In-Effect Dissociative Policies in Australia: Macedonian Ethnicity and Empty Shelled Slav-Macedonian Ethnicity

The Macedonian ethno-collective is one of the many ethno-collectives contributing towards Australian ethno-cultural diversity. While its contribution towards Australian ethno-cultural diversity and nation-building is undeniable, the contestation of its ethno-national distinctness has been a long standing issue. Over the last two decades, the Australian Government’s contestation of Macedonian civic and ethnic identity has been notable (a) for its policy of diplomatic non-recognition of the Republic of Macedonia under its constitutional name, and (b) for the act of introducing the referent ‘Slav-Macedonian’ in the mid 1990s for the purposes of official reference to the ‘Slav-Macedonian’ community. Notwithstanding, ethno-Macedonians do not nurture collective sentiments for ‘Slav-Macedonianness’. As no ethno-collective in Australia imagines its existence as Slav-Macedonian, Slav-Macedonian ethnicity remains empty-shelled. Focusing on the ethno-Macedonian experience in Australia, the first aim of this paper is to discuss in-effect dissociative policies, policies that have the effect of official disassociation of an ethno-culture from a respective ethno-nation. The second aim of this paper is to illustrate the connection between contemporary official Australian national policies regarding ethno-Macedonians in Australia and the foreign policies of the ‘Great Powers’ regarding the Balkans in the first half of the twentieth century. The findings presented in this paper are mostly based on investigative inquiry into the selected intelligence material compiled and archived by the relevant Departments within the Australian Commonwealth Government, directly or indirectly referring to matters of Macedonian nationhood and statehood up until the mid twentieth century.