Immigrants and society

This book is the result of a collaboration between a historian (Kovacs) and a psychologist (Cropley). It contains a historical study of certain aspects of East Central Europe and Australia, and it also contains a psychological analysis of relations between immigrants and receiving societies. However, does not stand on either of these bases alone. Rather, its major contribution rests on the quali ties which arise from the collaboration, i.e. from the new whole resulting from the interaction of the two parts (history and psychology).

The book consists of three broad parts. Part I contains an introduction to the basic psychological concepts which have traditionally been utilised in studying adjustment of immigrants. However, it extends those concepts by arguing that the psychology of immigration cannot adequately be understood without recog nition of the role of alienation. Part II is a report of a study of the interaction between a receiving society and a group of immigrants to that society. The particular group of immigrants consisted of men and women who were assisted by the International Refugee Organisation (IRO), and the particular receiving society was Australia. This part analyses the psychohistorical factors which shaped the states of mind of the immigrants, it describes the properties of Aus tralia as a receiving society, and it shows what happened when the two were brought into contact with each other through immigration. The third part of the text fuses and summarises Parts I and II, and indicates their implications for relations between immigrants and receiving societies, if the interaction is to be harmonious and mutually beneficial.

Australia is a particularly appropriate site in which to carry out such a study, not only because the country has been one of the major recipients of immigrants since the Second World War, but also because the Australian way of life involves a clearly-delineated set of values, and a strong sense among Australians of their own national distinctiveness and uniqueness. Thus, when immigrants enter the Australian culture, they find themselves in contact with a tightly organised,