Rooted in the ‘lucky country’: settler permanence, emigration ambivalence, and national identity in Australia

This paper offers a conceptual analysis of Australia’s comparatively low diaspora ratio, theorising emigration ambivalence as a product of national identity, settler colonial permanence, economic affluence, and mobility regimes. Rather than attributing immobility to geography or prosperity alone, it reframes staying as a culturally and politically constructed ideal. Drawing on nationalism studies, migration theory, and Indigenous critique, the paper argues that settler imaginaries of territorial belonging produce a structural preference for domestic permanence and weak institutionalisation of outward mobility. While grounded in Australia, the analysis contributes broader insights into immobility, diaspora absence, and identity formation in affluent and settler colonial contexts.