ABSTRACT
This chapter offers evidence that Productive Diversity is something other than ‘ethnic surplus value’, where ethnoculture begins to be framed in policy discourse as relevant to non-productive and market expanding occupations. Importantly, the chapter explains how Productive Diversity was actually conceived and first articulated. A feature of Productive Diversity’s policy emergence is explored in the relationship between the Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA) and the Committee for the Economic Development of Australia (CEDA), a think tank representing the interests of Australian capital. That relationship is shown to have mutual interest in convincing business elites as much as the polity that Australia can benefit from promoting ethnoculture as usefulness for the global market economy. The final section newly synthesises historical data on the shift away from labour and unskilled visa entry. This helps to reinforce an argument that Productive Diversity principally was not addressing migrant productive labour as value.
