ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on research that investigates the vocational aspirations, as well as the working experiences, of young Arab-Australian men from disadvantaged urban regions of Sydney. It examines the intra-ethnic tensions among second-generation Lebanese-Australian secondary school students, and argues that these tensions emerge out of informants' rejection of a local youth culture called the Lebs. The descriptions of Lebs provided by informants in this study reveal a stylised youth culture in which second-generation migrant youth perform an intensified version of Lebaneseness created out of the diasporic experience. The chapter explores narratives that are intimately connected to these strong desires for upward social and economic mobility. One of the themes that emerged quite strongly from the excerpts explored in the chapter was that these young men actively rejected styling themselves as what they saw as typical' Lebanese-Australian youth.
