The Great Divide: Immigration Politics in Australia

This is the first book to describe those Australians known as the new class.

They work in knowledge industries, which have expanded rapidly in recent decades: universities, the media, publishing, public policy, schools and the arts.

In a society where knowledge is increasingly important, the opinion-formers of the new class now have an immense influence on government and form a power base that rivals the traditional establishment.

Betts explores the growth of the new class and examines, using immigration and race as examples, how it came to adopt values that conflict with those held by most Australians.

Katharine Betts teaches sociology at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, and is co-editor of the demographic journal People and Place.