Researching Migration on Indigenous Lands: Challenges, Reflections, Pathways

This open access edited collection provides an interdisciplinary assessment of research about migration on Indigenous lands. Via an assortment of critical reflections from settler colonial Australia, it identifies tensions between colonialism and Indigenous sovereignty as an increasingly salient topic of analysis within migration research. It poses challenges to migration research that takes place on Indigenous lands, reflects on the methodological and theoretical issues at play when studying migration in settler colonial Australia, and outlines potential pathways for ethical migration research agendas that genuinely engage with Indigenous knowledges and scholarship. The book also compares and synthesizes where studies of settler colonialism and migration have intersected and contributing authors profile how migration, colonialism and Indigenous sovereignties intersect in multicultural Australia’s pasts and presents. At its core, the volume challenges migration studies, from Australian shores, to reimagine itself. In doing so, questions related to migration are altered and the basis of discussion around colonial legacies, multiculturalism, integration and diversity is recast. By providing nuanced theoretical, historical, and reflective case studies from a rage of disciplinary approaches, the volume will be a great resource to students, academics in migration and refugee studies, Indigenous scholars, activists, as well as policymakers in settler colonial societies.

Dr. Andonis Piperoglou is the Hellenic Senior Lecturer in Global Diasporas at the University of Melbourne. His work on Greek relations with race and labour in Australia has been published in many forums and his work on the historical intersections between migration and colonialism has led to the publication of ’Settler Migrations’ in the Cambridge History of Global Migrations (Vol 2) and a coedited special issue (with A/Prof Zora Simic) called ＂Their Own Perceptions: Non-Anglo Migrants and Aboriginal Australia＂ in Australian Historical Studies. His forthcoming book, Making Greek Settlers: Racial Inclusions and Exclusions in White Australia will be published with the University of Illinois Press’s Studies in World Migrations series. He is a member of the Modern Greek Studies Association (North America) and the Australian Historical Association, and sits on the editorial board of the Journal of Modern Greek Studies. Currently, he serves as Vice President of the International Australian Studies Association.

Dr Francesco Ricatti is Associate Professor of Italian Studies at The Australian National University. He has published extensively of the history of Italian migration to Australia, including his most recent book, Italians in Australia: History, Memory, identity (Palgrave 2018). His most recent research focuses on decolonial and transcultural approaches to migration history and Italian studies. He has also conducted participatory projects and research on the role of art and sport in informal processes of transculturation within superdiverse cities, including the project Youth in the City: La nostra Prato, which was supported by National Geographic and the Scanlon Foundation. He has just started work on the first history of grandparenting in Australia, a 3-year team project supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant.