Australian Immigration – Greeks
Changing Rights and Freedoms – Migrants
In 1947, Australia began implementing a social policy which was to have profound and binding effects on its history, it was ‘populate or perish’. In an attempt to safeguard Australia from foreign invasion, over three million migrants and their children, from a diverse range of cultures were absorbed by 1975. This was both a social and political change that shaped the very foundations of our modern society. This paper will discuss the fact that the diverse range of migrant groups each faced individual experiences and problems in their search for a better place to call home. This paper will focus on the experiences and problems faced by one migrant group in particular, the Greeks.
Issues such as why families were forced to leave their home for a new start, why they chose Australia as their new home and the problems faced once here will be examined. It will be argued that those who migrated from Greece to Australia encountered incredible obstacles and made large sacrifices however the successful assimilation of Greek-Australians within our modern society was dependent on the struggle that was overcome by their ancestors.
In order to fully understand why so many Greeks sought a new start to begin with, we must first look at Greece’s predicament at the time. Following World War II, Greece was one of the main contributors to migration due to economic and political issues of the time, both connected with the consequences of a 1946-1949 Civil War and the 1967-1974 period of military junta rule that followed. After WWII and the political problems that followed, Greece was left in ruins, and enormous economic. The nation was left without industrial infrastructure, primitive agriculture and thousands of displaced people in addition to an unstable political position. Almost everyone within Greece was affected as unemployment rose dramatically. The people of Greece simply could not find work and...