PUBLIC LECTURE: From �ten pound Poms� to 'serial migrants': the epic story of postwar British migration to Australia

The ten pound passage British assisted migration scheme, introduced by Arthur Calwell as Immigration Minister in 1947, was the most ambitious in Australian history in both its vision and results. By the time of its termination in diminished form in 1982 it had attracted well over a million British migrants to Australia. As anticipated, the preference for skilled and semi-skilled workers boosted urban and industrial development and helped to shape the direction of postwar suburban settlement. Yet in much immigration history and in media discussion these British-Australians have rarely been treated as migrants, with a history and experience parallel to that of other migrants.

In ‘Ten pound Poms’: Australia’s Invisible Migrants (Manchester University Press, 2005) Jim Hammerton and Alistair Thomson draw on life stories of the British to show that these ‘invisible migrants’, despite their shared language, experienced the traumas and benefits of migration in ways not dissimilar to those of their non-English speaking contemporaries during the last decades of the white Australia policy.

At the same time, the ten-pound scheme was unprecedented for its open-endedness and ease of access. Alongside the well-qualified and young families it admitted unskilled workers with few prospects, dissatisfied professionals and, most importantly, young single ‘sojourners’, men and women eager to enjoy a two-year working holiday in Australia, often before moving on to a further destination. The scheme was revolutionary in its capacity to enable people to make life-changing migration decisions virtually on a whim, following, for example, a run of bad weather or a family squabble. For these reasons it attracted a new kind of migrant, open to adventure and new experiences, and heralded the later twentieth century phenomenon of the global backpacker and the ‘serial migrant’. The old pink on the global map enabled the British to be in the forefront of this late twentieth century ‘mobility of modernity’, and the lecture will illustrate ways in which this was foreshadowed from the 1950s in the experience of ‘ten pound Poms’. At a time when immigration controls are at their most pervasive, far removed from those of Calwell’s scheme, the British continue in large numbers to confront the demanding admission regulations around the world to pursue their visions of global migration.

Profile: Anthony James (Jim) Hammerton’s research has focused primarily on British social and gender history in the 19th and 20th centuries, and particularly on 19th century female emigration, the history of marriage and marital conflict, masculinity and the lower middle-class and the British experience of emigration to Australia and Canada since 1945. His latest book, co-authored with Alistair Thomson, ‘Ten Pound Poms’ – Australia’s Invisible Migrants, is based on a major oral history survey of British-Australian migrants’ experience between the 1940s and 1970s; his current project explores late 20th British emigration to ‘old Commonwealth’ countries from the 1970s to the present.

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