The first national study of young people from migrant and refugee backgrounds has found they face a number of challenges, including discrimination and inter-generational conflict.
It also found many felt a strong sense of belonging to the Australian community.
The opinions of over 1,900 15 to 25 year olds from across Australia were surveyed by Melbourne University in 2017.
The result is the Multicultural Youth Australia Census (MY Australia Census)—the first national study of people from migrant and refugee backgrounds.
The study’s co-author, Rimi Khan, says it provides a much needed picture for policy makers of the different experiences and needs of multicultural youth.
“There are regular studies of Australian young people in general, there is nothing specific to refugee and migrant youth, and that is a real problem, because we know now that basically half of Australian young people are either first or second generation migrants. So it is no longer a minority of youth that we are talking about. It is a really huge part of our society and it is important that our policy makers and leaders understand more about their experiences,” Ms Khan says.
Around 75 per cent of those surveyed were born overseas.
Four out of five were studying.
Forty-nine per cent stated they had experienced discrimination or unfair treatment in the last year.
Racism was both experienced and witnessed in public spaces, schools, workplaces and when applying for jobs.
Fifty per cent experienced underemployment, compared to 31 per cent of people of the same age in the general population.
Multicultural Youth Advocacy Network New South Wales was involved in the study.
Its Executive Officer Alex Long says there are benefits for employers when they hire multicultural youth.
“They are multilingual, they have cross-cultural skills, they have tenacity, adaptability. So these are young people who can really contribute and bring a huge amount of benefit to a workplace. So it’s disappointing that we still see unemployment and underemployment in this particular group of young people,” says Ms Long.
The survey looked at what it means to belong.
It found high levels of engagement across a number of social, community and cultural activities.
More than three quarters of new arrivals said ‘I feel like I belong in Australia’, ‘in my local area’ and ‘I belong in my school’.
Ms Long says the finding is a welcome antidote, to the bad press often associated with multicultural youth.
“They feel like Australia is a place where they are going to be able to achieve their goals and reach their future goals. They feel connected to their community, they feel connected socially, and in a whole range of spaces. They want to participate, they want to work towards a better Australia. We don’t often hear those kinds of stories. We sort of see this ongoing criminalisation of - in the case of Victoria - African gangs. But we see the same kinds of issues flaring up in Sydney as well,” adds Ms Long.
But Rimi Khan says the high levels of belonging mainly relate to people who were newly arrived in Australia, with levels decreasing after a number of years.
She believes this could be due to a drop off in support services for refugees and migrants after the first few years of arrival.
“So people who had been in Australia for five years or longer were significantly less optimistic than newer multicultural youth. So that really tells us that perhaps there is not enough being done in Australia, not enough support services or programs holding onto that optimism for young people,” adds Ms Khan.
The study also found multicultural youth had strong but complex connections to their families, seeing them as both a source of support and a source of tension, with family responsibilities sometimes stopping young people from getting involved in other areas of life.
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