The role of local government in migrant and refugee settlement in regional and rural Australia

Abstract

Government responsibility for the settlement of newly arrived refugees and migrants in Australia is shared between the federal, state and local levels. While Australia's settlement policies are predominantly top-down and Commonwealth driven with some state involvement, local government has the potential to play a greater role in facilitating the settlement of newly arrived migrants and refugees. A growing body of literature in Australia and overseas highlights the role of local-level policies in supporting integration and social cohesion, which is arguably even more crucial in the context of migrant and refugee settlement in regional and rural areas. This paper draws on focus groups with 90 local stakeholders in eight local government areas in Victoria to propose a typology of local government involvement that shows the variable but potentially significant role of local government in the regional and rural settlement of recent arrivals. We argue that Australia's over 560 local governments provide crucial but underutilised governance resources for improving the settlement process. This finding has implications for settlement policies and funding, intergovernmental coordination, and the retention of migrants and refugees in regional and rural communities in Australia. K E Y W O R D Sintergovernmental coordination, local government, migrants, refugees, regional and rural, settlement

Integration and social determinants of health and wellbeing for people from refugee backgrounds resettled in a rural town in South Australia: a qualitative study

“…Given that one of the major rationales for regional resettlement is to fill needed employment gaps [58], matching migrant's skills to employment opportunities in an area is an important key for success. Focused policy and government services could support the role of employers, services providers and agencies to include support of systematic volunteering pathways to paid employment and protections from exploitation [88,95], alongside systematic strategies to build social networks important for securing work.…”

Reconceptualising the Governance of Migration Policy in Australia

“…In recognition of the potential contribution of a stronger role for local government the RCOA (2014) claimed that in many smaller communities, networks tend to work more efficiently due to the small numbers of organisations and people involved. Research supports this view (Boese and Phillips, 2017) with local area coordination generally reported to be effective and practically oriented and long-term in nature. This would require both the Commonwealth and the states taking subsidiarity more seriously.…”

“…Unfortunately, these differences between the experiences of the states highlights a possible lack of cooperation between them in terms of policy learning for more effective approaches to migration issues (SA, 2017). Boese and Phillips (2017) shows that local governments have been involved in supporting the implementation of multicultural policies and fostering social cohesion through community-based inclusion focused activities. Small grant programs to assist community organisations to provide family support (such as home visits to ethnic playgroups) can play an important role in engaging the volunteer community within migrant groups.…”

The Regional Migration-Development Nexus in Australia: What Migration? Whose Development?

“…The mentioned economically-driven policies and initiatives have been paralleled by local government efforts, that are primarily concerned with the social and cultural impacts of migration to regional towns and communities ( Boese and Phillips, 2017 ). Over the past 10 years, many regional cities and towns in Australia have developed local initiatives to support the settlement of refugees in particular and, less so, of skilled migrants.…”