Mapping the multiple geographies of mixed-ethnicity couples in Australia

ABSTRACT

Mixed-ethnicity partnerships are becoming increasingly common in Australia and other countries of high immigration. Formal and de facto marriages involving partners from different ethnic backgrounds are key indicators of decreasing social distance between groups. Yet mixed-ethnicity couples have received scant attention from Australian geographers. We use customised data from the 2011 Australian census to analyse the nation-wide distribution of several types of mixed-ethnicity couples. We focus on couples comprised of an Anglo-European (ethnic majority) partner, and a partner from a ‘visible’ ethnic minority group. Our analyses explore the residential geographies of mixed-ethnicity couples vis-à-vis ‘co-ethnic couples’ (where partners share the same ethnicity). We find that mixed-ethnicity couples are more widely dispersed across Australian cities and regions than comparative co-ethnic couples. However, each type of mixed-ethnicity couple has its own unique residential pattern: there are multiple geographies of mixed-ethnicity couples in Australia. These distinctive patterns reflect the migration and settlement histories of the couples’ constituent ethnic groups, but also hold great potential to shift seemingly entrenched ethnic residential geographies in the present and future.

KEYWORDS:

• Mixed ethnicity
• census
• diversity
• segregation
• households
• residential geography
• ancestry

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the staff at the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Information Consultancy Service for providing the customised data tables. We thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful advice and feedback, which greatly improved the paper. This research has been conducted with the support of the Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship. All errors remain our own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. US-based research uses the terminology ‘mixed-race’ due to racial identification categories in the US census. This terminology is less appropriate in Australia, where the census classifies people according to the Australian Standard Classification of Cultural and Ethnic Groups. We use the term ‘mixed-ethnicity’ unless referring to studies where the term ‘mixed-race’ has been adopted.

2. For instance, an individual of English and Australian ancestry would be included in the ‘Anglo-European’ group; however, an individual of English and Vietnamese ancestry would be excluded from the analysis. Similarly, an individual of Tanzanian and Kenyan ancestry would be included in the SS African group; but one who stated Tanzanian and Korean ancestry would be excluded.

3. One SA3, Blue Mountains—South, was excluded as its resident population was close to zero.

4. Following Wright, Ellis, and Holloway (2011, 10), LQs are calculated as:

where LQ_j is the location quotient for mixed-ethnicity (or co-ethnic) couples in area j. In the numerator, P_ij is the count of mixed-ethnicity (or co-ethnic) couples in area j and P_j the count of all couples in area j. In the denominator, P_im is the count of mixed-ethnicity (or co-ethnic) couples in Australia, and P_m is the count of all couples in Australia.

5. The standardised entropy index for each SA3 is calculated as:

where K is the proportional share of the SA3 population for each ethnic group (1 through n). The scaling constant (s) ensures that potential values range from zero (no diversity) to one (all groups present in equal proportions).

6. These included: Anglo-European (defined previously), Southern and Eastern European, North African and Middle Eastern, South-East Asian, North-East Asian, Southern and Central Asian, Sub-Saharan African, mixed Anglo-European and SE European, mixed Anglo-European and one of the other aforementioned groups, and Other.

7. This percentage would be much higher if our analysis was able to include partnerships between Anglo-European Australians and Indigenous Australians.

8. The 10 per cent threshold may not seem ‘large’, yet it is appropriate in identifying significant shares of ethnic minority groups at the SA3 level in Australian cities.

Additional information

Funding

This project was supported financially by a URC Small Grant (University of Wollongong (AU)) awarded to Natascha Klocker.