‘Our most undesirable migrants usually have some redeeming qualities but not Aziz’: character and the politics of integration, 1976–1984

Abstract

This article follows the story of prohibited immigrant Noory Aziz and the long battle between Department of Immigration officials and Tasmanian Liberal MP Michael Hodgman over his residency status. It examines how Hodgman and the Department presented competing narratives around Aziz with each narrative informed by the shifting racial politics and social contexts of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Drawing on the Department’s detailed archival record, it is argued that each contending side in this battle constructed a concept of ‘immigrant’ that represented, on the one hand, the undeserving migrant of poor character and, on the other, the ideal migrant, exemplary of the ‘type’ of immigrant that Australia ought to favour.