Boomerangs on a small island : Maltese who returned from Australia

Abstract

In 1947 there were 3,238 Maltese born persons in Australia. Maltese emigration records show a further 87,868 departing for Australia from mid-1947 to mid-1986, giving a total of over 91,000. The Australian census of 1986 however shows only 56,232 Maltese born persons still living in Australia. The postwar departures, comprising over a quarter of the entire population of Malta (at the start of the period) are a major component of that mass exodus which is one of the most salient and well known facts of Maltese postwar history. Altogether by the end of 1986 a total of some 149,000 were recorded as having departed permanently, almost entirely to Australia, Canada and Britain, leaving a population of 345,000 at the end of the period. What concerns us in this paper is the gap between the records of departures to Australia and the Australian census figures at the end of the period - the 35,000 missing persons. If these are emigrants who have returned home, they would indicate the departure of almost two- fifths of those who arrived in Australia and the presence in Malta of a large population of ex-Australians, constituting 10% of the population. As we shall see many additions and subtractions do however need to be made to the figure for missing persons before we can estimate return migration.