WELFARE BENEFITS AND RESIDENTIAL CONCENTRATIONS AMONGST RECENTLY - ARRIVED MIGRANT COMMUNITIES
Ernest Healy
WELFARE BENEFITS AND RESIDENTIAL CONCENTRATIONS AMONGST RECENTLY - ARRIVED MIGRANT COMMUNITIES
Ernest Healy
Despite some improvement since the early 1990's, high proportions of recently-arrived migrants remain dependent on unemployment benefits. Contrary to most analysts' expectations, there is evidence that disadvantaged migrants are becoming more, rather than less, residentially concentrated.
Part of the debate over the outcome for Australian society of its mass immigration program concerns two questions. Do migrants rates of dependence on welfare move towards the norm for the population as a whole over time? And, do migrant levels of residential concentration tend to dissipate over time?
Most analysts have been inclined to argue that initial high migrant benefit-dependency rates and high migrant residential concentrations, most notably within Melbourne and Sydney, are a passing phase of the settlement process. The dispersal of earlier-arrived southern-European migrant groups is typically presented in support of the view that such dispersal will occur in due course for more recently arrived groups from Asia.
However, such claims underestimate the impact that the recently changed political and economic environment can have upon the migrant settlement process. This paper explores the implications of recent social security data for this issue and as well provides overall estimates of recent migrants' dependence on unemployment-related benefits.
MIGRANT RESIDENTIAL CONCENTRATIONS: THE BACKGROUND
Migrant residential concentrations in Australia, of course, are not new. The post-war mass immigration program saw the rapid development of high concentrations in Australia's principal capital cities. Burnley, Prior, and Rowland note that, in general, the residential aggregation of the major immigrant communities has declined with length of residence in Australia [1] They also note, however, that this dispersal has applied less to some communities than to others. They describe the complexity of the settlement process, whereby sites of secondary settlement for earlier arrivals often became primary sites of settlement for subsequent arrivals from the same immigrant group [2]. For example, the 1966 to 1971 period not only saw the settlement of newly arrived Greeks in the Melbourne suburb of Northcote, but the in-migration of a significant number of earlier-arrived Greeks who had initially located elsewhere[3].
Although this pattern of settlement appears to have remained fairly constant over the medium to longer term, some recent developments suggest a worrying departure. A recent study by Marcuse shows that, although the general pattern in Australia is still for migrant dispersal over time, the Vietnamese constitute a striking exception. In metropolitan Sydney the residential concentration of the Vietnamese increased significantly over the period 1981 to 1991. Whereas the index of dissimilarity for this group was 60.5 in 1981, it had increased to 66.5 by 1986, and to 67.1 by 1991.[4].Marcuse suggests that the pattern of settlement witnessed in the case of the Vietnamese in Australia could potentially lead to the type of racially-based segregation evident in the U.S.[5] Such concerns have been contested, however, by Jupp and Viviani. They claim that such concentrations are essentially transient. Jupp et al. argue that the extent of ethnic concentrations in Australia often appeared greater than they actually were, and that such concentration tended to be a function of class rather than of ethnic factors. Ethnicity is thus minimised as an active factor in enclave formation and perpetuation. Viviani et al., defend Jupp's conclusions in this respect, and reject Geoffrey Blainey's criticism of their work which was that it did not take sufficient account of the attraction of ethnic institutions in the perpetuation of ethnic residential concentration, and that research based on relatively large local government areas (LGAs) understated the levels of ethnic concentration at a more local level.
Subsequently, Birrell, utilising 1991 census data, which neither Jupp or Viviani had had access to, showed that several areas of existing Vietnamese concentration in Sydney and Melbourne had undergone sharp increases in the 1986-1991 intercensal period. He argued that, in the case of the Fairfield LGA in Sydney, this residential concentration was associated with evidence of serious social disadvantage.[6] His data indicated that Jupp and Viviani had underestimated the attraction of enclaves for earlier Vietnamese-born arrivals. Birrell also examined Vietnamese concentrations at the postcode level within LGAs. In 1986, postcode 2166 within Fairfield accounted for 18 per cent of the Vietnamese living in the Sydney metropolitan area. By 1991, it accounted for 22.7 per cent. This represented an increase from 5,862 Vietnamese-born people in this one post- code area to 10,775. But, the postcode data did not show the same pattern for the Vietnamese concentration in the LGA of Springvale in Melbourne, something which Jupp was quick to point out.[7]
However, my subsequent research into ethnic concentrations within Springvale at the collector district (CD) level has shown that, at this micro level, Vietnamese-born concentrations did increase significantly in the 1986 to 1991 period.[8] By 1991, the Vietnamese-born com- prised 7.3 per cent of the Springvale population. But the distribution of the Vietnamese-born varied considerably at the CD level within Springvale. A comparison of the distribution of Vietnamese between CDs for the years 1986 and 1991 reveals not only a continued and distinct concentration of Vietnamese settlement in Springvale, but that this concentration had both increased and spread. Many of the CDs where the Vietnamese-born were under-represented in 1986 had concentrations of 5 to 10 per cent by 1991. Some CDs which were under-represented in 1986, at 0 to 5 per cent, jumped to between 10 to 15 per cent by 1991. CDs near the centre of the enclave which in 1986 had concentrations of between 10 and 15 per cent had increased to 15 to 20 per cent by 1991. A small number of CDs near the centre of the Vietnamese concentration had increased from 20 to 25 per cent or less in 1986 to between 25 and 30 per cent Vietnamese-born in 1991.[9]
MIGRANT DEPENDENCE ON UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS
Recent Department of Social Security (DSS) benefit data allow more up-to-date analysis of the concentration issue. But, first, I begin with an overview of the welfare problem as regards recently-arrived migrants.
This analysis extends earlier studies of the issue.10 Previous work showed that unemployment-benefit rates generally declined with time spent in Australia. But, this was not so evident for some birthplace groups, especially the Vietnamese, Lebanese, and Turkish-born. In some cases, earlier-arrived cohorts maintained higher dependency rates than immigrants from their own birthplace group who arrived later. These particular groups of earlier arrivals did not appear to derive any particular advantage from the improved labour market conditions of the mid-1990s.
The previous research only dealt with data at the national level. Here, data at three levels national, statistical local area (SLA), and postcode is examined. This method enables an exploration of the relationship between benefit-dependency and minority residential concentrations.
Table 1 shows the numbers of settler ar- rivals for 1993 and 1994, for selected birthplace groups who, at the time of entry, intended to enter the work force. These arrivals provide a base figure from which to calculate unemployment-benefit dependency rates as of August 1995. Apart from Job Search (unemployed less than 12 months) Newstart (unemployed 12 months or more), and Youth Training Allowance beneficiaries, which are all unemployment benefits, other labour-market-related ben- efits, including Sickness Benefit, Special Benefit, and Partner Allowance have also been included. These latter benefits, together with unemployment benefits, comprise the All Benefits' column in
[Table 1].
Thus, the table shows both the proportion of the arrival cohort which is on unemployment benefits as of August 1995, and the proportion which is on all labour-market related benefits. The data do not include pensions or parenting benefits. These are provided to persons outside the work force.
From Table 1, it can be seen that arrivals born in the former Soviet Union and the Baltic States, Vietnam, Turkey, Lebanon, and China have very high rates of labour-market benefit dependency, ranging between 46 and 62 per cent for 1994 arrivals. For 1993 arrivals, there is a minor reduction in most cases though for the Turkish-born the dependency rate actually increases. The former Soviet Union and Baltic States, the former Yugoslav Republic, Cambodia, Poland, and Egypt also rank high, with dependency rates for 1993 arrivals of 43.6, 32.5, 42.1, 42.8, and 41.0 per cent respectively. Of the 3,487 Vietnamese-born who arrived in Australia in 1993 and indicated that they would enter the work force, 1,706, or 48.9 per cent, were on labour market-related benefits as of August 1995. Despite this very high number, it is at least an improvement on the much higher dependency rates recorded in May 1994.
Forty-four per cent of the migrants who were born in Vietnam and arrived in1993 were on unemployment benefits in August 1995. This figure is only marginally lower than that for the Vietnamese-born cohort arriving in 1994.
Though high, these figures are an improvement on those of the early 1990s, hus indicating some benefit from the recent strengthening of the labour market. The Vietnamese-born cohorts who arrived in 1989-90, 1990-91, and 1991-92 showed unemployment benefit dependency rates of 55.3, 70.0, and 63.3 per cent respectively as of May 1994. This is also the pattern for the Lebanese, but not for the Turkish-born for whom the dependency rate shows no clear pattern of decline.11 These rates stand in stark contrast to the consistently low de- pendency pattern of the UK-born. UK arrival cohorts for the years 1989-90, 1990-91, and 1991-92, had unemployment-benefit dependency rates of 15.7, 14.4, and 14.2 per cent respectively in May 1994. Table 1 shows that their relatively low dependency rate (14.1 per cent for 1993 arrivals) continues in 1995.
It was not possible to explore the pattern of benefit dependency for pre-1993 arrivals as of August 1995. However, the ABS Labor Force Survey indicates that most of the country-of-origin groups discussed above continue to experience high unemployment levels for up to ten years after arrival. There is currently no simple pattern of employment improvement over time as some have suggested.
UNEMPLOYMENT-BENEFIT DEPENDENCY AT THE STATISTICAL LOCAL AREA (SLA) LEVEL
Here I will consider the distribution, in New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria, of the highest dependency groups observed by SLA.
The focus will be on Job Search, Newstart, and Youth Training Allowance recipients as of August 1995.
Considering all birthplace groups in aggregate, including the Australian-born, the SLAs with the highest share of unemployment-benefit dependents in Sydney were, in order, Fairfield, Black- town, and Bankstown/Campbelltown/ Canterbury all sharing third position. Liver- pool followed in fourth position. In the Melbourne metropolitan area, Sunshine, Broadmeadows, Keilor/Springvale, and Preston had the highest shares of Victoria's unemployment benefit dependents.
Considering the distribution of Vietnamese-born benefit dependents first, Table 2 indicates that Fairfield, Bankstown, Marrickville, Canterbury, Liverpool, and Auburn held the highest concentrations of Vietnamese-born benefit dependents in NSW. The degree of concentration involved is highlighted by the fact that these six SLAs accounted for 87 per cent of the Vietnamese-born benefit dependents living in NSW. Fairfield alone accounted for 47.1 per cent. Bankstown and Marrickville accounted for another 12.7 and 9.7 per cent respectively. If we compare these SLA concentrations with 1991 Census data for the distribution of the Vietnamese-born population, it is evident that Vietnamese-born unemployment benefit dependents are over-represented in some SLAs. The 1991 Census data show that 38.9 per cent of the NSW Vietnamese-born population lived in Fairfield as compared with 47.1 per cent of NSW Vietnamese-born unemployment-benefit dependents in August 1995. Over-representation is also indicated for Liver- pool and Marrickville, but not for Auburn, Canterbury, and Bankstown.
[Table 2].
The SLA distribution of the Viet- namese-born population within NSW may also have become more concentrated between the time of the 1991 Census and August 1995. This will not be known until the 1996 census results are available. But, whatever the result, we can be confident that the most vulnerable Vietnamese residents are concentrated in Fairfield.
In Victoria, the Melbourne SLAs of Sunshine, Footscray, and Springvale account for the highest concentrations of Vietnamese-born unemployment-benefit dependents. These were 17.5, 14.5, and 14.3 per cent of all Vietnamese-born recipients in Victoria respectively. Clearly, none of these concentrations approach that of Fairfield in Sydney. The Vietnamese-born population is much more dispersed in Melbourne than it is in Sydney. However, Vietnamese unemployment-benefit re- cipients are over-represented somewhat in Sunshine, Footscray, Fitzroy, and Colling- wood. These SLAs represent two distinct Vietnamese-born enclaves, (Sunshine shares an SLA border with Footscray, and Fitzroy shares a border with Collingwood, as it also does with Richmond). Whereas 13.3 per cent of the Victorian Vietnamese-born population was located in Sunshine at the time of the 1991 Census, 17.5 per cent of the state's Vietnamese-born unemployment-benefit dependents resided there as of August 1995. However, in Springvale, a third enclave area, the share of Victoria's Vietnamese-born population and Vietnamese-born unemployment benefit recipients is about equal.
Significant spatial concentrations of unemployment benefit dependent migrant groups are not confined to the Vietnamese-born. Of the high dependency groups seen in
The Lebanese, Turkish, and Yugoslav-born (former Yugoslav Republic) populations also exhibit considerable concentrations. The highest concentrations of Lebanese-born unemployment-benefit-dependency in Melbourne are in Broadmeadows, Coburg, Brunswick, and Preston. These account for 15.7, 14.5, 10.6, and 9.4 per cent of Victoria's Lebanese-born recipients respectively. The highest concentrations of Lebanese-born un- employment benefit recipients in Sydney were in Bankstown and Canterbury, representing 18, and 21.2 per cent of the Lebanese-born recipients in NSW re- spectively. Bankstown and Canterbury accounted for 14.9 and 18.8 per cent of the Lebanese-born population in NSW, respectively, in 1991.
Some of the SLAs in Sydney which are host to high Vietnamese-born unemployment-benefit dependent con- centrations are also sites of concentration for Lebanese and Yugoslav-born de- pendents. For example, Fairfield accounted for 15.5 per cent of the Yugoslav-born unemployment benefit dependents in NSW as of August 1995. Although Fairfield does not figure so prominently as a high concentration areas for the Lebanese-born, Canterbury and Bankstown do. These are also areas of significant concentration for Vietnamese-born dependents.
[Table 2] also shows that Vietnamese-born persons receiving unemployment benefits are much more likely than recipients from all birthplaces to be long-term (Newstart) beneficiaries. In other words, their disadvantage tends to be long-lived and residentially concentrated.
BENEFIT-DEPENDENCY CONCENTRATIONS AT THE POSTCODE LEVEL
I referred to collector district (CD) data for Springvale earlier in order to show how the Vietnamese-born were distributed within that LGA. Whereas the Vietnamese-born comprised 7.3 per cent of Springvale's population at the time of the 1991 Census, some CDs comprised between 25 and 30 per cent Vietnamese-born. This raises the prospect of locally high concentrations of unemployment-benefit dependents within certain SLAs.
Fairfield is a significant example. As noted above, Fairfield accounted for 47.1 per cent (4,728) of the Vietnamese-born unemployment-benefit recipients in NSW as of August 1995. One particular post- code, number 2166, in which the Cabra- matta area is located, is host to 64 per cent of the Vietnamese-born recipients living in Fairfield. In turn, this single postcode area accounts for 30.2 per cent of the Vietnamese-born unemployment benefit dependents residing in NSW. 1991 Census data showed that, by comparison, 21.9 per cent of the NSW Vietnamese-born population lived in postcode area 2166.
Postcode-based data also indicate that SLA level data disguise more localised concentrations of unemployment-benefit dependents. For example, Bankstown, which had 1,279 Vietnamese-born un- employment-benefit recipients in August 1995, had 798, or 62.4 per cent, of its SLA total in two postcode areas. Bankstown is comprised of seven postcode areas lying entirely within it, three over 90 per cent within it, and four lying in it to a lesser extent.
Residential concentrations are also evident within some Melbourne SLAs with high Vietnamese-born benefit dependent concentrations. Again, Springvale is an example, with 59 per cent of its unemploy- ment-benefit dependents living in one postcode area: number 3171. 1991 Census data suggests that Vietnamese-born un- employment-benefit recipients living in Springvale are over-represented in postcode number 3171. In 1991, postcode number 3171 was host to 48.3 per cent of the Vietnamese-born living in Springvale.
TIME OF ARRIVAL OF VIETNAMESE-BORN UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFIT RECIPIENTS
It was noted above that many analysts believe that ethnic residential concentrations are composed mainly of new arrivals and thus are essentially transient. DSS data for the Vietnamese-born benefit-dependent concentrations do not support such claims.
Although there is no standard definition of a newly-arrived' migrant, if persons arriving in Australia before 1991 are considered to be out of this category, it can be concluded that significant con- centrations of such earlier arrivals prevail.
[Table 3] shows the number of Vietnamese-born unemployment-benefit recipients who arrived pre-1991 and post 1990 for the key SLAs examined above. The table also shows the proportion of the NSW or Victorian total living in the SLAs listed for each period of arrival. The table reveals a striking level of concentration of pre-1991 arrivals in NSW. Of the Vietnamese-born unemployment-benefit recipients in NSW who arrived in Australia before 1991, 53.1 per cent are concentrated in Fairfield. This share is considerably higher than the concentration of more recently (post-1990) arrived unemployment-benefit recipients living in Fairfield which was 40.1 per cent.
[Table 3].
Although the degree of concentration is less acute in Victoria, Sunshine has emerged as the foremost site of concen- tration for Vietnamese-born unemploy- ment-benefit recipients. Sunshine accounts for 17.5 per cent of Victoria's Vietnamese-born unemployment recipients and for 18.4 per cent of the state's Vietnamese-born unemployment-benefit recipients who arrived prior to 1991. As with Fairfield, Sunshine's dominance as an area of concentration is reflected in lower levels of concentration in the other areas under consideration here.
Further evidence of the concentration of disadvantage is the high proportion of Vietnamese-born who are not only earlier arrivals and long-term unemployed, but who have never gained employment in Australia. Table 4 shows that 49.0 per cent of the Vietnamese-born unemployment-benefit recipients living in Fairfield who arrived in Australia before 1991 were categorised by DSS as having no previous employment'. Even more striking, 62.5 per cent of the 355 Vietnamese-born persons in Marrickville who arrived in Australia prior to 1991 and were receiving unemployment benefits were in the no previous employ- ment' category. Only a small proportion of the people in this category is of school-leaving age.
The data show that certain areas of Vietnamese-born unemployment-benefit recipient concentration have become host to disproportionate aggregations of earlier-arrived, labour-market-vulnerable migrants. Fairfield and, to a lesser extent, Sunshine appear to be the areas of principal concern. The argument of Viviani et al., that high Indo-Chinese unemployment rates are essentially an expression of these migrants' short period of stay in Australia, is not consistent with this data.12
There may well be a considerable degree of out-migration from ethnic enclaves and upward socio-economic mobility after an initial period of economic and social familiarisation. Dobson, Birrell, and Rapson show that young non-English-speaking-background (NESB) people had achieved higher participation rates in higher education than those from English-speaking-background.13 They found that the Vietnamese-speaking group achieved higher education participation rates double that of students with an English-speaking-background. They also noted that,
...large numbers come from residential areas which are popularly imagined to be enclaves beset with problems of unemployment, crime and low income industries...14
But upward and outward mobility does not necessarily negate the potential for cumulative economic and cultural entrapment within enclaves of those unable to achieve spatial or socio-economic mobility. The upward social mobility and/or outward spatial movement of some, or even the majority, ought not to blind us to the processes of enclave formation. Such mobility is not incompatible with enclave consolidation.
Claims that the residential con- centrations of ethnic minorities, such as the Vietnamese, are transient, appear to have been only partially accurate. Certainly, many new arrivals are found within areas of high concentration. But, the DSS evidence indicates that significant proportions of earlier-arrived, chronically-dependent unemployment-benefit re- cipients also live in areas of high concentration, in both NSW and Victoria. This suggests a longer-term process where- by the most labour-market-vulnerable elements of the immigration intake have been accumulating in high-concentration areas. We may be witnessing a process of transition in these areas where the enclave is being consolidated on the basis of labour-market disadvantage.
ENCLAVE CONSOLIDATION? SOME CONSIDERATIONS
In support of their argument that high ethnic residential concentrations in Aus- tralia are zones of transition' and not ghettos, Jupp et al., 1990, emphasised the economic vibrancy of the high-Indo-Chinese Cabramatta area of Sydney.15
But, highly visible minority-based commercial activity may be a deceptive indication of the economic well-being of the minority population as a whole within a residential concentration. While Jupp et al. pointed to the commercial vitality of Cabramatta, evidence was emerging of widespread, highly exploitative Asian outworking in the garment industry. At the Bureau of Immigration and Population Research-sponsored Migrants and Work Conference in November 1995, a trade union representative claimed that there were now 15 outworkers in the clothing industry for every one clothing factory worker. Overall, the union estimates there are over 300,000 such workers in Australia, recruited from a range of birthplace groups.16 By early 1996, a Senate inquiry was being conducted into the garment outworking industry, and a Social Security amnesty was in place offering indemnity from prosecution to outworkers who had received unemployment benefits while engaged in informal garment industry outwork. These measures by the Federal Government were a clear admission that an exploitative informal labour-market based on the clothing industry, and related social security fraud, had assumed major proportions.
The response to an eight week outwork industry phone-in, in 1994, conducted by the Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union of Australia (TCFUA), had indicated a high level of Asian involvement in outwork, and the prevalence of social security fraud. The Union's reporting of the phone-in stated that 20 per cent of the callers were from the Chinese community, 50 per cent from the Vietnamese community, with the remainder being shared amongst eight other community groups, including Koreans.17 The Union also reported that, of the calls received, ten per cent were about tax specifically, ten per cent about social security, and another 35 per cent were of a more general nature concerning wages, conditions, social security or tax. According to the Union, some employers insisted social security benefits be claimed by outworkers before work would be given.18 Presumably, the benefit was being calculated into the outwork piece rate.
The developments described are in part a product of the interaction between the federal government's deregulatory eco- nomic policy and its immigration policy. The two processes facilitated the rapid emergence of an exploitative, informal labour-market based on residentially-concentrated minority populations. In Springvale, for example, there was a marked jump in the percentage of overseas-born persons between 1986 and 1991, from 36.9 to 43.6 per cent, largely due to the rapid influx of Indo-Chinese migrants. The arrival of these generally poorly-educated, poor-English-proficient migrants occurred in a period of economic stress and industrial dislocation. Much of the industrial work which had sustained earlier-arrived NESB migrants was disappearing; unemployment rates were high and competition for remaining industrial work was tough.
In this context, employment in the textile and clothing industry, which had previously been under-represented in Springvale in spite of the area's industrial character, grew rapidly. By 1991, Census data showed that the clothing, textile, and footwear industries only accounted for 2.2 per cent of Victoria's employees, but 3.2 per cent of Springvale's employees. These migrants had stepped into the breach of a rapidly declining industry which the federal government no longer had any interest in defending. The result was the development of a spatially-concentrated, minority-based informal labour market, operating on the basis of pay and conditions greatly out of step with the mainstream economy. 1991 Census data indicates that the largest single occupational category amongst the Vietnamese-born who both resided and worked in Springvale was Textile Sewing Machinist'. They represented 21.3 per cent of this Live-in/Work-in' Vietnamese-born group. Interviews conducted in Springvale in 1995, with people well-positioned within the Vietnamese community, suggest that the 1991 Census data significantly under- estimated the level of involvement in garment industry outwork.19
The evolution of this situation appears to be linked to the occupational history of the Vietnamese-born migrants settling in high concentration areas. In 1994-95, 1,922 female spouses or fiances who were born in Vietnam arrived in Australia. Of the 1,251 who recorded an occupation, 848 were garment workers.20 Many of these women were joining families whose prospects were poor and thus likely to be under pressure to work in the garment outwork industry. In an earlier study of spouse sponsorships, the author found that many of the sponsors had been recipients of unemployment benefits in the period immediately prior to initiating sponsorship. In 46.2 per cent of these cases, the sponsor had received unemployment benefits within the two years prior to sponsorship of a spouse many over extended periods.21 Viviani et al. have defended the position of Jupp et al., that ethnic concentrations are principally an expression of class rather than ethnic factors.22 Rejecting the idea that Indochinese concentrations were ethnic ghettos, their preferred characterisation was that of multicultural suburb.23 This designation, reflects an apparent reluctance to explore the interaction between class and ethnicity within the process of enclave formation.
However, concentrations of ethnic workers in the exploitative garment in- dustry suggest a close relationship between class location and ethnic identity. This relationship was evidenced in the union phone-in referred to above. The TCFUA noted the difficulty of ethnic minority outworkers in reporting or complaining about work-related abuses as a result of the ethnic relationship with their employers. One Korean caller is cited:
Our community is very close knit; people are reluctant to complain. They think they shouldn't complain because their boss is of the same ethnic background and they will never get a job in this community again.24
Another caller pointed to the added dif- ficulty when the employer is a friend [presumably co-ethnic] or acquaintance of the family. This ...complicates their ability to make any complaints about their work'.25 Ethnic isolation not only often closes off access to mainstream labour market opportunities, but also introduces a set of ethno-specific factors into the development of the employer-employee relationship which can add further dimensions of disadvantage. Employer-employee relations develop which are quite out of step with mainstream labour market norms. This, in turn, can help constitute a set of class relations peculiar to enclave life.
Additional dimensions of disadvantage associated with poor racially-segregated minority concentrations are emphasised by Massey and Denton in their analysis of black ghettoisation in the United States. Although only partially relevant to Indo-Chinese concentrations in Australia, a comparison does seem justified.
The authors argue that the spatial concentration of disadvantaged minorities can act to concentrate poverty, creating an entrenched, intergenerational environment of social and economic disadvantage, conducive to the emergence of an underclass. The concentration of poverty, Massey and Denton point out, is not a neutral social factor. It is typically associated with a range of social ills: family instability, welfare dependency, crime, housing abandonment, and low educational achievement.26 The out-migration of better-off, more socially mobile elements who can manage to escape the cycles of social and infrastructural decline within the ghetto further exaggerates the spatial concentration of poverty.27
The spatial concentration of eco- nomically disadvantaged minorities means that enclave life is more prone to dislocations generated within the broader economy. Any economic development which adversely effects the poor will be magnified within the minority enclave. The revitalisation of outwork garment industry amongst the Indo-Chinese population during the late 1980s and early 1990s is an instance of this process. Economic deregulation, which caused significant hardship amongst the mainstream labour force, took on a distinctly exploitative form amongst spatially concentrated Indo-Chinese populations.
Massey and Denton note that although racial segregation was recognised as central to black subjugation in the 1940s, 1950s, and most of the 1960s, from 1968, civil rights leaders, politicians, and academics increasingly diverted their attention from segregation as a problem. The authors note that: by the end of the 1970s residential segregation became the forgotten factor in American race relations'.28
This myopia concerning the problematic nature of racial segregation was associated with the influence of de- constructionist/postmodernist ideologies which became entrenched amongst American intellectuals from the mid-1970s. From such perspectives, it was no longer acceptable to characterise minority status as problematic. To the contrary, minorities were often idealised and perceived as outposts of resistance against the dominant forms of oppression. In Australia, too, the intellectual climate has been characterised by a reluctance to recognise the serious problems which can be associated with minority residential segregation. The point has now been reached in Australia, that the contradiction between idealistic ideology and empirical research is sufficiently great to require a basic reconsideration of immi- gration and settlement policies.
References
1 I. Burnley, R. J. Pryor, and D. T. Rowland, Mobility and Community Change in Australia, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1980, pp. 121-126
2 ibid.
3 ibid. pp. 127-130
4 P. Marcuse, Is Australia Different? Globalisation and the New Urban Poverty, Mel- bourne, Australian Housing and Research Institute, Melbourne, 1996, pp. 30-31; I. Burnley et al., op. cit., p. 124, Burnley et al. note that the ...index of dissimilarity is the percentage of a given ethnic or birthplace group in a city that would have to move to have the same percentage distribution as the host society or total population of the city for given spatial units.'
5 ibid.
6 B. Birrell, Ethnic concentrations: the Viet- namese experience', People and Place, vol. 1, no. 3, 1993, pp. 26-32
7 J. Jupp, Ethnic concentration: a reply to Bob Birrell', People and Place, vol. 1, no. 4, 1993, pp. 51-52
8 E. Healy, Vietnamese enclaving in the Spring- vale area', unpublished research conducted within the Centre for Population and Urban Research, Monash University, 1994-1995 (A Collector District' is the smallest statistical area used by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in the collection and collation of census data.)
9 ibid.
10 E. Healy, Unemployment dependency rates amongst recently arrived migrants: an update', People and Place, vol. 2, no. 3, 1994, pp. 47-54
11 ibid. p. 49.
12 N. Viviani et al., Indochinese in Australia: The Issues of Unemployment and Residential Con- centration, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1993, p. 16
13 I. Dobson, B. Birrell, and V. Rapson, The participation of non-English-speaking-back- ground persons in higher education', People and Place, vol. 4, no. 1, 1996, pp. 46-54
14 ibid., p. 53
15 J. Jupp, A. McRobbie, and B. York, Metro- politan Ghettoes and Ethnic Concentrations, The Office of Multicultural Affairs, Canberra, 1990
16 BIMPR, The outworkers story', BIMPR Bul- letin, March 1996, pp. 16-17
17 TCFUA, Report on the National Outwork Information Campaign, Sydney, 1995, pp. 12-13
18 ibid., p. 20
19 E. Healy, unpublished, op.cit.
20 B. Birrell, Policy implications of recent mi- gration patterns', People and Place, vol. 3, no. 4, 1995, pp. 32-40
21 This data was collected in preparation for, although not published in, the publication: R. Birrell, A. Sudbury, and E. Healy, Strategies for Predicting Chain Migration, BIPR, Canberra, 1994
22 N. Viviani et al., op.cit.
23 ibid.
24 TCFUA, op.cit., p. 14
25 ibid.
26 D. Massey and N. Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass, Harvard University Press, 1993, pp. 130-131
27 ibid., pp. 118-125
28 ibid., p. 4
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