Mass Migration and the Mass Society: Fordism, Immigration Policy and the Post-war Long Boom in...

Mass Migration and the Mass Society:Fordism, Immigration Policy and thePost-war Long Boom in Canada and

Australia, 1947–1970johs_1429 1..34

JAMES WALSH*

Abstract The immediate post-war period was defined by shifts in capitalism’ssocioeconomic and institutional underpinnings. Commonly known as Fordism, untilthe early-1970s models of standardized industrial mass-production and robust stateplanning and intervention were relatively successful in maintaining secular growthin employment, productivity and demand as well as establishing the nationaleconomy and society as unified, governable fields. This paper considers how migra-tion controls in Canada and Australia enhanced and extended such arrangements.In simultaneously boosting production and demand, diversifying and integratingindustrial activities and assimilating European migrants into a mass consumerculture while excluding non-Europeans perceived as disruptive of material andsociocultural homogeneity, such policies provided central vectors of economic andcultural nationalism that complemented other monopolistic and redistributiveinterventions.

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Introduction

In extending sovereign authority over bounded territories and soci-eties, immigration policies contribute to the nation-state’s hege-mony as a social form and constitute powerful mechanisms ofsocial engineering. As such, they are generally mediated by the twindynamics of national interest and identity. Mirroring the exigenciesof statecraft, migration controls approach the population as anadministrative construct whose composition and functioning areclosely measured, monitored and regulated. Here policies comple-ment numerous instrumental tasks ranging from labour forcereproduction and maintenance to issues of social integration andexpenditure. Migration policies also approach the population as a“people” or nation: the putative source of collective identity, loyalty

* James Walsh is a sociologist and Postdoctoral Scholar for the Institute forSocial Behavioral and Economic Research (ISBER) at the University ofCalifornia Santa Barbara. He can be contacted at [email protected] for this article was generously supported through the CanadianEmbassy in Washington’s Doctoral Student Research Award; the Univer-sity of California Pacific Rim Research Program; and the UCLA Institute forResearch on Labor and Employment.

Journal of Historical Sociology Vol. •• No. •• •• 2012DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-6443.2012.01429.x

© 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA02148, USA.

and attachment. In deciding who can enter and join the nationalsociety they provide normative appraisals of what citizens and thesocial order should look like (Brubaker 1992, Walzer 1983).

This paper situates these observations historically by examiningmass-migration’s centrality in the socioeconomic and institutionalarrangements of post-war Canada and Australia. Until the early-1970s both countries incorporated ambitiously expansive policyregimes into Fordist-Keynesian programs of nation-building andpolitical regulation. Although cross-case differences were percep-tible, when compared to other advanced industrial states, the styleof migratory regulations and their integration into each nation’spublic policy profile were distinct and roughly equivalent.1 Specifi-cally, migration policies provided interventionist measures for spur-ring infrastructural and demographic development and maintaininga shared sense of identity, reciprocity and solidarity based onmaterial and sociocultural homogeneity. In simultaneously boost-ing production and demand, diversifying and integrating industrialactivities and assimilating European migrants into a mass con-sumer culture while excluding “unassimiable” non-Europeans,such policies complemented other regulatory arrangements,whether tariffs or monopolistic and redistributive interventions. Inthese regards, managerial policies represented proactive forms ofeconomic and cultural nationalism and reflected the broader con-sensus of the period that the only the nation-state possessed theexpertise and resources to comprehensively regulate social life,maintain a general standard of well-being and tentatively resolve theconflicts and contradictions of industrial capitalism.

Unlike the welfare-state, industrial policy, fiscal and monetaryregulations, and other interventionist measures – all of which havereceived significant theoretical treatment as indications of thestate’s role in coordinating accumulation, capital-labour relations,and political legitimation in the post-war period (Aglietta 1979,Esping-Andersen 1990, Hall 1986, Strange 1998) – historians andsocial scientists have largely ignored immigration policy. Theseoutcomes are attributable, in part, to the empirical and analyticprivilege accorded to America and Europe where immigration wasdominated by guestworkers and, thus, approached as a mecha-nism of labour supply peripheral to Fordist regulatory arrange-ments. Failing to rigorously test these dynamics against theexperiences of other national settings has produced the moregeneral assumption that there is little to gain from integrating theinsights of regulation theorists and immigration scholars. Com-pounding the neglect of the cases’ theoretical and conceptualimport, appraisals of Canada and Australia have been influencedby theories of post-war labour migration built atop the experiences

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© 2012 Blackwell Publishing LtdJournal of Historical Sociology Vol. •• No. •• •• 2012

of Europe and the U.S. Several scholars have argued that thecases’ policies were predominantly oriented to securing capitalistinterests by mobilizing a reserve army of labour and creatingsecondary labour markets for foreign workers (see Castles et al.1988, Castles and Miller 2003, Collins 1988, Cashmore 1978, Li1996).

Working forward from the historical evidence and backward fromthe theory it implies, this study provides both a specific account ofthe development of Canadian and Australian immigration policyand a more general refinement of received approaches to post-warimmigration. As it argues Canada and Australia do not conform todominant explanations that cite immigrants’ utilization as anindustrial reserve army or secondary workforce. While the bracerosand gastarbeiters of the U.S. and Germany provide ample evidenceof these trends, for Canada and Australia the technocratic plan-ning of immigration and integrative arrangements supporting per-manent settlement and citizenship ensured that immigrationdisplayed equally significant implications for demand and the sta-bilization of the production-consumption dynamic.2 Rather thandismissing their experiences as deviant, this study utilizes thecases to reconceptualize immigration’s connection to the post-warlong boom and clarify the relationship between states, markets andimmigrants. As such, this paper is exploratory and invested asmuch in provoking as it is convincing. Specifically, its findings helpchallenge entrenched orthodoxies, reorient debates and encouragethe pursuit of new research agendas for interrogating the politicalunderpinnings of migration.

On a broader level, this study’s treatment of states as authorita-tive institutions exerting control over territories and populationsprovides an important corrective to extant migration scholarship.Received explanations have generally assigned state regulations aperipheral role in favor of “pushes”, “pulls” and connections gen-erated by psychic and socioeconomic factors, whether individualmotivations and desires, familial and communal networks, or seg-mented and global labour markets. This lack of sociologicalresearch has led noted analysts to claim there is a glaring absenceof “systematic theoretical analysis of . . . the external pressuresimpinging on the state and the internal dynamics of . . . adminis-trative bodies dealing with immigration” (Portes 1997, 817). Thecases’ experiences demonstrate that, far from an inevitable reactionto changing international norms, domestic social interests orlabour demand, international migration has historically beentightly managed by the state. Further, they reveal that state policiesand regulations not only render international migration a “distinc-tive social process” involving a “transfer of membership and juris-

Mass Migration and the Mass Society 3


diction” (Zolberg 1989, 40) but are critical determinants thatultimately “determine whether movement can take place and ofwhat kind” (Zolberg 2000, 89).

Such observations are uniquely relevant for the cases. Throughcentrally planned policies and their effects on the volume andcomposition of immigration both governments continuously shapedand directed the contours of the social body. For each nation thestrength and autonomy of the executive under the Westminstermodel granted ministers, cabinet members, and rank and filebureaucrats significant leverage and discretion in formulating andimplementing policies that cohered to received definitions of thenational interest.3 As such, several scholars have noted that his-torically migration policy has been subject to “maximal bureau-cratic controls” (Bruer and Power 1993) in which sweeping reformsand reversals could be carried out without introducing new legis-lation or significant interference from parliament (Hawkins 1988,Jupp 2002).

These dynamics are reflected in this paper’s methodologicalapproach. Alongside existing secondary literature, the evidence onwhich this research is based comes from official institutionalrecords collected at each country’s national library and archives. Inoffering insights related to institutional events, structures andprocesses, as well as the meanings and action-orientations under-lying administrative practices, official documents uncover theoriesof state action or accounts of how political actors have justifiedtheir decisions within periods of social transformation (Mohr andVentresca 2002).

This paper is divided as follows. After providing a brief overview ofthe Fordist paradigm and migration’s centrality in such arrange-ments, it assesses the demographic, economic and racial vectorsanimating the trajectory of policy development. In the first instance,demographic concerns related to underdeveloped and vulnerablepopulations were aligned with issues of external protection andnational security to promote aggressive policies of population-building. Secondly, immigration’s economic dynamics – whetheraggregate additions to labour and consumer markets or specificcontributions linked to migrant’s use as “unfree” labour and pat-terns of occupational segmentation – are analyzed. Finally, beforeoffering a brief summary and conclusion, it interrogates the sym-bolic dimensions of policy and how the imagined community of thenation – viewed predominantly as a racially homogenous unit-structured the dynamics of selection, exclusion and integration.Additionally, this section adumbrates the gradual transition tonon-discrimination and multiculturalism. While admittedly partial,this discussion points to both continuities across historical periods

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and supports the larger argument that Canada and Australia’simmigration policies are fruitfully interpreted as extensions ofbroader regulatory paradigms.

Making the Mass Society: Fordism and Migration in Canadaand Australia

Following World War II the case’s economies grew considerably. Therelease of pent-up consumer demand, baby-booms, suburbaniza-tion and the expansion of export markets to fuel European recon-struction combined to produce the post-war “long boom” orcapitalism’s “golden age” – a period of secular growth, high wagesand full employment. While secured through an emergent globalmonetary regime, these outcomes were equally mediated throughdomestic programs of socioeconomic intervention and redistribu-tion known as Fordism. More than a model of mass industrialproduction and scientific management, Fordism represented acoherent mode of social and state organization represented by theconjuncture of political, economic and cultural forces and ideolo-gies (Lipietz 1986, Aglietta 1979).4 Representing the apogee of theactivist state and economic nationalism, the period was marked bythe ascendance of consensual capital-labour relations, the linkageof mass production and consumption, redistributive arrangements,and associated commitments to centralized socioeconomic plan-ning and coordination (McBride and Shields 1993; Moran 2005,Harvey 1989). In terms of real economic growth, between 1950–69Canada and Australia outstripped the U.S., the undisputed globaleconomic and military hegemon: their economies grew at an annualaverage of 5.2 and 5.5% respectively, while the U.S. averaged 3.9%(Meredith and Dyster 1999, 157).

While scholars have assessed a broad range of redistributive andinterventionist measures underpinning such outcomes, immigra-tion policies have been conspicuously absent. This is unfortunateas, at the risk of some oversimplification, large-scale plannedmigration provided the fulcrum in programs of macro-economicstabilization oriented towards achieving material self-sufficiency,full-employment and sociocultural integration. As settler coloniesimmigration’s impact on the entire history of the Canadian andAustralian social formations can hardly be overestimated (Denoon1983, Pearson 2002). However, the post-war period was unprec-edented in terms of migration’s sustained scale, diversity andurban and wage-earning character. Specifically, both countrieslaunched ambitious immigration programs that, in relative terms,were the most expansive amongst advanced industrialized states.Through these measures state officials sought to complete their



countries’ infrastructural development and establish nationalmanufacturing sectors and home markets to reduce their historicreliance on “staples” industries and vulnerability to pendulumswings in the world market. As such, immigration was intended toenlarge the population, attract an undifferentiated pool of semi-and unskilled industrial labour and stimulate production anddemand without sacrificing the “racial character”, homogeneity ormaterial well-being of the domestic population.

While several scholars have discussed these features, scant atten-tion has been paid to their overall coherence or interdependence. Tothese ends the following interrogates the demographic, economicand sociocultural objectives of Canadian and Australia immigrationcontrol and argues that together they constituted central vectors inFordist programs of economic and cultural nationalism that – onceembedded in durable institutional arrangements – had enduringeffects.

“Populate or Perish”: National Security andDemographic Maintenance

Although Australian officials had always sought to fill the country’s“empty spaces” with white and, preferably, British bodies as abuffer against Asia’s “teeming hordes” (Beddie 1975, 75), demo-graphic concerns were drastically amplified during World War II.While generally afterthoughts during the height of Imperialism andBritain’s protective umbrella, the threat of Japanese expansionismaltered existing understandings of Australia’s international posi-tion, nationhood and vulnerability. Viewing the country’s smallpopulation as a strategic liability, Prime Minister Curtin warnedthat Australia’s future could only be assured with a population of30 million (Weiner and Teitelbaum 2001 28). Given the low birth-rates of the depression years and inherent lag-time of even the mostsuccessful pro-natalist policies, political officials called for massiveincreases in immigration. In 1945 the Department of Immigrationwas established to oversee such efforts. Heeding calls to “populateor perish”, Arthur Calwell, the department’s first minister,launched an aggressive program of population-building to augmentthe country’s “all-to-meager rate of natural increase” and expandit’s defense capacities, infrastructure and home market (NAA A461,A349/1/1 Part 2. Calwell to the House of Representatives, 9December 1947).

As the program began Calwell proclaimed: “the new life bloodwhich will make Australia’s national heart beat with the . . . pulseof prosperity and security has . . . begun to flow” (Lack and Temple-ton 1995, 8). Viewing a two-percent annual increase, half of which

6 James Walsh


was to come from immigration, as the “maximum absorptive rate”,the Department instituted extensive promotional campaigns toattract new settlers. These actions were historically unprecedentedas the desired level of 70,000 annual entrants significantly sur-passed the average of 18,000 between 1901–1930. However, equallyemphatic in preserving the country’s homogeneity and Britishcharacter, Calwell noted that the program would be aggressivelymanaged so that “for every foreign migrant” there would be“ten . . . from the United Kingdom” (Hammerton and Thomson2005, 30).

In demographic terms the policy proved profoundly successful.Between 1950–70 Australia gained 2.4 million new settlers- a figureexceeding total immigration over the previous 90 years and makingthe country the fastest growing member state of the OECD (White1981).5 Departmental officials claimed the immigration programwas the country’s “greatest single development project” (DOI 1961,3) and that “the story of immigration is a story of nation-building”(DOI 1970). However, the desire to remain a British nation wasunsettled by such efforts. As Britain’s economic recovery and com-mitment to full employment eliminated many of the incentives forrelocation, the Australian government was forced to turn toEurope. Such a stance allowed Australia to remain “white”, whilesimultaneously making it progressively difficult to remain unam-biguously British (McGregor 2006).6

Also citing the figure of 30 million, political officials were equallyemphatic in their desire to see Canada’s population grow. Althoughgenerally framed as an economic imperative that would completethe transition from a semi-dependent colony to a modern industrialnation, strategic concerns also animated programs of demographicmaintenance. Since the tendentious border disputes with the U.S.,fears of American encroachments and expansionism, both literaland figurative, created a distinct desire to increase the number ofCanadians following the Great Depression (Weiner and Teitelbaum2001, 28). Prime Minister MacKenzie King noted that his cabinetagreed: “Canada would certainly need . . . a larger population if shehoped to hold the country for herself against the ambitions of othercountries and to build her strength” (Harney 1988, 56).7

Wary of the “danger that lies in a small population attempting tohold so great a heritage as ours” King advocated a major immigra-tion program that, though “vigorous administration” and “carefulselection”, would expand the domestic population and labour force(Department of Labor 1947, 646). Although departmental officialsalso placed target inflows at 1 percent of the population, Canada’sapproach was significantly more cautious. Believing there werebuilt-in limits to expansive policies, the government pledged to only



accept as many migrants as could be “advantageously absorbed”without creating undue competition and conflict between domesticand foreign populations. Informed by understandings of “absorp-tive capacity” – a concept referring to the country’s economy andinfrastructure as well as cultural and ethnoracial character – theDepartment of Mines and

Resources and then Citizenship and Immigration adopted a “tapon/off” approach in which intakes were adjusted to the dynamicsof the business cycle and unemployment (Troper 1993).

Consequently, while immigration had tremendous impacts onCanadian society, inflows were lower and displayed greater vari-ance when compared to Australia (see Table 1). These trends areespecially striking given that Canada entered the period with apopulation nearly twice the size of Australia’s. In Australia thecontinuous adjustment of inflows was viewed as detrimental to thelong-term goal of population expansion. As argued by ImmigrationMinister Downer: “Immigration cannot be “turned on and off” likea tap . . . sharp reduction[s] would . . . destroy the confidence ofEuropean governments . . . [and] make it extremely difficult torestart the flow . . . at a later date” (NAA A446/165, 1962/65527.Downer to M. O’Brien, 15 July 1958).

Foreign Labour and Economic Nationalism: ImmigrationPolicy as a Component of Accumulation

A noticeable feature of the “long boom” was the international mobil-ity of labour on a scale unseen for nearly half a century. For manyadvanced industrial states socioeconomic development hinged, inpart, on the ready availability of migrant labour (see Cohen 1987,Potts 1990). For Canada and Australia migration provided anattractive solution for alleviating bottlenecks in productive capacityand stimulating economic growth during periods of intensiveindustrialization. As this section demonstrates mass migrationwas a critical ingredient in Fordist dynamics of accumulation and

Table 1: Average Annual Inflow Net InternationalMigration in Canada and Australia 1947–1970

Country MeanIntake

StandardDeviation

Australia 92,347 33,867

Canada 80,224 39,215

Calculated from ABS (2001) and Beaujot (1991)

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regulation and perceived as a “cornerstone” (DOI 1959, 4) of “vig-orous national development” (NAC RG 26 Vol 133 File 3-35-2 Pt. 8.Fairclough Draft Statement on Immigration Policy, 3 June 1960).Through rational planning, migration was to provide a system oflabour supply and mechanism of demand management, counter-cyclical regulation and economic integration. Consequently, con-trolled injections of immigration were conceived as a lever ofeconomic planning important in mediating the mass production-mass consumption dynamic and brokering economic stability andaffluence. Characteristic of its importance, Arthur Calwell arguedthat if immigration to Australia was properly managed “a new socialorder could be established after the war” (Richards 2009, 176).

Labour Supply

The long wave of economic expansion lasting until the early-1970screated conditions in which labour demand exceeded supply. For thecases, expanded export markets for manufactured goods and rawmaterials in Europe and burgeoning consumer demand following theend of the Depression and World War II generated absolute labourshortages across the industrial spectrum. These were partially filledthough domestic processes, whether the introduction of labour-saving technologies, internal migration or incorporation of womeninto the formal wage-economy. As evidence of these changes Aus-tralia’s rural population shrank from 33 to 14 percent of the totalpopulation between 1933–1966, while Canada saw its proportion ofthe workforce in agriculture shrink from 28.6 to 7.2 percent between1941–68 (Galligan et al. 2001, 173; Satzewich 1988, 283). Addition-ally, the proportion of Canadian women in the paid labour force rosefrom 19.9 to 33.2 percent between 1941–71 and in Australia theserates increased from 22.4 to 31.7 between 1947–71 (Eccles 1984).Despite these processes shortages persisted and immigration wasapproached as an important form of labour delivery.

More than a spontaneous reaction to labour demand and capi-talist expansion, these developments were intimately managedby the state. Wary of the demographic declines of the Depressionyears and their effects on economic development, political officialsbegan planning expansive migration policies before World WarII’s conclusion. In 1942 Australia’s Labor government establishedthe Department of Postwar Reconstruction to ensure that the cen-tralized coordination and socioeconomic mobilization for the wareffort was carried into peacetime for the purposes of industrialexpansion, immigration, full employment, housing and social pro-vision (Markus 1984). These desires were further articulated in a1945 white paper titled “Full Employment in Australia” which



outlined initiatives for creating a diversified, self-reliant and inte-grated economy – plans impeded by the existing size of the labourmarket. Following World War II the Chifley and Menzies govern-ments launched an impressive strategy of industrialization, full-employment and infrastructural development: all of which wereunderpinned by planned mass migration alongside significant stateintervention.8 This developmental strategy achieved significantresults and received broad support across the political spectrum.9

Three quarters of labour force growth from 1947–1961 was attrib-utable to immigration. In a longer view, immigrants filled 61% ofnew jobs between 1947–72, giving Australia one of the fastestgrowing labour markets in the world. For government officialsmigration ensured that Australia could “plan its economic devel-opment secure in the knowledge that the right workers would beavailable in the right numbers in the right place at the right time”(DOI 1959, 5).

In Canada Keynesian templates of government were first pro-moted in the 1945 White Paper on Employment and Incomes whichpresented the basic framework of post-war economic regulationand was frequently labeled Canada’s second “national policy”(Mahon 1977). As with the previous national policy of the late-19th

century expansive migration played a pivotal role in providingworkers and furthering economic consolidation. Close to half oflabour force growth into the 1970s was driven by immigration(Green 1976).

Beyond the workforce’s quantitative expansion, migrantsincreased the working-age population to a greater degree thangrowth driven by natural increase. In Canada it was noted thatbecause the active to dependent ratio for migrants was consider-ably higher than for the domestic population (approximately 70versus 50 percent) “immigration . . . increase[s] the averageproduct per capita in the economy” (NAC RG 26 Vol 133 File3-35-02 Pt 7. Chief of Settlement Divison to Director of Immigra-tion, 21 July 1958). In Australia Harold Holt, the ImmigrationMinister from 1949–56, noted that “for every three people . . .migration has added to the workforce it has added two to the ‘notgainfully employed’ group, but for every three workers naturalincrease has added to the workforce, it has added fifteen ‘notgainfully employed’ ” (Holt 1956c, 11). Additionally, officials in bothnations were keenly aware of expenses concerning the social repro-duction of native workers – costs that with immigration were borneby the sending society (Burawoy 1976). Consequently, migrationwas preferred to natural increase as the later imposed an “imme-diate net charge on the community” (NAA A446/167-1969/72747.1971/72 Budget Debate. 24 October 1971). In Australia, Immigra-

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tion Minister Athol Townley noted that based on a calculation of5000 pounds for each Australian worker, the externalization ofcosts associated with labour force renewal annually saved thecountry 300,000,000 pounds (DOI 1959).

Migration as a mechanism of macroeconomic planningand integration

More than filling labour shortages, planned migration wasapproached as an important mechanism of macroeconomic stabi-lization central to Fordist-Keynesian regulatory strategies. Commit-ted to maintaining socioeconomic configurations based on mass-production, the alignment of demand and productive capacity, andfull-employment and social wages, the ultimate goal of such effortswas to “humanize” market forces and secure accumulation withoutexacerbating the class tensions and social strains resulting fromcapitalism’s core contradiction: the socialization of productionalongside the private appropriation of surplus (O’Connor 1973).

These desires were to be achieved through the construction of thenational economy as a unified and functionally integrated systemthat could be managed in a predictable and efficacious manner.Although hardly conforming to ideal-typical models of Fordism inwhich the various circuits of accumulation were nationally orga-nized both governments clearly engaged in policies of economicnationalism in which public-enterprise, tariff walls, fiscal and mon-etary policies and social-welfarism were to provide monopolisticarrangements for creating diversified, balanced and integratednational markets (Collins 1988, Hampson and Morgan 1999,Jensen 1989, Rolfe 1999).10 Migration was to complement thesearrangements by: 1) creating strong manufacturing sectors andeconomic self-sufficiency; 2) establishing scale economies; 3) boost-ing aggregate demand; and 4) providing counter-cyclical measuresfor pre-emptively neutralizing economic downturn.

Promoting Self-Sufficiency

Worried that their export-dominated economies were vulnerable tointernational fluctuations, both governments employed protection-ist policies, open-door investment strategies and expansive migra-tion programs to marshal the necessary factors of accumulation atthe national scale and allocate them towards the creation of aconsolidated home-market and manufacturing industrial base. Indiversifying industrial activities, lowering rates of external depen-dency and boosting internal integration, planned mass-migration



was to facilitate the establishment of distinguishable national eco-nomic spaces capable of macroeconomic management.

For Canadian planners, by bringing balance to the workforce andstimulating demand, migration would diversify and integrateindustrial activity: “As Canada’s population increases and produc-tion expands, a smaller percentage of total production will bedevoted to exports, and the country will become more self-sufficient”. It was also argued that such conditions would make it“easier to maintain high employment . . . by our national monetaryand fiscal policies” (NAC RG 26 Vol 133 File 3-35-02 Pt 7. Chief ofSettlement to Director of Immigration, 21 July 1958). According toHarold Holt with mass migration Australia’s “industries will bemore diversified and less dependent upon terms of trade forprimary products, our internal manufacturing capacity . . . and. . . markets much increased in size making us . . . better able tocompete in [international markets] because of the economiesarising from larger scale manufacturing activity” (Holt 1956a, 11).11

Through their employment in large-scale public works and infra-structure projects, migrants also facilitated the integration of thenational economy. In addition to providing the vast majority oflabour for the Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric scheme and exten-sive irrigation projects in Western Australia, migrants providedone-fifth of all construction workers for public works projects andover one-third of the labour associated with utilities and the pro-vision of electric power (White 1981, DOI 1957). The structuralcomposition of Canadian immigration was equivalent and migrantswere readily incorporated into building construction, utilities andtransportation (Richmond 1967, Green 1976).

Establishment of Scale Economies

Immigration was also managed to overcome both nations’ small,spatially-divided and infrastructurally weak markets. Both govern-ments believed that, by increasing productive output and decreas-ing the unit costs of production, more workers meant cheapstandardized products, lower sunk costs, gross efficiency gainsand, thus, greater profitability for domestic firms and employers.

In a booklet distributed to regional branches, Canada’s immigra-tion department noted that productive capacity, consumer demandand the creation of “a well-balanced and . . . self-sufficienteconomy” were constrained by a “small and diffused population”and that “substantial and continuous immigration” (NAC RG 26 Vol133 File 3-35-2 Pt 8. Deputy Minister to Director of Immigration, 6February 1961) was the “primary factor” for correcting these imbal-ances (NAC RG 26, Vol 133 File 3-35-2, Pt 6. Forecast of Economic

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Prospects. 14 October 1957). These intentions were further articu-lated in the Department’s 1966 White Paper:

A bigger population means increased domestic markets . . . [which] permits manu-facturing firms to undertake, longer, lower cost, production runs, and . . . broadensthe range of industry we can undertake economically . . . [P]opulation increase inturn improves our competitive position in world markets (DMI 1966, 8).

Immigration minister Billy Snedden noted that opponents ofpopulation growth in Australia “overlook the per capita costs ofnational security, transport, [and] communications” and empha-sized the “material benefit in spreading these over a larger popula-tion” (Snedden 1972, 4). Additionally, political officials believedimmigration displayed “capital widening” effects. By expanding bothcountries’ labour force, productive capacity and markets migrationwould encourage foreign firms to establish branch plants in eachcountry and assist in augmenting full-employment and the efficiencyand technological sophistication of industrial undertakings.

Stimulating Aggregate Demand

The success of economic orders based on industrial mass-production hinged “on continuous and uninterrupted expansion ofmarket demand” (Hoogvelt 2001, 44). In both countries migration’sunique contributions to domestic consumption were central inKeynesian forms of demand management. Given their, on average,lower ages and arriving with little in the way of personal posses-sions migrants displayed a high propensity towards purchasinghousing, personal effects, public utilities and social overheadcapital (DMI 1966, Meredith and Dyster 1999, Waterman 1972).The Canadian government observed that large migrant cohortsmade “substantial addition[s]” to aggregate demand and repre-sented a significant “advance towards the development of massmarkets for goods and services” (DBS 1958, 6). Further, the chief ofthe settlement division claimed that “Industries expand as a resultcreating new jobs which in turn increase effective demand . . .Population growth [is] the condition of economic progress and . . . itis always possible to achieve more rapid economic developmentthrough immigration” (NAC RG 26 Vol 133 File 3-35-2 Pt. 7.Chief of Settlement Division to Director of Immigration, July 21,1958).

In Australia, in particular, mass consumption was achievedthough suburbanization: “the focal point of antipodean Fordism”(Rolfe 2003, 336). New houses, cars, clothing and consumerdurables all provided an expanding market for the producers of the



Fordist bloc. The primary source of such expansion was the outersuburbs of those cities gaining the most from migrant settlementand manufacturing- Sydney, Newcastle, Adelaide, Geelong andWollongong (Macintyre 2009, 219–222). One government reportsuggested that every 50,000 migrants settled increased domesticconsumption by 6% (Collins 1988, 67).

Counter-cyclical Regulation

Additionally, controlled intakes of immigration were approached asmechanisms for reducing the inherent vulnerability of nationallyorganized mass-production economies to cyclical recessions.

In a particularly revealing statement, Australian officials claimedimmigration provided one of the quickest and most effective formsof economic intervention and was central to Keynesian programs ofeconomic stabilization:

The stimulus given . . . by large-scale immigration has been a major factor inoffsetting the depressing effects of the loss of export income. The effectiveness andsensibility achieved by ‘pump-priming’ with immigration deserves emphasis. Othermeasures . . . [are] indirect and . . . uncertain or . . . concentrated on a narrowrange of industries. Substantial time lags may be involved . . . In contrast, immi-gration provides an immediate and direct stimulus to a wide range of industries (DOI1959, 10).

Canadian officials advanced similar claims. A 1960 departmentalreport claimed that immigration’s effects on consumption could bemanaged to contain market failures:

On the cyclical upswing, a high labour content of our immigration is a usefulanti-inflationary factor insofar as . . . new immigrant workers, due to the require-ment to save for major consumer . . . purchases or for bringing a family over,consume less than their contribution to production. Then on the subsequent down-swing, when the immigrant is ready to purchase, dissaving takes place which is adesirable anti-deflationary factor (NAC RG 26 Vol 147 File 3-53-3. Director ofResearch to Deptuy Minister, 12 July 1960).

The Functionality of Migrant Labour: Unfree Labour andIndustrial Segmentation

In addition to expanding labour and consumer markets, migrantsproved uniquely “beneficial” given their economic and institutionalstanding as foreign labour. This is demonstrated through bothcountries’ settlement of displaced persons following WWII, as well as,patterns of occupational segmentation that emerged as the periodwore on. These developments demonstrate that, rather than aninevitable consequence of labour demand, migrants’ allocation into

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distinct productive arrangements was mediated, both intentionallyand unintentionally, through the state’s bureaucratic arrangementsand regulations (see Satzewich 1988). While at first blush theseoutcomes appear similar to the guestworker systems of Europe andthe U.S., careful scrutiny reveals that Canada and Australia avoidedsystems of labour circulation and instead promoted immigration asa permanent source of labour and consumption. In these respectsimmigration policy not only reflected the exigencies of mass produc-tion, but was also aligned with broader Fordist-Keynesian strategiesof economic coordination and social integration.

Scrupulous Hospitality: Displaced Persons and Indenture

Although historically both governments rejected guestworkerarrangements and promoted permanent settlement instead of tem-porary denizenship, following World War II European refugees, weretemporarily inserted into unfree labour relations in attempts atprogrammatically stimulating rural and infrastructural develop-ment and managing their social incorporation.

Facing labour shortages and unable to attract enough preferredmigrants from Britain and Northwestern Europe, both governmentsturned to the surplus labour of Europe’s two million statelesspeople. In direct coordination with the International Refugee Orga-nization each nation accepted approximately 170,000 displacedpersons from Eastern Europe and the Baltic Region between 1947–52. Department officials and migration officers – several employerswere also included in Canada’s efforts – were dispatched to screenand handpick settlers on the grounds of employability, assimilabil-ity and political ideology. According to one Canadian officer thegovernment sought “strong young men” who “like cattle . . . coulddo manual labour and not be encumbered by aging relations”(Knowles 2007, 165) – while actively avoiding political radicals andan excessive number of Jews (Abella and Troper 1991). In AustraliaCalwell proclaimed that selected refugees were hardworking, moti-vated and “magnificent human material” (NAA A461, A349/1/1 Pt2. Calwell to House of Representatives. 9 December 1947).

Given their payment at prevailing wages and lack of residencyrestrictions or compulsory rotation and repatriation displacedpersons appeared formally free. However, such workers ultimatelyentered each society as indentured labour for a two-year period.Specifically, through political and legal compulsion, displacedpersons were: (1) sequestered in their initial occupations and (2)unable to choose their initial location of settlement or freely circu-late within the labour market (Lack and Templeton 1995, Satzewich1988).



In the eyes of department officials, such arrangements deliveredtargeted contributions to specific economic sectors and, by regulat-ing the destination of settlement, prevented the formation of recal-citrant ethnic-blocs. Migrants were directed towards regions facingoccupational shortages in seasonal and labour-intensive industriesthe domestic population was unable or unwilling to fulfill. InCanada these “bulk labour schemes” provided a significant shareof labour for agriculture, logging and mining, while in Australiamigrants were directed towards agriculture, manufacturing,mining, housing and infrastructure (Collins 1988, Harney 1988).12

Displaced Persons were transported separately and accommo-dated in inexpensive housing and reception centers in remote ruralareas. Government-assisted refugees in Australia were placed inonsite work camps while their families were housed separately inDepartmental holding centers that were generally former armycamps. The most famous of these was the Bonegilla receptioncenter. A converted POW camp, more than 320,000 migrantspassed through it during the post-war period (Ozolins 1994, Lackand Templeton 1995). Officials for the Canadian sugar beet indus-try, which utilized POWs as surplus labour during the war, claimedEuropean migrants “could be quartered in existing POW camps. . . [which] could be operated . . . [like] the former camps but withmuch less expense . . . since no guards would be needed” (Harney1988, 58).

Relegating displaced persons to the dirty, difficult, isolated andundesirable jobs of each country’s rural and industrial economies,ensured they did not compete with domestic workers, lower wages,working conditions or the power of unions. These arrangementswere backed by the state’s coercive power as violations of labourcontracts resulted in automatic deportation. While these measureshighlight the centrality of unfree or coerced labour in moderncapitalist development (Miles 1987), both governments sought toavoid forms of precarious or non-belonging central to the U.S. andEurope. Accordingly, refugees’ socioeconomic incorporation wasless a premeditated attempt to undercut wages and working classsolidarity, and more an ad hoc response to shortfalls in immigra-tion from Britain and Northwestern Europe. Moreover, as timeprogressed displaced persons generally experienced significantsocial mobility, low unemployment and comparable rates of unionmembership (Lack and Templeton 1995, Richmond 1967).

Occupational Segmentation and Industrial Structure

Given state officials’ views of the wage relation and collective con-sumption as well as their broader desire to simultaneously boost

16 James Walsh


productive output and aggregate demand, both governmentseschewed permanent guestworker arrangements and preferred set-tlers and future citizens to a reserve army of expendable labour. Inaddition to disturbing attempts at maintaining sufficient consumerdemand, Canadian officials believed guestworker arrangementsstifled innovation and technological development and were funda-mentally illiberal and socially disruptive: “an infringement of thefreedom of the individual . . . that cannot be justified in a demo-cratic country” (Satzewich 1988, 287). In Australia the issue ofcontract labour was even more contentious, given that claims of a“worker’s paradise” emerged as central components of the country’spolitical ethos (Miles 1987, Tavan 2005). As noted by one depart-mental official: “Once we admit a man to Australia we should beprepared to grant him citizenship . . . [which] is . . . the culmina-tion of all integrative activities – not an entry control measure”(Jordens 1997, 218–19). Additionally, these outcomes were a com-ponent of the prevailing consensus between capital and labour. Inexchange for its support of expansive migration and enforcement ofcentrally determined union policies, the Australian Council ofTrade Unions was given privileged access to government officialsand was promised that migrants would not be employed to weakenthe power of organized labour (Hagan 1981, 318–20).13 Conse-quently, for both nations migrants were less substitutes intendedto discipline native workers, lower wages or plant the seeds ofethnic antagonism – than complements incorporated to promotefull employment. Although some level of competition and resent-ment inevitably occurred, migrants tended to boost consumptionby securing new additions in the lower tiers of the productivelabour market and creating opportunities for social and occupa-tional mobility amongst domestic workers (Collins 1988, Green1976, Lever-Tracy and Quinlan 1988).

While guestworker arrangements were avoided, distinct patternsof labour market distribution frequently emerged. Following thedisplaced person schemes migrants, particularly those of non-English speaking background (NESB), occupied distinct labourmarket positions. Such migrants generally filled deskilled, monoto-nous and often dangerous jobs deserted by native workers, therebyconstituting a permanent fraction of the industrial working class.

In Canada migrants were overrepresented in manufacturing andconstruction while under-represented in business services andother tertiary industries – dynamics even more pronounced fornon-British migrants (Pendakur 2000).14 Australia’s heavy manu-facturing industries in Sydney, Geelong, Ipswich, Melbourne, Wol-longong and Adelaide, were largely built upon the backs ofContinental Europeans – particularly Italians, Greeks and Yugosla-



vians. In general such migrants were twice as likely to work inindustrial occupations and their presence in many sectors, whetherthe automotive, footwear, garment, steel and food processingindustries, was so great that such occupations were commonlylabeled as “migrant work” and “super exclusive” to the foreign-born(Jordens 1995, Lack and Templeton 1995).15 In fact, between1947–61 80% of workforce growth in manufacturing was attribut-able to immigration (Lever-Tracy and Quinlan 1988, 39).

While displaying clear patterns of occupational segmentation,both countries’ experiences do not conform to prevailing theories ofpost-war labour migration. Under current assessments migrants’socio-legal standing as non-citizen labour provided access to eithera: a) reserve army of industrial labour or b) secondary labour force.In the first instance migrants are peripheral to the active, productiveworking-class and are cycled in and out of the workforce to absorbthe variability of labour demand (Castles and Kosack 1985). Theoriesof labour market segmentation claim that modern capitalist econo-mies are occupationally bifurcated. In the primary sector or core,large corporations are able to achieve monopoly rents and maintaina compliant workforce through promotional opportunities, job secu-rity, collective bargaining and generous remuneration. In contrast isthe competitive or secondary sector in which demand is unstableand met through the employment of unskilled, low-wage workers inarrangements that are generally part-time, temporary, seasonal andinsecure (Piore 1979, Gordon et al. 1982).

While compelling for the U.S. and Europe, Canada and Australiafail to provide commensurate evidence and highlight the need forbroader theories that do not focus exclusively on labour marketoutcomes but situate migration in larger policies of socioeconomicregulation and stabilization. Theories of a reserve army have littlerelevance as migrants were more likely to participate in the work-force and did not constitute temporary “shock absorbers” intendedto enhance labour force flexibility. Migrants certainly provided anarmy of labour to fuel industrial expansion, but temporary resi-dence, compulsory rotation and periodic expulsions were neverpracticed and there is little reason to assume that voluntaryreturns occurred to meet the systemic requirements of capitalrather than the needs of migrants themselves (Lever-Tracy andQuinlan 1988, Richmond 1967). Additionally while NESB migrantswere concentrated in manufacturing and heavy industry, this dis-tinct productive position does not conform to expectations of labourmarket differentiation. Migrants were underrepresented in theservice economy or part-time occupations intended to absorb eco-nomic variability and, when occupationally clustered, were foundwithin the economy’s “productive core” or leading industries,

18 James Walsh


dynamics that enabled domestic workers to move upwards intohigher paying professional and supervisory positions. NESBmigrants remained clustered in manufacturing and heavy industrydue to linguistic and professional barriers rather than migrationpolicy itself (Lever-Tracy and Quinlan 1988; Pendakur 2000).

Additionally, expanding wages, full employment and “thick”forms of citizenship linked to social insurance, economic redistri-bution and other strategies of “class abatement” (Marshall 1950),helped broker cohesion across class and national background andboost the security of migrants and the working class in general(Barnes 1996, Mahon 1991, Moran 2005). Moreover, given bothnations’ preference for British settlers it seems overstated to claimstate officials actively sought out migrants lacking skills, educationand language proficiency to segment and divide the working class.Migrants’ labour market outcomes and general well-being confirmsuch interpretations. In Australia centralized systems of wage-fixing and arbitration ensured that migrants’ concentration inindustrial undertakings did not result in undue patterns ofinequality (Patmore 1991, Fox 1991). Ultimately, in receiving adecent standard of living and opportunities for upward mobility,immigrants expanded the home market and helped sustain abuoyant domestic economy (see Jordens 1995, 114–136). Levels ofsocial inequality between NESB migrants and native Canadianswere more noticeable, creating what has been called a “verticalmosaic” in which ethnic minorities occupied lower economic andoccupational positions (Porter 1965). However, the existence of“high wage proletariats” assisted in easing integration an contain-ing ethnic antagonism (Panitch 1981) and, over time, many immi-grants achieved parity with the domestic population (Troper 1993).In these regards, immigration certainly divided the working class,but claims that differentiation was engineered by the state toweaken the overall position of labour are less than conclusive.Instead, the preceding indicates that migration control’s economicfunctions and effects were Fordist insofar as they were orientedto macroeconomic coordination whether consolidating nationallabour and consumer markets, neutralizing the contradictions ofindustrial capitalism, or achieving stable equilibrium between massproduction and aggregate demand.

Bounding Societies and Policing Borders: Migration Policy,National Identity and Ethnoracial Selectivity

In addition to material and geopolitical concerns, Canada andAustralia’s policy regimes were underpinned by racialized assump-tions concerning the physical and mental qualities of discrete



human groups and the desire to reproduce themselves as homog-enous white nations. Below I trace the evolution of these impera-tives from the end of World War II through the 1960s. As a caveat,although the period would be defined by shifts in the logic ofmigrant exclusion and incorporation, the culmination of thesechanges through official programs of multiculturalism did notbegin until the 1970s and falls outside this paper’s analyticpurview. Nonetheless the following discussion foreshadows suchchanges by accounting for their emergence, effects and continuitieswith prior arrangements.

While, unlike Australia, Canada had already experienced signifi-cant ethnic mixing following extensive immigration from Easternand Central Europe in the early 20th century, the country remainedrelatively homogenous and continued to privilege the entry andcontributions of British and French settlers. In 1947 Prime MinisterKing proclaimed that “the people of Canada do not wish to makea fundamental alternation in the character of our population . . .considerable Oriental migration would . . . give rise to social andeconomic problems” (Kelley and Trebilcock 1998, 317).16 Commit-ments to preserving the dominance of the country’s “foundingraces” were supported across the political spectrum. In 1947 MPBlackmore argued: “the majority of . . . [Canadians] want people oftheir own kind. Canada was explored settled and developedby . . . two of the greatest races in the world, the French and Britishpeople. Have these races no rights?” (Canada, House of Commons1947, 342). Another politician admonished parliament that: “wehave a solemn responsibility towards [future] generations . . .to keep . . . Canada white” (Canada, House of Commons 1947,323).

In 1949 Immigration Secretary Heyes, noted that migrants “not ofpure European descent”, even when “predominantly of Europeanextraction and . . . appearance” were unsuitable “as [Australian]settlers” (NAA A1838 1531/1 Pt 1. Tasman Heyes to Secretary ofExternal Affairs. 20 January 1949). A staunch supporter of racialpurity, Arthur Calwell vowed that the “flag of white Australia wouldnot be lowered” (Lack and Templeton 1995, 12) and claimed “thereare different varieties of human species” and that it was “wise toavoid internecine strife and the problems of miscegenation. . . [pre-sent] in all countries . . . where races of irreconcilable characteris-tics have lived” (NAA A183/1, 581/1 Pt 1. Calwell, PreparedSpeech. 23 March 1949).17

These beliefs were translated into gatekeeping strategies asmigrant suitability was determined primarily through reference tophenotypical and physiognomic characteristics. First preferencewas given to white British and- in the case of Canada – American

20 James Walsh


and French migrants. Viewed as exemplary members such groupswere enticed through interest free loans for travel and settlement,speedier processing, and more active promotional campaigns (Price1975, Troper 1993). Non-preferred but admissible migrantsincluded all healthy and employable Europeans of good character.For such migrants occupational restrictions were more stringentand sponsorship arrangements more vigorously enforced to guar-antee they would not become “public charges”. Non-Europeanswere cast as permanent outsiders who were different, undesirableand undeserving of residence or membership. Those of “Negro” or“Asiatic” race – irrespective of their citizenship and nationality –were classed as inadmissible and vigorously excluded.

Canadian officials justified non-Europeans’ exclusion on thegrounds of their “peculiar customs, habits, modes of life, methodsof holding property” and “inability to become readily assimilated”(NAC RG 26 Vol 73. National Advisory Committee on Immigration.1 October 1953). When processing applications Canadian officersoften assessed photographs to determine the applicant’s ancestryand racial type (Satzewich 1989, 85). In Australia “coloured”migrants were administratively defined through the subjective andocular evaluation of rank and file bureaucrats until the early-1970s. In one officer’s report detailing the grounds for rejecting animmigrant of “mixed descent” it was noted: “the European elementin his features is almost completely submerged” and “African fea-tures predominate” (NAA A446, 1969/46868. Report of interviewwith migration applicant. 10 June 1970).

By the 1950s changing international norms concerning race,sovereignty an human rights, Asia’s growing importance as asource of trade and investment, and decolonization and third worldnationalism combined to create acute pressures for policy reform(Brawley 1995, Harney 1988, Joppke 2005, Li 1996). However, theshifting international climate had little substantive impact on defi-nitions of migrant admissibility. Thus, even as notions of cultureand difference replaced repertoires of race and inferiority both setsof concepts shared the core assumption that Europeans and Non-Europeans were irreconcilably different and that racial mixingshould be vigorously avoided. In the immediate term, such pres-sures resulted in discursive realignments where race was jettisonedfrom the formal lexicon of policy and superficial concessions whichremoved racial bars on entry while continuing to subject non-Europeans to restrictive, differential treatment (Castles et al. 1988,Kelley and Trebilcock 1998, Tavan 2005).

Alluding to the U.S. and South Africa, in 1959 Prime MinisterMenzies proclaimed: “it is our national desire to develop in Austra-lia a homogenous population in order that we may avert social



differences which have arisen in many other countries” (Markus1994, 172). It was also asserted that due to “natural instincts”:“different races living side by side inevitably tend to divide thenation into rival communities . . . [which] frequently flares intoantagonism.” (NAA CP815/1, 021.132. Chief Publicity Officer toMinister. 11 November 1947). In Canada the racially-coded dis-course of climactic difference revealed the determination of depart-ment officers to exclude non-whites. In 1952, Immigration MinisterWalter Harris observed that the country’s Northern climate createdsignificant integrative problems for non-Europeans:

It would be unrealistic to say that immigrants who have spent the greater part oftheir life in tropical or sub-tropical countries will become readily adapted to theCanadian mode of life . . . [N]atives of such countries are more apt to break down inhealth . . . [and] find it more difficult to succeed in the highly competitive Canadianeconomy (Kelley and Trebilcock 1998, 325).

Additionally, in 1966 it was suggested that migration offices beopened in the Caribbean given the region’s close ties to Britain. Theimmigration department firmly rejected such proposals given “con-cern[s] over the long-range wisdom of a substantial increase innegro migration to Canada. The racial problems of Britain and theUnited States undoubtedly influenced this concern” (Satzewich1989, 88).

Ultimately, both governments viewed migrants as creating prob-lems caused by their racial and cultural background and notdomestic values, political ideologies or social structures. More fun-damentally it was held that admitting “coloured” bodies woulddisrupt social order though intractable tensions and conflicts andirrevocably disturb the nation’s character and “way of life”. Suchmodes of argumentation reveal that the “imagined community” ofboth nations was underpinned by racialized ideologies which pre-cluded the inclusion of non-European, “alien races” within thesocial body.18

As these features suggest, the demand for greater settlers andworkers was circumscribed by concerns associated with race, eth-nicity and nationality. While tempting to view these imperatives asdistinct and even conflictive, there was fairly broad consensusamongst state planners that the success of stimulating macro-economic expansion through migration hinged upon maintainingcultural homogeneity and not overwhelming the existing agenciesof assimilation. Such dynamics reflect the Regulation School’sobservations that socioeconomic formations are mediated bycultural and ideological codes, norms and behaviors, as wellas, “local ‘habits’ of history” (Hoogvelt 2001, 117). Accordingly,Fordist-Keynesian templates of socioeconomic planning are best

22 James Walsh


understood as techniques of “societalization” (Jessop 1994) and“less as a new system of mass production and more as a total wayof life” (Harvey 1989, 135).19

In these regards immigration policies were characteristic of eco-nomic nationalism in a dual sense. In providing the necessarysettlers to territorially integrate the various factors of accumula-tion they were to create the institutional basis for reinforcing thenation’s putative character and identity as well as furtheringnationalist sentiments and solidarity (Helleiner 2002).20 Equally,however, both governments were invested in selecting those set-tlers capable assimilating into the country’s economic and culturalfabric. Notions of assimilability were highly racialized as certainhuman groups, often on the basis of phenotype and ancestry, wereportrayed as corruptive and possessing qualities that woulddisrupt the socioeconomic and cultural underpinnings of theFordist era. Reflecting these dynamics, an internal departmentalreport from the 1960s employed the image of a prosperous, equaland unified Australia as the overriding policy goal, citing the main-tenance of “a homogenous population in order [to] . . . plan the fulland proper development of our resources” (Markus 1994, 172). Itwas assumed that ethnocultural heterogeneity would underminenational solidarity and the egalitarian underpinnings of the “Aus-tralian settlement” fused by cultural homogeneity, undifferentiatedloyalty and material equality. “[Our immigration policies] are. . . firmly based on the belief that all Australians want Australia tobe an essentially integrated society, notable for political democ-racy, for the rule of law, for economic opportunity and socialmobility, without self-perpetuating enclaves and undigestedminorities.” (NAA A446/167-1969/72747. Speech by AJ Forbes,31 July 1972.).21 Accordingly, integrative arrangements sought to“construct cultural homogeneity for the purposes of national devel-opment” (Castles et al. 1988, 114). In Canada officials “perceivednational borders as the primary boundaries of economic exchangeand political community” and consequently “established social andeconomic rights of citizenship depended on states controllingaccess of persons to their national territory” (Jensen 1997, 217). Inaddition to racial conflicts and social disharmony, departmentofficers frequently argued that “negro” immigrants lacked themental and moral capacity to contribute to and thrive withinmodern industrial economies (Satzewich 1988).

The Gradual Turn to Multiculturalism

Over time the confluence of a number of strains unsettled estab-lished policy regimes and, by the mid-1970s, both nations entered



new phases of nationhood based on formal commitments to eth-nocultural pluralism and multicultural integration. Far from adecisive break, the complex and lengthy process of policy liberal-ization was “uneven, partial and not freely chosen” (Pearson 2002,996). Specifically, the end of racial restriction was mediated by boththe feedback effects of post-war policy and the crisis of Fordism inthe early-1970s. While an exhaustive discussion is beyond thispaper’s scope, a cursory examination of the historical evidenceaffirms the more general argument that immigration controls werederivations of historically specific regulatory arrangements.

By the 1960s economic imperatives necessitated the widening ofboth country’s gates to source countries previously classed asdeviating too heavily from the Anglo-centric norm. Insufficient sup-plies of British and then European workers forced both govern-ments to cast the immigration net wider and wider to include adiverse array of Europeans and Middle Easterners. As thisamalgam of nationalities was successfully incorporated into eachnation’s socioeconomic structure, popular fears of cultural differ-ence and incompatibility gradually subsided and the purportedlynecessary fusion of ethnolinguistic and political boundaries wasincreasingly undermined (Brawley 1995, Breton 1988, McGregor2006, Pearson 2002).

Additionally, while the wage relation, full employment and socialcitizenship assisted in brokering consent and maintaining nationalunity, the collapse of Fordism in the early-1970s undermined thesearrangements and amplified patterns of inequality and ethnic dis-advantage. Facing this environment both government’s engineerednew integrative arrangements and ideologies of nationhood basedon the belief that ethnoracial minorities required tailored forms ofassistance and that all members should be free to retain, enhanceand share their cultural heritage. Consequently, multiculturalism’scareer as an explicit state-directed program reflected “an attempt tomodify existing concepts of the nation to match up to new realities”(Castles et al. 1988, 12, cf. Mackey 2002, Pearson 2002). Whilecertainly improving the symbolic standing of racial and ethnicminorities, multiculturalism was less a definitive break and insteadrepresented the most recent iteration of attempts to manage inter-group relations and intervene in the symbolic order of the nation.

For many observers, as it evolved, multiculturalism was inextri-cably linked to the ascendance of flexible accumulation and politi-cal ideologies of neoliberalism. On the one hand it provided a seriesof symbolic interventions for quelling demands for ethnoculturalrecognition; measures that were conservative insofar as they didnot promote structural or institutional change, nor question thenecessity of nationalism and the drawing and policing of member-

24 James Walsh


ship boundaries (Abu-Laban and Gabriel 2002, Jakubowicz et al.1984).22 Additionally, the incorporation of ethnic communities intothe cases’ political systems functioned to both marginalize radicalelements and reduce the costs of service delivery. In the laterinstance these changes were fused with patterns of welfare-stateretrenchment and residualist social policies as community-basedmodels of administration were underpinned by the neoliberal dis-course of autonomy, self-help and volunteerism (Castles et al.1988, Ilcan and Basok 2004, Stasiulis and Jhappan 1995). Finally,by the early-1980s multiculturalism was deployed as an adjunct oflabour market restructuring and the emergent “competition state”(Cerny 2005). Under these arrangements diversity was less asource of identity and cohesion and more a commodity or strategicasset. Specifically, both governments promoted diverse immigra-tion on the grounds that migrants’ cultural capital provided acritical resource in flexible specialization and the nichefication ofmaterial and symbolic production. Under such arrangementsdiversity was perceived as “productive” and central to enhancinginnovation, trade, tourism, investment and regional integration(Cope and Kalantzis 1997, Mitchell 2004).

While space constraints preclude a full elaboration, these trendssuggest that the immigration controls were intimately structuredby prevailing modalities of societal regulation and the underlyingrelations between states, markets and citizens they assume. More-over, despite their modified form, the managerial logic and politicalimperatives underlying post-war policy – enabling economic devel-opment, organizing labour market incorporation, and managingsocial integration- remain relevant in the present period.

Conclusion

In sum, this article has traced the trajectory of post-war migra-tion controls in Canada and Australia to situate such policieswithin the broader regulatory arrangements of the Fordist era.The general argument that the volume, patterns and political per-ceptions of international migration cohered with and extendedFordist-Keynesian regulatory templates is clearly supported bythe Canadian and Australian cases. As the preceding pages indi-cate state officials constructed policy-regimes which utilizedplanned mass migration for economic and other requirements,while restricting territorial access to groups perceived as “unas-simiable” and disruptive to the project of national integration.Under such arrangements migration was approached as a care-fully calculated institutional field and critical component ofnation-building and state-making. In enlarging the national popu-



lation and labour market, diversifying and integrating economicactivity, spurring mass-industrial production, boosting aggregatedemand and providing forms of sociocultural gatekeeping, migra-tion controls accompanied other redistributive and interventionistprograms as forms of macro-social engineering oriented towardsproducing and maintaining the national economy and society ascoherent, bounded and homogenous units. By the early-1950ssuch policy regimes were firmly institutionalized and remainedimmune to substantive revisions until Fordism’s terminal crisis inthe early-1970s.

Beyond its empirical account of migration control, this paper’sinterpretation of immigration policies as critical components ofFordist-Keynesian regulatory schema helps integrate scholarshipon international migration and political sociology. Although mutu-ally beneficial for both fields, intellectual engagement and cross-pollination have been constrained by conceptual and analyticdifferences.

In the first instance, received conceptualizations of migration aredominated by society-centered appraisals in which human move-ment is mechanically engendered by individual and collectiveresponses to uneven development, capitalist penetration, the for-mation of social networks and perceived opportunities for materialgain (see Castles and Miller 2003, Papastergiadis 2000). Accompa-nying the causal privilege ascribed to socioeconomic factors is thegeneral treatment of states as epiphenomenal components that, ifdiscussed, are treated residually as derivations of market forces orcollective interests, values and identities (Brubaker 1992, Castells1975, Freeman 1995, Joppke 2005). As such, the role of states indetermining entrance and structuring incorporation remainsopaque and shrouded in conceptual fog.

Second, recent political sociological work has eschewed concep-tualizations of the state as either a factor of value-consensus,neutral broker of interests or appendage of capitalism, and articu-lated alternative models in which states exist as critical actors andstructures that influence social, economic and cultural forces asmuch as they are influenced by them (see Amenta 2005). However,the rich theoretical literature generated by such perspectives haslargely privileged the welfare-state, industrial policy and other insti-tutional fields at the expense of migration controls. If nationalborders and legal frameworks and regulations concerning immigra-tion were of marginal political importance, such theoretical gapswould be of little consequence. However, immigration policies notonly engage the immediate exigencies of state administration(labour policy, social expenditure, demographic growth etc.) butexist as a sort of meta-policy that, through their social, political and

26 James Walsh


symbolic effects, create political boundaries and directly structurethe form and organizational logic of the nation-state and inter-statesystem. More than pursuing administrative goals in accordancewith a set of prescribed national interests, migration policies areimplicated in the state’s material and symbolic production as thecentral, legitimate organization that defines, articulates andsecures interests on a national scale (see Joppke 2010, Mitchell1999).

Through its analysis this study has assisted in bridging thisimpasse. By highlighting the cases’ role in managing entry andincorporation in accordance with Fordist developmental objectives,it has integrated migration controls into broader discussions ofstate management and political regulation. Consequently, the his-torical evidence presented here suggests that greater attention bepaid – by political sociologists and migration scholars alike – to themanner in which immigration policies structure both migratorypatterns and broader frameworks of state-making and societalregulation.

Notes1 In terms of differences, when compared to Canada Australia has

historically displayed more robust commitments to national social provi-sion and a larger and politically organized labour movement (see Iacovettaet al. 1996, Moran 2005).

2 While scholarship on the cases has readily acknowledged differencesvis-à-vis Europe and the U.S., discussions continue to endorse generaltheories of labour migration in which, despite contextual variations, immi-grants provided equivalent political-economic functions (for example seeCastles et al. 1988, Collins 1988).

3 These outcomes are in stark contrast to the U.S., the other major“nation of immigrants”, where the policymaking trajectory has generallybeen guided by highly politicized legislative initiatives and powerful socialinterests (Tichenor 2002).

4 While Fordist styles of production existed in the early 20th century,it was not until the post-war period that this techno-economic paradigmwas thoroughly integrated into a complex of complementary forms of socialorganization, regulatory arrangements and cultural values that, once inplace, permitted the realization of its full socioeconomic implications (seeHoogvelt 2001).

5 In proportional terms this influx exceeded that of America during its“golden age” of migration in the decades spanning the start of the 20th

century. From 1950–1969 Australia received 23% of all emigrants leavingEurope versus 22% for the United States – a particularly striking outcomeconsidering that in 1960 America’s population was eighteen times that ofAustralia (see Meredith and Dyster 1999; 148).

6 Thus, although Calwell claimed that without significant demo-graphic gains “the day of the white man in Australia will be finished”, hisdepartment readily acknowledged that the preservation of racial homoge-neity hinged upon some sacrifice of ethnocultural homogeneity: “It would



be far better for us to have in Australia 20 or 30 million people of 100%white extraction than to continue the narrow policy of having a populationof 7 million people who are 98% British” (Richards 2009, 177).

7 Even trade unions, who were traditionally suspicious of immigra-tion, supported such efforts. According to Pat Conroy, secretary of theCanadian Congress of Labor: “We have this extremely large country withvirtually only a handful of people . . . because of the uncertain worldsituation . . . if we do not look after our heritage we may lose it” (Depart-ment of Labor 1947, 1109).

8 According to Hawker (1994, 91): “The post-war reconstructionshowed that the federal government was moving to a broader policy role, inwhich it increasingly came to coordinate the activities of the state govern-ments and in which its own apparatus also became increasingly undercentralized control”.

9 The governing Labour and then Liberal parties both believedthe state should play a significant role in economic planning and socialredistribution. In the later instance, although Liberal Prime MinisterMenzies promoted himself as a crusader against socialism and the“red menace”, his administration continued Labour’s nation-buildingagenda and “the . . . emphasis on [planned] migration and national devel-opment ensured the retention of economic management” (Macintyre 2009,206).

10 Specifically, Canada and Australia were heavily reliant on capitalimports and primary and export-oriented industries as a source of eco-nomic growth.

11 Holt would go onto add that these efforts were directed towardsstrategies of import substitution: “Since the war, the total . . . produc-tion of iron and steel has more than doubled and it is significant thatimmigration provided about three quarters of the increase in theworkforce . . . On the import-replacement side, motor vehicles figureprominently. It is interesting to note that Australian production . . . is nowabout 120,000 [vehicles] per annum . . . More than a third of the employ-ees are Non-British migrants” (Holt 1956b, 8).

12 For details on terms and conditions on ’bulk labour schemes inCanada see NAC RG 26 Vol 72 File 3-18-3 Vol 1 Undersecretary of Statefor External Affairs to Director, Department of Mines and Resources, 6December 1947.

13 These arrangements were brokered between Immigration MinisterHolt and the Australian Council of Trade Unions President Albert Monk.

14 Native Canadians were twice as likely to work in high-skill serviceoccupations, while migrants were a third and two-thirds more likely towork in manufacturing and construction respectively (Pendakur 2000).Based on a national survey conducted in 1961, one-half of British migrantsconstituted non-manual labour versus 20 percent of the remainingmigrants. Additionally while only 11% of British migrants fell within thelowest tier of the class hierarchy, this figure was 31% for the remainingmigrants and 52% for Greeks, Italians and other Southern Europeans(Richmond 1967).

15 Demonstrating these trends at a Ford manufacturing plant inGeelong immigrants made up 47% of the workforce in 1955 and 87% in1974 (Richards 2009).

16 At the time of King’s speech 50 and 30 percent of the Canadianpopulation was of British and French background respectively. Regionally,

28 James Walsh


ethnic homogeneity was even more apparent. 75 percent of Ontario’spopulation, the largest province, was of British background and 90 percentof Francophones lived in Quebec and northern Ontario and New Brun-swick (Harney 1988, 51).

17 For Calwell such differences were innate and unbridgeable: “I do notthink that an occidental mind can follow the mental processes of anoriental mind” (Markus 1994, 168).

18 Additionally, in both settings the demand for sociocultural homoge-neity and conformity was also linked to Cold War ideologies. Specifically, itwas feared that in addition to importing labour radicalism, non-Westernimmigration would weaken national solidarity and thereby undermineeach nation’s united front against communism and the “Red Menace”(Davidson 1997, Whitaker 1987).

19 In addition to the shop floor or state bureaucracy, “regulation” wasintended to capture culture, morality and collective identity, all of whichprovided the basis for social order and the integration of the market andpolity (see Lipietz 1986).

20 While generally associated with traditional accounts of nation-building (see Deutsch 1963), recent theorists have documented the impor-tance of economic unification as both an infrastructural and symbolicforce. According to Calhoun (1997, 69) “the integration of economies on anational level not only knitted together dispersed individuals and commu-nities, it helped define the unit of identity”.

21 Such sentiments were also advanced by demographer W.D. Borriewho claimed Australia’s economic development “was contingent on racialexclusion in immigration to foster a homogenous industrial society”(quoted in Richards 2009, 210).

22 Moreover such arrangements ensured that diversity existed withinstrict state-defined parameters and did not interfere with popular loyalty toa shared public culture and national values and institutions (Joppke2010).

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