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Australian context Migration planning

Submission to an Australian Government inquiry on regional migration

September 26, 2019

It’s been four months since I returned from my Churchill Fellowship research and I’m excited to have already had several opportunities to share my learnings with regional Australian towns and government policy makers.

Last week I made a submission to the Australian Government Joint Standing Committee on Migration’s inquiry into migration in regional Australia. With mounting interest in regional population planning across government and community, this is a timely inquiry which will hopefully result in a more coordinated approach to newcomer attraction and retention. My submission makes 7 policy recommendations based on my findings:

  1. Involve people from migrant and refugee backgrounds in all elements of attraction and retention initiatives and policy making.
  2. Implement place-based approaches which involve all levels of government, community and business. Doing so could break down information and program silos, thereby enhancing efficiency and potential resource and knowledge sharing.
  3. Invest in social capital building and creating connections between newcomers and community members.
  4. Build the capacity of mainstream services and programs to meet the specific needs of people from migrant and refugee backgrounds.
  5. Develop a more strategic approach to engaging with migrants and refugees in cities to actively market regional employment and lifestyle opportunities.
  6. Help regional employers to recruit, develop and retain a culturally diverse workforce.
  7. Demonstrate leadership by communicating the benefits of immigration and contribution migrants and refugees make to society. Investing in community consensus building and preparedness is a key determinant of newcomer retention.

Regional Australia has critical skills shortages and positions that cannot be filled locally. It needs migrants to build the local workforce, support entrepreneurship and contribute to local communities. However, over the past five years only 15% of refugees in Australia have settled in regional areas. At the same time, moved by media images of the global humanitarian crisis, more and more Australians in regional areas have put their hand up to bring refugees to their town. Recent policy decisions in Australia and overseas have emphasised visa incentives which force migrants to remain in regional towns for fixed periods of time only to see them move away when the time is up. Regional communities need to focus on how they can make themselves attractive to migrants and refugees so that people come and then choose to stay. At the heart of this is building a welcoming community where people feel valued and like they belong.

My research explored the role that secondary migration can play in reinvigorating towns. Secondary migration is when migrants or refugees choose to relocate from their initial destination to a new location. It involves challenging misconceptions amongst refugees in cities of what it’s like to live in a regional town. It takes careful planning and coordination to find the right match between the skills, characteristics and motivations of refugees and the social and economic objectives of the town.

In places I visited, I saw how important it is to take the time to build community consensus on the need for migration. Reframing the image of refugees as people in need of help, to people who can contribute the skills, workforce and qualities that are desperately needed by the town, helps build support.

There is no quick and easy solution to attracting and retaining newcomers. However, finding ways to engage and coordinate all levels of government, community leaders, business and civil society is important to maximise efforts and develop new approaches.

These findings will be illustrated in more detail in my report which is due to be launched in November. It will be available for download on this website.

Australian context

What is the City to Country Project?

January 3, 2019

Over the past few years I’ve travelled throughout my state of New South Wales and met with towns of all shapes and sizes. Towns that can’t find employees to grow their businesses, towns that are struggling to keep their schools open due to a lack of enrolments, towns with ambitions to grow into vibrant and thriving communities.

I talk to Councils, employers and community groups about the opportunity to attract people from refugee backgrounds, who are living in cities in Australia, to build their region. It is easy to make the case that the skills, qualifications, resilience and entrepreneurial drive refugees bring with them, can be beneficial for their town.

Through these discussions a common theme emerges, an overwhelming interest in initiating an attraction strategy and a hunger for examples and ideas from other towns that have done it before.

I recently joined a group of refugees on a bus visit to Walla Walla, a small rural town in Southern NSW. I was with about 30 refugees from the Assyrian community considering relocating away from Sydney. The 5 hour trip gave me a chance to hear what it had been like for people to settle in a big city like Sydney.

I heard a sense of feeling ‘suspended’ in their new environment – eager to build a new life, but unable to move forward because of financial pressures, trouble finding work and few social connections.

Like Ramin*, his wife Deena and their 6 year old daughter who arrived in Australia after escaping the war in Iraq. They moved straight into a house in a suburb of western Sydney with a large Assyrian community, close to settlement supports, English classes and health care.

But now two years on, the benefits of this proximity to cultural community and initial supports have now been outweighed by the very high cost of housing, competition to find work and sense of social isolation from the broader Australian community. Ramin and his family are at a stage in their settlement journey where they are ready to consider what’s next. For them, a sense of belonging, meaningful work and a quality education for their daughter is of top priority.

So how can we best connect families like Ramin’s with the opportunities that regional and rural towns have to offer? And what steps can towns take to prepare themselves and build a welcoming and inclusive community, so that there is the best chance of success once people have relocated?

These questions are what spurred me on to apply for a Churchill Fellowship in the first place. They are at the heart of what I hope to discover during my visits to towns in Canada, USA, Germany, Norway and Sweden.

I hope you will come along with me on this journey through this website.

I want the City to Country Project to be a useful space to share insights and ideas which can inspire other towns, spark new ideas and generate awareness of the enormous potential that regional towns have to offer refugees.

You can subscribe to receive regular updates to the right of this page and also add me on Instagram @citytocountryproject

*Names have been changed