Neoliberal Multiculturalism/Racial Neoliberalism

Against popular recourse to mythologies of liberal multicultural tolerance and diversity in Australia, I contend in this paper that contemporary multiculturalism, having been largely co-opted and transformed in the ongoing neoliberalisation of the Australian political economy, in fact (re)produces already-existing and novel mechanisms of racial exclusion. This contention is primarily informed by the influential theoretical work of David Theo Goldberg on ‘racial neoliberalism’, a concept which seeks to trace how the neoliberal state has increasingly sought to ‘protect and expand the freedom of flows of capital, goods, and services, and more recently of information’ whilst simultaneously being ‘decidedly circumspect about freedom of movement for multitudes of people’ (2009).In building the evidence for this contention, I address one key question: how has multiculturalism been instrumentalised in the pursuit of maintaining a ‘competitive edge’ in the global market? In response to this question, I argue that neoliberal multiculturalism is thoroughly engaged in the business of shaping flows of people in the interests of capital primarily by privileging migrants that can be expected to serve the interests of capital as ‘economic inputs and dispensable components of production’ (Walsh, 2014). This, I contend, necessarily implies the reproduction and innovation of modes of exclusion and discipline of those that challenge the functionalities of neoliberal multiculturalism.