From Labour Market Exclusion to Industrial Solidarity: Australian Trade Union Responses to Asian Workers, 1830-1988

Michael Quinlan and Constance Lever-Tracy

Cambridge Journal of Economics, 1990, vol. 14, issue 2, 159-81

Abstract: This paper analyzes the historical interaction of immigration, racism and labor markets in Australia. In particular, it seeks to explain how a trade union movement which played a significant part in the exclusion of Asian immigrants gradually came to renounce racist sentiments and accept large scale Asian immigration even at a time of widespread unemployment. It is argued that while racism is often seen as self-perpetuating, the ratios between Australian unions and Asian workers have been historically contingent upon the interaction of socioeconomic forces, including the nature of the economy and trade, the linking of racism with nationalistic sentiment, the shifting balance of class forces, the impact of immigration on patterns of labor market segmentation, and the nature of labor market regulation. Copyright 1990 by Oxford University Press.

Date: 1990
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