Listening intersubjectively: re-analysing migrant rights activism in 'new' and 'old' oral history collections

This research stems from a desire to add social and emotional detail to earlier assessments made by Marxist scholars about the work of migrant rights activists in pre-multicultural Australia (1960s-1980s). While analysing interviews within two very different oral history collections, the research became an exploration of the timeliness and future use of oral history collections in historical research. How do researchers productively draw on and build histories with oral history collections created in vastly different political and social contexts? This question is worth exploring in relation to oral history collections formed in or after politically contentious contexts and with politically active interviewees. Here, oral histories are read (or re-analysed) in a context for which there is a constrained or different discourse around multiculturalism, and around the role of men and women in public life. This type of re-analysis becomes a matter of listening both intersubjectively and dialogically. The aim is to cast a light on a history of welfare rights and social activism in migrant working-class communities, and thus explore their alternative visions of multiculturalism espoused by the migrant men and women working on the frontlines. Author(s): Alexandra Dellios Keywords: multiculturalism; migrant rights; intersubjectivity; re-analysis; welfare rights; Greek-Australian