Becoming Australian: Migration, Settlement and Citizenship

The year 2013 is the 40th anniversary of the end of the 'White Australia policy'. In these four decades Australia's immigration policy has shifted from a primary concern with cultural homogeneity or Britishness to a focus on demand-based skills through an increasingly fine-tuned system of points tests, occupation lists and employer-sponsored visas.

Despite disproportionate politicisation of asylum seekers in recent public discourse, the intake of refugees and humanitarian entrants has remai...