Yesterday I spoke at Visible Immigrants Seven, a small conference organised by Flinders University and the Migration Museum in Adelaide. The conference aimed to explore the idea of migrant mobility before and after the major act of migration. Most of the papers focused on nineteenth-century migrants from Ireland, Scotland and England, including convicts. My paper looked at the return migration of Chinese men and their Australian families.
Thanks for sharing this. One of the topics in the new Australian Curriculum is Immigration and how it shaped the nation, exploring the contribution of different groups and so on. So I’m always on the lookout for anything that improves my knoweldge of the topic.
Hi Lisa,
You might also like to have a look at ‘The real face of White Australia’ (http://www.invisibleaustralians.org/faces), an innovative archival interface developed by Tim Sherratt as part of our Invisible Australians project. It is a scrolling wall of photographs of people who applied for Certificates Exempting from Dictation Test when they travelled overseas in the early years of the 20th century. We’ve heard from other teachers that it’s been an effective way of engaging students with the history and the records.
Cheers,
Kate