Using souvenirs to rethink how we tell histories of migration: some thoughts

Abstract

The representation of migration in Australian museum exhibitions has been shaped by two main issues. The first is that in settler countries like Australia, migration is closely linked with nation-building. Unlike European countries, where migrants are perceived as an addition to a well-established population with strong roots in immemorial time, non-indigenous Australians are all linked to a process of migration. The focus on how we tell the stories of migration in museums has, as a consequence, concentrated on the experiences of travel itself, on what migrants brought with them and finally on how they contributed to building the nation. This is so regardless of whether we are talking about migrants in the nineteenth century, defined as ‘settlers’, or referring to the postWorld War II migrants, more recent migrants from the Asian region or refugees. The assumption is that migrants come, stay and become Australian. The second factor is the close relationship between the representation of migration and the emergence in the early 1970s of multiculturalism as a formal policy of the Australian government. Given the close association between museums and nation-making, it is not surprising to see that museums capitalized on the opportunity to use the multicultural agenda to anchor their educational, public role. Representing either the culture and heritage of individual migrant communities or their contribution to Australia’s national development served a double role – to incorporate them into an Australian national imaginary and to encourage the Anglo majority to value their contribution to the nation. As Ian McShane (2001: 128) has put it, in these narratives migrants undergo a process of rebirth, emerging as new citizens and enriching the cultural matrix.

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