship. This section brings together different strands of the interdisciplinary
literature and argues that ceremonies are important sites where legal identities are per-
formed. The second section outlines the Australian citizenship ceremony in some
detail. After identifying the historical purpose of the Australian citizenship ceremony,
198 Social & Legal Studies 32(2)
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