Becoming Australian: Migration, Settlement and Citizenship

Becoming Australian

Becoming Australian

Migration, Settlement, Citizenship

Brian Galligan, Martina Boese &

Melissa Phillips

MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY PUBLISHING

An imprint of Melbourne University Publishing Limited

11–15 Argyle Street South, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia

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First published 2014

Text © Brian Galligan, Martina Boese & Melissa Phillips, 2014

Design and typography © Melbourne University Publishing Limited, 2014

This book is copyright. Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968 and subsequent amendments, no part may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means or process whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publishers.

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Text design by Phil Campbell

Typeset by J&M Typesetting

Printed in Australia by OPUS Group

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

Becoming Australian

Brian Galligan, Martina Boese and Melissa Phillips.

9780522866377 (paperback)

9780522866384 (ebook)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Immigrants—Cultural assimilation—Australia.

National characteristics, Australian.

Multiculturalism—Australia.

305.906912

Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgements

About the Authors

List of Acronyms

Introduction

1     Making the Australian Nation

2     Pre-migration

3     Migration

4     Settlement

5     Employment

6     Citizenship

7     Australia and Its People

Appendix 1

       Research Project and Methodology

Appendix 2

       Migrant and Refugee Interview Participants

Notes

References

Index

To the memory of Millsom Henry-Waring (1965–2012),

colleague, friend and a principal researcher.

Acknowledgments

Research for this report was supported under the Australian Research Council’s (ARC) Linkage Projects Scheme 2009–13, and conducted in collaboration with industry partners the Municipal Association of Victoria (MAV) and the Office of Multicultural Affairs and Citizenship (OMAC) in the Victorian Government Department of Premier and Cabinet, previously the Victorian Multicultural Commission (VMC). We thank the ARC and our industry partners for their generous support.

The project was led by Joint Chief Investigators Professor Brian Galligan and Dr Millsom Henry-Waring (until 2012), and included Postdoctoral Fellow (APDI) Dr Martina Boese, and PhD scholar (APAI) Melissa Phillips. Annika Kearton, Dora Horvath and Sara Meger contributed research and administrative assistance, and helped keep the project on course.

We acknowledge the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne for its collegial encouragement and material support; also the University of Melbourne for its supportive culture and facilities that bolster research and writing.

Our thanks go to the staff of the MAV and OMAC who provided assistance and direction to the project, in particular members of the project advisory group: Rob Spence (CEO, MAV), Clare Hargreaves (Manager, Social Policy, MAV), Con Pagonis (Multicultural Policy Advisor, MAV), Hakan Akyol (Director, OMAC), Lucy Richards (Policy and Programs Manager, OMAC), Ban-Lian Ng (Senior Policy Officer, OMAC) and Stephen Dimopoulous (former Policy and Programs Manager, VMC).

We are grateful to the many professionals working in the settlement area who shared their insights through focus groups, an online survey and expert interviews, and to those who facilitated our access to research participants in regional and rural sites. We would especially like to express our sincere appreciation to the many recent arrivals who shared with us their experiences of settling in Australia and becoming Australian. Their testimonies have enriched our knowledge.

We should like to thank Melbourne University Press for publishing our book, and in particular Sally Heath and Penelope White. Also Helen Koehne for copy editing and Jon Jeremy for the index.

Finally, we should like to acknowledge our dear colleague and friend, Millsom Henry-Waring, who played a lead role in the project but sadly died before its completion. The book is dedicated to her memory.

About the Authors

Brian Galligan

Brian is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Melbourne and was previously a Professor in the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University. He has published extensively on Australian politics and political economy, including four books as single or co-author with Cambridge University Press: Beyond the Protective State (1992), A Federal Republic (1995), Citizens without Rights (1997), and Australians and Globalisation (2001). He has co-authored Australian Citizenship (Melbourne University Press, 2004), and was co-editor of Defining Australian Citizenship: Selected Documents (Melbourne University Press, 1999), The Oxford Companion to Australian Politics (2007) and Human Rights in Asia (2011).

Martina Boese

Martina was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne (2009–13), working on the project ‘Resettling Visible Migrants & Refugees in Regional and Rural Australia’. She has a PhD in Sociology and MAs in Legal Studies and in Sociology, and has contributed to interdisciplinary research projects on migration and employment in Australia, Austria and the UK. Her current research is on an ARC Discovery project on temporary migration and precariousness based at RMIT University and the University of Melbourne. Martina’s publications are in the areas of migrant and refugee employment, the creative industries, community sector agency, racism and social in/exclusion.

Melissa Phillips

Melissa completed her PhD at the University of Melbourne in 2013 on ‘Re-Visualising New Arrivals in Australian: Journey Narratives of Pre-migration and Settlement’. She has an MA in Anthropology and a BA (Hons) in History and Sociology. She has extensive experience working with refugees and migrants in Australia, South Sudan, the UK and Libya. She is currently working with a non-government organisation on migration issues in the Middle East and North Africa/Horn of Africa regions. Her research interests and publications are in migration, refugee resettlement, multiculturalism and displacement. Melissa is also an Assistant Editor of the Journal of Intercultural Studies.

List of Acronyms

Introduction

The year 2013 was the fortieth anniversary of the end of the ‘White Australia policy’. In these four decades, Australia’s primary concern for its immigration policy shifted from cultural homogeneity or Britishness to a focus on demand-based skills through an increasingly fine-tuned system of points tests, occupation lists and employer-sponsored visas. Australia now competes for skilled migrants in an increasingly globalised world. Australia’s intake of humanitarian entrants, including asylum seekers, has remained relatively constant at about 14 000, until it was increased to 20 000 in 2013 by Julia Gillard’s Labor government. The diversity of migrants and refugees has increased, with people coming from all corners of the earth. Australia’s contemporary migrant and refugee intake is truly multicultural. While governments continue to adhere to an official multicultural policy, integration into the Australian community and culture, especially for second- and third-generation Australians, is the real story. Australian identity and citizenship have changed in the four decades since the end of the White Australia policy, making Australia and its people more pluralistic and richly diverse.

Our title ‘Becoming Australian’ suggests the process of change for individual migrants and refugees, and for the entire nation of Australia and its people. For nearly half a century, from Federation in 1901 until the end of World War II, Australia was predominantly ‘White Australia’ comprised mainly of ‘transplanted Britons’, to invoke Sir Keith Hancock’s apposite but somewhat exaggerated 1930s term.¹ This changed with the flood of postwar migrants and refugees who came from central and southern Europe. The colour bar against Asians, Africans and people from the Pacific Islands remained until the late 1960s, and was formally set aside in 1973. Postwar migrants and refugees were commonly called ‘New Australians’, and British migrants were still preferred by governments, as demonstrated by official programs such as ‘Bring out a Briton’. The term ‘New Australian’ is no longer used for migrants and refugees, and we have avoided using ‘Old’ and ‘New’ as descriptors of recent migrants and refugees or of Australia and its people. Such a binary suggests a fixed category of the ‘Old’ to which the ‘New’ assimilate.

Our focus in this book is the ways in which migrants and refugees meet the challenges of becoming Australian and how they change once they are living in Australia; and also the transformative process for Australia and its people as the continuing influx of multicultural peoples is incorporated. Since first European settlement, Australia has been a migrant country that has absorbed millions of migrants and refugees. As migration policy has changed, the nation and its people have also changed through decades of multicultural migration with no racial restriction. Chapter 1 outlines the making of the Australian nation through its constitutional foundation in 1901 and early adoption of a suite of nation-building policies: the ‘Australian settlement’, which included restricting migration to those who were white and mainly British.

Many, including formal Commonwealth government sources, use ‘multicultural’ to sum up the more diverse Australia that has developed since the abolition of the White Australia policy. This is misleading in implying that multiculturalism—literally, many cultures—continues through settlement and integration, and that distinctive cultural differences are maintained across generations. This is not the case: multicultural migrants and refugees settle in Australia; they, and even more so their children and grandchildren, integrate through social interaction, work and schooling. Significant aspects of cultural distinctiveness might be retained, but these are dwarfed by the shared cultural norms and attributes that migrants and refugees formally embrace in becoming Australian citizens. We lack an adequate term or neat phrase to sum up the changing character of the Australian nation as it incorporates multicultural migrants and refugees. Chapter 7 includes an exploration of how the nation and its people have changed, and how modern Australia’s national character and distinctiveness might be best described.

As is the case with the oath or pledge that new citizens take, the expression ‘Australia and its people’ is open-ended and does not attempt to define national character or what it means to be Australian. This allows scope for different views and multiple cultural aspects and identities, and for changes over time. While this term allows for a multicultural Australia, it does not assert or require it. To find out what Australia’s and Australians’ character and defining attributes are, we need to explore how Australians speak about themselves, and how former migrants and refugees perceive what ‘becoming Australian’ means for them and their children. Much of this is done throughout the middle chapters of the book, drawing upon extensive interviews with those engaged in the migration and settlement process. Chapter 7 draws together the key factors shaping modern Australia and its people, and critically assesses how well government leaders and officials capture this in speech and practice.

Chapters 1 and 7 deal with the bigger picture of the Australian nation and its people, chapters 2 through 6 focus on pre-migration, migration, settlement, employment and citizenship. Our purpose in these chapters is to bring out the patterns and themes in the main phases of migration. We draw extensively on the individual stories of migrants and refugees, and the viewpoints and experiences of officials and community leaders who formulate migration policy and manage the settlement process.

Chapter 3 gives an overall account of immigration since the demise of the White Australia policy, and its contribution to modern Australia. This was the first phase of the migration process, which is preceded by pre-migration as discussed in chapter 2. The subsequent two chapters, chapter 4 on settlement and chapter 5 on employment, focus on the second phase of the migration process: settling into Australian communities and getting jobs. In these chapters we critically assess government policies and present some of the detailed findings and case studies from our research on settling visible migrants and refugees in regional areas. The final two chapters focus on the third and final phase of migration: becoming Australian citizens and Australians. The first of these, chapter 6, concentrates on citizenship and how it has been adapted in recent years and what it entails for settling migrants. Chapter 7 gives an account of Australia’s changing national character which, we argue, is not multicultural but a pluralistic liberal democracy with distinctive national characteristics that has developed, in part, through contributions of the diverse people who make Australia their home.

Migration to Australia, and consequentially Australia’s population, has changed considerably due to several significant shifts in immigration policies. More recently this trend has included a shift to temporary migration and a significant increase in Australian residents, temporary and permanent, without full citizenship rights. These changes, as well as the locations of humanitarian crises and the related intake under the Humanitarian Program, have considerably diversified the Australian population to include new arrivals from all parts of the world.

Settlement is often understood as a finite process undergone by new residents, supported by public policy provisions to varying degrees, but with substantially different experiences for different groups of entrants as defined by their visas. How settlement is experienced and what outcomes it generates is dependent, however, on a wide range of factors beyond visa categories. Pre-arrival experiences, post-arrival mobility, social relations within and across ethnic boundaries, job search and labour market experiences, and access to support, are some of the influences that shape the sense of place, identity and belonging that recent entrants experience and develop in the course of their settlement.

Multiculturalism has been promoted as an appropriate way of describing Australia and its people, but has become a contested term in recent international debates. Various leaders in the United Kingdom and European countries have declared the failure of multi-culturalism and some are now using interculturalism as an alternative term. Multiculturalism in Australian has been more benign, with fluctuating prominence given to it by successive governments. Moreover, Australian multiculturalism has been defined in terms of liberal democratic and Australian values that de-emphasise cultural attributes and differences. The ruling principles are tolerance for individual differences; respect for others, especially women; the rule of law; and adherence to democratic values and practices. This makes cultural difference something to be tolerated and respected, with some government and civil society support for ethnic social groups and gala occasions. Across generations, cultural differences tend to be swamped by the homogenising power of the English language, public schooling, integrated workplaces, and the high propensity towards geographic dispersion and marriage outside one’s ethnic or cultural group. The result is that Australian multicultur-alism is not primarily about maintaining distinct cultures, but providing a tolerant process of integration into an open and changing society and nation.

This book brings together critical analyses of the policies and politics of multiculturalism and citizenship in Australia with an analysis of recent immigration and settlement experiences of migrants and refugees. Our approach has three significant components. First, it combines a political science and public policy approach with the sociological analysis of in-depth empirical research, from policy documents to interviews and focus groups with recent arrivals and with representatives from government, the community sector and businesses involved in the settlement of recent arrivals. Those interviewed include skilled and family migrants; refugee and humanitarian entrants; temporary and permanent residents; and recent Australian citizens from twenty countries.

Second, it views migration as a journey of adaptation and change, or a phased process, beginning with pre-migration and progressing though arrival, settlement and employment, often culminating in citizenship. Modern migration is not simply a one-way street with a set end point; migrants become Australian while maintaining and developing family, marriage, employment and citizenship links with their countries of origin.

Third, we depart from the dominant focus on metropolitan locations, often understood as the quintessential sites of migrant settlement and cultural diversity, by including regional settlement sites and providing a comparative analysis.

Visibility is an important marker for testing how settlement is working. Standing out as a visibly different sort of person in a smaller regional town or rural community—being ‘seven feet tall and very black’ in a Victorian country town, as a regional service provider put it—heightens sensitivities for both the new entrant and the host community. Visibility, whether because of skin colour, dress or religious practice, is a feature of modern multicultural migration. Investigating how it plays out in regional and rural settings gives further insight into the settlement process, as more migrants and refugees follow the broader demographic trend of settling away from metropolitan ‘gateway cities’.

This book gives an account of Australia’s modern migration and settlement policies, and explains how this ongoing nation-building project is progressing. It details and builds on the experiences of recent migrants and refugees, from pre-arrival through settlement, employment and taking out citizenship. As migrants and refugees become Australian, Australia and its people are changing. We show how extraordinarily multicultural Australia’s migrant intake has become, and how this has made Australia a more diverse and pluralistic nation where cultural and ethnic distinctiveness and differences are tolerated within a liberal democracy. Government policy that promotes multiculturalism defines it in non-cultural, liberal democratic terms and by Australian values. Ironically, this marginalises cultural difference through relegating it mainly to the private realm. At the same time, the integrative forces of Australian culture, society and day-to-day laid-back living undermine the individual maintenance of cultural differences across generations. In modern Australian migration policies, culture is of no consequence; skills are the new touchstone for selection, with most migrants selected for the economic contribution they can make to the nation. This book changes the way we think about Australia and its people, and sets the stage for a more informed national discussion of their true character.

1

Making the Australian Nation

Australia was first settled by the British more than two hundred years ago in 1788, and founded as a nation more than one hundred years ago in 1901. Along with New Zealand, Australia was a relatively new settler society compared with the United States, Canada and South Africa where European settlement began in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was a more recent and homogeneous fragment of late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth-century Britain, with convict and free settlers drawn from the cities and regions of Britain in the throes of the Industrial Revolution.¹ If the convict regime was harsh and often petty, it was also infused by the British rule of law that protected basic life and property. Transportation and penal servitude were terrible impositions that maimed and destroyed some, but many others found increased opportunities for economic advantage and social inclusion in a new settler society that would have been impossible in the old country. Transported convicts included many young adults who had committed minor offenses of stealing food or clothing, and were broadly representative of middling and lower British society. Free settlers included adventurers, entrepreneurs and dreamers, along with those who had little to lose and potentially much to gain from migrating to the new Australian colonies.² British government policy and state authority controlled both convict and free settlement, and took special measures to encourage women and families though assisted passage. Throughout the nineteenth century, assisted migrants were a decisive majority despite the huge upsurge of ‘diggers’ who paid their own way during the gold rushes.

Of course, Australia was already settled by Indigenous people, Australian Aborigines, who had occupied the country for at least forty thousand years, which is the limit for dating techniques. British settlement was a prolonged tragedy for Indigenous Australians, who were dispossessed of their land and afflicted by European diseases for which they had little resistance. The official policy of ‘terra nullius’—land of no one, or no one who had the kind of title that the British authorities would recognise—denied Indigenous peoples’ traditional ownership and usage rights. The doctrine of terra nullius would not be overturned until the famous Mabo case in 1992 when the High Court ruled that it was discriminatory, and that a limited ‘native title’ still existed where it had not been extinguished by governments, and provided that Indigenous people retained an unbroken association with their land. This applied in isolated pockets such as the Murray Island where Eddie Mabo’s land was located, but more importantly, it applied across the vast pastoral leases of northern and western Australia, as the Wik case decided in 1996. Mabo, however, was too little and far too late to save Aboriginal land. ‘Settler sovereignty’³ had imposed British law and practice as settlers quickly fanned out from the original convict and free settlements around coastal Australia, displacing Indigenous people or incorporating them into colonial society. Despite sporadic resistance that was readily suppressed by superior force, Aboriginal people were dispossessed, and remnant groups were pushed to the fringes of white settler society. Australia’s Indigenous people became ‘citizens without rights’ in their own country⁴; their treatment is a shameful part of Australia’s British settlement and foundation as a ‘White Australian’ nation.

The focus of this book is not primarily on early settlement and settler society, with its defining combination of British convict and free settlers discarding and displacing Aboriginal peoples. These subjects have been extensively researched, and there is a large literature that has changed Australian public discourse and sentiment. Convict ancestry is now considered a badge of distinction, as is Aboriginal descent and heritage. Indigenous dispossession and discrimination have been recognised and addressed, albeit with limited success, through legal changes such as Mabo, anti-discrimination laws, a national apology by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in 2007, and a range of Commonwealth and state and territory policies. Early British settlement and dispossession of Indigenous people were inter-related components that shaped colonial development through the nineteenth century and the foundation of the Australian nation. Our focus is the latter: the establishment of the Australian nation in the twentieth century, and in particular the migrant strand, which is a defining part.

Australian Settlement

‘Constitutional settlement’ and ‘Australian settlement’ have been commonly used in past discussions of Australian political history and culture, but not usually combined. ‘Constitutional settlement’ is typically used to refer to the political process of constitution making that resulted in the adoption of the constitution in 1901. ‘Australian settlement’ has been a handy way of referring to the set of national policies that were adopted by the early Commonwealth parliament and shaped the development of the Australian nation through the first half of the twentieth century. The key ones were the inter-linked policies of immigration, protection and arbitration, and the large and activist role of government, often called ‘state socialism’ by early commentators. This usage has been broadened by recent scholars to include other key aspects of Australian political history and thinking.⁵ We use the term ‘Australian settlement’ as a broad and encompassing one to include both the constitutional settlement of 1901, and the set of national policies put in place in the decades after Federation, as well as the political and economic thinking that informed this nation building.

Bringing together the constitutional and national policy aspects, as well as the political thinking that underlies them, allows for a more comprehensive discussion of the foundation and consolidation of the Australian nation. The constitution was not adopted for its own sake, but in order to create an ‘indissoluble Federal Commonwealth’ with institutions that could implement major policies for developing the new federal Commonwealth. Political and economic thinking of the time informed both the constitution and national policies, and are important for understanding the shape they took. Our perspective combines all of these elements and might properly be called constitutional political economy. The constitution was the institutional framework for the foundation of the Australian nation that drew upon the political economy thinking of the time, and enabled subsequent nation building that embodied that same political economy thinking in the Australian settlement.

The Australian settlement and its discussion in this chapter provide the larger canvas for migration, settlement or settling in, and citizenship, which are the main focus of this book. Migration has always been a key component of the Australian settlement, both old and new. The migrant story has these three major components: migrating to Australia, settling into Australian society, and becoming citizens, each of which