Refugee settlement in Australia: policy, scholarship and the production of knowledge, 1952-2013

Since 1947, Australia has formally resettled more than 750,000 refugees. During that time, researchers have successfully completed more than 150 Masters and doctoral theses and published more than 900 articles, books and reports about issues of refugee settlement in Australia, with about half of them being published in the past 10 years. In this paper, we discuss the development of the production of knowledge about refugee resettlement. We identify trends in the literature, such as the emergence of an ethnospecific focus, and the concern with settlement’s psychological and emotional impact, and relate them to policy changes. We suggest that scholars need critically to take stock of the knowledge produced so far and be more cognisant of the international scholarly debate.