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How useful is the term ‘Culturally and Linguistically Diverse’ (CALD) in
Australian research, practice, and policy discourse?
Pooja Sawrikar and Ilan Katz
Social Policy Research Centre (SPRC)
University of New South Wales (UNSW)
Word Count:
Key words: CALD, Social Policy, Discourse, Multiculturalism, Social Exclusion,
Ethnic Equality
Short title: The term ‘CALD’ in social policy discourse
Correspondence: Dr Pooja Sawrikar, SPRC, Building G2, UNSW, 2052 Australia
Acknowledgements: For their valuable insights from discussions, or comments on
drafts of this paper, we would like to thank Dr Kristy Muir (SPRC), Mrs Anjali
Russell (Department of Community Services; DoCS), Mr Tony Piggott, Dr Karen
Fisher (SPRC), Associate Professor Adair (University of Technology), Mr John Lee
(Chinese Australian Forum), and Mrs Mary Dimech (DoCS). We would also like to
thank the anonymous reviewer of the paper for their important comments and
feedback.
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How useful is the term ‘Culturally and Linguistically Diverse’ (CALD) in
Australian research, practice, and policy discourse?
Background
The terms ‘Culturally and Linguistically Diverse’ (CALD) and ‘Non-English
Speaking Background’ (NESB) are both commonly used in the research, practice, and
policy discourse to refer to all of Australia’s non-Indigenous ethnic groups other than
the English-speaking Anglo-Saxon majority. Indigenous Australians are generally
excluded from CALD and NESB because their experiences and needs as first nation
people are seen as significantly different from other groups.
CALD was introduced to replace NESB in 1996, when the Ministerial Council of
Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (MCMIA) decided that the term and acronym
NESB was to be dropped from official communications. They identified four main
problems with NESB: (i) it is a term that has many conflicting definitions; (ii) it
groups people who are relatively disadvantaged with those who are not
disadvantaged; (iii) it is unable to separately identify the many cultural and linguistic
groups in Australia; and (iv) it has developed negative connotations (Department of
Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, 2001).
The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that CALD, like NESB, has developed
negative connotations because it also has many (more) conflicting definitions, and it
continues to group together people who are relatively advantaged and disadvantaged.
We also aim to propose a new, more ideal, term that:
• Refers to all of Australia’s visible minority ethnics but not be so broad as to
include people who have a western European heritage;
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• Acknowledges the diversity within this sub-population, but also the fact that
all these minority groups share some experiences of Australian society; and
• Is positive and affirming rather than referring to people because they lack a
certain attribute.
Strengths of ‘CALD’
CALD is seen as superior to NESB for a number of reasons. Firstly it does not
demarcate people based on what they are not. NESB developed negative connotations
because it distinguishes people based on their non-English speaking heritage. This can
have the effect of ‘other-ing’ them as if they are not fully Australian. Babacan (2005)
refers to this feeling of not belonging as ‘relational exclusion’. More specifically,
relational exclusion refers to “relationships between communities, government, and
others to address issues such as recognition of identity, racism, and ethnic social
capital” (p. 10). When relational exclusion occurs, it can be said to symbolise a
deviance from ‘cultural justice’, in which there is equity and equality in recognition of
identity (Fraser 1999). In comparison, CALD does not fix a characteristic from which
minority ethnic groups deviate, and so it can avoid the relational exclusion and
divisiveness NESB may produce for minority ethnic groups.
Another benefit of CALD is that because it draws attention to both the linguistic and
cultural characteristics of minority ethnic groups, it can highlight that any barriers or
disadvantages they experience also relate to these two factors. This is useful for
researchers, practitioners, and policy makers who are aiming to overcome racialised
disadvantage in the use of services and access to opportunities; also known as
‘distributional exclusion’ (Babacan 2005). More specifically, Babacan (2005)
describes distributional exclusion as “access to social resources, access to the labour
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market and financial support” (p. 10). When distributional exclusion occurs it can be
said to symbolises a deviation from ‘social justice’ is which there is equity and
equality in the distribution of tangible resources such as access to goods and services,
as well as intangible resources such as opportunities to access goods and services
(Fraser 1999). For example, by identifying that language barriers occur for a CALD
family, the need for interpreters and translators can be highlighted. Similarly, by
identifying that a CALD family experiences cultural barriers, the need for individual
and organisational training in cultural awareness, sensitivity, and competency can also
be highlighted (Campinha-Bacote 2002; Korbin 2008; Purnell 2002). By providing
language services and culturally competent service delivery, the distributional
exclusion CALD families perceive or experience can be reduced. Importantly, CALD
can show that any barriers or disadvantages that these groups experience are not
simply based on language, in the way NESB implies.
Finally, because CALD does not have any explicit criterion to define membership, it
is flexible and adaptive to be inclusive of any and all ethnic groups. For example, it
can refer to minority ethnic Australians (its most common use), but also the Anglo-
Saxon majority when describing Australia’s multicultural milieu. In this way,
Australia can be described as a ‘culturally and linguistically diverse’ society. CALD
reflects a move toward a term with non-explicit and multiple meanings, and away
from essentialising terms such as ‘Black’ or ‘White’ or ‘Non-English speaking’,
which fix individuals to one unchangeable category. CALD is therefore a term that is
sensitive to the dynamic process of acculturation – where CALD individuals balance
their conflicting needs for cultural preservation and cultural adaptation across
changing contexts (Sawrikar and Hunt 2005; Berry, 1980).
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In summary, CALD does not distinguish groups based on what they are not; it draws
attention to the need for providing both linguistically and culturally appropriate
services; it can be adapted to include any group; and it is sensitive to the fluid process
of acculturation. However, in its efforts to overcome the relational exclusion that is
implied by ‘NESB’, the term CALD has inadvertently created a number of other
challenges.
Weaknesses of ‘CALD’
‘Relational exclusion’: CALD has conflicting definitions which can lead to a sense of
social exclusion
Although NESB was based on relatively easily identifiable demographic information
– that is, language in country of origin – it nevertheless had conflicting definitions.
For example, Vietnamese people were more likely to be included in this term than
(Gaelic-speaking) Irish people. Such discrepancies highlight that language difference
is but one feature of minority ethnic groups that may distinguish them from the
majority, rather than being the only feature. Arguably, NESB developed negative
connotations because it became a proxy for the ‘non-Anglo Saxon other’.
On the other hand, CALD highlights that groups may differ from the majority because
of both linguistic and cultural differences. By doing so, CALD can conveniently
include the White majority when describing and celebrating Australia’s multicultural
milieu, but for the most part includes only minorities. The consequence of this
‘malleability’ is that the Anglo Saxon majority are either considered to not be a
cultural or linguistic group, or that their cultural or linguistic diversity is not
‘sufficient’ to warrant being part of CALD.
We argue that the word ‘diverse’ in the term CALD carries an emotive valence for
people which the factual ‘language in country of origin’ does not. This valence is
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arguably detrimental to Australia’s capacity to embrace itself as a multicultural
nation. If the majority were able to celebrate their own linguistic and cultural
diversity, there may be less need for other ethnic groups to push for an
acknowledgment of their languages and cultures. Cultural diversity would become an
intrinsic part of Australia’s national identity as a multicultural nation, consistent with
the aims of the policy of multiculturalism introduced after the White Australia Policy
was abolished. This structural multiculturalism would manifest, for example, in the
way organisations and institutions were structured, policies were designed, and
practices were tailored, to reflect the way Australia’s ethnic diversity contributes to its
socio-cultural fabric.
Furthermore, CALD’s acknowledgment of the uniqueness of different (minority)
groups detracts from the fact that in its common use, the term still refers to the same
groups as NESB – those who are different from the majority; it is simply less
transparent about the fact that there is a majority from which others are seen to differ
from. The mismatch between its function of celebrating diversity and its common
categorical use for the non-Anglo Australian majority population, can still lead to
relational exclusion among minority ethnic Australians who may feel both
linguistically and culturally different from what constitutes being ‘Australian’. Again,
this undermines Australia’s ability to embrace itself as a multicultural nation. In
short, there is a still a potential for the term CALD to produce relational exclusion,
but now not just for minority groups, but also for the majority.
In addition, grouping all minority ethnic groups together as different from the
majority implies that the cultures of all minority ethnic groups are more similar to
each other than each is to the Anglo-Saxon culture. For example, Dutch-Australians
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and German-Australians are on the whole culturally individualistic (Bond 2002;
Hofstede 1980) and so are more similar to the Anglo-Australian culture1
In short, CALD is a functional term, aiming to celebrate the diversity of languages
and cultures in Australia. It is not a categorical term that explicitly describes a sub-
group of Australians, but is nevertheless used to do so by implicitly distinguishing
them as the culturally and linguistically different. We argue that CALD should only
be used to describe Australia’s multicultural makeup, and as such includes all its
ethnic groups – majority and minority. CALD should not be used to describe any or
all of Australia’s minority ethnic groups.
than they are
to Chinese-Australians or Sudanese-Australians who are more collectivistic in their
cultural orientation (Bond 2002; Hofstede 1980). The effect of simultaneously
drawing attention to culture but also grouping all minority ethnic groups together, is
that it homogenises their unique cultures and therefore undermines the term’s ability
to celebrate the cultural diversity to which it lays claim.
‘Distributional exclusion’: ‘CALD’ groups those who experience disadvantages with
those who do not which can mask the disparity in access to opportunities between
ethnic groups in Australia
Minority ethnic Australians face a number of common issues, including language
barriers, acculturative stress both post migration and over generations, intra-familial
culture clashes, clashes with other ethnic groups, fear of authority and official
processes, lack of recognition of qualifications obtained in their country of origin, low
socio-economic status, lack of networks to access employment opportunities, and
interpersonal and institutional racism and discrimination (Sawrikar, Griffiths, & Muir
1 Culture has been ‘fixed’ here along the dichotomy of individualism and collectivism, as a possibly
useful heuristic for making meaningful distinctions between groups. However, it is important that
researchers and policy makers remain mindful that culture is, in fact, a dynamic and interpretative
process that is in flux (Forehand & Kotchik 2002, 1996).
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2008; Sawrikar & Katz 2008; Cortis, Sawrikar & Muir 2007; Katz, La Placa & Hunter
2007; Sawrikar & Hunt, 2005; Katz & Pinkerton 2003; Katz 1996). Thus it is
important to have a term which can account for the common challenges faced by these
groups.
CALD, at least in its common use, is superior to NESB in that it highlights how both
the linguistic and cultural characteristics of a minority ethnic group may contribute to
distributional exclusion. However, and similar to NESB, CALD still fails to
acknowledge that racial differences may also contribute to distributional exclusion.
By failing to acknowledge the occurrence of racialised disadvantage in access to
services and opportunities, which occurs as a result of institutional racism, there is a
risk of pathologising ethnic groups as if characteristics of their own culture were the
main cause of their disadvantage.
Institutional racism occurs when there is disproportionate representation in
organisations and institutions in governing bodies that do not reflect the multicultural
demographic of the (local or national) community. It also occurs when the design and
delivery of services are ethnocentric reflecting mainstream cultural values, norms, and
practices, and are not appropriate or sensitive to the cultural needs of non-mainstream
groups. For example, some organisations do not routinely collect data on ethnicity,
reflecting a failure to acknowledge racialised disadvantage in access to services and
opportunities.
Also, by including ‘culture’ in the term CALD, there is a risk that the same sensitivity
to individual variation that is afforded to the White majority, such as across gender,
age, class, sexuality, neighbourhood, or disability, is not afforded to minority ethnic
Australians. There may now be a comparatively greater focus on how ‘group’
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characteristics such as culture impacts the behaviour of a minority ethnic Australian,
which only serves to increase the effect of stereotyping, and overlook the complexity
of individuals from minority ethnic groups.
Importantly, because CALD in its common use still refers to the same group as NESB
(but expands on NESB by drawing attention to two characteristics of minority ethnic
groups instead of one), it still groups those who experience more disadvantages with
those who experience fewer disadvantages. For example, German-Australians
generally do not experience the same kinds of barriers as Pakistani-Australians. By
grouping them together in research, the overall size of difference between the
majority and CALD groups is reduced, making it seem as though ethnic disparity is
not that great, and the most vulnerable groups remain hard to reach because the
differences in inequality among the various CALD groups is masked. In summary,
NESB should not be used to refer to Australia’s minority groups, and CALD should
only be used to describe the diversity of Australia as a multicultural society.
The need for a new term
The population of minority ethnic Australian citizens is growing (Australian Bureau
of Statistics 2007), and the proportion of mixed race children in Australia is likely to
increase in the future. We need a new term that encompasses these relatively
established and newly emerging Australian groups.
This term should be able to maintain the advantages associated with CALD – that it
does not distinguish a subgroup based on what they are not; that it draws attention to
how language and culture may contribute to some of the issues they experience; and
that it does not have explicit and fixed criteria (such as ‘language in country of
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origin’) so that it can be sensitive to the dynamic process of acculturation and does
not essentialise or negatively affirm their minority ‘status’.
However, this term should also be able to overcome the issues associated with CALD
– that it can produce relational exclusion for both the majority and minority, and that
it fails to address how race may contribute to distributional exclusion for minority
groups. To this end, we propose the term Australians Ethnically Diverse and Different
from the Majority (AEDDM).
Strengths of AEDDM
One benefit of AEDDM is that it grants an Australian ‘sense of belonging’. For
example, African Americans are not referred to as ‘people from Africa in America’.
By bestowing minority groups with the title of ‘Australian’, relational exclusion may
decrease.
Also, the term ‘ethnicity’ subsumes, and so can pertain to any aspect of, language,
culture, or race. In this way, researchers, practitioners, and policy makers can now
draw attention to any aspect of these three characteristics to explain why ethnic
disparities in distributional equality and equity may be occurring. Importantly, this
now shines a spotlight on the important issue of racism, either individual or
institutional, rather than closing debate and discussion on this often common
experience for AEEDM.
While AEDDM still celebrates the heterogeneity of cultures among minority ethnic
groups that make up this category, it also clearly identifies that what groups them
together is that they are different from the majority. As such, it is less likely to
homogenise the unique cultures of minority groups and undermine the function to
which it laid claim; an effect that occurred by simultaneously drawing attention to
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culture, but also implicitly grouping them together as the different ‘other’. Also, the
culture of each group is still highlighted since ethnicity subsumes culture, but
implications about how similar these cultures may be to each other, but different from
the majority, are less likely to occur.
AEDDM also highlights that Anglo-Saxons are an ethnic group that constitute but one
(albeit large) part of Australia’s socio-cultural fabric. By doing so, it can overcome
the relational exclusion CALD produces for the mainstream population. Importantly,
by drawing attention to the language, culture and race of Anglo-Saxon Australians,
these factors are less likely to be overlooked are failed to be considered in research.
In addition, while AEDDM makes reference to a majority group, it does not make
reference to a minority group. Mostly in the discourse in the UK, minority groups are
referred to as ‘minority ethnic groups’. While they comprise the minority only
because of their lower population size, the very word ‘minority’ can carry a negative
connotation and so distinctions based on this factual information (that is, population
size) can still carry an emotive valence that, over the long term, may become
negatively affirming because it becomes entrenched through official vernacular. We
do however acknowledge that the term AEDDM implicitly denotes (linguistic,
cultural, and/or racial) minority status to this sub-group of Australians, since their
very membership to this category is based on the fact that they are not members of the
(linguistic, cultural, and racial) majority group. Indeed, it is unlikely that there is one
term that can fulfil the needs of AEDDM to be nationally considered and
acknowledged as Australian without having to denounce or downplay their other
ethnic heritages. The primary aim of the term AEDDM is not to celebrate diversity –
as CALD is sufficient for this purpose – but to develop a term that explicitly identifies
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the characteristics that define category membership, and as such be transparent about
the distinctions between sub groups of Australians. As such, we have had to make a
decision not use the term minority – which over the long term can have negative
consequences and simply use the word ‘different’ instead; this is a decision that
believes we have minimised any negative consequences because ‘different’ does not
necessarily imply minor. Finally, and arguably most importantly, AEDDM actually
identifies the group it intends to refer to and therefore it does not have conflicting
definitions. It refers to all of Australia’s non-Indigenous ethnic groups other than the
English-speaking Anglo-Saxon majority.
AEDDM requires a paradigm shift in which Anglo-Saxons are not seen as the culture-
less reference point from which others deviate, but instead as one ethnic group in this
culturally and linguistically diverse society who happen to form the majority only
because of their population size, but not because they are more valuable than any
other group. Overturning the status quo is not an easy task, but certainly worthwhile.
Indeed, by analogy, the feminist movement was a revolution that put gender equality
at the forefront of social policy. A similar capacity remains yet unfulfilled with ethnic
equality in Australia.
Weaknesses of AEDDM
On a final note, we acknowledge that the term AEDDM is not ideal. There are two
main issues we have identified. The first is that the term ‘ethnic’ has, in the past, been
used to refer to Australia’s minority groups, and by association with racism against
minority ethnic Australians who entered in the first waves after the abolition of the
White Australia Policy, has become a negative word in some circumstances and
among some ethnic and advocacy groups. However, as we cannot identify another
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term that subsumes all three characteristics of language, culture, and race, we have
chosen to use ‘ethnicity’ here.
In addition, ‘AEDDM” is long term and acronym, and as such, may not be taken up in
the social policy discourse, despite its attempt at being inclusive. At the very least,
this paper offers a starting point for discussions and debate on the need for a new
term, given that CALD has the capacity to incite and perpetuate cultural and social
injustice.
Conclusion
CALD was introduced to address some of the issues associated with NESB. While it
has some benefits over and above NESB, it inadvertently created a number of other
issues. Many of these relate to the mismatch between its function of celebrating
Australia’s cultural diversity, and its implicit categorical use for referring to groups
different from the majority. It is important for social researchers, practitioners, and
policy makers in Australia to have a term that helps meet their aims – increasing their
social inclusion, and equity to services and opportunities. To this end, we propose that
a new term and acronym be introduced into debates on the importance of language –
‘Australians Ethnically diverse and Different from the Majority’ (AEDDM).
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