Writing about Dutch Migration to Australia: Language, Belonging, and Identity

Australia has a long history of linguistic contact with the Netherlands and the Dutch language dating from the 1600s. After the Second World War some 160,000 Dutch-speaking migrants settled in Australia from the Netherlands and the Dutch East Indies. This article examines Dutch migrants’ personal stories of migration to Australia in the second half of the twentieth century and interrogates authors’ usage of the Dutch and English languages in their writing. By examining three Dutch-Australian publications that reflect on twentieth-century migration journeys—Theodora Biesheuvel’s Dutch Treat: For All Those Who Left Their History Behind Them (2014); Corry, Pierre, and Peter de Haas’s Finding Our Place in the Sun: A True Story (2021); and the collection Our Story: Experiences of the Dutch in Queensland (2001), edited by Rob-Jan Mijnarends and Annelies Zeissink—this article investigates how these writers negotiate belonging and identity in multilingual and multicultural Australia through their use of the Dutch and English languages in their writing.