Australia's Language-In-Migration Policies: Another Site For Subtle Social Exclusion

Abstract

Australia's immigration policies have remained an unsettled area subject to political disputation since the promulgation of the Immigration Restriction Act (No. 17) of 1901. Section 3a of this Act required that all prospective immigrants from non-European countries, particularly those from the Asian and the South Pacific regions, had to pass a dictation test in any European language selected by the immigration officer. Far from being an objective assessment of language proficiency skills, the dictation test was a discursive construct ostensibly designed to be failed and to exclude people whose political and racial affiliations were considered undesirable. Although it was formally abolished in 1958, the dictation test was reinvented and re-written into Australia's language-in-migration policies that continue to insist on English as the sole language of citizenship and immigration testing. Given the abundance of World Englishes spoken by prospective Australian citizens, this paper brings to limelight the implied power imbalances underwritten by testing immigrants using the medium of only one particular language variety.