Australia's Migrant and Minority Community Press and Cultural Heritage: An Introduction

Australia's migrant and minority communities have often experienced a history of exclusion from mainstream society, as well as various forms of prejudice and discrimination. Establishing periodical press enterprises became a means for community members to unify, providing cohesion and support on many levels and offering readers a base for interaction on what was important to them. For researchers today these sources are invaluable and offer a way to recapture the voices and experiences of such groups from the past and present in context. While presenting an overview to the contributions of this book, this chapter discusses how newspapers and other periodical presses allow greater insights into the multicultural, cross-cultural, and transnational perspectives of those who have frequently been relegated to the margins. Through diverse approaches in retrieving their experiences and narratives of the past, these histories form an essential part of a pluralism too often overlooked, and Australia's cultural heritage.