ABSTRACT
Unsettled by affective responses of discomfort in a new cultural context, the transnational professionals in the Global Workplace study often reclaimed a sense of synchronicity with familiar cultural spaces through demarcating themselves as different from the Asian contexts they found themselves within. One way this was done, as noted in Chapter 2, was through defining particular Australian cultural practices as ‘better’, or inferring other cultural practices were ‘bizarre’ or ‘strange’. This strategic construction of difference was also evident among the young people in the studies outlined in this chapter. In comparing their narratives there were recurring motifs of discomfort at being outside the bounds of dominant frames of reference. These frameworks offered inadequate cultural resources for their transforming sense of self that was generated in the re-evaluation of their place in wider social formations. Subsequently, reclaiming synchronicity was made through negation, that is, demarcating difference from overarching identity referents. However, this was done within limits and still with a desire to belong, resulting in negotiated positions between release and restraint; between new possibilities and constraints from existing points of authority such as family. The following chapter will elaborate on these dual processes further, extending the analysis to the State’s capacity to maximise difference and belonging that inflects personal strategies of reclaiming synchronicity. Finally it examines whether hybridity is a solution to the inevitable creation of boundaries of inclusion and exclusion.
