Sara Wills

When good neighbours become good friends: The Australian embrace of its millionth migrant

The arrival of Australias ‘millionth’ post Second World War migrant in 1955 provided the occasion for a nationally choreographed embrace of a young British woman posed as both culmination and promise for an immigrant nation. This article traces various treatments of this event and explores the transitional national, political and cultural narratives produced and negotiated. It examines the ways in which the story of the millionth migrant was taken up as a matter of national interest in Australia and reveals how the British migrants the nation apparently embraced were processed and deployed as salves for anxiety about national identity and in the development of notions of Australian community. It argues that for many British migrants, this process was often fraught: assumed to be willing, welcome and easily assimilated, their identity as migrants was too often smothered by an embrace that ignored broader migratory experiences.

Un-stitching the lips of a migrant nation

Outlining some of the features of migrant belonging brought into relief by debate over refugees and asylum seekers in 2001, this article challenges Australian historians to produce histories based as much on the fact of migrancy as the myth of nation. Such histories, it is argued, provide scope for the remembrance of loss, disinheritance and the lack of a sense of belonging, which might in turn encourage us to react with empathy to those seeking refuge in Australia today.