Strands of Diaspora: The Resettlement Experience of Jewish Immigrants to Australia

Abstract

While in contemporary usage the term ‘diaspora’ is often construed to denote any deterritorialised or transnational population, it most meaningfully refers to dispersal and resettlement of a population elsewhere. Jews are a prime example of such a diaspora. While in the Australian context, Jewish immigrants have many of the middle class and disproportionately professional occupational backgrounds of transnationals, most Australian Jewish immigrants seek permanent resettlement. The surge of Jewish migrants in the past half century has produced a people less assimilated than integrated, part of Australia’s economic, political and social life while conscious of themselves as a community bound together by a common religious tradition, with Zionism — support for Israel — an important element of their lived experience and of the diasporic tradition.