Who were the assisted passage migrants after World War Two?

The assisted passage migrants after World War Two were the millions of people who came to Australia between 1945 and the early 1980s under the federal government's assisted passage schemes. These programmes paid most or all of the cost of migration in exchange for commitments to work and live in Australia for a specified period.

The largest scheme was the British Assisted Passage Scheme, known popularly as the Ten Pound Pom programme. British and Irish migrants could come to Australia for a fare of just ten pounds (about 800 dollars in today's money), with the federal government and the migrant's Australian employer or sponsor covering the rest of the cost. The migrants committed to stay in Australia for at least two years (later three) or repay their passage. About 1.5 million British and Irish migrants came to Australia under the programme between 1947 and 1982.

European displaced persons were another major group. The Displaced Persons Programme, operated from 1947 to 1953, settled about 170,000 European refugees from post-war camps in Germany, Austria, and Italy. The refugees came from Poland, the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), Yugoslavia, Ukraine, Hungary, the Soviet Union, and many other countries. The International Refugee Organization (IRO) coordinated the programme. Migrants typically had to agree to two years of directed labour in fields set by the Australian government, including work on the Snowy Mountains Scheme, in coal mines, in agriculture, and in manufacturing.

Other European assisted passage schemes operated with Italy (from 1951), the Netherlands (from 1951), West Germany (from 1952), Yugoslavia (from 1952), Greece (from 1953), and other countries. About 1.3 million people came to Australia under these non-British European schemes between 1947 and the late 1970s. The Italian and Greek communities, particularly in Melbourne and Sydney, produced the country's first major non-British European populations and transformed Australian food, fashion, sport, and everyday culture. Post-1975 Indochinese refugees and subsequent humanitarian migrants broadened the country further. The assisted passage schemes ended in the early 1980s as the demographic and economic rationale for subsidising migration shifted, but their legacy is the multicultural Australia of today. About 1 in 4 Australians today is descended from a Ten Pound Pom migrant or another assisted-passage arrival.