Croatians In Australia

Ilija Sutalo has given us a detailed and fascinating insight into Croatian settlers from the 1800s to the present, the likes of which has never before been attempted. Yet Croatians have been here for 150 years, and, by the 1930s, were well organised and conscious of their heritage. A people without whom Australia could not have developed and grown.

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Val Colic-Peisker harnesses concepts and theories from sociology, anthropology, and political science to compare the vastly different experiences of two Croatian immigrant cohorts in the city of Perth, Western Australia. The populations explored represent an earlier group of working-class migrants arriving from communist Yugoslavia from the 1950s to 1970s and a later group of urban professionals arriving in the 1980s and 1990s as 'independent' or skills-based migrants. This latter group integrated into professional ranks but also used their Australian experience as a stepping stone in becoming part of a highly mobile global professional middle class. Employing a refined theoretical analysis, this rich ethnography challenges the domination of the ethnic perspective in migration studies and the idea of ethnic community itself. It emphasizes the importance of class, focusing on the intersection of class, ethnicity, and gender in the process of migration, migrant incorporation, and transnationalism. In theorizing the connection of the two migrant cohorts with their native Croatia, the study introduces concepts of "ethnic" and "cosmopolitan" transnationalism as two distinctive experiences mediated by class.

Australia is one of the most ethnically diverse societies in the world today. From its ancient indigenous origins to British colonisation followed by waves of European then international migration in the twentieth century, the island continent is home to people from all over the globe. Each new wave of settlers has had a profound impact on Australian society and culture. The Australian People documents the dramatic history of Australian settlement and describes the rich ethnic and cultural inheritance of the nation through the contributions of its people. It is one of the largest reference works of its kind, with approximately 250 expert contributors and almost one million words. Illustrated in colour and black and white, the book is both a comprehensive encyclopedia and a survey of the controversial debates about citizenship and multiculturalism now that Australia has attained the centenary of its federation.

This title was first published in 2000: Although the main tragedy of the wars which first erupted in 1991 in former Yugoslavia lies within the Balkan region, the war's shadow is global in outreach. Using a mainly ethnographic approach, this is an exploration of how the Balkan wars have affected the everyday life and mental health in particular of Serbian immigrants and their families in Australia, and how they have responded to long-distance grief, devastation and dislocation. The work examines how the mass media has enabled migrants to see and feel the impact of events happening in their homeland more vividly than in any previous conflict and how the international consensus which blames the Serbs for perpetrating the wars has stigmatized this immigrant community. In doing so, the author, who is a mental health expert, deals with issues of globalization, fragmentation and adaptation of national and cultural identities, grief and alienation, and the effects of these on mental health and well-being.