ABSTRACT
The Italians are the largest immigrant group of non English-speaking origin in Australia and they have been the subject of a number of studies since the years of greatest influx in the 1950s and 1960s. In the mid-1970s, as migrant rights were asserted more vigorously, there was an increasing acceptance of the ideology of ‘multiculturalism’. This chapter argues first that it is more meaningful to see Australian society in class terms than to use liberal pluralist theory. It sets out to illustrate how a consciousness derived from a minority culture is transformed in its interaction with competing ideologies from the wider Australian society. The chapter suggests that new forms of consciousness generated by economically, politically and ideologically powerful groups are appropriated by the descendants of any immigrant group. Like Southern Europeans generally, Sicilians received less Australian government assistance with their passages out than other immigrants, their qualifications were less recognised, and they found English language resources inadequate.
