Poverty, Work and Social Networks: The Role of Social Capital for Aboriginal People in Urban Australian Locales

Abstract

In this article, I present the key findings from a project entitled “The Social Context of Indigenous Poverty”. The research involved a series of interviews with Aboriginal people in urban SE Australia on issues of poverty, social capital and social exclusion. In the article I draw together Aboriginal perspectives on the meaning of poverty to reflect on the relevance of social capital concepts for understanding Aboriginal economic disadvantage and hence, the merits of policy framed in these terms.

Keywords:

• Aboriginal Australia
• poverty
• social capital
• social policy

Acknowledgements

Wholehearted thanks to those people who participated in interviews and to the research assistants and organisations that facilitated the research process, the Strategic Policy and Planning Unit, Shepparton, and Muru Mittigar, Penrith, and the then named Daruk Aboriginal Community Controlled Medical Service, Mt Druitt. A version of this article was presented in the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Seminar Series, at The Australian National University. The comments received in that forum were helpful in the redrafting process as were the comments offered by UPR's two reviewers. The author also benefited from conversations with Dr Boyd Hunter and Professor John Taylor (both of ANU).

Notes

1. Though poverty is now largely understood as multidimensional and a poverty line as a unidimensional instrument, the use of a poverty line indicator is still regarded as a useful tool providing “the statistical foundation on which other methods of measuring deprivation and social exclusion can build” (Saunders et al., 2008, p. 1).

2. To assess the overall effectiveness of such a strategy that aims to utilise bonding social capital networks to access desired work in Indigenous community organisations, it is necessary to grasp the size of what has been termed the ‘Indigenous sector’ (Rowse, 2002). This important sector emerged out of the self-determination era. Unfortunately, it is not possible to quantify the current size of this potentially large sector (Taylor & Hunter, 1997). In national statistics, the sector is routinely embedded within either public or private sector categories. There has been a single opportunity to quantify this group using the 1994 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Survey (NATSIS) (Taylor, 2006). The NATSIS data is arranged by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) regions and doesn't offer estimates for my specific study locations, Shepparton and Western Sydney, but its national estimates show that 2.6 per cent or n = 1700 of the total number of Indigenous persons employed were working in community organisations (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 1995). Oddly, in the same year that the 1994 NATSIS was conducted, 2600 Indigenous organisations were registered with the Office of the Registrar of Indigenous Corporations (Commonwealth of Australia, 2008). In simple terms, this means that the number of registered Indigenous organisations was larger than the number of Indigenous people employed by Indigenous community organisations (as counted by NATSIS). In these terms the 1994 NATSIS arguably represents an underestimate of the Indigenous sector. The nature and potential size of the Indigenous sector is the subject of ongoing research by the author.