Smuggled: An Illegal History of Journeys to Australia by Ruth Balint and Julie Kalman

Book Description

Secondhand. Very good condition. Ex library copy with no external stickers. No stamps or stickers on inside pages. Small piece of sticky tape on author bio page. RFID patch on inside back cover. Minor wear to book corners and edges. Interior and binding are still excellent.

People smugglers are the pariahs of the modern world. There is no other trade so demonised and, yet at the same time, so useful to contemporary Australian politics. But beyond the rhetoric lies a rich history that reaches beyond the maritime borders of our island continent and has a longer lineage than the recent refugee movements of the twenty-first century.

Smuggled recounts the journeys to Australia of refugees and their smugglers since the Second World War - from Jews escaping the Holocaust, Eastern Europeans slipping through the Iron Curtain, 'boat people' fleeing the Vietnam War to refugees escaping unthinkable violence in the Middle East and Africa.

Based on original research and revealing personal interviews, Smuggled marks the first attempt to detach the term 'people smuggler' from its pejorative connotations, and provides a compelling insight into a defining yet unexplored part of Australia's history.