Contemporary anti-Muslim sentiment in Australia is reproduced through a racialization that includes well rehearsed stereotypes of Islam, perceptions of threat and inferiority, as well as fantasies that the Other (in this case Australian Muslims) do not belong, or are absent. These are not old or colour-based racisms, but they do manifest certain characteristics that allow us to conceive a racialization process in relation to Muslims. Three sets of findings show how constructions of Islam are important means through which racism is reproduced. First, public opinion surveys reveal the extent of Islamaphobia in Australia and the links between threat perception and constructions of alien-ness and Otherness. The second data set is from a content analysis of the racialized pathologies of Muslims and their spaces. The third is from an examination of the undercurrents of Islamaphobia and national cultural selectivity in the politics of responding to asylum seekers. Negative media treatment is strongly linked to antipathetic government dispositions. This negativity has material impacts upon Australian Muslims. It sponsors a more widespread Islamaphobia, (mis)informs opposition to mosque development and ever more restrictive asylum seeker policies, and lies behind arson attacks and racist violence. Ultimately, the racialization of Islam corrupts belonging and citizenship for Muslim Australians.

The concentration of Indo-Chinese-Australians in and around the vicinity of Cabramatta in Sydney, NSW, has been unfavourably depicted by most media, policy-makers and academics. Positive aspects of ethnic concentration in Cabramatta are rarely ever discussed. It has been axiomatic in much of the urban studies literature that ethnic concentrations were manifestations of societal malady. This assumption was based upon the premise that social distance equated with spatial distance. However, a just system of urban and social planning requires a perspective which does not automatically pathologise cultural difference. Such a system should not enforce cultural assimilation through strategies such as migrant residential dispersal. To this end, urban researchers require fresh perspectives for the analysis of ethnic concentration. One such perspective is the 'politics of difference' approach proposed by Iris Marion Young and others. A politics of difference approach celebrates institutional practices which give rise to diverse cultural expressions, and rejects the previous denial of difference which was dominant in much of urban social science. This perspective allows urban scholars to adopt a more progressive position in contemporary urban political debates about migrant settlement. It also provides a less partial assessment of ethnic concentration by seriously theorising the advantages and the dynamism of unassimilated cultural difference in a place like Cabramatta.