PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
Ruth Balint is Associate Professor of History at the University of New South Wales. She teaches and writes about forced migration and refugees in the twentieth century. Ruth has a keen interest in Australian migration history and holds an ARC Discovery grant with Professor Sheila Fitzpatrick from the University of Sydney and Dr Jayne Persian at the University of Southern Queensland, on the subject of Russian and Russian-speaking Jewish Displaced Persons arriving in Australia via the 'China' Route in the Wake of the Second World War. Ruth's forthcoming book Destination Elsewhere: Displaced Persons and their Quest to Leave Postwar Europe is to be released this year with Cornell University Press. It explores the encounters of refugees with the international aid agencies, western migration agents and Allied forces on European soil during the war's aftermath, and the struggle to redefine refugees as immigrants to the West. Ruth has also written extensively on the histories of families broken apart by the immigration policies of western nations. Ruth's background as a filmmaker has also led her to become increasingly interested in the importance of making Australian history accessible in creative ways. In 2019, her radio documentary 'Cooking for Assimilation' aired on Radio National's Hindsight program. It focused on the migration of Ruth's grandmother as a Jewish refugee to Australia, and more broadly, about the expectations and challenges women migrants faced in postwar Australia.
'A new, important way to tell our migration history, and a fascinating read.' --Andrew and Renata Kaldor, Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW 'Smuggled is a pioneering work in Australian immigration history.' --Professor Joy Damousi, Australian Catholic University 'a timely corrective to the simplistic portrayal of people smugglers as evil scum.' --Peter Mares, The Cranlana Centre for Ethical Leadership
