Migrant women and their children who arrived in Australia as widows and unmarried mothers under the Displaced Persons (DPs) Scheme following the Second World War entered a society that was deeply invested in the nuclear family, in the ideal of the home and woman's place within it, caring for the family and raising children (Murphy, Reference Murphy2000).Footnote 1 For women with children who fell outside of this ideal, there was little financial or other assistance and working mothers, even if day care had been readily available, were generally frowned upon. As Howe and Swain (Reference Howe and Swain1993) explain, the term widow ‘had been traditionally used loosely in welfare circles to cover deserted wives, women living in de facto relationships and single mothers as well as married women whose husband had died’ (p. 44). However, following the war, the anger expressed by some community groups at the inclusion of de facto wives and other women not considered to be ‘genuine’ widows resulted in the use of the term ‘dependent female’ (Howe & Swain, Reference Howe and Swain1993, p. 44). Whatever term was used, and despite the increase in the number of widows post-war, as Aitken-Swan (Reference Aitken-Swan1962) contends, even within the wider community: ‘[t]he widow is called apathetic if she stays at home and she is blamed if she goes to work’ (p. 3).
Australian mothers were entitled to some government assistance through child endowment and from 1942 there was also the option of a Widow's Pension.Footnote 2 Benefits paid under either scheme, however, were very low and difficult, if not impossible, to live on (Curthoys, Reference Curthoys, Curthoys, Martin and Rowse1987). For DP women and their children, the social and economic situation was even more difficult. To be eligible for the widow's pension a recipient had to be an Australian citizen and under the Nationality and Citizenship Act 1948 naturalisation was impossible unless the individual had been a resident in Australia for five years. Furthermore, as historian Damousi (Reference Damousi2001) explains in her study of Australian war widows, the ‘psychological impact of war remains long after the event, not just for soldiers, but also for those around them who also have to absorb the legacy of war’ (p. 5). For refugee women and children, there were additional issues of displacement and isolation. Far from the countries of their birth and without English or knowledge of Australia, many had already spent years in camps in Europe and, as one social worker report states, they had lost all hope and initiative, and were fearful of moving into the wider community (National Archives Australia [NAA], A446, 1962/65241).
There were further issues to contend with in the case of unmarried mothers. Single mothers, as Howe and Swain (Reference Howe and Swain1993) explain, challenged the patriarchal state and posed a threat to the ideal of the family, which was at its economic and social base. In the years leading up to World War Two, the single mother was considered the villain to be punished and the ex-nuptial child was generally the innocent victim (Howe & Swain, Reference Howe and Swain1993). In post-war Australia, with an even greater emphasis on the traditional nuclear family, these attributions remained and were perhaps enhanced for the ex-nuptial migrant child. Their status as future citizens and the overarching belief in the migrant child as ‘readily assimilate-able’ and therefore the very best of ‘New Australians’ (Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates, 14 August 1948, p. 19) immediately raised their welfare as an issue.Footnote 3
Given the poor social status and economic difficulties of single mothers already apparent within Australia, it is hard to pinpoint the exact reasons for the acceptance of DP widows and unmarried mothers as part of the post-war refugee intake. While other scholars have debated Australian, and particularly Minister for Immigration Arthur Calwell's motivations,Footnote 4 this paper considers how the presence of this cohort significantly challenged the three key policy foundations of the post-World War Two programme of vigorous population expansion. The policies of record were: the mandatory 2-year work contract for all refugees and assisted European immigrants; the provision of government-run hostel accommodation for newly arrived migrants; and the overarching policy of assimilation of migrants into the ‘Australian way of life’.Footnote 5
Following a short review of the background to the large scale immigration scheme that led to so many new arrivals in Australia, this paper considers how the influx of migrant widows and unmarried mothers placed stress on the key policies of the immigration system. It reflects upon the responses of the authorities at the time, in particular the Department of Immigration Social Welfare Section, and how these impacted on the migrants themselves, especially the children of unmarried or widowed women. It will be proposed that the perhaps unintended, and yet potentially foreseeable, consequences were a high incidence of migrant child placement and adoption amongst this cohort, which resulted in long lasting issues of abandonment and betrayal.
Methodology
The migrant children (and their mothers) who are the subject of this paper fall within a much wider multi-disciplinary scholarship of adoption and child placement practices in Australia. Recent inquiries including Lost Innocents: Righting the Record (2001), a report on child migration and Forgotten Australians (2004), a report on Australians who experienced institutional or out-of-home care as children, and subsequent national apologies have raised public awareness and stimulated a wide variety of scholarly responses.Footnote 6 However, within the existing literature, the consideration of ‘migrant children’ has largely been limited to those who arrived as a consequence of the direct policy of child migration (in particular those from the United Kingdom and Malta). By contrast, this paper considers how the children of post-War European migrants became part of the wider child welfare system as a result of immigration policies mainly directed towards adult migrants, rather than the children themselves.
The research for this paper has been extracted from the extensive archival material accessed as part of a larger project examining the experiences of refugees and post-Second World War migrants who passed through government-run migrant accommodation centres.Footnote 7 This article has drawn mainly on Department of Immigration records, including departmental social worker reports. These regular reports are often statistical in nature, but also address particular individual cases as exemplars of issues facing new arrivals. The reports are naturally coloured by the individual biases and agendas of social workers, many of whom were happy to work within the government policy of assimilation, but some of whom were more questioning of the efficacy of the policy. The use of the broader Department of Immigration record set and contemporary newspaper reports also helps to situate the exemplars within the broader policy context.
Background to Australia's post World War Two immigration boom
Australia's acceptance of over 170,000 DPs from Europe over the period 1947 to 1953 has been described by some scholars as an immigration revolution (Markus, Jupp, & McDonald, Reference Markus, Jupp and McDonald2009), with the mass migration scheme completely altering the face of Australia. The reason for this significant change from Australia's previous stance on immigration, based on the so-called ‘White Australia’ policy,Footnote 8 may have had some grounding in humanitarian diplomacy, but was also certainly driven by the economic and political position of Australia at the time. Post war, in response to falling birth rates, the desire to build the economy and reacting to a perceived need for a much larger populace for reasons of defence and fear of invasion, the Australian Government had revived the phrase ‘populate or perish’.Footnote 9 It proposed that the population of just over 7 million should increase by 2% per annum, 1% of which would come from immigration.
1947 proved to be a defining year in the advancement of Australia's immigration programme. Serious manpower shortages were reported. Vital industries, including coal mining, steel, timber and the producers of other building materials, reported that all labour resources had been tapped. There was insufficient labour to maintain current outputs in manufacturing, expansion was impossible (Markus, Reference Markus1984), and as a result a new labour source was essential. This lack of industrial expansion and calls for a greater workforce coincided with a severe housing shortage, estimated just two years earlier to be in excess of 300,000 dwellings (Macintyre, Reference Macintyre2015).
At the same time, on the other side of the world, Australia becoming a signatory to the constitution of the International Refugee Organisation (IRO) opened new possibilities to a government struggling to overcome the limited recruitment of desirable immigrants (i.e. those from the United Kingdom and northern Europe). At the end of the war, there were an estimated 12 million DPs in Europe (Persian, Reference Persian2015) and even by 1947 more than 1.6 million remained in over 900 camps in Germany, Austria and France (Markus, Reference Markus1984).
Australian community support was considered essential for the success of the post-war immigration scheme and, alongside the careful selection of DPs, extensive publicity and ‘conditioning campaigns’ were instituted aimed at the Australian public (see for example NAA, A436, 1948/5/330). Initially, Australian selection officers in Europe concentrated on healthy single men and, to a lesser extent, single women because alongside the shortages of workers in industry, there were also shortages in traditional female occupations including nursing and domestic work.) However, by April 1948, as the number of available single DPs fell, and in consideration of the fact that Australia needed not only ‘good and willing workers’ but also ‘prospective breeders’ (NAA, A445, 200/1/5), family groups were included. In February 1949, Calwell extended the acceptable DP criteria to include widows, deserted wives and unmarried mothers with children.
Work Contracts, Hostel Accommodation and the Impact on Single Mothers
While some receiving nations contracted DPs to specific companies, only those going to Australia and New Zealand were required to sign up to work contracts before departure from Europe (Kunz, Reference Kunz1988). These contracts stated that the migrant must remain in the employment found for them by the authorities for a period of up to two years. Furthermore, they prohibited the changing of employment without the consent of the Department of Immigration. Accepting that the future of Australia's mass migration policy rested on the success of the DP scheme, Kunz (Reference Kunz1988) argues that Calwell used the two year work contract to prevent the growth of unfavourable attitudes towards immigrants and ‘thus ensure the green light for further mass intakes’ (p. 143).
History had shown that the most likely groups to oppose the importation of ‘foreign labour’ were the unions and the two year work contracts ensured that migrant workers could only be placed where they would not deprive an Australian of employment. Furthermore, once placed the migrant had to receive award wages and work under (union) award conditions. Migrants were also encouraged to join the union (although this was not specifically written into the contract). If a DP failed to comply with the conditions of the contract, they could be deported under Section 4 of the Immigration Restriction Act. In practice, the two year work contracts ensured that the Australian government could control the employment of DPs and therefore move them into positions of perceived need, often in arduous working conditions.
One of the major problems with the placement of DPs into work was that of accommodation. As noted above, post-war Australia was in the midst of a severe housing shortage. Although labour was essential to the ultimate correction of this shortage, labourers had to be housed. The solution was twofold. DPs who were to be employed by government utilities or private companies were only placed where employer provided accommodation was available (NAA, D1917, D24/46 Part 2). In order to fulfil the obligations of the IRO agreement and to ensure harmony within the general population, it was specified that this accommodation ‘must be at least equal to the standards which are customary for Australian workers in the particular employment concerned’ and could only be provided if it was ‘not likely to prejudice the accommodation needs of the general public’ (NAA, MP239/7, 573/6/1). For others, Commonwealth Government migrant accommodation initially took the form of Reception and Training Centres, often utilising ex-army camps, such as Bonegilla and Bathurst. As their collective name implies, as well as providing initial accommodation, these centres also provided lessons in the English language and an introduction to Australian history, democracy, and customs and values – commonly referred to as the Australian way of life. It was from these centres that DPs were placed in employment (NAA, MP239/7, 573/6/1). Without consideration of previous employment, education or training, men were placed in primarily labouring positions, often in remote areas, with the principal aims of improving manufacturing output and providing labour for infrastructure projects. Single women, after some initial placements in administrative positions, were generally placed in domestic, cleaning and carer positions with many staffing mental institutions and tuberculosis sanatoriums.
With the arrival of family groups, and eventually widows and single mothers, a second level of accommodation for women and children not in employment became necessary and to meet this need the government established a series of Holding Centres. Like the earlier Reception and Training Centres, Holding Centres were usually established in ex-army or air force bases, provided temporary accommodation and worked on the principal of communal living with cafeteria style food delivery and communal ablutions. These centres, again as their name implies, were places where women and children waited either for their breadwinners to find accommodation for them or for them to complete their two year work contracts. For many women, and especially for women and children without breadwinners, Holding Centres often became long term residences.
DP widows, unmarried mothers and their children were sent initially to Reception and Training Centres such as Bonegilla with the expectation that they would be placed in employment and therefore fulfil their commitment under the work contract. While there is evidence that some women, mainly those with only one child, were successfully placed in mainly domestic situations, often in rural areas, the majority could not be placed and were then sent on to the Holding Centres where, even unemployed, they were expected to pay a weekly rent. Without work placements, widows and unmarried mothers could not fulfil their contracts, they could not become self-supporting and many quickly ran up considerable debts. In November 1950 at the Woodside Centre in South Australia for example, one Lithuanian born widow, Elena, with her five children, who had arrived in April 1949 and was therefore among one of the first widows to arrive, reportedly already owed £230 (NAA, A434, 1950/3/27104).
As well as the incurring of debts, the inability to place women with dependent children into work also saw them remaining within the accommodation system for longer and longer periods of time. Aside from their failure to fulfil their work contracts, these ‘long stayers’ also had significant impacts on the other two key immigration policies. Since these dependent mothers and their children did not move through the accommodation system as planned, increasingly their continued presence restricted entry of new arrivals and, more importantly, prevented their progression towards assimilation into the wider community. The so-called ‘problem cases’ quickly became the focus of the newly-formed Department of Immigration Social Welfare Section (See for example, NAA, J25, 1966/2798).
Government Responses
As early as 1949, Arthur Calwell, Minister for Immigration, had written to the Minister for Health and Social Services about the necessity for a co-ordinated plan for the assimilation of ‘aliens’, particularly former DPs. Calwell recognised that these refugees had:
no one to break down for them the first barriers of life in a strange country with its different language and customs . . . [and] their reception, preliminary training, education in the English language, employment and accommodation are the responsibility of my Department of Immigration. All these are matters which are vital to and inseparable from their general welfare. From the beginning it has been obvious that the case-work necessary to cope with personal and family difficulties could be undertaken only by Social Workers functioning as an integral part of my Department (NAA, A438, 1949/7/1510).
The Department of Immigration Social Welfare Section was formed as a branch of the Aliens Assimilation Division in the same year (NAA, A445, 140/5/6) with the aim of employing thirty-seven, mainly female, social workers, although that target was never actually met (NAA, A438, 1949/7/1510). By job description, the role of the social workers primarily involved identifying issues causing stress and discontent amongst migrants and referring cases to an appropriate volunteer agency for assistance (NAA, A438, 1950/7/387). As Calwell explained to the Minister for Health, the ‘assimilation and social welfare of the migrant is essentially a matter for every Australian citizen’ so that paid staff, including social workers would not be used ‘for work which will be undertaken by such bodies as the Country Women's Association, New Settlers’ League, Y.W.C.A. and Y.M.C.A’ (NAA, A438, 1949/7/1510). The role of the Department of Immigration social worker was, therefore, primarily to help DPs ‘become happily absorbed into the community’ by working as a liaison between the voluntary organisations, the Australian public and the migrant (NAA, A438, 1950/7/387). The role was as much about educating and acclimatising the Australian public as in helping the migrant, or as their job descriptions stated to ‘help cushion some of the effects upon the Australian community . . . thus bringing about a better mutual understanding’ (NAA, D400, SA1959/3783).
In reality, as early reports from social workers in the accommodation centres highlight, their enormous caseloads brought them into contact with a wide range of issues including mental and other health problems, accommodation issues, financial problems and marital breakdowns. Their work also placed them in the middle of the nascent problems associated with widows and unmarried mothers. A typical approach of utilising church and other voluntary organisations as a solution to the key problems facing these women and their children is the example of an unmarried Italian woman and her two year old daughter, who with the aid of a Catholic Priest, were placed in employment with accommodation to enable them to move out of the Holding Centre and into the community whilst remaining together (NAA, A438, 1950/7/387). Another approach to dealing with the problem of single mothers was to encourage them to marry. This had the added advantage of not only resolving the issue of the support of the dependant woman and her children but also worked towards addressing the issue of the balance of the sexes among DP arrivals.Footnote 10 Hazel Dobson, Director of the Department of Immigration's Assimilation and Social Welfare Section, regularly expressed her belief that marriage was the ‘only really satisfactory solution in many cases of widows with several young children’. Therefore she encouraged ‘Social Workers, Church Workers and Good Neighbour Councils . . . to keep in mind the need for these women to be given opportunities to meet suitable men’ (NAA, A437, 1950/6/173).
As more widows and unmarried mothers arrived the pressures placed upon the system grew. Social workers were evidently torn between their role in aiding assimilation and addressing the hardships that these women and their children were facing. Social worker reports express a wide variety of responses with some labelling their clients as ‘hard core problems’, non-compliants and misfits (See for example NAA, A445, 276/2/11). Others are far more sympathetic arguing that all they need is ‘a bridge over which they can move from the Centre to the outer world. They need someone to help them over this bridge. They need both a push from the Centre and a pull into the community’ (NAA, A446, 1962/65241). Whatever the response, the majority of social worker reports refer to these women and their children as their ‘greatest challenges’ (See for example NAA, A437, 1949/6/385).
A number of solutions were sought. In the first instance it was determined that:
from an assimilation aspect consideration should be given to the employment of these women on camp duties least their continued idleness ruin what slight incentive may remain to accept some responsibility for their own and their children's welfare (NAA, A434, 1950/3/27104).
However, as the number of widows and unmarried mothers in the accommodation centres increased, there was insufficient employment for them. Furthermore, as noted above, these centres were established as temporary housing; long term residents had a detrimental effect on the expected ongoing movement of people and more particularly on the policy of assimilation. Employment needed to be found within the community.
A targeted campaign to employ and/or accommodate a widow and child had some success and was seen as an ideal solution as it provided employment, accommodation and the potential for assimilation. A nationwide newspaper campaign, with a particular emphasis on rural areas, aimed to find homes for over 700 women and their children calling on Australians to ‘accept the Christian and moral obligation of assisting these innocent victims of the war to find security and happiness in Australia’ (See for example, The Riverine Grazier, 1950, p. 1). Despite the success of the campaign in placing more than 800 women in work with accommodation, still more than 700 women and many more children remained in the centres. The majority of those who had been placed in work had only one child and it was apparent to Dobson that women with more than one child would most likely remain in centres indefinitely (NAA, A445, 276/2/10).
Impacts on Children
The ‘handicap of children’ placed pressure on both the Department of Immigration and migrant mothers and one of the solutions was to remove children (usually temporarily) into orphanages and other accommodation facilities. Social worker reports comment that:
[r]equests for child placement have been numerous. In the case of widows who are unable to obtain employment with their children, it has been considered justifiable to render some assistance to the mother in arranging for separate accommodation for their children (NAA, A445, 276/2/11).
The total number of children so placed, as in the wider community (Penglase, 352), is very difficult to determine, but as an example we know that in 1949–1950 some 67 children were placed from accommodation centres in New South Wales alone (NAA, A445, 276/3/2). This number included temporary and permanent or adoption placements but there is no indication of whether the mothers were widows or single women.
Placements were most commonly made through the churches and other charitable organisations such as Salvation Army homes. A 1951 social work report from Perth gives some indication of this, outlining that, of the 51 placements made that year, Clontarf and St Joseph's Orphanages took most of the children but some were sent to the Wanslea Home for Children, to the Salvation Army Home and one to the Presbyterian Home (NAA, A445, 276/3/1).Footnote 11 Children were generally placed in homes where spaces were available with no consideration for religious or cultural beliefs. For example, two children of Greek Orthodox denomination from the Woodside Centre were placed in a Church of England and a Roman Catholic children's home, respectively (NAA, A445, 276/3/4). Little consideration was apparently given to family separation, and siblings, especially when there were large age gaps, were often placed in different institutions (NAA, A434, 1950/3/25969).
For the mothers of these children the financial burden did not end with placement. Reports indicate a great variety of charges across the different institutions. While one social worker claimed that although most institutions requested a small weekly sum for the upkeep of the child, it was ‘never insisted upon and the amount is usually left to the parent to decide’ (NAA, A445, 276/2/11). In Perth however, the social worker noted that the financial difficulties of placement:
cannot be overlooked – where widows have two, three or four children, it becomes impossible for them to meet their commitments, (£1 per week for each child at least) out of their wages and in this community there are no agencies to help them, the State Department being somewhat unwilling to take on the responsibilities of helping to pay for the children in homes (NAA, A445, 276/3/1).
Therefore, the institutions were often left to cover the cost of care for these children. This caused a degree of public outcry with newspaper reports claiming that these migrant children were jamming welfare homes (see for example, The Argus, 1952).
For the Australian public, the placement of children was often seen as the migrant taking advantage of a system designed for the Australian born or as a sign of the inherent weakness in the migrants themselves. Sensational headlines claimed ‘Migrants Rush Orphanages’, quoting a Sydney Social Worker that ‘many New Australians were trying to place their children in orphanages or denominational schools so that the parents could get accommodation . . . [but] in some cases they simply wanted to get rid of ‘problem children’’ (The Sunday Herald, 1951, p. 5). A report in the Adelaide Advertiser (1951) that migrants were ‘Selling Children’ was rapidly disseminated across the nation's newspapers. According to a church official, migrants were so desperate to find accommodation that they were selling some of their children and if you knew the right person you could pay 5 pound for a child in a hostel (migrant accommodation centre) because migrants were ‘that desperate to decrease the number of children’ (The Advertiser, 1951, p. 3). Furthermore, many newspapers openly blamed the problem on the arrival of unmarried or widowed mothers and their illegitimate children who had been born in DP camps in Europe (The Sunday Herald, 1951). Although newspapers later reported that these particular claims were unsubstantiated, ongoing reports highlight the resentment of some sectors of the community that these women, and their children, were taking the places needed by Australians.
Calwell, and the Department of Immigration, were always aware of the potential for local resentment and Dobson warned that when dealing with the problem of dependent migrant women it was difficult to suggest schemes ‘without arousing resentment because of the number of ‘old’ Australians, including widows, whose position is desperate’ (NAA, A445, 276/2/10). In response to complaints, Calwell wrote that it had ‘never been the intention that migrant children should occupy accommodation in State Institutions to the detriment of Australian children’ (NAA, A434, 1949/3/24452). However, the policies that he and his Department had put in place (the two year work contract, the need to find accommodation and move out of centres and the pressure to assimilate) and which had directly led to the situation these women and their children found themselves in, remained. Calwell's successor as Minister for Immigration, Harold Holt, continued to actively pursue the placement of children saying that: ‘Now that the mothers have been relieved of the responsibility of looking after their children they are free to engage in remunerative employment, in fact they are obliged to do so’ (NAA, A434, 1949/3/24452).
A more permanent solution for migrant widows and unmarried mothers failing to manage under the pressures of the policies in place was the adoption of their children. Within wider Australian society of the period, adoption was generally perceived to be ‘the ideal solution to the problem of ex-nuptial pregnancy’ as it:
provided the “healthy” white child with a two-parent family and legitimacy, the birth mother with an opportunity to “get on with her life” and infertile couples with a child to care for and cherish (Standing Committee on Social Issues, 2000, p. 36).
Again, it is difficult, if not impossible, to determine from the available records how many migrant women might have gone down this path. While one social worker report states that ‘very few are willing to even consider having the children adopted’ (NAA, A434, 1950/3/25969), others report, often quite matter of factly, that ‘[t]wo babies have been adopted’ (NAA, A445, 276/3/1) or that ‘the adoption for the newborn of an unmarried mother was finalised and the child was handed over to the Child Welfare Inspector . . . A further two unmarried mothers in the centre have requested assistance with the adoption of their expected babies’ (NAA, A437, 1949/6/385).
Numbers were obviously sufficient that departmental instructions were issued to outline the legal requirements and procedures required for New Australian mothers who wished to have children adopted. In the first instance, social workers and accommodation centre directors were told that migrant women may ‘make private arrangements’ or that the ‘Centre Social worker might help’. However, if the mother could not make private arrangements then:
the Department must be concerned. The Director must obtain a witnessed and signed statement from the mother to the effect that she fully understands the adoption process and that she desires the Director to make arrangements for the adoption of her baby (NAA, K403, W59/926 Part 1).
In this and other correspondence regarding the adoption of migrant children, one is struck by the impersonal nature and lack of consideration given to these women and their children. In one report, the plight of a recently arrived unmarried mother who gave birth to a child soon after her arrival at Bathurst Migrant Camp and had the child adopted is highlighted. Following the adoption, and as required under the work contract, this woman was placed in employment in a private home caring for three children. The social worker reported that after a short time she:
began to resent expending her love and energy on strange children when she had been forced to part with her own. Her employer felt it was not safe to leave the children in her care. She was being treated for insomnia and hives and a doctor recommended she not be employed in the care of children (NAA, A434, 1950/3/5084).
The woman was subsequently found work in a factory (NAA, A434, 1950/3/5084).
Conclusion
It is clear that the policies put in place for the management of the post-war mass influx of DPs were severely tested by the arrival of significant numbers of widowed and single women with dependent children. Their family status was, in general, incompatible with the requirement to serve out a 2 year work contract, their inability to work caused problems with movement through and out of the hostel system, and their inability to move into the community compromised the assimilation aims of the government of the day. Even as early as November 1950, T E Heyes, of the Department of Immigration, noted that ‘Widows with children are amongst our greatest employment problems’ and suggested that ‘all future sailings should not accept widows with more than one child unless the children are of working age’ (NAA, A434, 1950/3/25969).
The establishment of the Social Welfare Section of the Department of Immigration and the deployment of social workers represented an acknowledgement of some of the issues being raised but did not really address the tragedy of the plight of the unintended victims of the policy failings, namely the children of single and unmarried or widowed migrants. The Department of Immigration records that have been used as the basis of the research for this paper do not tell us much of the long term fate of the children of women who transited through the migrant accommodation system and who were forced, by a combination of circumstances, to give them up in order to be able to undertake work. Some files certainly indicate that placement was temporary, whilst for others placement and adoption was permanent. Many of these children grew up, as one social worker reports, in ‘places where there are too many children for any one individual to receive the adequate personal attention every child needs’ (NAA, A445, 276/3/1). Therefore, although their path to the wider child welfare system may have been different, their experiences of ‘care’ have undoubtedly cast similar long shadows as those who were part of the now notorious child migration schemes. It is important that these children of post-war refugees and migrants are recognised within the awareness and ongoing scholarship that has arisen from the inquiries into, and national apologies for, the treatment of children forced into adoption or institutional care, as, unlike some of these practices which are rooted in our history, the migration of refugee women and their children continues.Footnote 12 As Lenette (Reference Lenette2013) highlights, over 80% of the world's estimated 15 million refugees are said to be women (many of them widowed) and children and yet as her recent work on Sudanese women in Queensland highlights:
the impact of widowhood on the lives of lone refugee women with children in a resettlement context does not receive a lot of attention . . . It is therefore important to consider the lived experiences of widows with children as a distinct set of circumstances that determine their resettlement process (p. 404).
Australia's refugee intake, does, and will continue to, contain these women and their children.
