ABSTRACT
The chapter focuses on how Uyghur migrants reclaim their versions of the minzu concept to fit into multicultural Australia through restaurants and business networks, and how this process creates meanings and establishes a dialogue between them and multicultural Australia. For Uyghur Australians, food is a symbol of the transformation from “white Australia” to multiculturalism. Uyghur migrants reclaim their sense of minzu through establishing food businesses, which are stimulated by Australian multiculturalism. Since the initial fieldwork for this study in the early 2010s, the concept of minzu has gained increasing importance among Uyghur migrants in Australia. This chapter shows that Australia’s multiculturalism is positively embodied by most Uyghur immigrants. Multiculturalism works better for Uyghur individuals not because it is perfect, but because it follows cultural intimacy that leaves social and private space between state, its minorities, and individuals’ private lives. In contrast to Australia, this cultural intimacy has been replaced by a state-initiated kinship project in Xinjiang, and the current Chinese model of kinship leaves little space for ambiguity or opportunity to negotiate the concept of minzu.
