Histories of migration are integral to local, national, regional, and global historical perspectives. Broader considerations of ‘mobility’, particularly under the disciplines of political science and legal studies, are booming in Europe, driven by societal concerns over refugee flows and issues of ‘integration’. This necessitates historical approaches that can add nuance and reveal continuities and discontinuities in the structures of power that have shaped the movement of individuals across (and within) borders.

The massive increase in refugee arrivals to Europe from 2015 has not been mirrored in Australia. Nonetheless, Australia too has seen an increase in anti-immigration and anti-immigrant political rhetoric. At a time when migrant or ethnically-aligned community groups struggle to gain funding, and our major collecting institutions and heritage lists seem disinterested in migrant histories, what is the future of migrant history (or more broadly histories of movement and settlement)? This roundtable will reflect on methodological perspectives that have influenced the writing of migration history since the 1970s, and offer suggestions for future practice and potential research directions. As historians of new and older arrivals engaged in both museum and heritage fields, with experience in oral history and archival work, we will address the following:

- Learning from past practice

- Scales of mobility, the local and the global, and intersections between transnational and migration studies

- Public history and community work

- Questions of ethnicity, intra-diasporic movement, and post-ethnicity

- New methodologies and conceptual frameworks

- Future directions and practice