Stowaways on their father's ships: European immigration and Australian film

In the 1940s and 1950s the Department of the Interior's Film Unit made a number of films designed to win the support of a sceptical Australian public for the large-scale intake of migrants, including refugees, from Europe. Migrants, it was argued, addressed the most pressing shortage in Australia at the time, 'manpower'. Since then, there has remained an emphasis on the vitalizing effects of immigration upon Australian society, although this has broadened to include cultural richness as well as labour. The more recent films dealing with the children of migrants have, however, dramatized a concern that the migrant's experience delivered to them as their 'heritage' could no longer carry the weight of optimism that both migrant and host had invested in the enterprise.