CASE STUDY:
Migration and diversity in Australia Australia has become one of the most culturally diverse countries in the world. One can hardly walk along a major city street without passing a Chinese restaurant, a Vietnamese grocery store, an Italian deli or a Japanese sushi bar. The most significant contributor to this multicultural environment is the ever-increasing levels of immigration. As Castles (1992: 549) pointed out, nowhere is this more apparent than in a country like Australia, where ‘immigration has always been a central part of nation building’. Since 1945, over 7 million people have come to Australia as new settlers. Their contribution to Australian society, culture and prosperity is an important factor in shaping the nation. In the eighteenth century, transported criminals were the basis of the first migration from Europe. Starting in 1788, some 160,000 convicts were shipped to the Australian colonies. From that time, free immigrants also began coming to Australia. The rapid growth of the wool industry in the 1820s created an enormous demand for labour and sparked an increase in the migration of free people from the United Kingdom. The social upheavals of industrialization in Britain also resulted in many people emigrating to escape widespread poverty and unemployment. The myth of ‘terra nullius’, or empty land, encouraged immigration, and many people in the indigenous population were pushed from their traditional territory to cede the land, willing or not, with the newcomers. This pressure, along with conflict and serious discrimination against them, began to tell on the Indigenous population, whose numbers, influence, and visibility steadily decreased. A major impetus for Australian immigration following its initial post-convict settlement was the discovery of vast alluvial goldfields that attracted a mass influx of immigrants in the 1850s, coupled with the extension of parliamentary democracy and the establishment of inland towns. During the Gold Rush era of 1851 to 1860, early migration peaked at arrivals of around 50,000 people a year; Chinese immigrants were the largest non-British group. More restricted immigration began by the 1880s, at the start of the movement known as ‘White Australia’, when the colony of Victoria introduced legislation to discourage immigration by taxing Chinese migrants. The ‘White Australia Policy’ reflected Australians’ fear of the ‘yellow hordes’, as they perceived Asian immigrants – indeed, as they perceived any migrants who were not from Britain or northern Europe. This policy was strongly assimilationist, and also reflected the belief current at that time that a population must be culturally homogeneous to be truly egalitarian and democratic. Pressure to assimilate was applied both to immigrants and to the indigenous population, so that the dominant Anglo-Celtic group came to be seen as ‘native’ Australians. In the mid-twentieth century, Australia’s outlook on the world was significantly changed because of the Second World War. Australia then had a population of only 7 million people, and the devastating effects of the Depression and the war led to a policy of ‘Populate or Perish’. Australia opened the floodgates for mainly British and European migrants, many of whom had been displaced by the war and the Nazi Holocaust. Immigration policies aimed to attract migrants to the industrial workforce. A more ambitious part of Australia’s migration programme followed the end of the Second World War. The resettling of ex-servicemen, refugees, and young people were significant chapters in Australian immigration history. Australia negotiated agreements with other governments and international organizations to help achieve high migration targets. For example, a system of free passage for United Kingdom residents (the ‘ten-pound migrants’), and an assisted passage scheme for British Empire and United States ex-servicemen vastly increased immigration. Australian immigration drew heavily on its traditional connections with the British who, until the 1960s, continued to get virtually free passage for themselves and their families. At various times in the 1950s and 1960s, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Greece, Turkey, and Yugoslavia were also important sources of immigrants. The ‘White Australia Policy’ was removed in 1973, by the then Whitlam Labor Government. Furthermore, in 1967, Indigenous people had been recognized as full Australian citizens through a national referendum. When legislation removed race as a factor in Australia’s immigration policies, the assimilation policy was still in force, reflecting both the perceived national need for homogeneity and an opportunistic political aim of nation building through imported population growth. In the 1980s, the nation implemented this policy of multiculturalism, adopting an institutionalized diversity. The evolution of Australia’s immigration policies at several phases over time was reflected in Fact Sheet 4 of the Australian Government’s Department of Immigration and Border Protection (2013). The policy of multiculturalism enhanced the situation of immigrants in Australia for 20 years. Unfortunately, prejudice and discrimination against the non-immigrant indigenous population was affected little by this policy. In addition, a change of government in 1996 allowed the policy to be eroded to some extent, as immigration was increasingly restricted. The situation for immigrants today is thus more fragile than in the recent past, as recent conflicts illustrate (see the Cronulla riots in the Chapter 9 Case Study). Today, nearly one in four of Australia’s more than 22 million people were born overseas, and approximately 200 languages, including indigenous languages, are spoken in the country. New Zealand and the United Kingdom are still the largest source countries for migrants, but other regions, notably Asia, have also become more significant contributors.