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ABSTRACT
This article focuses on the migrant family in postwar Australia. The Commonwealth government’s two-year work contract scheme had significant effects on the initial settlement experience of displaced persons (DPs)—particularly, through the family separation that the contract enforced. Family reunification was afforded in accordance with an occasionally callous and pragmatic concern for maintaining a directable pool of labour. In this regard, the scheme and the available hostels and centres, while extensive in their bureaucracy and administrative reach, were woefully unprepared for the needs and wants of DPs, specifically the need for family unity during the initial settlement process. In drawing on archival sources, this article explores bureaucratic practices, and responses to DP resistance and dismay in the face of family separation.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Ivan Laszlo to Miss M. Dyson, 27 September 1949, National Archives of Australia (NAA), K403 control symbol W59, 35, Part 1.
2 Gareth Larsen, “Family Migration to Australia,” Research Paper Series, 2013–14, Parliamentary Library, 23 December 2013, 1.
3 John Lack and Jacqueline Templeton, Bold Experiment: A Documentary History of Australian Immigration since 1945 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1995), 10.
4 Egon Kunz, Displaced Persons: Calwell’s New Australians (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1988), 38; Klaus Neumann, Refuge Australia: Australia’s Humanitarian Record (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2004), 20.
5 For more on the selection processes of this scheme and the implications of producing a “surplus of men” in postwar Australia, see Zora Simic, “Bachelors of Misery and Proxy Brides. Marriage, Migration and Assimilation, 1947–1973,” History Australia 11, no. 1 (2014): 149.
6 O and M Review [Organisation and Management of Bonegilla Migrant Accommodation Centre], Department of Immigration: Migrant Accommodation Division, Public Service Board, August 1959. NAA, A12799, control symbol 14.
7 Industry and Development Committee—Immigration programme, 1950—employment accommodation of migrant workers and dependants. NAA, A4933, control symbol ID/1.
8 State governments also administered some hostels, such as those exclusively for British migrants (accommodated as family units) in urban centres.
9 E. F. Laws (Regional Director) to Secretary (Department of Immigration), 4 June 1958, NAA, MP690/1, control symbol 1957/1039. Records show some women refused these categories. Internal memos on the number of unemployed staying at Wacol in 1957 state: “six employable married women who do not want domestic service”. According to some policy documents, only married women were eligible for accommodation at holding centres, but there are also multiple examples in the archives in which single women with children were accommodated. Bonegilla Migrant Reception and Training Centre—Czech Refugees, Report by Welfare Officer, E. Martek, 4 June 1969, NAA, A2567, control symbol 1968/27.
10 R. Andrew, director of Bathurst to The Secretary for the Department of Immigration, 17 May 1949, NAA, A434, control symbol 1949/3/11213.
11 See Simic for examples of press reporting on marriage ceremonies between migrant residents at reception and training centres, and Calwell’s attendance at some of these ceremonies. Simic, “Bachelors of Misery,” 152.
12 Male workers (or “breadwinners” if married), as stated, were the preferred migrant in the early years of the scheme, leaving little room for the valuing of women and dependants as part of Australia’s migrant future.
13 Michael Cigler interviewed by Barry York [sound recording] 1989, TRC 2536/0000/0006, National Library of Australia.
14 Cigler interviewed by York.
15 Mary Hutchison, “Accommodating Strangers: Commonwealth Government Records of Bonegilla and Other Migrant Accommodation Centres [Paper In: Outing the Past],” Public History Review 11 (2004): 77.
16 Catherine Panich, Sanctuary? Remembering Postwar Immigration (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1988), 117.
17 Louis Maroya, “Bonegilla Immigration Museum: A Meeting of Cultures: A Necessity in a Multicultural Australia. Workshop Paper,” in FECCA Congress Report: Multiculturalism: A Commitment for Australia (Canberra: Federation of Ethnic Communities’ Councils of Australia, 1988/9), 231.
18 For the most concerted historical study of family separation, with a particular focus on South Australia, see Karen Agutter, “Displaced Persons and the ‘Continuum of Mobility’ in the South Australian Hostel System,” in On the Wing: Mobility Before and After Emigration to Australia, Visible Immigrants Vol 7, ed. Margrette Kleinig and Eric Richards (Melbourne: Anchor Books, 2013), 136–52.
19 Agutter, “Displaced Persons,” 136–52.
20 Ann-Mari Jordens, Alien to Citizen: Settling Migrants in Australia, 1945–75 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin in association with the Australian Archives, 1997), 30.
21 Lack and Templeton, Bold Experiment, 2–3.
22 Lisa Featherstone and Yorick Smaal, “The Family in Australia,” Journal of Australian Studies 37, no. 3 (2013): 279.
23 Adam Dukars cited in “Greta Has a Language Problem,” Newcastle Morning Herald, 11 June 1949.
24 Selga Judge, arrived from Latvia, September 1949, cited in: “Bonegilla Memories Database,” http://bonegilla.com.au/collection/memories/images/Bonegilla_Memories__Database.pdf.
25 Justina Pobezin, arrived from Slovenia, 6 February 1952, cited in “Bonegilla Memories Database,” http://bonegilla.com.au/collection/memories/images/Bonegilla_Memories__Database.pdf; see also Lena and Peter Saboisky, Ukraine/Germany, 2 May 1950 and Rieveld-Ada Scholten, Holland, 25 November 1955.
26 Cited in: Christopher Keating, A History of the Army Camp and Migrant Camp at Greta, New South Wales, 1939–1960 (Sydney: The New South Wales Department of Urban Affairs and Planning, and the Australian Heritage Commission, 1997), 68.
27 Release of Dependants from Migrant Centres, R. Andrew, Director of Bathurst, to the Secretary of the Department of Immigration, 17 May 1949, NAA, A434, control symbol 1949/3/11213.
28 Tomasz Luzny to his wife Krystyna in March 1950, accessible at: History SA, Migration Museum, “Letter,” http://migration.historysa.com.au/collections/letter.
29 “Greta Has a Language Problem,” Newcastle Morning Herald, 11 June 1949.
30 Husbands Visiting Centre, Director R. Andrew to the Secretary for the Department of Immigration, 16 May 1949, NAA, A434, control symbol 1949/3/11213.
31 Release of Dependants from Migrant Centres, Reports by Regional Directors of Employment for 1949—on complaints from DPs arising from separation of wives from husbands, NAA, A434, control symbol 1949/3/11213.
32 NAA, A434, control symbol 1949/3/11213.
33 “Families to Stay Near Husbands,” The Advertiser (Adelaide), 17 October 1951.
34 W. Funnell to the Secretary for the Department of Immigration, Canberra, 9 August 1949, NAA, A434, control symbol 1949/3/11213. Including extracts from reports by Regional Directors of Employment for 1949—on complaints from DPs arising from separation of wives from husbands.
35 See, for example, Michael Tsounis, “Greek Communities in Australia,” in Greeks in Australia, ed. Charles Price (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1975), 22–42; Kristen Allen et al., Greek Families in Hawthorn and Clifton Hill (Melbourne: General Studies Department, Swinburne College of Technology, 1974).
36 W. Funnell to the Secretary for the Department of Immigration, Canberra, 9 August 1949, NAA, A434, control symbol 1949/3/11213. Including extracts from reports by Regional Directors of Employment for 1949—on complaints from DPs arising from separation of wives from husbands.
37 Memo from Commonwealth Migration Officer J. Olaffe to the Secretary of the Department of Immigration, Att: Mr G. C. Watson, 14 April 1949, NAA, A434, control symbol 1949/3/11213.
38 Industry and Development Committee—Immigration programme, 1950—employment accommodation of migrant workers and dependants, NAA, A4933, control symbol ID/1.
39 NAA, A4933, control symbol ID/1.
40 R. Andrew Director of Bathurst to The Secretary of the Department of Immigration, 17 May 1949, NAA, A434, control symbol 1949/3/11213.
41 Memo from Commonwealth Migration Officer J. Olaffe to the Secretary of the Department of Immigration, Att: Mr G. C. Watson, 14 April 1949, NAA, A434, control symbol 1949/3/11213.
42 NAA, A434, control symbol 1949/3/11213.
43 See NAA, K403 control symbol W59, 35, Part 1.
44 See Lisa Featherstone, “‘The One Single Primary Cause’: Divorce, the Family, and Heterosexual Pleasure in Postwar Australia,” Journal of Australian Studies 37, no. 3 (2013): 349–63; Report by Welfare Officer, E. Martek, 4 June 1969, NAA: A2567. Control number: 1968/27.
45 These issues are addressed in work by Karen Agutter and Catherine Kevin; see in particular, “Lost in Translation: Managing Maternity and Infant Loss in Post-war Migrant Hostels,” paper presented at Hostel Stories: Reflecting on the Past, Looking Forward, Adelaide, September 2014. Social workers too wrote condemning reports of single women with children—they represented economic and social failures to assimilate.
46 Jordens, Alien to Citizen, 63; “Separation of Migrants ‘Appalling’,” Sun, 14 February 1950.
47 Bishop Moyes and Rev B. R Wyllie, cited in: “Separation of Migrants ‘Appalling’,” Sun, 14 February 1950.
48 T. H. E. Heyes to W. Funnell, Director of Cowra, June 1949, NAA, A434, control symbol 1949/3/11213.
49 Kunz, Displaced Persons, 258.
50 W. Funnell to J. B. Chifley, 2 November 1949, NAA, M1457, control symbol 13.
51 David Taylor interviewed by Ann-Mari Jordens in the Chief Migration Officers’ oral history project [sound recording], 17 April 2008, ORAL TRC 5930/7, National Library of Australia.
52 “5000 Migrants Have Absconded from Their Contract Jobs,” Sun, 19 March 1951.
53 Josef Sestokas, Welcome to Little Europe: Displaced Persons and the North Camp (Sale, VIC: Little Chicken, 2010), 128.
54 Director of Employment to Commonwealth Employment Service, 20 September 1950, NAA, MP1722/1, control symbol 1950/23/9332.
55 NAA, MP1722/1, control symbol 1950/23/9332.
56 Regional (Tas) Director of Employment, J. C. Franklin to Commonwealth Employment Office, 29 September 1950, NAA, MP690/1, control symbol 1957/1039.
57 Kunz, Displaced Persons, 177.
58 Employment and Associated Accommodation—Displaced Persons, NAA, A4933, control symbol ID/1.
59 E. J. Parks Director of Rushworth to the Secretary Department of Immigration Canberra, 20 June 1949, NAA, A434, control symbol 1949/3/11213.
60 R. Andrew Director of Bathurst to the Secretary of the Department of Immigration, 17 May 1949, NAA, A434, control symbol 1949/3/11213.
61 Kunz, Displaced Persons, 258.
62 Neumann, Refuge Australia, 30.
63 R. W. Davies to Mr Russell, 5 January 1962, NAA, MP690/1, control symbol 1957/1039.
64 Admission of Breadwinners to Hostels in Advance of their Families—H. A. Bland (Secretary) to Officer-in-Charge, Bonegilla, 5 October 1965, NAA, A2567, control symbol 1963/110, Item 439678.
65 G. W. Austen, Assistant Director Employment to Officer-in-Charge, Bonegilla, 7 April 1966, NAA, A2567, control symbol 1963/110.
66 Initially, married couples without children were not eligible for these self-contained flats.
67 W. Law Controller of Migrant Accommodation to Director of Bonegilla, 30 July 1969, NAA, A2567, control symbol 1968/109A.
68 NAA, A2567, control symbol 1968/109A.
69 Office of the United Nations Commissioner for Refugees, The UN Refugee Agency, Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees. http://www.unhcr.org/protect/PROTECTION/3b66c2aa10.pdf, 10–11.