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AbstractBlack African migrants have recently become a visible presence in Australia. Many arrived through the humanitarian resettlement programme, but far greater numbers come through the "skilled stream". This paper explores recent research into these populations to tease out how material, social and existential elements of settlement intersect with belonging. As a heuristic, it uses Ager and Strang's ten markers and means of integration: material aspects (employment, housing, education and health); social connections internally and externally; facilitators (language, cultural knowledge, safety, stability); and rights and citizenship. A range of challenges to positive settlement and integration are identified, using these domains. However, Australian research has focused almost exclusively on African migrants of refugee background, with most sampling South Sudanese, making generalization impossible, even dangerous. The urgent need for research using wider samples, and more large‐scale quantitative work, is called for and a range of policy recommendations suggested.

Academic debate around the need for global cooperation, the anachronism of national borders, and the necessity of nurturing a cosmopolitan ethic of care for all, has strengthened over the last two decades, but it is unclear the extent to which the general population has embraced such ideas. This article explores Australians' perspectives using data from a series of projects investigating whether Australians are moving beyond national to postnational orientations and cosmopolitan identifications. Quantitative data demonstrates robust nationalism, although elements of a postnational outlook are also evident. Discursive analyses similarly suggest that while compassion towards others and openness to difference do exist, the ideology of the nation-state remains strong, with postnational formations seen as impractical, and perceptions of the rights of others limited by nationalist thinking. The best characterisation of the Australian orientation is that of multicultural nationalism, an approach that celebrates internal diversity within limits, but remains hostile to postnational material formations and global cosmopolitan ideological formations.

In a globalising world, people might be expected to be less nationalistic about their personal consumption decisions. Yet support for Trump-style protectionism and 'buy national' campaigns appears to be spreading. How do people talk about such purchasing decisions? Applying thematic content analysis and discourse analysis to qualitative data from 27 focus groups (n = 223) conducted across Australia, this article explores the key features of discussions about 'buying Australian', comparing migrant/ethnic minority responses with non-migrant/mainstream responses. Perhaps surprisingly, migrants adopt the taken-for-granted imperative that nationalist consumption is good for the national economy, and articulate this choice as a demonstration of loyalty and reciprocity to their adopted country. Perhaps counter to expectations, mainstream participants are far more ambivalent in the ways they express this nationalist imperative. While nationalist consumption remains the bottom line as the appropriate purchasing orientation, their position as charter group enables them to offer more critical arguments about the authenticity of the 'Australian-made' logo and the quality and price of goods. For both, however, the taken-for-granted default position is that consumer nationalism is 'the right thing to do'. Buying national is thus an instance of what Billig identified as 'banal nationalism', where the nation-state, as opposed to other collectives such as 'workers' or 'global citizens', is reproduced as the appropriate category for identification and collective responsibility.

Academic debate about the anachronism of national borders is extensive. The general population, however, has been less keen to embrace the idea of a 'postnational' world. This paper offers evidence from focus groups with Australians suggesting that in some quarters talking beyond the nation is occurring. However, the ideology of the nation-state remains strong, and such talk is quickly shut down using a particular rhetorical device. This is 'the principle/practical' dichotomy, which insists that dropping national borders is impractical for a range of reasons, despite it perhaps being a valuable idea in principle. The paper explores the ways this occurs, using detailed critical discourse analysis. Practical objections are generally framed in terms of governance rather than cultural issues. However, practical examples of existing 'no borders' situations are used to make the counter-argument that a postnational world is possible.

Members of a marginal Australian political party recently sparked controversy by claiming China wants to 'take over' Australia. While apparently the opinion of a minority fringe, little is known about how Australians actually feel about Asia. This article explores the ways in which Asia is constructed in the Australian imagination, arguing it is both 'invisible', yet also a source of deep anxiety. Data from 26 focus groups conducted across Australia offer evidence of this invisibility, with Australians preferring to discuss domestic issues over international ones. But Asia is simultaneously a source of anxiety, in that when Australians do talk about Asia, it is in relation to a perceived threat from Asia's economic power, its large population, its polluting practices, its military might, and its pursuit of mineral and agricultural resources. Such concerns mask fears of a cultural threat. Discursive analysis reveals how the threat from Asia is articulated, and implications for national and post-national identities.

Muslims are often the target of those arguing that diversity threatens social cohesion. However, little research has focused on the settlement and integration of migrant Muslims. This article reports research comparing skilled Muslim refugees' experiences of integration into the Australian employment market and the wider society with the experiences of skilled non-Muslim refugees. Quantitative data from the study indicates no relationship between religion and social exclusion as evidenced in negative employment outcomes, social networks, satisfaction with life or perceptions of discrimination, although qualitative data shows some skilled Muslim refugees and some employers see religion as a key facet of cultural difference disadvantaging Muslims. The influence of religion on other aspects of settlement, including social engagement, integration and well-being is also surprising, demonstrating that Muslims in the sample generally feel no more excluded than other refugees. The findings challenge the assumptions that skilled Muslim refugees find it more difficult than others to adapt to 'western' culture, and that religious difference threatens social cohesion.

In the last quarter of the 20th century the study of globalisation was refined in many ways and especially in the direction of conceptualising the connections, entanglements and interdependencies of the global. An array of terms arose to capture these complexities, many containing the suggestion of superseding the nation. The terms 'post-national' and 'cosmopolitan' are two fields that have come to signify thispossibility. Our contributors engage with the idea of the post-national in a variety of manifestations, focusing on addressing fundamental questions related to the extent and durability of post-national expressions. This collection of articles trace contemporary theoretical debates, and provide empirical material in a variety of contexts using multiple approaches. Collectively, they affirm the relevance of the category of the post-national, and related cosmopolitan outlooks, while charting the mixed, ambivalent, and sometimes reactionary responses to it.