Middle-class Pacific Islanders in Australia: negotiating identity, race and class

By examining in-depth interviews with ten middle-class Pacific Islanders, this thesis explores the complexities they experience in negotiating identity and belonging through the intersections of inclusion, exclusion and inbetweeness. Inclusion is experienced through formal and informal modes of 'integration' which have facilitated the respondents sense of belonging; exclusion meanwhile relates to the everyday racism faced by respondents that act as a constant reminder they do not fully belong; and lastly a sense of inbetweeness must be negotiated as they occupy being privileged socio-economically whilst simultaneously stigmatized due to racial ethnic markers. This thesis reveals the complexity of the middle-class migrant identity which continues to be little examined in the literature on immigrant settlement in Australia. Moreover, it expands research on the settlement experience of Pacific Islanders in Australia by focusing on its middle class as well as unpacking the heterogeneity of this pan-ethnic grouping.