*5.2. Perpetual Strangerhood*

While Australians of African descent may live in Australia as law-abiding and productive citizens, the ongoing scrutiny and questioning of their status within the nation-state and within 'local communities' may nevertheless position them as 'perpetual strangers'. When Black Africans migrate to Western and settler-colonial societies, they became 'objects of curiosity' for the white gaze [4]. They are marked as 'visibly different'; they are 'recognizable as different from the white, Western-clad, and English-speaking majority in various ways, including phenotype, attire, accent, or a combination of these 'visibilities' [48]. Individuals from a wide variety of cultural, ethnic, and national backgrounds are relegated to singular categories such as 'African' or 'Black'—labels which they may never have previously identified with. So, in addition to becoming hyper-visible as a body, Black African Immigrants can also experience the paradoxical opposite; that of becoming invisible. Both can lead to the imposition of 'strangerhood' and denial of belonging. As Durey and Thompson [49], p. 2 suggest, in Australia, whiteness is the norm, 'the

standard against which differences, or deviations from that norm, are measured, valued, and often demeaned'.

Conditionality of belonging has been an increasingly prominent feature of the globalized world in the past twenty years, as securitization agendas construct 'foreigners' or 'strangers' not only as 'a threat to the cohesion of the political and cultural community but also as potential terrorists' [19]. As Yuval-Davis [19], p. 213 emphasizes, 'the politics of belonging has come to occupy the heart of the political agenda almost everywhere on the globe, even when reified assumptions about "the clash of civilizations" are not necessarily applied'. African migrants confront a complex postcolonial conundrum of needing to navigate anti-Black rhetorics of 'belonging' based on 'borders that are inherently porous, of colonial origin, and paradoxically symbolic of sovereignty' [50]. Proprietary belonging by Australians of white settler-colonial heritage can also be 'reflected in the traditional vigilance and policing of boundaries between "locals" and "Others"' [26].

One of the most ubiquitous ways in which this boundary is policed in Australia is through the racialized question 'where are you from?' [1]. As Kwansah-Aidoo and Mapedzahama, [28] have noted, this question, repeatedly directed towards Black Africans and other visibly different immigrants, 'imaginatively dislocates them from "here" and makes them strangers in a familiar land'. They state:

*The question symbolically deports [the interrogated person] back to the faraway places "where they are from"* . . . *they are not "authentic Australians" because their visible difference (attributable to their skin colour) impedes their inclusion in the imagined Australian nation. Yet they are not authentic foreigners because, apart from having Australian citizenship, some of them have been here too long to be bona fide foreigners. Thus, while this question may enable the questioner to 're/locate' the questioned to some distant geopolitical location, it also imaginatively dislocates them from 'here' and makes them strangers in a familiar land*. [28], p. 108

Udah and Singh argue that this question reminds the Black African migrant that they are not recognized as 'locals . . . but are considered as strangers born in some far-away place' [1]. Nyuon articulates the implications of such symbolic deportation by wondering 'what it would feel like to feel Australian but happen to be black?'. She asks, 'how do you hold on to a sense of belonging when it is so often assaulted by racism?' [51].

A dominant theme of the literature on African diasporic experiences in Australia is the way that visible differences conjure racialized coded meanings that can lead to high levels of unemployment, underemployment, and a loss of post-migration occupational status [52]. The labour market structurally excludes Africans from the job market through policing of 'English proficiency, non-recognition of overseas qualifications and skills and a lack of Australian experience', which contributes to a downward socioeconomic spiral [52,53]. The preference for Western expertise assumes those who are not from Western countries are 'strangers' to western knowledge, regardless of their training and experience. This means that even when they acquire work, Africans are more likely to experience subtle, persistent and normalized racial microagressions or biased assumptions about their ability to do the job as well as White Australians [53]. Mapedzahama locates these experiences as examples of ways that black bodies in white spaces are 'speaking a language of [their] own', one that works to essentialize, and homogenize them [4].

Black people can face significant backlash when they speak publicly about their racialized experiences in Australia, with increased severity experienced by those with multiple intersecting social identities such as women from African migrant backgrounds [27]. In a recent example, Nyuon, a Sudanese-Australian lawyer based in Melbourne has publicly documented the significant impacts of cyber-bullying she has experienced due to her outspokenness about racism [54]. As African migrants are expected to perform perpetual gratitude towards Australia for 'letting them in', representatives of dominant social groups, under the guise of 'free speech', are licensed to debate the existence and harmlessness of racism which minimizes the racial trauma fueled by the racial violence and microagressions that Black people experience everyday [27]. Always required to be cognizant of the

hyper-visibility of their skin colour, Black African migrants can come to terms with the difficult and transcendental journeys of migration by embracing their blackness, resenting it, or feeling separated from it. This can be a liberating experience, but it can also foster a deep sense of exclusion, and the impression that it is necessary to be white to be fully accepted and to exist with dignity in Australia.
