Transitions from education to employment for culturally and linguistically diverse migrants and refugees in settlement contexts: what do we know?

ABSTRACT

Access to and experiences of education among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Migrants or Refugees (CALDM/R) is a site of increased scholarly interest. While research emphasises new CALDM/Rs’ desire to work and meaningfully contribute to their new country, many remain under employed even though many hold multiple tertiary qualifications. This article offers an interpretive review of literature relating to the higher education and employment experiences of CALDM/R, so as to contribute to debates about how universities should facilitate the pathways from university to employment for these students. From our reading of the literature, we argue that current policy fails to address areas of language proficiency, work experience and recognition of work and study from countries overseas, all of which contribute to high levels of unemployment. This review also highlights structural workplace issues of racism, discrimination and exploitation and discussed the role and responsibility of universities in contributing to the employment outcomes for CALDM/R. It concludes that as tertiary education providers have a commitment to ensuring their graduates are ‘job ready’, particular attention to the needs of CALDM/R is required.

KEYWORDS:

• CALD migrants and refugees
• transitions out
• tertiary education
• higher education
• pathways to employment
• pathways to further study

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 This number has been increased to 18,750 from 2018 to 2019 (RCOA 2018a).

2 The Refugee Education Special Interest Group is an Australian-wide collective of students, educators and advocates who are interested in working for better educational opportunities and outcomes for students from refugee and asylum seeking backgrounds (https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/educationsig/).

3 The People from Refugee and Asylum Seeking Backgrounds: An Open Access Annotated Bibliography can be found here https://apo.org.au/node/251191.

4 For an overview of the AMEP, see Department of Education (n.d): https://www.education.gov.au/adult-migrant-english-program-0.