Case Studies

Immigration centres and industries that employed refugee and immigrant labour in the postwar period can be thought of as nodes in a spatial and labour network—the running of each was dependent on the other. The case studies aim to convey this network, its nodal points and inter-cultural social interactions through a study of the camps, key industrialsites for hydro-electric power generation, defence and raw-material production selected due to their significance in the history of immigration and Australian modernisation and capacity to convey their co-dependence, and the later dispersal of new immigrants into manufacturing and service industries at the metropolitan periphery. In doing so the project reveals how labour and domicile environments of refugees shaped Australia internally, highlighting their interaction and competition with other groups. Examples are drawn from the populous southeastern states; recipients of the largest numbers of post-war refugees.