The Racialisation of Immigration Selection Policy: A Comparative-Historical Analysis of Australia and the UK

Abstract

Since the early 1970s, when overtly discriminatory immigration policies such as the White Australia Policy officially ended, policy-makers in liberal democracies have formally committed to the principle of non-discrimination on the grounds of race and national origin in selecting migrants. Despite this professed egalitarian commitment, immigration and refugee selection policies can still be racialised, sometimes deliberately but covertly, and sometimes inadvertently. This thesis analyses policy-making since the 1970s in Australia and the UK, two majority ‘white’ nations with colonial ties and similar Westminster parliamentary systems. The overarching methodology is the comparative case study approach. The thesis uses process tracing to explore the individual cases, deploying a mixture of qualitative instruments: documentary analysis; archival analysis; and semi-structured, elite interviews. It poses two main questions. First, what are racialised immigration and refugee selection policies? Second, why have certain areas of immigration and refugee selection policy been more or less racialised across time in Australia and the UK? ‘Racialised immigration and refugee selection policies’ are defined as policies which disproportionately restrict ‘visible minority’ migrants from entering the country through immigration and humanitarian selection and admission channels compared to ‘white’ migrants. The central argument is that immigration policies are more racialised the narrower the group of policy-makers and the greater their control over policy-making, provided the policy-makers are not ‘race-conscious’. This argument has theoretical implications for comparative migration scholars drawing on new-institutionalism and for comparative politics scholars analysing ‘race’, as well as practical implications for policy-makers.