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Alistair Thomson on the Ten Pound Poms: "Implicitly assumed they weren't migrants"

Why don’t the British figure in narratives of post-war migration, when for decades they were still the largest migrant group?

On Afternoon Light #189 Georgina Downer speaks with Alistair Thomson about the 10 Pound Poms. Whose complex migrant stories provided us with plenty of Aussie rock icons, but also gradually revealed that Australia was not quite as British as either they or we assumed.

Alistair Thomson is Professor of History at Monash University in Melbourne, and was previously Professor of Oral History at the University of Sussex in England. His books include Anzac Memories: Living With the Legend (1994), The Oral History Reader (1998 and 2006, with Rob Perks), Ten Pound Poms: Australia’s Invisible Migrants (2005, with Jim Hammerton), Moving Stories: an intimate history of four women across two countries (2011) and Oral History and Photography (2011, with Alexander Freund).

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