> It's an interesting comparison, but the Australian case is more of a
> shedding of a narrow identity for a larger one, no?
This is beginning to remind me of a conversation I had a few years ago with a Somali immigrant who had been here for a few years. She asked what nationality I was and when I said "Australian", she said "yes, yes, I am too, but where did your people come from?" To her Australian meant only a citzenship, whereas I suggest it is also a cultural identity -- i.e. an ethnicity in the broad/contemporary sense of the word -- clearly understood by its members. In fact, Australian citzenship is easily obtained and held by the vast majority of the population.
I'm talking about something characterised by accent, dialect, behaviour, attitudes, tastes, etc., which emerged initially, in a _dialectical_ relationship to a previous British identity. It then recruited people from non-British groups.
Obviously I'm also not talking either about _ethnos_ in the sense of "biological race", although a Martian --- going by the appearance of the inabitants --- might surmise that Australia was once part of north west Europe. However the identification of Australianness with NW European physical features is also breaking down and I believe the cultural identity is also increasingly understood in non-racial terms.
The 38% of the population who identified as "Australian" in the 2001 Census either listed that in addition to "English", "Irish", "Italian", "Chinese", "Aboriginal" etc, or they showed no sign of acknowledging any other ancestry. What I'm saying -- in a roundabout way -- is that culture is a more significant way of identifying ethnicity than who people's parents were.
> Over time, they developed their own
> customs and self-identity. "We are not Russians or Ukrainians -- we are
> Cossacks!" It's more, I guess, as if an Indian caste developed into a
> distinct self-identified nationality.
This is exactly the same case in Australia, the founding "caste" being the working class, lumpens and peasants of Britain and Ireland.