Settlement and Migration

Beginning with the colonization event in 1788 and then moving through the arrival of free settlers in the nineteenth century, this chapter considers how the British and then colonial governments sutured themselves into the space that became Australia. It explores key cultural and political events that created a sense of belonging for non-Indigenous peoples at this time. The chapter then explains how policies and practices that marked out the limits of migrant belonging have worked, focusing on the migration of groups who were understood as marginal to the nation. Again, emphasis is placed on the range of ideas, events, demands, and desires about migration that complicated policies and practices that clearly sought to produce a white Australia. Lastly, the analysis in this chapter locates migration in relation to the spatial, focusing on how migration and settlement practices were shaped in terms of political and everyday understandings of Australia in relation to: first, other countries in the region, especially Asia; second, the ‘mother country’, the United Kingdom; and finally, the Indigenous peoples within the country.