Introduction and Situating the Self
As a naturalised Australian citizen, May 2022 happened to be my first time voting in Western Sydney. Prior to this, I had only voted in the inner west of Sydney which tends to be socially progressive, albeit less culturally diverse than the west. I cast an early vote in a booth located in the multicultural suburb of Blacktown which now has sizeable South Asian and Filipino-origin communities (ABS 2021). At this booth, I was surprised to see the number of South Asian men (largely first-generation and of Punjabi descent) pre-selected as candidates for nearby seats by the Liberal Party or standing as independents or for minor parties. These included – Pradip Pathi (Liberal candidate for Greenway), Jugandeep Singh (Liberal candidate for the seat of Chifley), and Vivek Singha (Liberal candidate for my own seat of McMahon). My initial surprise can be attributed to the fact that I had never witnessed so many non-white faces on campaign material in any Australian election. I also later realised that they had all been chosen in relatively safe Labor seats, rendering them virtually ‘unwinnable’ by Liberal candidates. It is difficult to speculate on the reasons for their pre-selection, although anecdotal evidence from long-term Western Sydney residents suggests they were seen as ‘tokenistic’ choices to appease local ethnic communities rather than offer a substantive and genuine alternative to the incumbent Labor MPs.
Moving further towards the centre in the inner west of Sydney, a different story of Asian Australian political candidacy and leadership was unfolding. I was hearing from friends volunteering for Sally Sitou’s campaign in the marginal seat of Reid, as well as those living in the electorate who were deeply impacted by her ‘child of migrants’ advertisement across media platforms. A family friend joked that even her toddler knew who Sally Sitou is as her usual YouTube streaming of children’s content was getting frequently interrupted by the latter’s election advertisement. This was not viewed as an unwelcome interruption by the parent, however, as they could envisage their own child aspiring to be a leader one day.
People of Colour and Politics in Australia: a story of under-representation
Before analysing the media interviews and self-representation via digital campaigns of the three chosen Asian Australian candidates, it is important to situate their candidacy in the Australian and comparable immigrant national contexts. While research on the lack of culturally diverse leadership in Australia is still emerging, one of the pioneering works in this area is a book on race, ethnicity and the ‘participation gap’ in Australia by Juliet Pietsch. In this study, Pietsch concludes that, ‘Australia lags both Canada and the United States in the political participation and representation of “non-white” immigrants and ethnic minorities in its political institutions” (Pietsch, 2018: 44). She attributes this gap, in turn, to an absence of quotas, and suggests that Australia’s goal of attaining racial and ethnic equality within a multicultural society has not been realised thus far (Pietsch, 2018: 44). In contrast to the Australian case, the representation of racial and ethnic minorities in the US and Canada has risen due to the existence of legislative instruments and policies that are specifically targeted at closing such gaps (Pietsch, 2018: 44).
An in-depth discussion of the merits of affirmative action in the Australian political context is beyond the scope of this chapter. At the same time, it is useful to understand political representation in this settler colonial immigrant nation through a transnational lens. This lens reveals that Australia followed the Canadian model of official multiculturalism until the mid-1990s, but that this has eroded in practice, and especially in the wake of national security rhetoric after the 9/11 attacks in the US (Pietsch, 2018). What this erosion of official multiculturalism means for the candidates of non-white ethnic backgrounds, including Asian Australians in recent Australian elections is that they are often battling against a lack of political will to include cultural diversity in structural reform. At the same time, the emergence of such candidates from grassroots party structures suggests that the tide may be turning in terms of the maturing minority communities themselves seeking change, especially in suburban electorates where they constitute a critical mass. One could also argue that the 2022 federal election marked a turning point in the representation of cultural diversity in Australian politics (Jakubowicz, 2022). While representation of Asian Australians and other ethnic minorities is still not at parity, it is significant that of the ‘ten or so seats the ALP won from the Liberals across the country, six were won by “ethnic candidates”’ (Jakubowicz, 2022). In fact, the 2022 federal election outcome was hailed as signalling an end to ‘White Australia’. Re-visiting this piece at the start of 2025, which is another election year, the cultural diversity of political candidates is yet to emerge as an agenda item of any significance for any of the major parties, thereby suggesting that 2022 may have been an exception.
In addition to political opportunity structures inhibiting the representation of ethnic minorities in Australia, Jakimow’s recent research on women of colour in local government in the state of New South Wales shows that this group faces more acute intersectional challenges.
Women of non-European ancestry were grossly underrepresented, comprising only 6.06% of councillors in Greater Sydney in the October prior to the 2021 elections, and a tiny 2.28% across NSW as a whole. While not dismissing the importance of achieving gender equity, success in this regard should not blind us to what has become an increasingly urgent need to increase cultural and ethnic equity in Australian political institutions (2022: 75).
Among the reasons cited for this more critical gap in representation is that women of colour, particularly those hailing from the first generation of migrants, are more likely to be seen as interested in local or ethnic community service than in political power (Jakimow, 2022: 80). This observation is of consequence for the subsequent case studies and analysis as all three Asian Australian Labor women who were successful were second-generation and able to appeal to a broader community (including being perceived by those that pre-selected them to have inter-community reach).
Case studies: Three successful Asian Australian Candidates in the 2022 Election
Besides Sally Sitou who I mentioned in the introduction, there were two other Asian Australian woman-identifying candidates across the country who had successful grassroots campaigns and an overall media pitch that won voters across the political (and ethnic) spectrum in marginal seats. They are Sri Lankan-Australian physician and academic Michelle Ananda-Rajah in the Victorian state of Higgins, and Goan-Australian engineer Zaneta Mascarenhas in the West Australian seat of Swan. Besides all three being Labor members, they are second-generation migrants of Asian descent in that they were either born in, and/or grew up in Australia. In this section, I will attempt to unpack what is known of their biographical details through media coverage and interviews to understand how they constructed a political persona that contributed to their success against the odds in their electorates.
As the daughter of Laotian refugees who migrated from Vietnam in the early 1980s, Sitou has been active in politics for over a decade and even volunteered for former Labor MP Maxine McKew’s federal campaign in 2007. She has used her status as a child of migrants, a relatively young woman in the political sphere, and her social media accounts to create a persona that has broad appeal. For instance, in an interview for SBS News soon after her election, Sitou remarked on how younger women from different backgrounds look up to her: “Young women from different backgrounds came up to me and said that me standing as the candidate meant something to them – and that’s something that I’ll take away with me forever” (Sitou cited in Pueblos, 2022). The timing of this quote shows that Sitou is both self-aware of the novelty of someone of her background entering federal parliament, and also using this strategically to draw the support of a broader group of under-represented voters.
In other media profiles, such as a detailed one by independent news outlet Crikey, Sitou is presented as effortless at being able to code-switch, and this is seen as pivotal in an electorate with a diverse migrant population (Saville, 2022). In other words, this population includes not just first-generation migrants from mainland China, but also their descendants and a significant number of working professionals. According to Saville, Sitou looked relaxed at her campaigning spot in the suburb of Homebush, had a broad smile, and switched ‘effortlessly between English and Mandarin’ (2022). In terms of social media, Sitou has active Instagram and TikTok accounts and these were used to target younger voters as well as those more broadly interested in climate change and education as election issues during the campaign. Some of the TikTok videos on her account also show behind-the-scenes footage from the campaign trail and thereby build familiarity with voters in a way that is reminiscent of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s use of Insta reels in the US context (see Khorana, 2022).
In the Victorian seat of Higgins, which has previously been occupied by Liberal heavyweights including former Prime Ministers, Sri Lankan-Australian Michelle Ananda-Rajah (via England and Africa) was an unlikely choice at first. Her media interviews presented her as moving from ‘model minority’ success as a medical doctor and academic to the realm of advocacy (in public health) during the COVID-19 lockdowns and finally on to trying to make ‘speedy change’ through politics. In her conversation with an Indian diasporic publication called The Indian Sun, she commented, ‘The pandemic activated me and what I realised during the advocacy I did then was that there was a lot of voluntary work. But what I also realised was that if you really want to drive change with the speed and the scale necessary then you really do need to step into the political ring’ (Ananda-Rajah cited in Laisram, 2022). In terms of her cultural identity, Ananda-Rajah identifies as ‘Australian’ and diasporic as she migrated to Australia with her Tamil parents at the age of eleven (Laisram, 2022). These dual identities undoubtedly helped her appeal to aspirational white-collar migrants in her electorate as well Anglo and European Australians who saw her as a formidable medical expert who stood up to the Morrison government during the pandemic.
In addition to the ‘ethnic’ and ‘mainstream’ realms, Ananda-Rajah can be seen as relatedly appealing to a diverse range of political ideologies due to her class and cultural capital. According to Blaine’s pre-election coverage of her and her seat in The Monthly, Ananda-Rajah acknowledged that there was a time when ‘an inner-city elite with her level of income and education would have been a rusted-on Liberal voter. But she viscerally detests Scott Morrison. This reiterates the feedback from university-educated women in focus groups’ (cited in Blaine, 2022). In this profile, she is depicted as some who can ‘win over “doctor’s wives”’ and is relatable because her kids attend the same elite schools as most of the voters in the electorate (Blaine, 2022). It is likely due to this relatability and expertise that Ananda-Rajah had ‘entire families of lifelong Liberals shyly pledge their allegiance’ (Blaine, 2022). Ananda-Rajah’s privileging of her medical expertise over other aspects of her identity is also manifested in her digital campaign and Facebook videos which will be examined in detail in the subsequent section.
West Australian Zaneta Mascarenhas, in turn, straddled different (and seemingly disparate) spheres by simultaneously presenting herself as a child of migrants, an ‘Aussie girl’ from a mining town, as well as a woman of science. In Blaine’s coverage of her seat for The Monthly, it was noted that her parents migrated to Australia from Kenya while their ancestors are from Goa, a former Portuguese colony in India (2022). Also highlighted in her story are Mascarenhas’s working class roots as her father was a fitter-and-turner and her mother worked as a kindy-cleaner.
During the election campaign, Mascarenhas is noted as highlighting to a gathering that she was born in Kalgoorlie, grew up in the nickel-mining town of Kambalda and started her career wearing steelcap boots on a mine site:
“I’m a white-collar professional who has worked on the mines for 12 years … I’m a country girl who lives in the city. I am a dinky-di Aussie, and I’m also the child of migrants. You know what the word is? Duality” (Mascarenhas cited in Blaine, 2022).
She paints this picture of ‘duality’ to disarm her diverse voter base. Later in the speech, Mascarenhas also declares her university credentials as a chemical engineer and a recent consultant for an energy firm. By doing this, she appeals to ethnic communities in her constituency through the take of the Catholic migrant family that provided ‘home-cooked and a piece of furniture to new arrivals in the town’ (cited in Blaine, 2022). Later in this media profile, she is also at pains to highlight that the diversity she stands for is not just in terms of her gender and ethnicity, but also the skills she brings to political office: ‘Mascarenhas says parliament desperately lacks people with science, technology, engineering and mathematics backgrounds at a time when they are needed the most’ (Hastie, 2022). In this vein, Mascarenhas is similar to Ananda-Rajah in deploying her professional background and scientific expertise to lend solidity to her political credentials and potentially deflect attention from the gendered and racialised aspects of her identity in certain contexts.
Digital Campaigns and Self-Representation
In addition to the three Asian Australians’ representation and interviews in the mainstream media, it is also crucial to closely examine and analyse who they (with the support of their party and staffers) chose to self-represent in their digital campaigns. This is because in a hybrid media system, ‘voters are presented with politicians’ performances on various media platforms and across different genres, and they are thus able to evaluate the trustworthiness of the politicians in the context of various media environments’ (Enli and Rosenberg, 2018: 1). In their research on this perception of trustworthiness across platforms in the Norwegian context, Enli and Rosenberg found that opinion pieces and social media were considered the most authentic. This is likely because their content is seen as ‘user generated, as they are not produced by media professionals but by individuals or groups who want to get their message across to a wider audience’ (Enli and Rosenberg, 2018: 4).
In the Australian political context, what is perceived as trustworthy and authentic is not just a relatable social media presence, but also a meaningful connection to the local community. According to Milione, ‘Australian voters are more likely to support a candidate that lives or has lived in the electorate’ (2019: 25) and therefore political parties are more likely to preselect such candidates. In line with this finding, all three Asian Australian candidates examined for this chapter had hyper-localised campaigns with a view to building connections with their own background and those of diverse ethnicities, appealing to young women and families, and strategically connecting with the Labor base of working-class communities where applicable. In other words, these campaigns did not all follow the script of the ALP in every post. Rather, the party’s overall message and policies were strategically tailored to each candidate’s persona and the demographics of their seat.
Michelle Ananda-Rajah
The official Facebook page’s campaign posts in the two months preceding the federal election in 2022 mostly focus on climate mitigation policies, the Morrison government’s poor record on the COVID vaccine rollout, and cheaper childcare. These are presumably the most important issues in Ananda-Rajah’s electorate of Higgins, which is located in a more affluent part of Melbourne. It is also noteworthy that none of her posts or election ads explicitly mention her own ethnic background or migrant story. This is possibly because it may not be a point of connection with others in Higgins, while her medical training and middle-class family is.
In an election video ad posted on her Facebook page and targeted at her constituents on 28 April 2022 (about 4 weeks before polling day), Ananda-Rajah states:
I’m asking for your vote this election because leadership really matters.
For climate action. For cheaper childcare. To fix aged care. To rebuild manufacturing, and create good jobs.
This election, Higgins will come down to a handful of votes.
Vote to change our government and our future.
Vote Labor.
In the video itself, she talks to the camera with subsequent shots showing her emerging out of the Alfred Hospital in scrubs, interacting with a child in a playground and sipping a cup of tea on a balcony with a solar panelled roof in the background. This video sets the tone for the remainder of the campaign, and especially its most crucial period. It shows the candidate as a formidable medical expert, yet sufficiently feminine and engaged with the community.
In another ad posted on 5 May 2022, Ananda-Rajah focuses on the cost of living pressures in Higgins and the failure of the Morrison government to help alleviate them:
Everything is rising except your wages.
When things are going well, Scott Morrison takes all the credit – and when things get difficult, he takes none of the responsibility.
Only Labor has a plan for a better future.
A future where we ease cost of living pressures, by creating secure jobs that put upwards pressure on wages. Where we grow our economy without adding to inflationary pressures, strengthen Medicare and make child care cheaper.
All Scott Morrison has is a bunch of one-off payments to get him through the election.
We need a government that steps up – we need a Labor Government.
The visuals in this video ad are similar to the previous one, with a focus on the medical system, infrastructure for young families and climate change. However, it begins with her declaring ‘if you work hard, you should be able to get ahead’. This statement might be the only invocation of a hard-working migrant ethos in Ananda-Rajah’s self-representation and leadership style. Other posts in this final month before the election lay out the improvements in specific schools as well as revamped sports infrastructure in local clubs in her electorate that Labor plans to undertake if elected (such as building a new science kitchen at Camberwell South Primary School).
Prominent Labor politicians featured in Ananda-Raja’s Facebook page posts who also helped the campaign in Higgins include former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and current Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong. Some of these posts, including the one featuring Wong also highlight ‘Labor women’ who ‘get things done’, again foregrounding the expertise frame and establishing the legacy of the party itself as one that stands for professional women as well as women of colour.
In the posts leading up to election day, Ananda-Rajah’s video ad focuses again on Morrison’s lack of leadership on climate and other issues like cheaper childcare. She declares to voters that they have ‘an easy choice to make tomorrow’ if they want change. A 20 May post also mentions that Higgins as a seat that has long been held by the Liberal Party can not only vote for a change of leadership, but also be part of history making through making a switch to Labor. One final post before the election results were announced later on 21 May sees Ananda-Rajah thanking all her supporters for a ‘grassroots community campaign’, which was also seen in Sitou’s case in the NSW seat of Reid.
Sally Sitou
The overarching emphasis in Sally Sitou’s official Facebook page is on being a child of migrants. This is demonstrated through a number of personal throwback photos of her migrant parents as well as pictures of her own 5-year-old son. Sitou used these posts to connect to issues of childcare and schools in her electorate and related Labor policies.
Over-development without adequate infrastructure also an issue in the seat of Reid with a growing population of young families. A 1 May post on the Wentworth Point Residents’ Action Group highlights this in particular as it states that these residents are affected by over development, roads and traffic, mobile coverage and the new local high school. It pledges $8.5 million if Labor is elected to ‘ease traffic congestion and flood proof the area’. Another significant post on this day is a #MayDay post that is not electorate-specific and is more generically aligned with the Labor Party’s core values. This post mentions that Sitou and her team will work on securing local jobs, and in making sure her constituents have better pay and conditions.
The post on 2 May wishes her Muslim constituents who celebrate with the message ‘Eid Mubarak’. Note that this was missing on the same day in Ananda-Rajah’s case, most likely because her seat has a larger proportion of people of Jewish faith. However, like her fellow Labor woman-identifying candidate of Asian-Australian heritage, Sitou’s Facebook page also has a series of posts leading up to the 21 May election that pivot on local schools and infrastructure for sports. For instance, one on 4 May is focused on the Ashfield Pirates Football Club and promises ‘$300,000 for upgrades to the female change rooms & amenities at Hammond Park’. Similarly, in a post on 13 May, Sitou visited the Concord High School with the then Shadow Education Minister Tanya Plibersek to ‘hear about their plans to refurbish the Theatrette to allow students to express their creativity and talents’. They also announced that under a Labor Government, the School would receive $95,000 to upgrade the theatrette.
Another theme is the rising cost of living, with several posts in May focused on how the Morrison Government has failed to deliver on this front, and highlighting the struggles of young families in her electorate in particular. She also dedicates several posts to ‘young people’ who she claims are not politically apathetic as scores of them are helping with her grassroots doorknocking campaign.
On May 8 (Mother’s Day), Sitou dedicates a post to her own mother who she implies was not able to reach her full potential due to her journey of forced migration:
This is my mum Phet. I’ve always known she was special – resilient, loving, incredibly capable and our family’s MacGyver (the 80’s version of life hacks). But she never got to reach her full potential – her education was disrupted, conflict in her homeland meant she had to uproot her life and move to a new country with a one-year old in tow. She went on to work long hours in factory jobs but never missed making us delicious family dinners. But it wasn’t until I had my own child that I realised how special my mum is, she is the most amazing grandmother. She’s patiently taught my son how to make dumplings, sing Chinese nursery rhymes, tend to a garden and above all she’s taught him the importance of helping others.
In writing this post, Sitou also re-frames her story of success as a child of migrants who is trying to reach her potential and enabling thousands of others like her in her electorate to do the same. The personal, affective and intergenerational registers of this post are likely to have had an impact on those engaged with her campaign, including younger and older women voters.
On election day itself, Sitou’s first post is a long one outlining her own journey as a ‘child of migrants’ once again, accompanied by a childhood photo of her with her parents posing in front of the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge. This, instead of an officially produced campaign video, is a noteworthy post for an important day in the election cycle. In the first couple of paragraphs of this post, she once again highlights her family’s gratitude for finding shelter in Australia, and her own capacity to make contributions to the community as a consequence of having excellent teachers and educational infrastructure. She later states how she is embedded in the community as she and her young family live in the suburb of Homebush and her son goes to the local primary school. In this way, Sitou uses her final opportunity to help convince the voters to choose her and her party by trying to connect with them through her migrant upbringing story as well as her local roots.
Zaneta Mascarenhas
On Mascarenhas’s official Facebook page, campaigning prior to the 2022 federal election was focused on her engineering background and how that is linked to Labor’s climate change policy alongside the generation of new jobs. There were also several posts about cheaper childcare, better school and health infrastructure and references to her migration journey (in relation to her parents who are from Goa in India).
On 21 April , we see Mascarenhas’s first campaign video appear on her official Facebook page. In this video, she and then Shadow Minister for Industry and Innovation, Ed Husic appear in high-vis and explain the FYI Resources High Purity Alumina process at the IMO Metallurgical Lab. Both then go on to link this to Labor’s promise of more jobs and reduced carbon emissions, and how this in turn is connected to the ‘know-how’ that exists in Western Australia. In this way, Mascarenhas is positioned as an ambassador for her state and its engineering potential.
It is noteworthy that Mascarenhas’s campaign has many more posts related to Labor’s climate change policies than the other Asian Australian women examined in this chapter. For instance, in a post on 2 May, she points out that if elected, Labor will have an electric vehicle charging network across the state’s highways. This is part of the party’s ‘Driving the Nation’ policy which plans for an EV charger on average every 150 kilometres across the country.
Similar to both Sitou and Ananda-Rajah, Mascarenhas’s page in the lead up to election day has several posts dedicated to school and sporting infrastructure. For instance, on 28 April, she announced that she visited Forrestfield Primary School to pledge $70,000 in funding to resurface their courts. Later in the month, she was at Redcliffe Primary School and the post states that an Albanese Labor Government would fund playground upgrades there amounting to about $80,000.
In a video posted on the Facebook page on 3 May, we are first made aware of Mascarenhas’s journey as a child of migrants herself. However, it is noteworthy that in this speech, she describes herself as the daughter of a metalworker and a kindy cleaner who was born in the mining town of Kalgoorlie rather than emphasising her parents’ non-white backgrounds. It is likely that this was also part of a localised strategy to appeal to her particular electorate of Swan. While she received a degree (in engineering) from Curtin University, and like Sitou is thankful for the opportunities afforded to her by Australia and the Labor party, the migrant aspect of this gratitude is implied rather than made explicit in this video. However, in a post on 12 May, she does thank her godmother, an Anglo-Australian woman named Debbie who opened her home to the Mascarenhas family when they first arrived in Australia and showed them ‘the best of Australia’. She goes on to cite this as the reason she wants to contribute to the community and ‘help show the best of Australia in our Federal Parliament’.
Like Sitou, Mascarenhas also has several posts where she poses with her children in videos or photos to make a comment about Labor policies on childcare or education. For instance, in a post on 6 May, she has a video up where she is holding her younger child, Flick in her lap and saying that she is about to drop him off at day care. She uses this moment from her ordinary life as a working mother to connect with voters who are in the same boat and would be appreciative of cheaper childcare and a chance for primary carers to return to the workforce.
Mascarenhas’s election campaign posts do contain some references to ethnic or first-generation migrant communities in her seat of Swan, such as a post on 9 May where she is seen meeting with members of the Indian community in Wattle Grove. However, the overarching themes of her campaign and accompanying videos in the lead up to election day are largely dedicated to messages about a better future for working families, investment in renewables, and creating highly skilled job opportunities in Western Australia. In other words, her localised campaign draws more on her ‘tough country girl turned engineer and mother of two persona’ rather than focusing solely on her story as a child of migrants.
Concluding notes: Straddling the ‘Ethnic’ and the ‘Mainstream’ and the Global Picture
This chapter began with situating the author, a naturalised citizen and recent resident of the multicultural hub of Australia in western Sydney to anecdotally highlight the relative novelty of a large number of Asian Australian candidates standing for election in 2022. I then contextualised the lack of representation of Australia’s cultural diversity in its political institutions, especially in relation to comparable immigrant and settler colonial nations like Canada. Recent research points towards specific structural and cultural barriers for aspiring women of colour candidates, and a perception that those hailing from the first generation are only interested in representing their own ethnic community. At the same time, the vast majority of Asian Australian candidates who succeeded in the last federal election are women, and the chapter examines three of them in detail with regards to their media interviews and self-representation in digital campaigning. What this analysis finds is not just a straddling or ‘toggling’ of the ethnic and mainstream spheres in their campaign material, but also posts that are tailored to their local areas and professional backgrounds.
Moving back to the global context, there have been small rises in ‘descriptive representation’, or the literal numbers of racialised minorities in elected office across the Global North. However, differences between political parties and minority groups notwithstanding, representatives from these communities still face significant hurdles. In the UK context, these are systemic in nature and exist despite the government’s attempts to improve inclusion in the houses of Parliament (Fieldhouse and Sobolewska, 2013). During the 2010 election, British Asian and Minority Ethnic (henceforth, BAME) candidates standing for parliament paid a ‘racial cost’ in terms of votes lost due to their race/ethnicity (Stegmaier et al, 2013). Their research also found that ‘the constituency incumbent party gains votes when facing a BAME challenger’ (Stegmaier et al, 2013, p. 283). This means that while the presence of a BAME candidate doesn’t necessarily imply an imminent loss, the ‘racial cost’ means that BAME candidates – if they do win – are not likely to win ‘by a landslide’ even where it might otherwise be expected (Stegmaier et al, 2013). This finding leads to the conclusion that efforts from parties notwithstanding, perception issues do exist in non-migrant voters, and more could be done in the broader social context such that a culturally diverse candidate is seen as embodying leadership potential. Since Indian-origin Conservative Party MP Rishi Sunak became the Prime Minister of the UK (2022-2024), there have been further discussions about how it is only people of colour with class privilege that are able to rise to such positions (Malik, 2022).
Other personal and professional barriers for racial minority candidates include significantly more labour to juggle identities and deal with online attacks. As noted in the case studies of the three Asian Australian candidates above, if such candidates are politically successful, it is largely so because they ‘walk a tight line between their national and ethnic identities’ (Fieldhouse and Sobolewska, 2013, p. 243) or embody what is seen as ‘acceptable difference’ (Durose et al, 2013). In other words, while they are representing their ethnic community descriptively and at least attempting to represent it substantially, such politicians still need to cater to the mainstream cultures of their political party and its broad base of voters which is presumably non-migrant and is mobilised on a range of issues such as education, climate change, public health, and working class rights.
For future research, it would be useful to compare the political sphere to others such as the creative arts and media where ‘straddling’ might also be taking place, and is not seen as an entirely negative phenomenon. For instance, Khan notes that straddling applies to multicultural arts which appeal to neoliberal policymaking as well as the everyday diversity agendas of arts organisations (2010). It would also be fruitful to map the literature on ‘code-switching’ as it is applied to migrant communities, and second-generation migrants, to find resonance with the experience of successful ethnic minority politicians. In preliminary research conducted by Morton in the US context, for example, it was found that ‘[Former President] Obama’s success appeared to be partially dependent on his ability to engage in cultural code-switching’ (2013: 259). For the purpose of this study, code-switching was likened to the behaviour of bilingual speakers, albeit seen as of most benefit to upwardly mobile minorities (Morton, 2013: 259). This finding also entails greater attention to class and educational capital, often more visible in the second generation.
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