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Rethinking Migration and Diversity in Australia: Introduction

Planned mass immigration since 1947 has been a key factor in transforming Australia from a small, insular society looking mainly to Britain for its values and heritage, to a larger and more diverse society, including people from every part of the world. One Australian in four is an immigrant, and an additional fifth of the population has at least one immigrant parent. Since 1945, more than seven million permanent immigrants have come to Australia, of whom 700,000 were refugees or displaced persons. The transition has also been an economic one: in the last 65 years, Australia has evolved from an agriculture-based economy supplying primary commodities to its imperial motherland, to a manufacturing economy, and then back to a resourcebased economy, providing minerals and other primary commodities to Asian regional markets. The shift has also been one from protectionism, strong unions and a comprehensive social welfare system to the neo-liberal model of open borders (at least for finance and trade), growing inequality, and a residualist welfare model. Immigration from an ever-wider array of origins has been crucial in all these transformations. The post-war immigration programme originally had conservative intentions: the aim was to keep Australia white and British. When migration from Britain faltered, economic objectives became paramount and immigrants were recruited from all over Europe and then from Latin America. Assimilation and the White Australia Policy were seen as the keys to maintaining a homogenous society. Yet, it proved impossible to assign immigrants to the least desirable jobs with the lowest incomes, while assimilating them into the white picket fence fantasy of burgeoning suburbia. The emergence of ethnic neighbourhoods and the maintenance of homeland languages, customs and religions were unstoppable, and soon the White Australia Policy became an embarrassment that had to be dropped. By the 1970s, multiculturalism was the new recipe for managing diversity. Since then, this approach has been regularly endorsed (albeit sometimes with gritted teeth) by all the major parties despite the vocal opposition of radio shock jocks and their followers. Yet things have changed dramatically in recent times. Australia’s public policies and perceptions on migration and diversity have been based on a long-standing set of assumptions that