MIGRATION AND OPPORTUNITY - AN ANTIPODEAN PERSPECTIVE

Australian data can reflect on British questions, about the quality of immigrant labour, and the opportunities gained by migrating, in the n ineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Three case studies are presen ted. The first uses quantitative methods and convict transportation re cords to argue that Ireland suffered a ''brain drain'' when Britain in dustrialized, siphoning off the cream of its workers to England and so me, eventually, to Australia. Drawing on an entirely different type of data, the second study reaches strikingly similar positive conclusion s about the qualities of Australia's early assisted immigrants: three splendidly visible immigrants stand for the tens of thousands of peopl e who sailed out of urban and rural Britain to the distant colonies. A no less optimistic view of Australia's immigrants half a century late r is demonstrated in the third case study on female domestic servants. Often referred to as the submerged stratum of the workforce, the most oppressed and the least skilled, the label ''domestic servant'' obscu red a wide range of internal distinctions of rank and experience, and too often simply homogenized them into a sump of ''surplus women''. Th is study helps to rescue the immigrant women from this fare and invest s them with individuality and volition, offering the vision of the int ercontinentally peripatetic domestic, piloting her way about the globe , taking advantage of colonial labour shortages to maximize her mobili ty and her family strategies. Best of all, these migrants emerge as in dividuals out of the mass, faces with names, people with agenda.