In 2006 Australia's population was 20.7 million. It is projected to reach 23 million in 2014. What is driving this rapid population growth, and how is the Rudd government dealing with immigration at a time of recession? The diversification of the immigration intake over the last 50 years, from the British Isles to Europe and Asia, is widely recognised. But there is less understanding of the development of Australia's temporary program, which since 2000 is the major component of the immigration intake. Similarly, the development of the global labour market and the impact of this on immigrants have not entered Australian consciousness. The lack of attention to these developments stands in marked contrast to the heated controversies sparked by the arrival by boat of small numbers of asylum seekers. Written by three leading researchers, with its analysis located in historical and international contexts, Australia's Immigration Revolution explains developments of national importance - including ground breaking explorations of ethnic concentration and public opinion.

This edited collection explores how migrants played a major role in the creation and settlement of the British Empire, by focusing on a series of Australian case studies. Despite their shared experiences of migration and settlement, migrants nonetheless often exhibited distinctive cultural identities, which could be deployed for advantage. Migration established global mobility as a defining feature of the Empire. Ethnicity, class and gender were often powerful determinants of migrant attitudes and behaviour. This volume addresses these considerations, illuminating the complexity and diversity of the British Empire’s global immigration story. Since 1788, the propensity of the populations of Britain and Ireland to immigrate to Australia varied widely, but what this volume highlights is their remarkable diversity in character and impact. The book also presents the opportunities that existed for other immigrant groups to demonstrate their loyalty as members of the (white) Australian community, along with notable exceptions which demonstrated the limits of this inclusivity.

This book examines the policy and practice of the insanity clauses within the immigration controls of New Zealand and the Commonwealth of Australia. It reveals those charged with operating the legislation to be non-psychiatric gatekeepers who struggled to match its intent. Regardless of the evolution in language and the location at which a migrant’s mental suitability was assessed, those with ‘inherent mental defects’ and ‘transient insanity’ gained access to these regions. This book accounts for the increased attempts to medicalise border control in response to the widening scope of terminology used for mental illnesses, disabilities and dysfunctions. Such attempts co-existed with the promotion of these regions as ‘invalids’ paradises’ by governments, shipping companies, and non-asylum doctors. Using a bureaucratic lens, this book exposes these paradoxes, and the failings within these nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Australasian nation-state building exercises.

Maritime migration : a wicked problem / Kathleen Newland -- Case study : unauthorized maritime migration in Europe and the Mediterranean region / Elizabeth Collett -- Case study : unauthorized maritime migration in the Bay of Bengal / Kathleen Newland -- Case study : unauthorized maritime migration in the Gulf of aden and the Red Sea / Kate Hooper -- Case study : the maritime approaches to Australia / Kathleen Newland -- Case study : maritime migration in the United States and the Caribbean / Kathleen Newland and Sarah Flamm

Today, Australia's response to asylum-seeking 'boat people' is a hot-button issue that feeds the political news cycle. But the daily reports and political promises lack the historical context that would allow for informed debate. Have we ever taken our fair share of refugees? Have our past responses been motivated by humanitarian concerns or economic self-interest? Is the influx of 'boat people' over the last fifteen years really unprecedented? In this eloquent and informative book, historian Klaus Neumann examines both government policy and public attitudes towards refugees and asylum seekers since Federation. He places the Australian story in the context of global refugee movements, and international responses to them. Neumann examines many case studies, including the resettlement of displaced persons from European refugee camps in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and the panic generated by the arrival of Vietnamese asylum seekers during the 1977 federal election campaign. By exploring the ways in which politicians have approached asylum-seeker issues in the past, Neumann aims to inspire more creative thinking about current refugee and asylum-seeker policy. 'Klaus Neumann has written a humane, engrossing book imbued with the awareness that in telling the history of Australia, one tells the story of immigration. Immigrants — always resisted, always blasted by invective and ever essential to our society and polity — show us ourselves through the heroic journeys of ancestors, the recurrent frenzies of resistance, right up to our present parlous state as the most supposedly tolerant intolerant society on earth. But if you think you've read all this before, you should know Neumann has brought to this book a novelty of approach, a freshness of perception, that means all the others have been mere preparation.' Tom Keneally 'A riveting book, vast in scope and timely.' Arnold Zable 'Across the Seas is a call to remember, to rethink, and regenerate. And to overcome our culture of forgetting … it's a fine and vital book – a work of highly accessible and gripping historical scholarship, which must be read by as many people in this country, and abroad, as possible.' David Manne 'Across the Seas' strongest point is a lack of dudgeon. Rather than condemn or mock historical players with thunderous prose and stylistic eye-rolling, Neumann plays it cool … Neumann gives us a mature and measured consideration of an issue that will never cease to be complex.' Saturday Paper

This book arose from an inaugural conference on Migration Law and Policy at the ANU College of Law. The conference brought together academics and practitioners from a diverse range of disciplines and practice. The book is based on a selection of the papers and presentations given during that conference. Each explores the unexpected, unwanted and sometimes tragic outcomes of migration law and policy, identifying ambiguities, uncertainties, and omissions affecting both temporary and permanent migrants. Together, the papers present a myriad of perspectives, providing a sense of urgency that focuses on the immediate and political consequences of an Australian migration milieu created without due consideration and exposing the daily reality under the migration program for individuals and for society as a whole.

In the century between the Napoleonic Wars and the Irish Civil War, more than seven million Irish men and women left their homeland to begin new lives abroad. While the majority settled in the United States, Irish emigrants dispersed across the globe, many of them finding their way to another “New World,” Australia. Ireland’s New Worlds is the first book to compare Irish immigrants in the United States and Australia. In a profound challenge to the national histories that frame most accounts of the Irish diaspora, Malcolm Campbell highlights the ways that economic, social, and cultural conditions shaped distinct experiences for Irish immigrants in each country, and sometimes in different parts of the same country. From differences in the level of hostility that Irish immigrants faced to the contrasting economies of the United States and Australia, Campbell finds that there was much more to the experiences of Irish immigrants than their essential “Irishness.” America’s Irish, for example, were primarily drawn into the population of unskilled laborers congregating in cities, while Australia’s Irish, like their fellow colonialists, were more likely to engage in farming. Campbell shows how local conditions intersected with immigrants’ Irish backgrounds and traditions to create surprisingly varied experiences in Ireland’s new worlds. Outstanding Book, selected by the American Association of School Librarians, and Best Books for Special Interests, selected by the Public Library Association “Well conceived and thoroughly researched . . . . This clearly written, thought-provoking work fulfills the considerable ambitions of comparative migration studies.”—Choice

This book offers a comprehensive and critical analysis of the tropes employed in the categorization of international students living and studying in Australia. Establishing the position of migrant students as ’subjects of the border’, the author employs various models of emotion in an analysis of the ways in which public debates on migration and education in Australia have problematised international students as an object of national compassion or resentment in relation to other national concerns at the time, such as the country’s place in the Asia-Pacific region, the integrity of its borders and the relative competitiveness of its economy. Applying an innovative methodology, which combines the breadth of a diachronic study with the depth afforded by the close analysis of a diverse range of case studies – including the protests staged by Indian international students against a spate of violent attacks, which led to their labelling as ‘soft targets’ in national discourses – Australia’s New Migrants constitutes an important contribution to our understanding of the ways in which emotions shape national collectives’ orientation towards others. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology, cultural studies and education with interests in migration, race and emotion.

Immigration specialist James Jupp surveys changes in immigration policy since 1972.

This conference proceedings provides the papers presented at the This conference proceedings provides the papers presented at the OECD/European Commission joint seminar on Naturalisation and the Socio-Economic Integration of Immigrants and their Children held in October 2010 in Brussels.