Lessons to be Learned and Understood

In the previous chapter, it was described how for many Indian students newly arrived in Australia, the first opportunity to meet the local Indian community came at the Holi celebrations held at the temple at Carrum Downs. Having arrived in Australia, matters such as finding a place to live, looking for jobs, etc., have to be taken care of. Those students with contacts (family, friends or acquaintances) in Australia often lost touch with them once they had found a place to live. Reasons varied from being too busy with ‘other’ things to simply not being interested in maintaining the contact. Aside from these reasons, though, it also appeared as if this was never supposed to be the case anyway. These contacts were never meant to remain long-lasting ones, something that was inherently understood from the start. This is rather surprising. The way international discourses and narratives on issues such as assimilation and integration take shape, one could argue that, in general, migrants are understood not only to have strong ties with people still living in the place of origin but to further strengthen these ties once they have migrated. Newcomers are imagined to quickly integrate in already locally established groups of migrants with whom they share a similar national/cultural background. Why then does this not appear to happen in the Australian case?