Less middle class, less privileged: A white researcher's analysis of Malaysian student leaders in Australia c 85-94, which is likely to offend all Asians who were students here at that time

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 Nice paper by one Tim Briedis with plenty of jargon:
This paper is the first case study to specifically hone in on NOSCA, one of the most substantial and left wing overseas student groups. Tracing the group's history helps us to reframe and rethink the landscape of student activism in Australia, as less white, less middle class and less privileged.






 
Following the history of NOSCA helps flip this script, freeing our imagination and allowing us to see the figure of the student radical differently, as less white, less middle class and less privileged. It forces us to rethink the places from where student activism can emerge, and shifts our understanding of the era of protest
against student fees and neoliberal commodification.


Less white perhaps, but less middle class, less privileged? 
Briedis seems not to understand that South East Asian students who arrived here after say 1980, were necessarily from the upper middle classes. Given exchange rates and costs of living, even air tickets to Australia were  beyond the reach of most South East Asians. Those that this writer came to know over the years and after would have been offended to be thought of as less than at least of the upper middle class,to which most belonged.


Consequently the rest of the paper reads like yet another attempt, usually  by white academics, to create the Asia of their imagination. Born of holidays in places like Phuket, it does not for example allow for any understanding of say, the Melbourne University SRC activities of the dark complexioned Malaysian student from Malaya in the top left corner of the photograph above. That photo was taken in 1959, while the white Australia policy was still in force. 


The problem with papers of this sort is that they tend to be picked up by analysts at DFAT, and then become part of Australia/s foreign policy. After all, it has been published by someone from Sydney University,  and published in the History of Education Review.

Once in the DAFT system it becomes part of the Australian foreign policy narrative. That stupidity then excludes much from that which can better  inform Australia's understanding of Asia and South East Asia. 

END 

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