Ruth Balint
Biographic Data
| ID | 376072 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ruth Balint |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ruth |
| FAMILY NAME | Balint |
| SIGNATURE | BALINT R |
| AFFILIATIONS | UNSW Sydney |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7592-3449 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 22 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 18 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
The Jewish Refugee Family and Concerns Over Intermarriage in Australia After 1945
Intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews was conceptualized as a ‘problem’ by the Australian Jewish establishment after the Second World War. From the Displaced Persons camps in Europe to resettlement in Australia, norms and expectations imposed by migration and welfare agencies, policymakers, and community leaders shaped the family as a site of control, anxiety, and expectation. The exclusion of intermarried families from visa support by Jewish r…
Destination Elsewhere
This book chronicles encounters between displaced persons in Europe and the Allied agencies who were tasked with caring for them after the Second World War. The struggle to define who was a displaced person and who was not was a subject of intense debate and deliberation among humanitarians, international law experts, immigration planners, and governments. What has not adequately been recognized is that displaced persons also actively participate…
White Russians, Red Peril
White Russians, Red Peril: A Cold War History of Migration to Australia." Australian Historical Studies, 52(4), pp. 654–655
Destination Elsewhere
This book examines the efforts and experiences of displaced persons after the Second World War to leave Europe for resettlement through the International Refugee Organisation, and the creation of new categories of legitimacy for refugees as immigrants in this period
Before Australia
In 1945, tens of thousands of Russian and Russian-speaking Jewish refugees were in China. Many had come decades earlier, following the Bolshevik revolution, the rout of anti-Bolshevik armies in 1919–20 and the White Russian defeat in Siberia in 1922. At war’s end, they became part of the large cohort of European refugees in the Far East, displaced by National Socialism and then by Communism, who urgently sought resettlement in the West. A signifi…
Histories of Migrants and Refugees in Australia
This article canvasses recent scholarship on migrants and refugees in Australian history. It covers broadly three main fields of enquiry: White Australia, postwar immigration and refugees since the Vietnam War. We argue there is a new dynamism to the field while simultaneously making the case that migrant and refugee history has hitherto been largely quarantined from mainstream Australian historiography
Alexander and Anastayzia
In 1949, the child search branch of the International Tracing Service, set up after the war by the Red Cross and the Allies, began a search for the mother of a four year old boy, born to a forced labourer and left at a hospital in Rottenmunster at 8 months old. His file records first his abandonment, then his mother's strong resistance to external pressure to sign his adoption papers. His later attempts to trace his mother is also recorded. Taken…
Children Left Behind
In 1950, a welfare report by the IRO (International Refugee Organisation) in Austria recorded the particulars of Julia Alexenko, a displaced person, and her six-year-old daughter. Julia had been doing forced labour when her daughter was born, and the father had disappeared under the Soviets and not been heard from since. Now facing the imminent closure of the DP camps, she desperately sought asylum and resettlement in the West. But as the IRO med…
To reunite the dispersed family’
The mass immigration of displaced persons (DPs) to Australia after the Second World War generated thousands of enquiries both to and from Australia of people searching for the fate of their family members. The Australian Red Cross tracing service often became the only means of communication for many families divided by the Cold War. This article examines the case files of Red Cross tracing enquiries for what they can reveal of the experiences of …
Industry and Sunshine
Australia’s Displaced Persons Program attracted over 180,000 migrant-labourers to Australia between 1947 and 1952. Official and popular memory remembers the scheme as evidence of Australia’s attraction as a country of salvation and new beginnings, and an escape route from the wartime devastation and postwar Communist perils of Europe. But competition with other resettlement nations with stronger profiles and a distinct lack of interest from a sub…
The idea of home in postwar Australia
the violence of deprivation, of dispossession and of exile. In the postwar period, as the population diversified and successive governments redefined Australia’s place in the world, the ideas of both ‘nation’ and ‘home’ were infused with new meanings and challenges. During the war, Australia had been forced to confront the reality of its distance from Britain and the fragility of its relationship to the mother country. This was the backdrop and i…
Aboriginal Women and Asian Men
In 1901, Broome—a port town on the northwest edge of the Australian continent—was one of the principal and most lucrative industrial pearling centers in the world and entirely dependent on Asian indentured labor. Relations between Asian crews and local Aboriginal people were strong, at a time when the project of White Australia was being pursued with vigorous, often fanatical dedication across the newly federated continent. It was the policing of…
Soft Histories
This article examines the series of publicly funded and ABC-screened history documentaries produced by the Making History initiative since 2005, and the social, economic and cultural conditions of their creation. I argue that the final products of Making History represent an impoverished vision of history and an ideological bias reflective of the wider politics of government funding and commissioning. This article contends that a lack of accounta…
Remembering Balibo
The ties that bind
Balint examines the current case of Károly Zentai, an Australian wanted for war crimes in Hungary, his country of origin. She explores the evidence for his extradition, the broader historical context of the Zentai case, from 1944 until the present day, and its implications for historical understanding in Hungary and Australia. In the former, the complicity of the state in the Holocaust remains subject to historical denial, drowned out by the domi…
The Somerton Man
The case of the unknown man who died mysteriously at Somerton Beach in South Australia in 1948 remains an open police investigation, although the trail today has grown fairly cold. Revisiting the case, and the responses the mystery of his person have elicited, enables a special historical insight into Australia's postwar society, and the ways in which the past is continually reshaped by the subjectivities of the present. Further, an unsolved case…
Troubled Waters
Joint winner of the Australian/Vogel's Literary Award 2003...Troubled Waters tells the story of Australia's northern waters and their dramatic transformation in the twentieth century from a backwater to the most militarised and fiercely guarded region in Australia. Once a bridge between two coastlines and two cultures, the Timor Sea has become, in the last years of the twentieth century, the nation's frontline against the threat of invasion...Whe…
The last frontier
(1999). The last frontier: Australia's maritime territories and the policing of Indonesian fishermen. Journal of Australian Studies: Vol. 23, Writing Australia: New Talents 21C, pp. 30-39
Histories of Migrants and Refugees in Australia
This article canvasses recent scholarship on migrants and refugees in Australian history. It covers broadly three main fields of enquiry: White Australia, postwar immigration and refugees since the Vietnam War. We argue there is a new dynamism to the field while simultaneously making the case that migrant and refugee history has hitherto been largely quarantined from mainstream Australian historiography
Children Left Behind
In 1950, a welfare report by the IRO (International Refugee Organisation) in Austria recorded the particulars of Julia Alexenko, a displaced person, and her six-year-old daughter. Julia had been doing forced labour when her daughter was born, and the father had disappeared under the Soviets and not been heard from since. Now facing the imminent closure of the DP camps, she desperately sought asylum and resettlement in the West. But as the IRO med…
Industry and Sunshine
Australia’s Displaced Persons Program attracted over 180,000 migrant-labourers to Australia between 1947 and 1952. Official and popular memory remembers the scheme as evidence of Australia’s attraction as a country of salvation and new beginnings, and an escape route from the wartime devastation and postwar Communist perils of Europe. But competition with other resettlement nations with stronger profiles and a distinct lack of interest from a sub…
Destination Elsewhere
This book examines the efforts and experiences of displaced persons after the Second World War to leave Europe for resettlement through the International Refugee Organisation, and the creation of new categories of legitimacy for refugees as immigrants in this period
To reunite the dispersed family’
The mass immigration of displaced persons (DPs) to Australia after the Second World War generated thousands of enquiries both to and from Australia of people searching for the fate of their family members. The Australian Red Cross tracing service often became the only means of communication for many families divided by the Cold War. This article examines the case files of Red Cross tracing enquiries for what they can reveal of the experiences of …
Aboriginal Women and Asian Men
In 1901, Broome—a port town on the northwest edge of the Australian continent—was one of the principal and most lucrative industrial pearling centers in the world and entirely dependent on Asian indentured labor. Relations between Asian crews and local Aboriginal people were strong, at a time when the project of White Australia was being pursued with vigorous, often fanatical dedication across the newly federated continent. It was the policing of…
The last frontier
(1999). The last frontier: Australia's maritime territories and the policing of Indonesian fishermen. Journal of Australian Studies: Vol. 23, Writing Australia: New Talents 21C, pp. 30-39
The ties that bind
Balint examines the current case of Károly Zentai, an Australian wanted for war crimes in Hungary, his country of origin. She explores the evidence for his extradition, the broader historical context of the Zentai case, from 1944 until the present day, and its implications for historical understanding in Hungary and Australia. In the former, the complicity of the state in the Holocaust remains subject to historical denial, drowned out by the domi…
The last frontier
(1999). The last frontier: Australia's maritime territories and the policing of Indonesian fishermen. Journal of Australian Studies: Vol. 23, Writing Australia: New Talents 21C, pp. 30-39
Troubled Waters
Joint winner of the Australian/Vogel's Literary Award 2003...Troubled Waters tells the story of Australia's northern waters and their dramatic transformation in the twentieth century from a backwater to the most militarised and fiercely guarded region in Australia. Once a bridge between two coastlines and two cultures, the Timor Sea has become, in the last years of the twentieth century, the nation's frontline against the threat of invasion...Whe…
Remembering Balibo
The ties that bind
Balint examines the current case of Károly Zentai, an Australian wanted for war crimes in Hungary, his country of origin. She explores the evidence for his extradition, the broader historical context of the Zentai case, from 1944 until the present day, and its implications for historical understanding in Hungary and Australia. In the former, the complicity of the state in the Holocaust remains subject to historical denial, drowned out by the domi…
The Somerton Man
The case of the unknown man who died mysteriously at Somerton Beach in South Australia in 1948 remains an open police investigation, although the trail today has grown fairly cold. Revisiting the case, and the responses the mystery of his person have elicited, enables a special historical insight into Australia's postwar society, and the ways in which the past is continually reshaped by the subjectivities of the present. Further, an unsolved case…
Soft Histories
This article examines the series of publicly funded and ABC-screened history documentaries produced by the Making History initiative since 2005, and the social, economic and cultural conditions of their creation. I argue that the final products of Making History represent an impoverished vision of history and an ideological bias reflective of the wider politics of government funding and commissioning. This article contends that a lack of accounta…
Aboriginal Women and Asian Men
In 1901, Broome—a port town on the northwest edge of the Australian continent—was one of the principal and most lucrative industrial pearling centers in the world and entirely dependent on Asian indentured labor. Relations between Asian crews and local Aboriginal people were strong, at a time when the project of White Australia was being pursued with vigorous, often fanatical dedication across the newly federated continent. It was the policing of…
Industry and Sunshine
Australia’s Displaced Persons Program attracted over 180,000 migrant-labourers to Australia between 1947 and 1952. Official and popular memory remembers the scheme as evidence of Australia’s attraction as a country of salvation and new beginnings, and an escape route from the wartime devastation and postwar Communist perils of Europe. But competition with other resettlement nations with stronger profiles and a distinct lack of interest from a sub…
The idea of home in postwar Australia
the violence of deprivation, of dispossession and of exile. In the postwar period, as the population diversified and successive governments redefined Australia’s place in the world, the ideas of both ‘nation’ and ‘home’ were infused with new meanings and challenges. During the war, Australia had been forced to confront the reality of its distance from Britain and the fragility of its relationship to the mother country. This was the backdrop and i…
To reunite the dispersed family’
The mass immigration of displaced persons (DPs) to Australia after the Second World War generated thousands of enquiries both to and from Australia of people searching for the fate of their family members. The Australian Red Cross tracing service often became the only means of communication for many families divided by the Cold War. This article examines the case files of Red Cross tracing enquiries for what they can reveal of the experiences of …
Children Left Behind
In 1950, a welfare report by the IRO (International Refugee Organisation) in Austria recorded the particulars of Julia Alexenko, a displaced person, and her six-year-old daughter. Julia had been doing forced labour when her daughter was born, and the father had disappeared under the Soviets and not been heard from since. Now facing the imminent closure of the DP camps, she desperately sought asylum and resettlement in the West. But as the IRO med…
Alexander and Anastayzia
In 1949, the child search branch of the International Tracing Service, set up after the war by the Red Cross and the Allies, began a search for the mother of a four year old boy, born to a forced labourer and left at a hospital in Rottenmunster at 8 months old. His file records first his abandonment, then his mother's strong resistance to external pressure to sign his adoption papers. His later attempts to trace his mother is also recorded. Taken…
Histories of Migrants and Refugees in Australia
This article canvasses recent scholarship on migrants and refugees in Australian history. It covers broadly three main fields of enquiry: White Australia, postwar immigration and refugees since the Vietnam War. We argue there is a new dynamism to the field while simultaneously making the case that migrant and refugee history has hitherto been largely quarantined from mainstream Australian historiography
Before Australia
In 1945, tens of thousands of Russian and Russian-speaking Jewish refugees were in China. Many had come decades earlier, following the Bolshevik revolution, the rout of anti-Bolshevik armies in 1919–20 and the White Russian defeat in Siberia in 1922. At war’s end, they became part of the large cohort of European refugees in the Far East, displaced by National Socialism and then by Communism, who urgently sought resettlement in the West. A signifi…
Destination Elsewhere
This book chronicles encounters between displaced persons in Europe and the Allied agencies who were tasked with caring for them after the Second World War. The struggle to define who was a displaced person and who was not was a subject of intense debate and deliberation among humanitarians, international law experts, immigration planners, and governments. What has not adequately been recognized is that displaced persons also actively participate…
White Russians, Red Peril
White Russians, Red Peril: A Cold War History of Migration to Australia." Australian Historical Studies, 52(4), pp. 654–655
Destination Elsewhere
This book examines the efforts and experiences of displaced persons after the Second World War to leave Europe for resettlement through the International Refugee Organisation, and the creation of new categories of legitimacy for refugees as immigrants in this period
The Jewish Refugee Family and Concerns Over Intermarriage in Australia After 1945
Intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews was conceptualized as a ‘problem’ by the Australian Jewish establishment after the Second World War. From the Displaced Persons camps in Europe to resettlement in Australia, norms and expectations imposed by migration and welfare agencies, policymakers, and community leaders shaped the family as a site of control, anxiety, and expectation. The exclusion of intermarried families from visa support by Jewish r…
Political science (15 works) · History (13 works) · Law (12 works) · History (11 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Australian History and Society (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Politics (7 works) · Refugee (6 works) · Economic history (5 works)