‘Sweeping from Aboriginal-settler clashes to current controversies over refugees, Migrant Nation […] reveals how national identity has never been about One Australia, but always about how its peoples have dealt with One Another.’
—Craig Howes, Director, Center for Biographical Research, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, USA
'The essays in ‘Migrant Nation: Australian Culture, Society and Identity’ work within the gap between Australian image and experience, focusing on particular historical blind spots by telling stories of individuals and groups that did not fit the favoured identity mould and can therefore offer fresh insights into the other side of identity construction. In this way this collection casts light onto the hidden face Australian identity and pays respect to the experiences of a wide variety of people who have generally been excluded, neglected or simply forgotten in the long-running quest to tell a unified story of Australian culture and identity, a story that is rapidly unravelling.
'Whether in terms of language, history, culture or personal circumstances, many of the subjects of these essays were foreign to the settler dream. The stories reveal their efforts to establish a sense of legitimacy and belonging outside of the dominant Australian story. Drawing upon memories, letters, interviews, documentary fragments and archives, the authors have in common a commitment to give life to neglected histories and thus to include, in an expanding and open-ended national narrative, people who were cast as strangers in the place that was their home.' (Publication summary)
'Who are the hidden faces that have contributed to the formation of an Australian identity? In what ways have individuals and groups been “excluded, neglected, or simply forgotten” in the dogged drive to narrate a cohesive story of identity‐making in Australia (p.2)? Such questions are addressed in this timely and comprehensive edited collection. As the volume's editor Paul Longley Arthur notes, the book sets out to uncover the “historical blind spots” that have been persistently concealed in the quest to uphold an “Australian settler dream” (pp.2‐3). Drawing upon a wide array of historical materials and approaches, this volume brings to the page histories of people who have been cast as peripheral to, or at odds with, commonplace Australian identity narratives. The uneasy colonial and gendered politics of the “official” archive, along with the complex interplays that exist between migration, memory, biography and belonging, are explored by an assortment of talented scholars who — when assessed as a whole — reveal the methodological richness of Australian historical inquiry and how it can interact with the conceptually robust disciplines of cultural and literary studies.' (Introduction)
'In his introduction to this edited book, Paul Longley Arthur notes that the public image of Australian egalitarianism is at odds with the nation's internal experience and policies, historically, and in the present. It would be unproductive, he writes, to attempt to present a case for ‘what we are’ or for the past ‘as it really was’ (2). Instead, stories of previously obscured or hidden lives shine a new light on the complexities of Australian (and other) identities, cultural experiences, society and history, working the ‘gap between image and experience’ (2). In a country obsessed with national navel-gazing, this is the type of national self-examination worth engaging in, he argues.' (Introduction)
'Who are the hidden faces that have contributed to the formation of an Australian identity? In what ways have individuals and groups been “excluded, neglected, or simply forgotten” in the dogged drive to narrate a cohesive story of identity‐making in Australia (p.2)? Such questions are addressed in this timely and comprehensive edited collection. As the volume's editor Paul Longley Arthur notes, the book sets out to uncover the “historical blind spots” that have been persistently concealed in the quest to uphold an “Australian settler dream” (pp.2‐3). Drawing upon a wide array of historical materials and approaches, this volume brings to the page histories of people who have been cast as peripheral to, or at odds with, commonplace Australian identity narratives. The uneasy colonial and gendered politics of the “official” archive, along with the complex interplays that exist between migration, memory, biography and belonging, are explored by an assortment of talented scholars who — when assessed as a whole — reveal the methodological richness of Australian historical inquiry and how it can interact with the conceptually robust disciplines of cultural and literary studies.' (Introduction)
'In his introduction to this edited book, Paul Longley Arthur notes that the public image of Australian egalitarianism is at odds with the nation's internal experience and policies, historically, and in the present. It would be unproductive, he writes, to attempt to present a case for ‘what we are’ or for the past ‘as it really was’ (2). Instead, stories of previously obscured or hidden lives shine a new light on the complexities of Australian (and other) identities, cultural experiences, society and history, working the ‘gap between image and experience’ (2). In a country obsessed with national navel-gazing, this is the type of national self-examination worth engaging in, he argues.' (Introduction)
