The impact of oral English proficiency on humanitarian migrants’ experiences of settling in Australia

ABSTRACT

Key drivers for migrants’ social integration are education, employment, and skills in the dominant language of the settlement country. Data from Building a New Life in Australia: The Longitudinal Study of Humanitarian Migrants were used to examine migrants’ English proficiency and how oral English proficiency facilitated or hindered participation in activities that may help them become self-sufficient and settle. Participants were 2399 humanitarian migrants interviewed in the first wave of data collection (during 2013/14). Before arrival in Australia, 80.1% reported they spoke English not well or not at all. After arrival, oral English proficiency was a statistically significant predictor of self-sufficiency (knowing how to look for a job, get help in an emergency, etc.) explaining 21% of the variance while controlling for confounding variables such as age and education. After English proficiency, age (neither too young nor too old), gender (male), education (more than 12 years), and time since arrival (more than one year) were significant predictors of self-sufficiency. Identification of factors that predict self-sufficiency informs the understanding of people who provide support for humanitarian migrants. These findings indicate poor oral English skills may profoundly hinder humanitarian migrants’ ability to settle and highlight the importance of supporting migrants’ English learning.

KEYWORDS:

• English proficiency
• humanitarian migrants
• refugees
• participation
• self-sufficiency
• settlement

Acknowledgements

This paper utilises data from the Department of Social Services (DSS) and the Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS); however, the findings and opinions reported are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the DSS or AIFS.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Helen L. Blake http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1041-4613

Sharynne McLeod http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7279-7851

Notes

1 Multilingual speakers are defined as individuals who are able to understand and/or speak more than one language; however, they may have varied competence in each of the languages they use and in the ways they use them, whether orally, in writing or signed (International Expert Panel on Multilingual Children’s Speech 2012).

2 Data on country of birth and home language were confidentialised when there were fewer than 10 households with a member who nominated a specific country/language (Department of Social Services 2015b). Therefore, only 16 countries of birth and 16 home languages were listed in the data.

3 Data on age were confidentialised due small numbers to preserve anonymity. Responses where age was over 70 years were coded as 75 years to reflect the average age of respondents in the dataset aged over 70 years (DSS, 2015b). The oldest participant was 83 years of age (DSS, 2015a).