Title: Positioning processes and dissent among Colombian migrants in Australia

Authors: Liana Mercedes Torres-Casierra

Addresses: School of Languages Sciences, Universidad del Valle, Cali, Colombia

Abstract: In the midst of the media-fuelled polarisation emanating from the peace talks between the Colombian Government and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) guerrillas in 2015, the narratives of lived experience by Colombian migrants in Australia at the time portray the multiple positionings shaping their social and political selves. This paper hinges on dialogical self-theory (DST) scholarship to argue that despite the common beliefs and expectations over Colombians' capacity to voice dissent, the migrants involved privilege the silencing or constraining of their standpoints especially when there are strong political views at play. It examines the ways Colombians in Australia construct their identities within different spaces of interaction with their fellow nationals, the host community, and their back and forth relation with their country of origin. The article draws on how the migrants' ambivalent and also called third positions relate to different ways of silencing political dissent.

Keywords: dialogical self theory; DST; dialogical triads; dissent; migrant identities; third positions; Colombian migration; Australia.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMBS.2023.138608

International Journal of Migration and Border Studies, 2023 Vol.7 No.4, pp.303 - 322

Received: 28 Jun 2022
Accepted: 16 May 2023
Published online: 15 May 2024 *

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