Conscious Citizenship: The Political Activism of the Filipino Diaspora in Australia Through the Lens of Hannah Arendt

This thesis explores an alternative way of looking at the idea of citizenship I call ‘conscious citizenship’. I utilise Hannah Arendt’s theory of the conscious pariah to investigate the political activism of Migrante Australia, a Filipino migrant organisation in Australia. I argue that an Arendtian approach is a suitable framework for this thesis because of Migrante’s activism that demonstrates the pariah’s rebellious character. It concludes by showing how political action paves the way for the emergence of a new Filipino collective identity in Australia which is based on agency, awareness and emotional attachment to group collectivities.