This paper explores the effects of "visible difference" on employment outcomes of three recently arrived refugee 2 groups: ex-Yugoslavs, black Africans, and people from the Middle East. The paper draws on data collected through a survey (150 questionnaire-based face-to-face interviews conducted by bilingual interviewers) of refugees who settled in Western Australia over the past decade. Results indicate different outcomes for respondents from the three backgrounds despite similar levels of human capital and similar length of residence. Our evidence supports a "political economy of labour migration" interpretation for the differential outcomes, based on both structural and interpersonal racism, rather than a neo-classical explanation which holds that the job market is "blind to ethnicity". Despite high unemployment and loss of occupational status, predominantly highly educated refugees were relatively satisfied with their lives in Australia.
60Colic-Peisker and Tilbury
This article explores settlement experiences of three refugee populations — ex-Yugoslavs, black Africans and people from the Middle East — who recently (1990s—2000s) arrived in Western Australia. Settlement success and life satisfaction are investigated in connection with the three groups' racial and cultural visibility in the host milieu and an endemic loss of occupational and social status. Data were collected through a survey of 150 refugees and the interpretation of statistical outputs was aided by follow-up in-depth interviews. The strongest predictors of life satisfaction were job satisfaction, financial satisfaction and social support, but their power varied between groups. Ex-Yugoslavs were more satisfied with their life in Australia than the other two groups, which is at least partly attributable to their whiteness and therefore reduced visibility in the general population. It is remarkable that `street discrimination' did not impact on the overall life satisfaction of refugees, while discrimination in the job market did. Refugee life satisfaction is compared to that of the general Australian population.
This article explores the processes of acculturation and identity among refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina who resettled in the Australian cities of Perth and Sydney during the 1990s. We start from the idea that refugees, through the process of forced migration, lose aspects of their identities that were embedded in their former communities, jobs, skills, language, and culture. Upon arrival in a new society, they seek to reconstruct their identity, and we argue that this happens in the context of the process of acculturation. We use two social psychological perspectives, social identity theory and acculturation theory, and the sociological theory of the migration of human capital, to examine our data collected by qualitative research methods from refugees and Australian professionals who work in the government-funded refugee resettlement programme. Our data highlight the loss of identity experienced in forced migration, difficulties in refugee acculturation and identity reconstruction, and collective and individual strategies in acculturation and identity adaptation. We see our perspective as essentially interdisciplinary, and take an interactional view of the acculturation and identity processes, as the characteristics of both the host society and the immigrants affect them.
This paper explores the process of resettlement among recent refugees in Perth, Western Australia. We propose four refugee resettlement styles created through the interaction of a number of factors. These factors can be clustered as: (
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