The Migrant Experience

Abstract

Too often, in recent years, the debate over just how the migrant experience informs Australian literature has oscillated between two extreme positions: either, that all non-Aboriginal Australians are migrants, or, in effect, that only post-war settlers are migrants, leaving the rest to be simply Austra­lians. The most significant factor governing migration before the 1940s and 1950s is that the settlers were drawn predominantly from the United Kingdom and their narratives of adjustment in a sense reinforced, both positively and negatively, the ties to ‘Mother England’. The measure of difference was thug restricted to the English language and English culture, even when the writers were Irish since, in this last instance, the struggle had always been confined to England and Ireland.