Book celebrating migrant experience launched in Australia

Maurice N. Cauchi's latest book, "Worlds apart", has been formally launched in Australia where an Australian author described it as being "written for anyone who is interested in Australia, anyone who is interested in migration, anyone who is interested in people".

Quite appropriately the launch took place at the Centru Malti, in Parkville.

Prof. Cauchi is a past president of the Maltese Community Council of Victoria and has first-hand knowledge of the migrant experience.

As Ron Adams noted, "Worlds apart" "is not directly and specifically about the Maltese... It's a fascinating and a really valuable account because it touches upon so many aspects of the migrant experience which we tend to overlook and take for granted; things to do with food, things to do with sound and sight; the sort of things that are clearly part and parcel of life but which, in the past, analysts and commentators have simply overlooked and instead concentrated on political events and on policy matters. Now they're not ignored in the book but one of the things the book does do is to address the full gamut of the experience of migration, settlement and transplanting".

Apart from holding various other positions, Prof. Adams is a director of the Europe-Australia Institute, a branch of the Victoria University of Technology, which published "Worlds apart". He was representing Jarlath Ronayne, Vice-Chancellor, who was called at the last minute to attend a high-powered meeting.

John McLaren, an emeritus professor at the university, himself an author, reviewed Prof. Cauchi's book.

"The more you read it, the more value you find in it," Prof. McLaren said. He described "Worlds apart" as more than "a remarkable book of scholarship". He felt "rather humbled that someone who is a medical scientist and a bio-ethicist... has completed such a consummate work of humanities scholarship. It is a scholarly book in that it is not an academic book: not academic in the sense of being written for other academics. It is written for anyone who is interested in Australia, anyone who is interested in migration, anyone who is interested in people."

Prof. McLaren remarked that the book is not about one-way emigration from the old world to the new world and said that the author chose the "literature" way of telling his story. It is not a history, it is not a theoretical book about what produces people out of it. "It brings about the huge variety of the migrant experience."

He dealt briefly with the principal headings of the book starting with the leaving and the taking of the first step in a long journey that ends in the shock of arrival at the other end. A large part of the excitement goes and it often turns into strangeness and also fear sometimes. It touches on the difficult settlement process that ensues when having established themselves migrants are faced with the question of identity. "Who are you if you live in East London and you and your children speak with a cockney accent? Are you a Jamaican? Or are you a Cockney? Or are you neither? Or are you both? All of these are possible."

Every migrant has to be creative to survive and out of the great melting pot of ideas comes huge creativity. He particularly referred to the heading of a chapter called "Eating and feasting". "We all have to eat but eating can be a delight... It brought new ceremony to life, a new meaning."

Prof. Mc Laren also touched on the isolation and loneliness of the migrant. "With isolation goes the issue of rejection and the problem of acceptance."

He then mentioned the experience of the returning migrant noting that the author has returned to his beloved Gozo himself, and the second generation and family.

"It is a very exhaustive analysis of all the elements of the migration experience. And it is a story which, on the whole, is one of great joy, but it also includes the tragedy, the failures. He never forgets that migration, which brings huge human benefits, also brings human costs and very often that cost is borne by the least able to carry it," Prof. Mc Laren concluded.

The formal launch of the book was made by Edwidge Borg, the new and first female president of the Maltese Community Council of Victoria. She spoke briefly about some of the important issues during Prof. Cauchi's time as president of the council and mentioned one of his other books, "Maltese migrants in Australia", which she described as "a mine of statistical information". She said she found that "Worlds apart" consisted of a mirror image of some of her own migrant experiences.

In conclusion, the author's wife, Agnes, read out a statement written by her husband at the time of the book's launch in Gozo in September 2002. He wrote about the importance he attaches to the whole migration movement. "Without it Malta would have gone through very bad economic conditions, particularly so in the post-war period, and ever since because the benefits of migration have been filtering through to Malta and Gozo for the last half century."

Prof. Cauchi accepts that the majority of migrants can fend for themselves but draws attention to the needs of the elderly for culturally appropriate care and the migration-related lingering difficulties of some of the younger generation. He hopes his book will tackle consciences and provide reminders of duties and obligations.

"It is also worthwhile to point out that migration is not a process that involves only the person who leaves. It also affects to almost the same extent those who stay behind and have some connection with the migrant. It is no exaggeration to say that there is hardly a family in Malta today who cannot claim some relative living overseas," Prof. Cauchi pointed out in his statement.