Australian Migration History Network

Migropessimism of the Intellect, Migro-Optimism of the Will: The Italian-Australian Experience Focusing on the Italian-Australian experience, this article outlines its authors’ migropessimism and their subsequent migro-optimism. We initially focus on what we perceive as the migrant’s ‘ontolo...

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

James Watson reviews ‘Immigrant Industry: Building Postwar Australia’ by Anoma Pieris, Mirjana Lozanovska, Alexandra Dellios @alecadell.bsky.social, Andrew Saniga and David Beynon
Berghahn Books @berghahnbooks.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1080/1031...

Friday essay: how ASIO spied on Australia’s Greek migrants during the Cold War As ‘aliens’, postwar Greek immigrants attracted the attention of ASIO, irrespective of their political affiliation.

theconversation.com/friday-essay...

Diversity and collecting practices at the museum of Chinese Australian history in Melbourne This paper examines the entanglement between collecting and community diversity at the Museum of Chinese Australian History (MCAH) in Melbourne. In Australia, culture-specific museums emerged in th...

New article by Vanessa Shia & Virginie Rey
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

This is in a new history of Aus, written by an academic.
There were Jewish quotas. There were interviews so that immigration officers could make sure that no Jews were included in the 170,000 DPs. "The Holocaust" was not yet a thing.

Fascists in Exile: Post-War Displaced Persons in Australia Published in The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History (Ahead of Print, 2025)

"Persian forces readers to confront the uneasy coexistence of humanitarianism and hypocrisy in Australia’s post-war nation-building."

Pierluigi Bolioli reviews @drjpersian.bsky.social's 'Fascists in Exile' for @jich.bsky.social (advance access)

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

My contribution to the Whitlam discourse is that, in my research around leftist allegations against Croatians & ASIO, Jim Cairns could generously be termed naive and/or not someone who needed hard evidence in order to agree in principle to firebombing people's homes.

New blog post by Alexa Ridgeway
aph.org.au/2025/11/beyo...

Who was Tie Cum Ah Chung? If you have wandered past the library on the corner of Murray and Bathurst streets, Hobart, you might have noticed a billboard featuring arresting black-and-white portraits of a young Asian woman i…

New blog post from me - ‘Who was Tie Cum Ah Chong?’ - in which I consider the curious early life of a young immigrant Chinese woman in Tasmania 120 years ago.

chineseaustralia.org/tie-cum-ah-c...

#ChineseTasmanianStories #EverydayHeritage 🗃️

Fun fact: several years after his Provisional Government was deposed by the Bolsheviks in 1917, former Russian prime minister Alexander Kerensky married Brisbane-born Nell Tritton and relocated briefly to peaceful, leafy Clayfield in Brisbane’s northern suburbs www.smh.com.au/world/alexan...

Hungary’s relationship with its diasporic heritage: do hyphenated identities disappear through repatriation? The Hungarian National Library (or National Széchényi Library) and the National Archives of Hungary has been collecting ‘Hungarica’ materials abroad since the nineteenth century. The National Széch...

New article by Ilona Fekete
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

From Wog Boy to Son of a Donkey: how ‘wog humour’ made Australian comedy its own In their new Netflix series, comedy duo Superwog take on daddy issues and the manosphere.

theconversation.com/from-wog-boy...

Screening multicultural Australia • Ien Ang How migrants have made their presence felt in an evolving TV landscape

insidestory.org.au/screening-mu...

Sue Silberg, PHA (Vic and Tas), shares some research about the cosmopolitan life of Jewish traders, and later politicians, in the tropics. The Australian colonial project is clear here with discussion about the Polynesian Company, a poor colony's Dutch East India Company.

#history #traders

Weida Chen shared some findings from his thesis about Greeks in NT, with particular concentration on military men.

#history #immigration #research

Amendments to Non-European Naturalisation Policy, 1956–1957: Differentiating Between Intention and Effect This article challenges benign depictions of the gradual and intentional liberalisation of the ‘White Australia policy’ during the Menzies government through an analysis of the quick series of amen...

Hot off the press & #OpenAccess, check out 'Amendments to Non-European Naturalisation Policy, 1956–1957: Differentiating Between Intention and Effect' by Nathan Gardner Molina: doi.org/10.1080/0308...

1975: Working Migrant Women The ethnic and class politics of working migrant women marked them at a distance from mainstream feminism and its mostly middle-class, libertarian, and Anglo-centric outlook during International Wo...

New open access article by @alecadell.bsky.social
1975: Working Migrant Women
share.google/LXGXDHgguQ7G...

Forced migration: exiles and refugees in the UK and the British Empire, 1815-1949 Published in Immigrants & Minorities: Historical Studies in Ethnicity, Migration and Diaspora (Ahead of Print, 2025)

Check out Tanja Bueltmann's review of our recent volume on Forced Migration with @degruyterbrill.bsky.social in @imm-min-journal.bsky.social - doi.org/10.1080/0261...

@andrekosvarnava.bsky.social @evansmithhist.bsky.social @dgb-history.bsky.social

As it's October and the 'Halloween as an imported American thing' discourse has begun, I thought I'd mention that in Australia, the Scottish diaspora, especially in the first half of the 20th century, celebrated Halloween as a particular Scottish tradition, as attested to by many articles on Trove.

The Greek Left, Whitlam and the Dismissal: a radical legacy Whitlam meant a great deal to working-class migrant communities.

Continued musings from my ongoing work on the community origins of multiculturalism and 1975 - bittersweet, to have something published in @meanjin.bsky.social - meanjin.com.au/essays/the-g...

Does anyone have a good recommendation on a history of the White Australia Policy? The internet keeps telling me to read one that specifically ends at 1920 which is too early for my needs

A History of Displaced Knowledge: Austrian Refugees from National Socialism in Australia "A History of Displaced Knowledge: Austrian Refugees from National Socialism in Australia" published on 07 Apr 2025 by Brill.

New book by Philipp Strobl
brill.com/display/titl...

Migration Heritage Project

The 2025 Addi Rd Multicultural History Award was awarded to Dr Tim Briedis for his essay Red and Black: Stories of Anarchists Across Borders

The award was presented by Addison Road Community Organisation CEO Rosanna Barbero

Read the judges citation and Tim's statement via buff.ly/oPiYLzJ

📷 TWH

The judges awarded a commendation for the 2025 Addi Rd Multicultural History Award to Dominique Jones for her essay: Rethinking Histories of Australian Multiculturalism: Diasporic Tensions and the Macedonian Question during the Bicentenary

Read Dominique's statement via buff.ly/oPiYLzJ

📷 TWH

Exhibition Bridges Two Centuries of Cantonese-Australian Stories Migration, memory, and cultural legacy

Lovely write-up about the new ‘Shared Connections: Cantonese Stories in Australia’ exhibition developed by Sophie Couchman for the Australian Consulate-General in Guangzhou!

(I also had a small hand in the exhibition, and it features my daughter’s story 😊)

mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzIy...

Maroubra’s migrant past remembered at special community event A special event to honour the legacy and 75th anniversary of the opening of the former Bunnerong Migrant Hostel will be held on Monday 22 September 2025 at the Heffron Centre in Maroubra.

www.randwick.nsw.gov.au/about-us/new...

Transnational Whiteness and the Elite Backlash to Reforming the Australian Immigration Control System in the 1950s and 1960s by Evan Smith & Andrekos Varnava Abstract: In the 1950s and 1960s, changes in the international situation, such as decolonization in Asia, led some Australians to question the usefulness of keeping the ‘White Australia Policy’, the basis for the country’s immigration system since Federation in 1901. Some argued that Australia’s international reputation, especially with newly independent countries in Asia and Africa, could be harmed by the maintenance of this policy. Events such as the Sharpeville Massacre in apartheid South Africa in 1960 caused further introspection into Australia’s racialized system. However, as pushes to reform the policy grew, others used international events to resist reforms. Using speeches by politicians and documents produced by policymakers, this article will show how events, such as the Notting Hill riots in Britain, the Little Rock controversy in the United States, and the Sharpeville massacre, were used as warnings about Australia potentially introducing similar ‘racial problems’ if it allowed more non-white migration. This article argues that these concerns tapped into a transnational whiteness that shared anxieties about decolonization, civil rights and non-white immigration in the post-war period, bringing a racialized solidarity forged at the turn of the twentieth century into the Cold War era.

Very excited that my new article with @andrekosvarnava.bsky.social has been published open access in @historicaljnl.bsky.social

'Transnational Whiteness and the Elite Backlash to Reforming the Australian Immigration Control System in the 1950s and 1960s'

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

How migrant stories and contributions have shaped Australian TV since the 1950s New research uncovers stories of resilience, entrepreneurship and thriving cultural creativity across seven decades of Australian TV history.

theconversation.com/how-migrant-...

A selection of historical documents relating to the Tasmanian Chinese See Yip Social Club, including blank membership cards, rule book and account book

Today I took custody of a box of historical materials that were purchased in a Launceston antique shop many years ago – I suspect they came out of the old Sun Hung Ack store. Among the treasures are a collection relating to the Tasmanian See Yip Club (which I knew existed but nothing more!)