Women on the march: radical Hispanic migrants in northern Australia

Abstract

Positioned at the intersection of studies in gender, labour history and migration, this article is anchored in both Australian and Hispanic scholarship. It analyses the Hispanic communities of rural northern Australia during the first half of the twentieth century, and integrates local responses with those of the broader Hispanic world. In particular, it demonstrates that Hispanic women used their political experiences from Spain and Argentina to assume public positions of community leadership in an Australian region frequently characterised as highly masculinised. As migrants, they applied Hispanic culture and precedent to the Australian industrial context. In doing so, the women defied characterisations of passivity and, instead, exemplified female participation in political activism based on transnational experience.