Last week in Melbourne marked the first of the three Greek Community Dialogues addressing the issue of ‘Greek Community in Transition’ from an intergenerational perspective. The series of dialogues organised by the Centre for Dialogue and the Greek Centre and Greek Studies Program at Latrobe University, in association with the Greek Orthodox Community of Melbourne and Victoria and the Victorian Multicultural Commission, tries to address issues of importance that affect the multifaceted presence of Greeks in Australia.
One of the issues that the first dialogue attempted to address was to imagine what the Greek community will look like in 10, 20 and 30 years from now.
If we are to address the future we need to discuss the main characteristics of our community in the present – Australia with a population of 23 million has 378,300 people who claim to be of Greek ancestry. According to the 2011 census, Greek Australians are concentrated in Victoria (42.8 per cent) and in New South Wales (33.5 per cent), with the majority living in Melbourne and Sydney. If people believe themselves as being of Greek extraction, then a broad definition of the ‘community’ should include all Greek Australians who publicly acknowledge their heritage today.
The question is whether or not the vast majority of these citizens choose to express their Greek identity in the private or the public sphere. The important issue will continue to be whether or not these people reside in a broadly defined common cultural, historical, linguistic, societal or ideological ground. If the collective or the individual parameters of belonging, in this case the ethnic or cultural identity, are broadly defined along with other parts of our identity, for example class, ideology, gender or sexuality, then I assume there might be a great number of people who are willing to engage with things being of Greek origin or Greek influence.
Historical, economic and sociological circumstances in this country, as well as material needs and cultural traditions made the Greek Australian community one of the leading non Anglo Celtic communities in the continent. Riding on a booming economy, and on the social liberation movements and policies of the 1960s and 1970s, the community as a collective, and quite a few of its members, through hard work and through circumstances, found themselves in positions of influence and power.
Common origins, needs and drives in a favourable era served the community well, in terms of achievements and gaining recognition and respect from the broader society, especially during the years of first generation immigrant dominance.
In the past, cultural attributes, significant public engagement and participation, and alliances with broader community and political movements in a country of approximately 10 to 15 million people gave an over representation of Greek Australians in the political sphere or the possibility of having Greek taught in many public schools and tertiary institutions.
In 2013, social mobility and diversification, in other words ‘class’, demographic realities and ideological factors define the ethnic and cultural components of our identity mostly in the private, rather than the public sphere.
As Greek Australians, we celebrate important landmarks in our personal lives or in our national narrative, but we do not use our Hellenic perspective or our ‘migrant’ experience as much as we used to in the past to achieve collective objectives that might also influence individual outcomes. This is evident for example in the declining fortunes of Greek in our education system.
However, if we are to retain and to enrich our cultural awareness and identity, if we wish to make our narrative part of the broader Australian as well as the Greek culture, if we wish to have a collective presence in the future – if we are to be a community, then we need to re-examine our priorities.
The community, its organisations and its leaders need to reclaim the wider public sphere. We also need to re-define more broadly and much more liberally, the boundaries and the characteristics of our own Australian Greek community.