In this chapter, I want to explore the apparent discrepancy between historical experiences of migration and aestheticized theories of ‘migrancy’ that have emerged from contemporary cultural studies. I will posit a link between the metaphorization of migration and the often utopian spatial poetics/politics of postcolonial theory. I will then examine this link by looking at two recent works by cultural theorists that attempt, in different ways, to bridge the gap between postmodern ‘travelling theory’ and postcolonial cultural politics. These works – Paul Carter's Living in a New Country (1992) and Iain Chambers’ Migrancy, Culture, Identity (1994) – can be seen as examples of a new ‘migrant aesthetic’ which uses poststructuralist theories of displacement to account conceptually for migrating people, goods and ideas within the so-called New World Order. I will assess both the benefits and the limitations of such an approach; finally, I will consider the extent to which the current cultural studies debates surrounding migration shed light on Australia's contested status as a postcolonial settler society.

I want to begin, though, with four no doubt unfairly decontextualized quotations on the subject of migration, the first from a political scientist (Aristide R. Zolberg), the second from a sociologist (Hans-Joachim Hoffmann-Nowotny), the third from an economist (Robert E. B. Lucas), and the fourth from a cultural theorist (lain Chambers). Here are the quotations, which I will juxtapose without further comment:

Migration results from structural and anomic tensions […] and is a process by which such tensions are transformed and transferred […] [Two cases may be cited.