Assimilation through play: migrant hostel play centres in post-War Australia

ABSTRACT

In post-war Australia, the provision of facilities for migrant and refugee children to ‘play’ in migrant accommodation centres was an essential element of government policy. Through an examination of photos and related archival material, this paper will consider how play was used as a means of introducing newly arrived young children to the English language and the Australian way of life. The paper will outline how play centres moved from hastily established, overcrowded child-minding centres, often run by untrained staff, in the late 1940s to well-organised, supervised play centres in the 1950s. It will then consider how, through songs, stories, and special activities, migrant and refugee children from diverse backgrounds mixed and learnt how to be ‘New’ Australians. Finally it will argue that a key aspect of the work of these centres was the assimilation not only of the children but also of their families, in particular their mothers.

KEYWORDS:

• Migrant children
• assimilation
• play
• Australia
• migrant hostels

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Dr Karen Agutter is an historian with a focus on the history of migration, particularly issues of migrant identity and host society reception, in Australia, Canada, and Great Britain. Karen has published widely in the areas of the migrant experience and has been involved in a variety of interdisciplinary collaborative research projects. She is currently a part of the Hostel Stories Project at the University of Adelaide.

Notes

1. Although British immigrants formed a significant percentage of assisted migrant arrivals in this period these families did not pass through the Reception and Training Centres and Holding Centres which are the topic of this paper. Rather they were housed in Hostels many of which, such as Gepps Cross and Bradfield Park, were British-only hostels. These children did attend hostel pre-schools but were not subjected to the same assimilation policy as European migrants.

2. The term ‘New Australian’ was first coined by the Minister for Immigration, Arthur Calwell, in the late 1940s. Use of the term was encouraged in order to replace the pejorative terms in use such as ‘reffo’ and ‘Balt’ and as a symbol of assimilation; however the term itself quickly took on a derogatory meaning.

3. The term ‘Australian way of life’ coined in the 1940s came into regular use in the 1950s across official, public and even advertising vernacular. While never specifically defined the term came to represent the idea of a quintessential Australian, a specific Australian spirit or character with certain ideals and values who celebrated their links to mother England etc. For discussion on this term see for example White (1981). Or for contemporary discussion see Stanner (1953).

4. This notion of the child as the ideal immigrant is paralleled in the promotion and acceptance of a number of child migration schemes which operated pre and post-World War II. See for example Gill (1998).

5. Olga Leschen trained as a pre-school teacher in Western Australia during 1913–1914. She was working in Victoria and was a member of the Kindergarten Union of Victoria when she was seconded by the Department of Immigration to assist Miss Gladys Pendred, Federal Officer of the Australian Association for Pre-School Child Development, to survey the makeshift pre-schools which had been established in the migrant centres throughout Australia. Following this survey she was appointed as Officer in Charge of Pre-School Services for Migrant Centres by the Department and held this position for many years.

6. Under Immigration Publicity Officer, H J Murphy’s instruction, photographers regularly attended migration centre pre-schools and, across the years, captured thousands of migrant children at play. These photos are held by the National Archives of Australia. While some photos were used for publication in the Pre-school Bulletin, a regular publication distributed to pre-schools across the country, others were strictly public relations photos, such as those taken with children at Bonegilla with a delegation of visiting Dutch journalists in 1953. A large number have been digitised and are available through http://www.naa.gov.au.

7. White Australia Policy is the colloquial term used for the Australian 1901 Immigration Restriction Act. The Act effectively controlled the entry of unacceptable (non-white) migrants into Australia through the use of a Dictation Test.

8. See for example NAA: A445, 220/51/7.

9. See for example NAA, 1/1956/22/35.

10. See for example NAA: AA1969/441, 18/2, photo 1 or NAA: AA1969/441, 19/1, photo 2.

11. See for example NAA: AA1969/441, 19/1, photo 6 or NAA: AA1969/441, 18/2, photo 9.

12. There are a number of photos showing teachers and young children sitting and walking through the open spaces at Woodside Centre. See for example NAA: A12111, 1/1955/22/27.

13. See for example NAA: A12111, 1/1956/22/29.

14. A good example of such events is in the photos within the Wacol Album NAA: AA1969/441, 18/8.

15. See for example NAA: AA1969/441, 19/1, photo 13.

Additional information

Funding

The research undertaken for this work was supported by the Australian Research Council under Linkage Grant LP120100553 for ‘Hostel Stories: Toward a Richer Narrative of the Lived Experiences of Migrants’.