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‘Healthy Types of Young Danes’: Australia's Unwilling Post‐War Migrants
Author(s) -
Kristensen Jeppe
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
history compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.121
H-Index - 1
ISSN - 1478-0542
DOI - 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2004.00083.x
Subject(s) - immigration , danish , context (archaeology) , world war ii , white (mutation) , haven , mythology , immigration policy , government (linguistics) , political science , safe haven , welfare state , spanish civil war , preference , white paper , history , politics , law , economics , international economics , philosophy , linguistics , biochemistry , chemistry , mathematics , archaeology , combinatorics , gene , microeconomics , classics
Following the Second World War the Chifley government initiated an ambitious new immigration programme, which would dramatically alter the make‐up of Australian society. This article focuses on the initial Australian preference for white‐skinned migrants from Scandinavia, and the response of one of those countries – Denmark – to the Australian recruiting drive. It examines the official Danish resistance to Australian migration initiatives, and the way in which Australia was portrayed in Denmark. It is argued that the migrant issue went further than economic opportunity, and can be understood in terms of a discursive clash between dominant national myths in the respective countries – with Australia as a natural haven for energetic, opportunity‐seeking Europeans, and Denmark as a humane, sophisticated welfare state that took care of its citizens from cradle to grave. Understanding how alternative, non‐British sources of white immigration dried up in the post‐war era is a hitherto neglected context for understanding Australia's gradual retreat from the ‘white Australia’ immigration policy.