ABSTRACT
Australia has accommodated refugees throughout its settler-colonial history, but has resettled refugees only since 1947. This chapter identifies trends in the scholarly literature on Australian refugee settlement, relates them to broader changes of the discourse on refugees and briefly places them within a global context. During the 1970s, the focus of inquiry was increasingly shaped by government policy, partly in response to new opportunities for research opened up by policy initiatives, and partly by the recognition of the refugee as a new and hitherto understudied and undertheorised category of migrant. The arrival of multiculturalism, the official end of the White Australia Policy and the announcement of a distinct refugee policy in 1977 had led to a range of new settlement initiatives and services for refugees that were implemented in the 1980s. During the 1990s, the academic discourse on refugee settlement was primarily concerned with the problems of specific groups of refugees, government policy and the service sector.
