Post-war Immigration Research Articles

Emigracja litewska w badaniach etnologicznych na Uniwersytecie Mikołaja Kopernika: kultura litewska w Niemczech powojennych

The research on ethnocultural and ethnopolitical processes in the environment of the Lithuanian post-war immigration and the specific situation that was faced by authors of Lithuanian culture in Germany in the second half of 1940-ies, meet the main direction of research in the Faculty of Historical Sciences of Nicolas Copernicus University, which traditionally has close relations with Lithuania. This article provides an outline of modern Polish historiography on Lithuanian emigration, pointing out works, which both methodologically and factographically are an essential complement, broading the image of “Lithuanian culture in Exile”, which was created by Lithuanian researchers in last decades. Based on existing literature and archival research taken by the author in the Institute of Lithuanian Culture in Germany (Huttenfeld-Lampertheim) author presents outline of the development of Lithuanian art in the camps for displaced persons in Germany, shows the history of creation of the World Union of Lithuanian artists (publishing materials of the First Congress, held in Germany in 1948), the works of the Institute of decorative arts and crafts in Freiburg, which continued the tradition of Kaunas school of art, describes the exhibitions of Lithuanian art, shown in Germany and the main trends in the works of Lithuanian artists, who tried to preserve the values of national culture and were simultaneously integrating Lithuanian art to the European artistic processes in the middle of 20th century.

“Our Gratitude to Our Soldiers”: Military Spouses, Family Re-Unification, and Postwar Immigration Reform

The perceived need to re-unite military families after World War II, initially addressed by ad-hoc war-brides legislation, played a key role in the reformulation of U.S. immigration policy. The large number of military spouses, especially from Asia, pushed policymakers to revise their notions of racial admissibility, thus helping to establish family re-unification as the driving force behind immigration reform. Though unnoticed at the time, the combination of wartime service, patriotism, and marriage formed an inadvertent road map for the family-centric, and ultimately racially neutral, admissions policies that would dominate U.S. immigration law after 1965. The importance of Asian war brides in shaping the contours of U.S. policy stands in even stronger relief when compared to the relative unimportance of the issue in Canada, another major participant in World War II, which also pursued immigration reform during the 1960s.

Holocaust Drama: The Theater of Atrocity (review)

Reviewed by: Holocaust Drama: The Theater of Atrocity Erika Hughes Holocaust Drama: The Theater of Atrocity. By Gene A. Plunka. Cambridge Studies in Modern Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009; pp. vi + 447. $99.00 cloth. Gene Plunka’s Holocaust Drama offers a broad introduction to the genre from which it takes its title. As such, the book covers much ground, dealing with over thirty plays from the United States, Europe, and Israel. Fortunately, Plunka does not race through his material, but, rather, describes each play thoroughly. He buttresses his analysis with performance histories, background information about the playwrights, and critical commentary by scholars of Holocaust theatre and literature, notably Alvin Rosenfeld, Lawrence Langer, Robert Skloot, Christopher Bigsby, and Terrence Des Pres. In this sense, his contribution offers a useful introduction to Holocaust performance and its scholarship. Like most studies of dramatic interpretations of the Holocaust, the book is organized thematically. The fourteen chapters cover a range of topics, which include “Transcending the Holocaust,” “The Holocaust as Literature of the Body,” “Marxism and the Holocaust,” “Survivor Syndrome and the Effects of the Holocaust on Families,” and “The Holocaust and Collective Memory.” The chapters read as standalone essays which avoid jargon and, for the most part, are clearly written. The Holocaust is not a universally understood historical event, and the book’s target audience (readers [End Page 311] in the US and UK) will have certain frames of reference that do not correspond with how the Holocaust is understood in other countries, particularly Germany and Israel. The author acknowledges these cultural differences in his discussion of the plays, yet his analysis frequently focuses on historical and theatrical similarities instead of differences in the ways that the Holocaust experience is remembered worldwide. His examination of Barbara Lebow’s A Shayna Maidel and Ben-Zion Tomer’s Children of the Shadows presents struggles of postwar immigration and assimilation common in both the United States and Israel. Likewise, in “Historical and Moral Responsibility in the Ghettoes,” Plunka draws parallels between playwrights from Israel and the United States who were indirectly affected by the Holocaust and who instead experienced it through stories of relatives and neighbors, Holocaust literature, and formal interviews with survivors. In his introduction, Plunka notes the large number of plays about the Holocaust: one of his sources records “257 Holocaust plays written through to 1997” (18). He therefore limits his analysis to “those plays written about Nazi genocide conducted between 1933 and 1945,” and of these, “the most salient plays of the last half of the twentieth century” (18). The American plays discussed include many well-known works, such as Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett’s The Diary of Anne Frank, Arthur Miller’s Incident at Vichy, Tony Kushner’s A Bright Room Called Day, and Martin Sherman’s Bent. Similarly, German examples include such oft-discussed plays as The Investigation by Peter Weiss, Nelly Sachs’s Eli, and Erwin Sylvanus’s Dr. Korczak and the Children. Plunka also deals with a number of French plays, such as Charlotte Delbo’s Who Will Carry the Word? and two that were new to this reviewer, Michel Vinaver’s Overboard and Gilles Ségal’s All the Tricks but One. Holocaust Drama also includes notable Israeli plays such as Motti Lerner’s Kastner and two of the three plays in Joshua Sobol’s Ghetto Triptych, Adam and Ghetto, among others. For those not familiar with Michael Taub’s anthology Israeli Holocaust Drama, this book will serve as an important introduction to this aspect of Israeli theatre, which asks its audience some of the most difficult questions regarding the Holocaust—questions about responsibility and individual choices—of any of the theatrical cultures discussed herein. Plunka rightly notes that, in Sobol and Tomer, the Israeli theatre has a tradition of innovation with respect to form (269). He also succeeds in describing the complicated ways in which German and Israeli audiences have received the stagings of their difficult Holocaust legacies, charting the controversies surrounding productions like Rolf Hochhuth’s The Deputy and Sobol’s Ghetto. Absent from Plunka’s study are unpublished works, performance pieces, and dramas deemed “minor” (18), as well as plays written for young...

Colonial legacy of ethno-racial inequality in Japan

This essay challenges anti-historicist accounts that sever the link between the colonial past and present, replacing them with a more historically nuanced understanding of Japan’s immigration policies and their relation to ethno-racial inequality. Contrary to the dominant view that transnational immigration is new to Japan, this article shows that Japan already had a history of immigration in the early twentieth century, and this history generated a lasting impact on postwar immigration policies and their integration. While recognizing the impact of structural and individual factors, this essay underscores a path-dependent approach that demonstrates how colonial exclusion led to the formation of a durable structure of inequality against low skilled labor immigrants, and thus how such a colonial legacy has continued to limit the life chances and integration of subsequent immigrants in Japan since the 1980s.

Canada's 1960s: the ironies of identity in a rebellious era

Rebellious youth, the Cold War, New Left radicalism, Pierre Trudeau, Red Power, Quebec's call for Revolution, Marshall McLuhan: these are just some of the major forces and figures that come to mind at the slightest mention of the 1960s in Canada. Focusing on the major movements and personalities of the time, as well as the lasting influence of the period, Canada's 1960s examines the legacy of this rebellious decade's impact on contemporary notions of Canadian identity. Bryan D. Palmer demonstrates how after massive postwar immigration, new political movements, and at times violent protest, Canada could no longer be viewed in the old ways. National identity, long rooted in notions of Canada as a white settler Dominion of the North, marked profoundly by its origins as part of the British Empire, had become unsettled. Concerned with how Canadians entered the Sixties relatively secure in their national identities, Palmer explores the forces that contributed to the post-1970 uncertainty about what it is to be Canadian. Tracing the significance of dissent and upheaval among youth, trade unionists, university students, Native peoples, and Quebecois, Palmer shows how the Sixties ended the entrenched, nineteenth-century notions of Canada. The irony of this rebellious era, however, was that while it promised so much in the way of change, it failed to provide a new understanding of Canadian national identity. A compelling and highly accessible work of interpretive history, Canada's 1960s is the book of the decade about an era many regard as the most turbulent and significant since the years of the Great Depression and World War II.

Remembering Bonegilla: The Construction of a Public Memory Place at Block 19

This article traces the emergence of Block 19 Bonegilla as a heritage site. I examine shifts in official heritage value through three different heritage listings. I indicate how agencies, like the Bonegilla Steering Committee of which I am a member, are going about the task of interpreting the site using official, staff, resident and host society recall to explain the significance of the place. Disparate sources yield different insights into refugee and migrant arrival experiences, and we are trying to unravel the mix of stories that arise in a place that draws on living memory. We want to address host society experiences of post-war immigration. We want to attract and engage visitors. Such interpretation and presentation tasks involve us in constructing a public memory place.

The Jarring Irish: Postwar Immigration to the Heart of Empire

In 1948, as citizens of Birmingham and London attempted to recover from the destructive effects of World War Two, they were perhaps unaware that another barrage was about to be unleashed upon them, this time in the shape of migrants rather than bombs. As commonwealth and Irish migrants streamed into postwar England, they instigated enduring tensions around issues of citizenship, housing, and employment, which irrevocably altered the makeup of the nation in the process. Mostly poor workers from Ireland, the Caribbean and South Asia, these migrants were welcomed bluntly with signs stating, “No Blacks, no dogs, no Irish.” My study of the experiences of white and non-white immigrants in this period aims to add to existing political analyses with a sociocultural exploration of migrants' adaptations to life in post-imperial Britain. By analyzing the Irish experience as well as those of non-white immigrants, I attempt to fragment monolithic assumptions of a singular “whiteness,” which implies that Irish migrants adapted in postwar British society free of the ethnic tensions that other migrants endured.

Retelling Modern European Religious History: Postwar Immigration and the Alternative Narrative of Presence

AbstractThe rise of the secularization thesis in the 1960s resulted in secularization becoming the dominant narrative theme in most scholarly accounts of modern European religious history. In the past few decades, sociologists and historians have increasingly challenged the secularization thesis, but less energy has been devoted to devising an alternative to the secularization narrative. Philip Jenkins's Future of Christianity trilogy offers historians something new in this regard, though it also contains plenty of the old. While the first two books largely reiterate the traditional secularization narrative by focusing on the absence of old-stock Europeans from churches, the third book focuses more on the growing presence of vibrant Muslim and Christian immigrant communities in postwar Europe, a presence that has stimulated significant political and cultural debates concerning the place of religion in Europe's past, present, and future.

Navigating Globalization: Immigration Policy in Canada and Australia, 1945–20071

Scholarship on immigration and globalization has failed to adequately analyze the nation‐state’s regulatory capacities, insisting instead that contemporary patterns of migration jeopardize national sovereignty and territoriality. While recognized that states possess the legitimate authority to control their territorial and membership boundaries, recent transformations of these capacities remain largely unanalyzed. This article’s historical analysis of Australia and Canada’s postwar immigration policies demonstrates that the contours of state regulation are intimately connected to the exigencies of state administration and nation building and—in contrast to the expectations of dominant theories—have intensified and expanded within the globalization context. The literature’s inattention to the fundamentally political nature of immigration has obscured the critical effects of national policies within both the migratory and globalization process. Australia’s and Canada’s contemporary policies constitute a unique model of migration control and reflect attempts by both countries to strategically position their societies within the global system and resolve a number of economic, political, cultural, and demographic transitions associated with globalization.

Between Global Norms and Domestic Institutions: Postwar Immigration Policy-making in Canada and the United States

Between Global Norms and Domestic Institutions: Postwar Immigration Policy-making in Canada and the United States

“From Wharfie Haunt to Foodie Haven”

In the first half of the twentieth century, indeed until the 1960s, dining out was unusual for ordinary Australians, saved for special occasions when they ate in the dining room of the local hotel. This formal and conventional style of dining provided utterly predictable food in surroundings that emphasized the specialness of the occasion and the status of the diners, rather than the imaginative quality of the food. Pubs also provided cheap food at the counter, to customers drinking at the bar. This had all changed by the end of the twentieth century, as pub dining rooms became restaurants, catering to the pleasures of modern urban life, offering adventure, fantasy and the lure of the exotic. This paper traces this transformation and argues that the change in pub food culture was a feature of modernity and universalizing US capitalism, not a consequence of postwar immigration but a business enterprise in which Europeanness featured as an alternative to Americanness. In this, the transformation of pub licensing laws was a crucial catalyst.

Plain Fare to Fusion: Ethnic Impacts on the Process of Maturity in Brisbane's Restaurant Sector

This article continues the advocacy themes of recent hospitality research, which promote an interdisciplinary approach. This embraces the culinary arts, broader humanities disciplines and media studies, among others, and might complement the dominant technical and business discourse apparent in hospitality management and food and beverage operations education and practice. Drawing on some of these alternative approaches, this article explores the historical development of an ethnically diverse contemporary restaurant scene in Queensland's capital city, Brisbane, Australia. It is argued that consumer demand has been the primary driver of this apparent culinary diversity. On the other hand, the proposition that this phenomenon of culinary diversity in Brisbane restaurants is attributable to colonial ethnic enclaves and the postwar immigration boom is critically appraised. This article's contribution is that it recognises, within this Queensland perspective, that market forces can be identified by, and the hospitality sector might benefit from, fields of endeavour beyond a business management framework.

Constructions of whiteness: latvian women workers in post-war britain

This article examines the ways in which Latvian women recruited by Britain as ‘volunteer’ workers in 1946 were constructed by the state as superior to other female economic migrants entering the United Kingdom at the same time. It draws on the notion of the ‘wages of whiteness’ to show how the British state defined Latvians as superior to Caribbean women but also argues that whiteness itself is a multiple construct as Irish and Latvian women–both white–found themselves differentially positioned in the gender and ethnic division of labor developing in post-war Britain. Based on interviews with 25 now elderly Latvian women, the article adds personal testimonies to Paul's (Paul, K. (1997) Whitewashing Britain: Race and Citizenship in the Postwar Era (Ithaca, New York, Cornell University Press)) arguments about the significance of skin color vis-à-vis citizenship in post-war British immigration policy.

‘They More or Less Blended in with Society’: Changing Attitudes to European Migrant Workers in Post-war Lancashire

European volunteer workers have received comparatively little attention in the history of British post-war immigration, with greater coverage given to, for example, demobilised members of the Polish Resettlement Corps. This paper is based upon oral history interviews with a group of European immigrants, predominantly European volunteer workers, and local Lancastrians who started work in the Lancashire cotton industry between 1946 and 1951, and examines perceptions of how they integrated into British life in a variety of domains. The paper emphasises that ‘blending-in’ was context-dependent, with a sense of being welcomed and fitting-in applying to certain domains and in certain situations but not necessarily in others. It argues that migration fosters particular cultural attitudes and practices amongst both migrants and hosts as social identities are produced and reproduced, changed and challenged.

Imperial Rhodesians: The 1953 Rhodes Centenary Exhibition in Southern Rhodesia

Reviewing the Rhodes Centenary Exhibition (RCE) of 1953, this article focuses on three interrelated themes in post-war Southern Rhodesia. First, significant post-war immigration challenged the state to educate new white Rhodesians on the founding myths of the colony, especially that of Cecil John Rhodes. Secondly, Southern Rhodesians were anxious to emphasise their status as British subjects in contrast to Afrikaner nationalism in South Africa. And finally, a rising and vocal black middle class challenged the state to adjust its national narrative to include blacks in the social process. The RCE spoke to all of these concerns by highlighting Rhodes and the British Royal family as central to a Southern Rhodesian identity that all races could share. Importantly, the black middle class had long embraced Rhodes's notion of ‘equal rights for all civilised men’ as their entryway into colonial society. At the RCE itself, the ‘African Village’ showcased African achievement in the arts as a noble contribution to the country. Taken together, the RCE's emphasis on Rhodes and royalty, as well as the focus on African contributions to culture, marked Southern Rhodesia as distinct from apartheid South Africa.

THE ET INTERVIEW: PROFESSOR JAN KMENTA

Jan Kmenta is the author of the internationally respected text The Elements of Econometrics [1] and co-editor of several books related to econometric model building. His published research over 40 years relates to many facets of econometric theory and practice, including the estimation of production functions, the evaluation of structural econometric models, and estimation in the face of missing data. This work has appeared in the leading journals of the profession. A 1966 paper [11] is of historical interest for being the second econometric model constructed of the Australian economy. In his work, through both constructive contributions and methodological critique, he has always sought to highlight and advance the evidently close connection between economics and econometrics.Kmenta was born on January 3, 1928, in Prague, the Czech Republic. He was educated at the Jirasek State Gymnasium in Prague (1939–47) and the Czech University of Technology in Prague (1947–49). At the University of Sydney (1952–55), Australia, he graduated with a Bachelor of Economics degree (First Class Honors). He obtained a Master of Arts degree (1959) and a Doctor of Philosophy degree (1964) from Stanford University with a doctoral dissertation entitled “Australian Postwar Immigration: An Econometric Study.” After teaching stints in Australia, Stanford, and Wisconsin, he taught at Michigan State from 1965 to 1973 and at the University of Michigan from 1973 to 1993. He is currently Professor Emeritus of Economics and Statistics, University of Michigan, and Visiting Professor, CERGE-EI, Charles University, Prague.His various academic awards and prizes include the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Award for Senior U.S. Scientists, the Michigan Economic Society Best Professor Award, the Royal Economic Society Lecturer at the University of Leicester, and the Karel Englis Medal of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Saarland, Germany, and served as associate editor, Journal of the American Statistical Association (1973–1979 and 1985–1992), associate editor, Review of Economics and Statistics (1975–1992), and associate editor, Metrika (1981–1985). Kmenta was listed as 40th among all economists ranked by the total number of citations (Medoff 1989).This is an edited transcript of two tape-recorded interviews conducted with Professor Kmenta in Sydney on March 12, 2004, as he visited the University of New South Wales to present the seminar Econometrics: A Failed Science? I am indebted to one of Kmenta's former students, Eric Sowey, for suggesting this project and for his enthusiasm and support throughout.

Enacting cultural diversity through multicultural radio in Australia

Australia is second only to Israel in being the world’s most culturally diverse nation, based largely on high levels of immigration in the second part of the 20th century. From the 1970s onwards, Australia formally recognized the massive social changes brought about by postwar immigration, and provided legislation to incorporate cultural diversity into everyday lives. One such ‘legislative’ enactment saw the establishment of multicultural broadcasting in Australia, as arguably a world-first, both in its comprehensiveness and diversity. Today, Australia has a public sector corporation, the Special Broadcasting Service, administering five radio services in 68 languages. Also, the Community Radio sector produces multicultural programming in 100 languages through a number of its 330 broadcast and 207 narrowcast stations. This article examines the relationship between radio and its communities. It argues that despite the ‘profile’ of SBS television, radio is much closer to its constituent communities, and therefore plays a greater role in enabling those communities to speak their own histories, beyond the confines of a consensual Anglophile paradigm.

Should the U.S. Have Locked the Heaven's Door? Reassessing the Benefits of the Postwar Immigration

This paper examines the economic impact of the second great immigration wave (1945-2000) on the US economy. Contrary to recent studies, we estimate that immigration induced important net gains and small redistributive effects among natives. Our analysis relies on a computable general equilibrium model combining the major interactions between immigrants and natives (labor market impact, fiscal impact, capital deepening, endogenous education, endogenous inequality). We use a backsolving method to calibrate the model on historical data and then consider two counterfactual variants: a cutoff of all immigration flows since 1950 and a stronger selection policy. According to our simulations, the postwar US immigration is beneficial for all cohorts and all skill groups. These gains are closely related to a long-run fiscal gain and a small labor market impact of immigrants. Finally, we also demonstrate that all generations would have benefited from a stronger selection of immigrants.

Open borders: the case against immigration controls

This work assesses the impact of the increasing severity of border controls since they were first introduced and makes the controversial case for their abolition. It focuses on postwar immigration controls, especially the use of such controls against the peoples of former European colonies and East Europeans, and their effects on asylum seekers. It examines the recent history of European coordination of border controls and the notion of Fortress Europe. Hayter argues that the existence of controls leads to great suffering and abuse of human rights, and that immigration controls are racist and help legitimate racism. She also shows that immigration controls have actually had a limited impact on controlling numbers. To illustrate her arguments, she draws on empirical material, especially from Britain in the 1980s and 1990s, relating in particular to the use of detention, arbitrary decision-making and the denial of benefits. She compares British government policies with policies elsewhere in Europe and calls for the free movement of people and the abolition of border controls.

Nexus: Cultures, Pluralism and Globalization

Ever since the 1951 Report of the Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences (the Massey Commission), the term culture has taken on an ever-increasing range of meanings.1 The Massey commissioners thought of culture largely in terms of the traditional highbrow visual and performing arts activities and serious literature. They were concerned with the threat posed to these activities by an increasingly all-pervasive American lowbrow popular culture reaching Canadians via radio, television and the print media. In their pursuit of a liberal humanistic democratic society, the commissioners urged the government to nurture the expansion of highbrow cultures, francophone and anglophone. The government responded, somewhat belatedly and in a piecemeal fashion, to the commissioners' many recommendations, but their intended goal of state-funded educational and uplifting cultural programmes was never fully implemented nor achieved in the way they had envisaged. Why? largely because Canadians, in a society transformed dramatically by new information and communication technologies, extensive post-war immigration, and rapidly changing social values and norms of behaviour, came to perceive and experience cultures) in ways completely unforeseen by the Massey commissioners. Canadians debate and experience cultural pluralism, including traditional highbrow visual and performing arts, all matter of popular cultures, youth countercultures, corporate and business cultures, political cultures, family cultures, religious cultures, etc. constructions, deconstructions and reconstructions of past, present and future are intimately related to the expanding pluralist nature of the various communities - family, local, regional, national and international - that we adopt, inhabit, alter and often abandon for other cultural experiences. Cultural expression, in the words of James Marsh and Jocelyn Harvey, more and more bound up with the development of cultural industries, which play a key role not only in disseminating works, but in forming the way in which the culture itself is perceived.2 It is the various challenges posed by the commercialization of cultures and the nexus of connections inherent in this tension-ridden environment of cultural pluralism that this seemingly eclectic collection of essays explores. What these essays do share is a common belief that cultures, however defined, experienced and turned to commercial ends, matter. They matter because cultures and everything they represent remain central to shared human experience. The construction of a tradition of literary classics and national literary icons has been a long and arduous task for the literary and publishing establishments. This process was aided and abetted greatly by L.M. Montgomery's immensely popular 1908 novel, Anne of Green Gables. Cecily Devereux analyzes how and why the nationalism of our Anne of Green Gables was immediately, and continually to this day, transformed from a Canadian Classic into a highly lucrative commodity export. The American, British, Australian and Japanese publishing establishments appropriated Anne of Green Gables into their respective national and nationalist discourses of children's literature, theatre and films. Canada's quintessentially British-Canadian Anne of Green Gables was reconstructed into very different American, British, Australian and Japanese Annes of Green Gables. If sizeable profits were to be had in the process, and they most certainly were and are, then so much the better! Devereux is drawn to conclude that Anne's circulation as a 'commodity' may well thus serve as an index not of difference at all - local, national or global - but of a fundamental ideological sameness in the representation and in the narratives of national identity. National values and themes managed to trump universal values and themes underlying our Anne because these are so much easier to communicate and commercialize. …