The ‘unwanteds’ and ‘non-compliants’

‘Unsupported mothers’ as ‘failures’ and agents in Australia’s migrant Holding Centres

Dados Bibliográficos

ID12447583
AutoresCatherine Kevin (0000-0001-9615-8774, Flinders University, autor correspondente), K Agutter (0000-0002-5970-4235, The University of Adelaide)
Ano2017
Volume22
Fascículo4
Páginas554-574
Data de publicação2017-05-29
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoThe History of the Family (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1081-602X • E-ISSN: 1873-5398
EditoraTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/1081602x.2017.1302891
OpenAlexW2618927486
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas7
Referências citadas22

Ideas of assimilated citizenship are inherently gendered and during Australia’s post-World War Two migration boom they were deeply and explicitly invested in marriage, children and domesticity. In this period of social conservatism and economic boom, assimilation rhetoric functioned as a reassuring mirror for the host population, promoting the dream of prosperous family life as the ultimate aspiration for refugees and migrants. The role of immigration Holding Centres within this vision was to provide a context in which migrants and refugees could take their first steps towards accomplishing this dream. These Centres of necessary temporary residence were designed as sites of transition towards autonomous, assimilated family life. However, those families headed by single mothers, often referred to in government records as ‘unsupported mothers’, had limited opportunities to live up to such images of assimilation, or even to comply with the economic imperatives of the migration scheme that had brought them to Australia. Based mainly on Department of Immigration records, this article demonstrates that despite recognising the long-term economic and social prospects their children represented, government agencies viewed many unsupported mothers as system failures. They attempted to remedy the situation by turning these women into live-in domestic workers, at times placing pressure on them to institutionalise their children in order to facilitate this, thereby prioritising their compliance with economic imperatives over support for their parenting. Within the limited scope of their agency, unsupported mothers responded by attempting to negotiate the terms of their compliance or simply refusing to comply. For the latter group, Holding Centres became a more permanent home. This permanence is read here as a gendered form of resistance to a system that struggled to foster their economic self-reliance without compromising their capacity to be mothers

Agency (philosophy · Baby boom · Citizenship · Context (archaeology · Economic growth · Economics · Geography · Government (linguistics · Immigration · Political science · Politics · Population · Refugee · Relocation · Residence · Social science · Sociology · Australian History and Society · Law · Migration and Labor Dynamics · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy

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