Multicultural Identity in Australia: Living Between Worlds
- Michael Elwan
- 3 days ago
- 2 min read
On Monday 16 February 2026, I will be co-facilitating Between Worlds - Finding Ourselves in a New Country at the WA Recovery College.
The session explores a question many migrants and multicultural communities live with quietly:
Where do I belong when my life spans more than one culture?
Multicultural identity in Australia is lived, not declared
Public conversations often describe multicultural identity in Australia through integration and settlement. The lived reality is more nuanced. People do not leave one culture behind to adopt another. They carry memory, language, values, and ways of being across borders.
Multicultural identity is negotiated daily:
at the dinner table
in language choices
through parenting and family roles
in tensions between collectivist and individual values
in moments of pride, and moments of invisibility
It is less a destination than an ongoing process of integration and meaning-making.
The bridge between worlds
During the session, participants will be invited into a reflective exercise called The Bridge Between Worlds. They will map two lands; their culture of origin and their life in Australia; connected by a bridge representing the self.
The reflection invites participants to consider:
what they wish to honour and keep
what they no longer want to carry
what they are discovering in their new home
who they are becoming between these worlds
The aim is not resolution. It is authorship.
Language, identity, and belonging
We will also explore how language shapes identity. Bilingual and bicultural people often describe feeling like different versions of themselves depending on the language they speak. Language carries humour, emotion, memory, and cultural logic.
Understanding this deepens culturally responsive practice and strengthens our capacity to support multicultural identity in Australia.
Community as a place of connection
Belonging rarely arrives all at once. It accumulates through repeated moments of recognition; in community groups, faith spaces, neighbourhood networks, sporting clubs, peer programs, and recovery communities.
Recognising these pathways to connection helps people anchor themselves while navigating change.
Between worlds, we don’t have to choose
The session centres a simple but powerful idea: Between worlds, we don’t have to choose just one. We can belong to many.
This perspective continues to shape my work in therapy, mentoring, and supervision. Across these spaces, I see how people are not trying to become someone new; they are integrating who they have always been.
Event details
Between Worlds - Finding Ourselves in a New Country
📅 Monday 16 February 2026
👥 Facilitated by Michael Elwan & Almudena Jimenez
📍 WA Recovery College
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