The aim of this chapter is to look at Asian migration and Australian immigration policy in their international context. Labour migration, settlement and the development of multicultural societies since 1945 are global phenomena. Migratory patterns have changed in the period of economic restructuring and “internationalization” that started in the 1970s, giving rise to the so-called “new” migration. The specific form of economic restructuring in Australia, and the way this has affected migration, settlement and “multiculturalism” will be examined. The increasing economic and political importance of the Asian region for Australia in the 1970s and 1980s made it impossible to sustain overtly racist national boundaries, leading to a shift from the White Australia policy to a non-discriminatory entry system. But this process has been contradictory, giving rise to a new type of racism in the mid-1980s. To appreciate the nature and significance of these changes it is necessary to first outline the international and historical developments which preceded them.

THE CHANGING WORLD SCENE

Colonialism, Industrialization and Labour Migration

Within the political economy of capitalist development, migration of people has always been a necessary complement to movements of capital, raw materials and manufactured commodities. This applies not only to the movement of workers to the new factory towns after the European industrial revolutions but, even earlier, to the mobilization of labour in the colonies. Settlers from Spain, Portugal, Britain, France and the Netherlands brought in workers from other countries or even other continents to build ports and roads and work in their plantations in America, Africa and Asia. Typically, migrant workers have been subjected to special forms of exploitation: slavery, indenture, forced labour, racial discrimination, contract labour, and inferior socio-economic and legal status.

Slavery in the West Indies and America was a major source of capital accumulation for Western Europe, making possible industrial revolutions, which in turn soon started to utilize migrant workers: the Irish in Britain, Poles and Italians in Germany and France.