African Refugee Communities in Southeast Queensland: forces of concentration and dispersion

Abstract

Black African refugee communities are a relatively recent addition to the Australia landscape. Between 2001 and 2007, over 5000 refugees from various African nations resettled in Queensland. There are very few data about African refugee settlement geography in Australia and no previous study delineating African refugee settlement within the State of Queensland. This research addresses the knowledge gap by examining the geographic distribution and secondary migration patterns of eight African refugee communities in Southeast Queensland. The research adopted a multi-method approach, mapping quantitative data from an existing secondary database and comparing these to qualitative primary data to determine geographical distribution. Additional qualitative data were used to establish secondary migration patterns of the case study communities. Results show noticeable discrepancies between existing secondary datasets and primary data collected from the communities. These inconsistencies are significant because settlement service providers who use the secondary data to budget, plan and deliver essential settlement services might be underestimating the size of the African communities and missing some settlement locations altogether. The results also reveal a tension between the main socio-cultural forces of concentration and housing forces of dispersion that are driving secondary migration in the communities. A policy recommendation to mitigate the potentially negative effects of residential dispersion on settlement outcomes includes the strategic location of service hubs in key suburbs, such as Moorooka, to which the communities are already drawn.

Keywords:

• African refugees
• settlement geography
• refugee distribution
• secondary migration
• Southeast Queensland

Acknowledgements

Sincere thanks to the African leaders and members of the eight case study communities for their valuable contribution to this research. Thank you to Nicholas Burridge (Department of Immigration and Citizenship) for compiling the original dataset from the settlement database, Carly Hall for her technical assistance with ArcGIS, Euan Rilley (Housing and Homelessness Services, Department of Communities) for compiling the median rental data used in Table 4 and to the anonymous referees for comments on the draft of this paper. This research was supported in part by a Queensland Government ‘Growing the Smart State PhD Funding Program’ research grant (2007–10).

Notes

1. The Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs changed its name to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship on 30 January 2007.

2. The Eritrean community chose not to participate in the research, reducing the number of case study communities from nine to eight.

3. The community data were aggregated to postcode level for ease of comparison.

4. Social housing includes public rental housing and medium- to long-term community housing, both of which are funded by Housing and Homelessness Services within the Queensland government's Department of Communities (formerly the Department of Housing). Public housing is supplied directly by the Queensland government, while community housing is provided by community-managed housing organisations.