Terms Of Belonging
Terms Of Belonging
$30.60 Paperback
Australia’s national story has always been entwined with immigration. From the arrival of convicts and free settlers, through the Chinese arrival on the goldfields, Afghan cameleers, and the vast postwar intake of Europeans, each wave of newcomers reshaped the country. After 1973, the dismantling of the White Australia Policy gave way to a multicultural compact: migrants could retain their languages and faiths, but in return they were expected to embrace liberal democracy, equal citizenship, and the rule of law. These were the “terms of belonging,” and for half a century they held – imperfectly, but on balance, successfully .
Description
This book traces that compact across time. It revisits the hunger and brutality of the convict era, the tensions of gold-rush immigration, and the exclusion enshrined in Federation. It recounts the transformation brought by the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme, when workers from thirty nations forged communities in the high country, prefiguring multiculturalism before it had a name . It follows Vietnamese boat people, Middle Eastern arrivals, and more recent humanitarian entrants, showing both the resilience of those who came and the ambivalence of those already here.
Yet the narrative is also about fracture. The October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks, and the spectacle of antisemitic chants on the steps of the Sydney Opera House days later, exposed a strain within the compact: imported hatreds given license on Australian streets. What once bound Holocaust survivors into the national fold now faces challenge from voices that deny or even applaud their suffering .
Terms of Belonging asks three urgent questions: What made the compact work when it did? Why is it faltering now? And what must be defended - legally, politically, and culturally - if a liberal, plural nation is to endure? It is a defence of pluralism anchored in civic responsibility, and a warning that diversity without shared norms risks devolving into division .
Additional Information
- Publisher : DWP - David Wilson Publications
- Language : English
- Paperback : 274 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1764386191
- ISBN-13 : 978-1764386197
- Dimensions : 13.97 x 1.75 x 21.59 cm