Urban transitions—Aboriginal men, education and work in Redfern Waterloo

Abstract

Chronic unemployment amongst indigenous Australians, men in particular, is central to this group's social marginalization. The challenge of finding paid work is much more formidable for those in regional and rural areas (other than in places affected by the mining boom) than for those in cities, where jobs are more plentiful. However, even in cities most Aboriginal people typically have low levels of formal education and few credentials and are often uncompetitive in urban labour markets. The article reports on biographical research among young Aboriginal men in Sydney's Redfern Waterloo district. It examines the way in which subcultural influences shape their early attitudes to education and work. It looks at how young Aboriginal men cope with the experience of growing up without fathers, a predominant social trend in the area. The research indicates that it is partly their ability to rise above the resistant cultures of their youthful peer groups that is crucial to young men's ability to find and retain paid employment. Each of the interview subjects discussed here demonstrates an awareness that, in order to exercise some control over their future, they need to transcend (or at least transform) the values and influence of a particular kind of indigenous subcultural community which has shaped their early life.

Acknowledgements

I acknowledge the assistance of Simon Jovanovic, David Sampson and Pariece Nelligan in conducting the research for this article, and the support of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies and the Australian Research Council.

Notes

1. Anna Patty, ‘Millions Wasted on Aboriginal Job Projects’, Sydney Morning Herald, 5 January 2012. www.smh.com.au/national/millions-wasted-on-aboriginal-job-projects-20120104-1pl7p.html (accessed 25 January 2012).

2. Redfern and Waterloo are contiguous suburbs to the south of the Sydney central business district, each with significant Aboriginal minorities.

3. Ann McGrath, Born in the Cattle: Aborigines in Cattle Country, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1987.

4. Ian Walden ‘“That Was Slavery Days”: Aboriginal Domestic Servants in New South Wales in the 20th Century’, in Kay Saunders, Ann McGrath and Jackie Huggins (eds), Aboriginal Workers, Sydney: Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, 1995.

5. Mervyn Hartwig, ‘Capitalism and Aborigines: The Theory of Internal Colonialism and Its Rivals’, in Ted Wheelwright and Ken Buckley (eds), Essays in the Political Economy of Australian Capitalism, Vol 3, Sydney: Australia and New Zealand Book Company, 1978, pp 107–144.

6. See Jon Altman (ed), ‘Aboriginal Employment Equity by the Year 2000’, Australian National University Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research Monograph No 2, Canberra: Australian National University, 1991; Will Sanders, ‘Citizenship and the Community Development Employment Projects Scheme: Equal Rights, Difference and Appropriateness’, in Nick Peterson and Will Sanders (eds), Citizenship and Indigenous Australians: Changing Conceptions and Possibilities, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp 141–153; John Taylor, ‘Tracking Change in the Relative Economic Status of Indigenous People in New South Wales’, Australian National University Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research Discussion Paper 277, Canberra: Australian National University, 2005.

7. D Smith, ‘Redfern Works: The Policy and Community Challenges of an Urban CDEP Scheme’, Australian National University Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research Discussion Paper 99, Canberra: Australian National University, 1995.

8. L Gibson, ‘Making a Life: Getting Ahead, and Getting a Living in Aboriginal New South Wales’, Oceania 80(2), 2010, pp 143–160.

9. Gibson, ‘Making a Life’, p 155.

10. Michelle Cunningham and Kathryn Davis, ‘Labour Market Outcomes in Regional Australia’, Reserve Bank of Australia Bulletin, September, 2011. www.rba.gov.au/publications/bulletin/2011/sep/1.html (accessed 25 January 2012).

11. James Forrest and Kevin Dunn, ‘Constructing Racism in Sydney, Australia's Largest Ethnic City’, Urban Studies 44(4), 2007, pp 699–721, p 709.

12. Robert Vurens van Es and Alfred Dockery, ‘Indigenous Australians in the Labour Market: Exploring the Role of Social Capital’, Centre for Labour Market Research CLMR Discussion Paper Series, 08/03, Perth: Curtin University of Technology, 2003. www.business.curtin.edu.au/files/08_031.pdf (accessed 25 January 2012).

13. See Janet McCalman, Struggletown: Public and Private Life in Richmond, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1984; William Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.

14. Gillian Cowlishaw, The City's Outback, Sydney: UNSW Press, 2009.

15. Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper, ‘Beyond “Identity”’, Theory and Society 29(1), 2000, pp 1–47.

16. Kay Anderson, ‘Constructing Geographies: Race, Place and the Making of Sydney's Aboriginal Redfern-Waterloo’, in Peter Jackson and Jan Penrose (eds), Constructions of Race, Place and Nation, London: UCL Press, 1993, pp 81–99.

17. See Wendy Shaw, Cities of Whiteness, New York: Blackwell, 2008; Don Weatherburn, ‘Riots, Policing and Social Disadvantage: Learning from the Riots in Macquarie Fields and Redfern’, Current Issues in Criminal Justice 18(1), 2006, pp 20–31.

18. Lucy Taksa, ‘“Pumping the Life-Blood into Politics and Place”: Labour Culture and the Eveleigh Railway Workshops’, Labour History 79, 1996, pp 11–34.

19. George Morgan, Unsettled Places: Aboriginal People and Urban Life, Adelaide: Wakefield Press, 2006.

20. Fay Gale, Urban Aborigines, Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1972.

21. Jeremy Beckett, A Study of Aborigines in the Pastoral West of New South Wales, Oceania Monograph 55, Sydney: University of Sydney, 2005.

22. See Morgan, Unsettled Places; George Morgan, ‘Assimilation and Resistance: Housing Indigenous Australians in the 1970s’, Journal of Sociology (Australia) 3, 2000, pp 187–204; George Morgan, ‘Aboriginal Migration to Sydney Since World War II’, Sydney Journal 1(3), 2008, pp 75–82.

23. The author researched these archives (held in the NSW State Records Office) extensively during the late 1990s and early part of the last decade.

24. Morgan, Unsettled Places.

25. Maggie Brady, Indigenous Australia and Alcohol Policy: Meeting Difference with Indifference, Sydney: UNSW Press, 2004.

26. See Harry Blagg, Crime, Aboriginality and the Decolonization of Justice, Sydney: Hawkins Press, 2008; Chris Cunneen, ‘Racism, Discrimination and the Over-Representation of Indigenous People in the Criminal Justice System: Some Conceptual and Explanatory Issues’, Current Issues in Criminal Justice 17(3), 2006, pp 329–346.

27. Redfern Waterloo Authority, Redfern and Waterloo Employment and Enterprise Plan, 2006. www.redfernwaterloo.nsw.gov.au/other/final_eep_july06.pdf (accessed 25 February 2012).

28. Ian Watson, John Buchanan, Ian Campbell and Chris Briggs, Fragmented Futures: New Challenges in Working Life, Sydney: Federation Press, 2003.

29. While clearly it would have been ideal to produce longitudinal data, to map individual subjects over a long period, this was not possible within the time constraints of the research project. In the absence of longitudinal data, this permitted some insight into the development of masculinities.

30. Cowlishaw, The City's Outback, pp 23–26.