Italians in Australia: Building a Multicultural Society on the Pacific Rim

Abstract

The mass migrations of the last half century have taken many forms: population movements resulting from decolonization; temporary labor migration; family reunion; refugee movements; and professional mobility within transnational corporations. Often these types have been linked, and clear distinctions have been impossible. For all their differences, the migrations of the last half century are the result of global processes of economic and social change: concentration of production and development of new industrial areas; global integration of markets for finance, commodities, and labor, incorporation of previously peripheral areas into the mainstream of the world economy. In the early 1970s, many observers believed that capital movements within the “new international division of labor” would make labor migration obsolete. There is no sign that this is happening: migration remains as important as ever, though the directions and forms have changed.