Why read Ten Pound Poms?

Book cover of Ten Pound Poms: Australia's Invisible Migrants

Book description

More than a million Britons emigrated to Australia between the 1940s and 1970s. They were the famous 'ten pound Poms' and this is their story. Illuminated by the fascinating testimony of migrant life histories, this is the first substantial history of their experience and fills a gaping hole in the…

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European history

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Why read it?

1 author picked Ten Pound Poms as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Wendy Webster

Author

This may seem an odd choice, but many British who migrated to Australia subsequently returned to Britain and some, nicknamed ‘boomerang migrants,’ had lives of to and fro between Australia and Britain. I’ve chosen it because the experiences of migrants who don’t settle but either return or migrate onwards are often missing from histories. In Ten Pound Poms, the voices of people who returned or boomeranged are prominent, talking about intense homesickness, but also about a kind of reverse homesickness since the place they return to doesn’t match the way they imagined it while they were away and has…

From Wendy's list on migrants and refugees in twentieth-century Britain.