THE GREEK-AUSTRALIAN UNEMPLOYED MOVEMENT 135 Te Greek-Australian Unemployed Movement and the Construction of the Migrants’ Rights Discourse * Toula Nicolacopoulos and George Vassilacopoulos Tis paper will present a brief history of the organised attempts within the Greek- Australian communities to address the problem of high unemployment in the 1950s. Focusing on the formation and work of the Greek Migrants’ Unemployed Com- mittee in Melbourne, we will argue that the Committee’s appeal to migrants’ right to work initiated the social processes that were to draw the Greek-Australian com- munities into the emerging rights discourse of the times. Te political campaigns for the rights of the unemployed consequently paved the way for migrant workers’ formulation of their future demands to the Australian state for equal rights and social justice. Introduction In the early 1950s Melbourne’s unemployed migrants formed the Greek Migrants’ Unemployed Committee. Tey called upon the established community organi- sations to adopt a principle of mutual aid and in doing so they challenged the conservative community’s reliance on the discourse of philanthropy. Rejecting their positioning as what we have elsewhere termed “the perpetual-foreigners- within” (Nicolacopoulos and Vassilacopoulos, 2004a; 2004b), the members of the Greek Migrants’ Unemployed Committee headed a community wide campaign for the rights of unemployed migrant workers. In this paper we will outline the process leading to the formation of the committee. We will argue that the histori- cal signifcance of the committee’s formation rests with its success in leading the organised Greek-Australian communities into the 1960s rights discourse that was * We conducted the research for this paper pursuant to an ARC grant administered by the Depart- ment of Social Inquiry, Women’s Studies, Labour Studies, The University of Adelaide and acknowl- edge the support of The SEARCH Foundation, the Victorian Trades Hall Council; the Greek Atlas League; the Greek Orthodox Community of South Australia; the Greek Australian Women’s Move- ment; the Greek Democritus League; and Platon League. Nicolacopoulos, Toula and Vassilacopoulos, George. 2007. The Greek-Australian Unemployed Movement and the Construction of the Migrants' Rights Discourse. In E. Close, M. Tsianikas and G. Couvalis (eds.) "Greek Research in Australia: Proceedings of the Sixth Biennial International Conference of Greek Studies, Flinders University June 2005", Flinders University Department of Languages - Modern Greek: Adelaide, 135-144. Archived at Flinders University: dspace.flinders.edu.au