From forced to coerced labour: displaced mothers and teen girls in post-World War II Australia

ABSTRACT

At the end of World War Two 1.2 million people were officially labelled Displaced Persons (DPs). Stateless, or refusing to return home, the majority were resettled in other countries including Australia which, like most receiving nations, saw these refugees primarily as a labour force for post-war economic recovery and expansion. However, unlike other nations, DPs destined for Australia signed a work contract which committed them to two years of assigned labour after arrival. This paper considers two specific subsets of these DPs, the ‘unsupported mothers’ (single, widowed, and divorced mothers with young children) and female unaccompanied teenagers. It illuminates the intersections of gender and displacement on the labour status of female DPs in post-war Australia and traces the continuities of coerced labour in their experiences of war and migration. We argue that the early life of female DPs in Australia provides an example of a continuum of forced and coerced labour which had begun under the shadow of war in Nazi Germany and continued after migration.

KEYWORDS:

• Forced labour
• coerced labour
• displaced persons (DPs)
• gendered coercion
• unsupported mothers
• unaccompanied teenage DPs
• domestic service

Acknowledgments

For their thoughtful responses to earlier versions of this paper, we would like to thank the special issue editors Anders Ahlback, Christine De Matos, Julia Heinemann and Fia Sundevall and the two anonymous peer reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Early estimates immediately post-war placed this figure at around seven million (see, Hulme, 1954) however, ongoing scholarship has indicated this figure was much higher, even double these initial figures (Von Plato et al., 2010).

2. Out of respect for the privacy of these DPs and their descendants, many of whom are living in Australia today, we have chosen to use Christian names and initials only. Therefore, as the National Archives of Australia frequently uses full names in their referencing system, in both control symbol and in titles, any identifying archival files will be referenced using the individual item identification number in the format – Archive, Series, Individual Identification Number rather than the standard Archive, Series, Control, Title. The use of this ID number allows researchers to find the referenced material but provides privacy for individuals by not including full names in the article.

3. The phrase ‘Australian way of life’ was originally coined in the 1940s but came into regular use in Australia in the 1950s across official, public and even advertising vernacular. Despite the term’s popularity, it was never clearly defined, and its usefulness lay in its vague and opaque nature (White, 1981).

4. Post WWII Australia aimed to increase its population by 2% per annum, half of this figure coming from migration. These migrants were important to the nation’s economic expansion. For a number of reasons Australia established a system of migrant accommodation centres for DPs and assisted migrants. The first step was the Reception and Training Centres. From here migrants were placed in work, the wage earner moving on to hostels and work camps, the dependant women and children to holding centres (Agutter, 2017).

5. Despite the implications made by these newspaper reports, for many reasons, including the fact that many of these records remain closed, it is impossible to know exactly how many DP children were placed in care or for adoption. However, Department of Immigration social workers filed regular reports and these returns given some indication. For example, a 1951 social work report states that there were 23 cases of child placement among DPs in the Northam Camp and 28 in Perth (NAA, A445, 276/3/1). Similarly, NSW Social Worker returns indicate that there were 35 child placements and adoptions in 1952 (NAA, A445, 276/3/2). To date these children have not been recognised among the recent official apologies. For more on this see, Agutter (2016) and Agutter and Kevin (2017).

6. Fortunately, the nominal rolls of the DP ships, available in the National Archives Australia, list the refugees under the category of arrival e.g. single men, nominated dependants, unsupported mothers, unaccompanied youths etc.

7. The legal status of illegitimacy was abolished in 1975 when the supporting parents’ benefit was made available to mothers who had never been married (Swain & Howe, 1995).

8. For more on the pension system see for example, Curthoys (1987). For more on the challenges posed by single mothers see, Howe and Swain (1993).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Karen Agutter

Karen Agutter is an historian with a focus on the history of migration, particularly issues of migrant identity and the relationship between new arrivals and receiving populations. Karen is a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Adelaide and has published widely on many aspects of Australian immigration history. http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5970-4235

Catherine Kevin

Catherine Kevin publishes on the histories of maternal and reproductive politics, immigration and Indigenous-settler relations in Australia. She an Associate Professor at Flinders University and the lead chief investigator on the project ‘A History of Domestic Violence in Australia 1850-2020’. She is the author of Dispossession and the Making of ‘Jedda’: Hollywood in Ngunnawal Country (Anthem, 2020). https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9615-8774