2026/03/06 by Tandee Wang · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Diaspora, migration, transnational identity #Education and experiences of immigrants and refugees #Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/03086534.2026.2632353
openalex publication_date 2026/03/06 · openalex created_date 2026/03/07 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/15
This article examines the history of Asian students in White Australia whose movement constituted an exception to immigration restriction. While the student exception was a feature of the administration of the Immigration Restriction Act (1901) virtually from its inception, it was not until the 1950s that it was taken up on a large scale, resulting in the presence of thousands of Asian students in Australian universities. By examining how these students were selected – through the academic, language and financial requirements of university admission – and, in turn, how they were discursively represented, the article argues that Asian students profoundly reshaped how ‘Asians’ were racialised in White Australia. They were no longer understood as unassimilable labouring hordes, the predominant racialisation of the nineteenth century, but rather educated and acculturated individuals capable of selective inclusion in Australian society. The history of Asian student mobility contextualises contemporary tropes regarding both Asian international and Asian Australian students. Centring the history of the student exception helps to elucidate how the Act designed to exclude Asians at federation also laid the foundations for their particular and restricted mode of inclusion decades later.