Becoming Australian: Migration, Settlement and Citizenship

By: Brian Galligan and Martina Boese and Melissa Phillips

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Synopsis: The year 2013 is the 40th anniversary of the end of the 'White Australia policy'. In these four decades Australia's immigration policy has shifted from a primary concern with 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. Despite disproportionate politicisation of asylum seekers in recent public discourse, the intake of refugees and humanitarian entrants has remained relatively small. While Australia's contemporary migrant and refugee intake is truly multicultural, and governments continue to adhere to an official multicultural policy, integration into the Australian community and culture has been the dominant process, especially for second and third generation Australians. Australian identity and citizenship have changed in the last forty years, making Australia and its people more pluralistic and richly diverse. Becoming Australian focuses on the ways in which migrants and refugees meet the challenges of 'becoming Australian' and the transformative process for Australia and its people as they incorporate the continuing influx of multicultural peoples.