The Freedom Voices: Slovak and Czech Immigration to Australia after World War Two

Jozef Adamec

doi:10.25918/thesis.381

After World War II, over 16,000 Czechoslovakians immigrated to Australia. This study is an in-depth enquiry into the lived experiences of 18 of those immigrants. The focus is on the period between the end of the war and the fall of the communist regime in 1990; a time when information in communist Czechoslovakia was censored or distorted to echo political narratives. This study attempts to fill gaps in knowledge from this time period by adopting a holistic and nuanced approach, that follows three key objectives: 1) Exploring immigrants’ lived experiences during the communist regime in Czechoslovakia and reasons for migration; 2) Immigrants’ experiences after arrival in Australia, their life in migrant camps, and concerns and constraints during their resettlement and integration into the community; and 3) Exploration into their personal and professional development, family issues, and achievements in Australia. At a theoretical level, this study employs Yuval-Davis’s theories of belonging, which are placed at the centre of the analysis. Doing so offers evidence of the impact of belonging, or the lack of it. Belonging here is seen as an ‘arena of contestation’ about who does and who does not belong to certain spaces or places. The thesis locates belonging as a continuously negotiated struggle related to power, recognition, and personal adaptation and theorises how those elements denote people's sense of safety and how they embody belonging conceptually and experientially. Concepts of diversity, acceptance, citizenship, social boundaries, and reshaping one’s identity in a new space and place are therefore important sites of interrogation in this study. Methodologically, the research focuses on harnessing the ‘wholeness’ of the lived world of the participants, bringing themes from the periphery to the centre. Participants’ narratives are situated in the present and in the past to clarify the essential meanings of their lives in communist Czechoslovakia and here, in Australia. Therefore, a phenomenological hermeneutic was used to frame this research, and a specifically designed mind map was used during the interviews to operate as a ‘roadmap’ for the participants to express their views freely, in the form of a dialogue with the researcher. As an insider-researcher, I developed an interpretive constructivist paradigm within the emerging dialogues based on the tradition of hermeneutics aimed at a greater understanding of participants’ worldviews. This ‘relationship’ to the stories and to the history under interrogation helped me see the story beyond the story inscribed in the articulation of their experience through language, mannerisms, tone, body language, and silences. Empirically, this study presents personal insights into migration and how participants navigated through it, including why they are, or are not, able to feel they belong and what effect borders, social boundaries, and political backdrops have on belonging. The study shows an understanding of belonging as a ‘felt experience’ and relies solely on personal experience as lived, seeking to extend existing knowledge and generate new original contributions, uncovering the experiences of migrants from communist Czechoslovakia as has never been done before in Australia. Finally, this thesis is personal, just as it is political. The stories of my participants are also my stories. It’s also time to hear my story through the stories of others. I am 80 years old, and it has been 56 years since I fled my country of origin and immigrated to Australia as a young man. For decades, there was no room to tell the truth in our stories and the heartbreak weaved through them. But as voiced by participants, ‘we are free to speak now’, accordingly, this study is titled ‘Freedom Voices’. It is their time, and my time to speak, before our stories are forgotten forever.

The Freedom Voices: Slovak and Czech Immigration to Australia after World War Two

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The Freedom Voices: Slovak and Czech Immigration to Australia after World War Two

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