Tracking the Settlement of North African Immigrants: speculations on the social and cultural impacts of a newly arrived immigrant group

In the past five years Australia has experienced a dramatic increase in the number of North African arrivals. The majority of North African arrivals for the past 4 years have arrived as humanitarian entrants. This migration stream reflected a shift in the regional focus of the humanitarian program towards Africa. The majority of North African arrivals since 2000–01 have been from Sudan. The States of New South Wales and Victoria received the highest proportions of these arrivals. Key issues, and important research topics for social scientists, are at least threefold. First, the domestic politics and international geopolitics of this humanitarian flow need critical analysis. Second, the suitability of settlement services needs to be assessed. Specifically, the effects and merit of privatising service provision to these refugees requires rigorous scholarly assessment. Finally, more needs to be known about the cultural adaptation of this group, especially youth. Research into the experiences of racism and, relatedly, the existence and appropriateness of anti-racism initiatives is required.     

Community resources for small city creativity? Rethinking creative economy narratives at the Blue Mountains Music Festival

ABSTRACT

Limitations in scale, infrastructure and business opportunities in combination with a greater sense of community in small centres require a more diverse understanding of the small city creative economy. Entrepreneurship and business development builds on non-capitalist resources, creative community initiatives, volunteers and community networks. Fostering the creative economy in small cities requires a rethinking of creative narratives that iterate the key role of non-capitalist community resources. I illustrate this argument via a case study of the Blue Mountains Music Festival, in New South Wales, Australia. It examines the gap between creative economy aspirations of a small city government and the reality of creativity ‘on the ground’. The City of the Blue Mountains is a small urban centre on the fringes of metropolitan Sydney and regional New South Wales. Its council has recently adopted a creative industries approach to enhance local employment in line with national and metropolitan creative agendas. The Blue Mountains Music Festival was launched in response to creative economy policy more than 20 years ago, but has now lost this connection as it fails to fit current policy aspirations. The festival is, however, an effective example of how creativity in a small city unfolds, demonstrating that beyond jobs and growth are key matters of non-capitalist community networks and resources.     

Understanding Ethnic Residential Cluster Formation: new perspectives from South Australia’s migrant hostels

ABSTRACT

Throughout Australia’s history, successive governments have lamented the clustering of non-English-speaking migrants in ‘ethnic enclaves’ or ‘ghettos’. From the early Chinatowns of the 1800s till today, urban concentrations of ethnic groups have raised concerns and fears in local populations and authorities alike, despite decades of international research which suggests that ethnic residential clusters actually aid long-term assimilation and adjustment. Many of the ethnic residential clusters in contemporary Australia have been claimed to be a direct consequence of the migrant hostels and reception centres which operated between 1948 and the 1990s. This paper traces migrant settlement patterns in South Australia in rich detail, revealing the complexities of lived experiences that shape migrant settlement decisions. Against the background of public and scholarly debates over ‘ethnic enclaves’, and drawing on quantitative and qualitative historical research on the lived experiences of former hostel migrants, it analyses how migrant hostels and reception centres contributed to the settlement experiences of diverse migrants. We conclude that migrant hostels were just one among various factors that led to the growth and maintenance of ethnic residential clusters.     

The Urban Settlement Patterns of Disadvantaged Migrants

Abstract

Disadvantaged migrants to metropolitan areas are segregated by race, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status within the residential areas of central city poverty neighborhoods. Whereas black migrants are generally restricted to ghetto space, regional cultural similarities and feedback in the social communication network are important to the residential location of lower class whites. The urban settlement patterns of a sample of recent disadvantaged white migrants to Indianapolis, Indiana, vary from the clusters of migrants from Appalachia and the South to the more dispersed pattern of migrants from Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio, and other metropolitan areas. The residential location of migrants from Appalachia and the South is geographically restricted by cultural constraints, and heavy reliance upon a limited network of friends and relatives in the housing search. However, the sociocultural resources of the Midwest group and the previous urban experience of metropolitan migrants increase the range of housing opportunities in Indianapolis that are available and known to them.     

Multiphase cooling and exhumation of the southern Adelaide Fold Belt: constraints from apatite fission track data

Data from apatite fission track analysis are presented for 20 outcrop samples collected in the southern Adelaide Fold Belt, South Australia. Interpretation of these data, with the aid of numerical models which allow inference of multiphase cooling histories, indicate three discrete cooling events that are likely to correlate with sedimentation events in surrounding depositional settings. An event beginning some time after 85 Ma (Late Cretaceous) was characterized by cooling throughout the study area from temperatures of roughly 50 to 70 °C. An event beginning at 300–270 Ma (Late Palaeozoic) was characterized by cooling from temperatures >120 °C in all areas except for the Mount Lofty Ranges and Murray Bridge region, where peak temperatures were only 95–115 °C prior to Palaeozoic cooling. Some samples from these subregions of relatively cool Late Palaeozoic temperatures also retain evidence for even earlier cooling from temperatures >120 °C, beginning prior to 350 Ma. We interpret the post 85-Ma event as the consequence of regional exhumation from a depth of 1.0–1.6 km. The Late Palaeozoic event (300–270 Ma) is interpreted as cooling associated with the termination of the Alice Springs Orogeny, while cooling prior to 350 Ma probably represents the final stages of Early Middle Palaeozoic unroofing of the southern Adelaide Fold Belt.
The results highlight the importance of regional, episodic postorogenic exhumation of Palaeozoic fold belts, where – in some cases – conventional methods have erroneously suggested relatively long-term stability.     

A history of aquatic plants in the Coorong,a Ramsar-listed coastal wetland,South Australia

The Coorong in South Australia is an internationally recognised ecologically significant coastal lagoon that extends 140 km south-east from the mouth of the River Murray. The Coorong has increasingly been impacted by a variety of human activities. Declining migratory bird abundance has been linked to the loss of Ruppia tuberosa, an aquatic plant that is the main feedstock for a wide variety of water birds. Analysis of Ruppia remains from a radiometrically dated core in the southern lagoon of The Coorong shows that the salt-tolerant annual Ruppia tuberosa has only been present at this site in recent times. By contrast, the perennial Ruppia megacarpa, which has limited tolerance to elevated salinity, appears to have been present at the site for several millennia, although it had never been observed in ecological surveys of this part of The Coorong. Diatom analysis from the same core reveals a shift from estuarine/marine assemblages to an assemblage reflective of elevated salinity levels. Charophyte, ostracod and foraminifera remains also indicate that the change in the aquatic plant community is associated with increased salinity at the study site since European settlement. Elevated salinity is the result of catchment modifications which have reduced freshwater inflows at the northern and southern extremities of The Coorong, and marine input via the Murray Mouth. This study demonstrates the utility of multiproxy palaeoecological data in addressing complex management questions. In the absence of such information, managers must ultimately rely on data sourced only from the historical record which, more often than not, is already skewed by the impact of European settlement.     

Modelling the spatial dynamics of Mainland China-born migrants in Australia

Over the past two decades, migration from Mainland China (MC) to Australia has become increasingly significant. In contrast to previous migrant waves, post-2000 MC-born migrants in Australia are more likely to be highly skilled and/or financially independent, and often migrate under skilled, business and investment visa programs. Though scholarship has explored various facets of MC-born migrants’ settlement in Australian cities, the spatial dynamics of settlement, and change over time associated with these shifts in socio-economic profile, have remained unexplored. This paper draws on three census periods, and employs a local indicator of spatial autocorrelation together with a geographically weighted regression. We conclude that the settlement patterns of MC-born migrants in Australia do not follow the ‘straight-line’ assumptions of spatial assimilation theory, nor are they tied explicitly to socio-economic factors in the majority of capital cities. Instead, the settlement patterns of MC-born migrants vary by city: Sydney and Melbourne display the most spatially segmented settlement patterns; while Adelaide and Perth exhibit increasing levels of concentration as the number of MC-born migrants grows. Results indicate that while MC-born migrants are somewhat likely to cluster at the early stage of group formation, within-group spatial patterns are articulated by social attributes as the group grows in size and significance in a metropolitan context.     

A Holocene paleoenvironmental history of Lake Alexandria,South Australia

An investigation of Holocene sediments within Lake Alexandrina, a shallow coastal lake at the mouth of the Murray River, South Australia, is presented based on a multidisciplinary approach.¹⁴C and²¹⁰Pb radiometric dating methods are used to establish a geochronological framework for the last 7000 yr BP, and diatoms, sand-siltclay ratios, organic carbon, phosphorus and copper concentrations are used to infer paleoenvironmental changes.The diatom assemblages indicate a change from marine-brackish to oligosaline-freshwater conditions between 7000 and 6000 yr BP, with sea-level stabilisation and continuous barrier formation across the Murray mouth. Sand pulses after 2300 yr BP document sand spit formation in the lake and the commencement of extensive lacustrine sedimentation.In the past 100 years which include the advent of European settlement in the region, the short-term²¹⁰Pb-based mass accumulation rate of 0.063 g cm^–2 yr^–1 is greater than that of the longer-term mean¹⁴C-based rate (0.023 g cm^–2 yr^–1), and high concentrations of phosphorus and copper correspond to historical records of blue-green algal blooms.This is the fifth in a series of papers published in this issue on the paleolimnology of aric regions. These papers were presented at the Sixth International Paleolimnology Symposium held 19–21 April, 1993 at the Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. Dr A. R. Chivas served as guest editor for these papers.     

‘Committing to Place’ at the Local Scale: the potential of youth education programs for promoting community participation in regional natural resource management

Emerging approaches to environmental governance require a greater level of community participation than did previous approaches in which these responsibilities largely rested with government agencies. There is consequently a need for increased engagement with NRM among a broad community sector. This paper examines initiatives by two prominent government agencies, the Murray–Darling Basin Commission (MDBC) and the National Museum of Australia (NMA), to engage school children from regional communities using education programs that focus on place and environmental health. We focus on the MDBC's International Riverhealth Conference held in Mildura in 2003 and the associated Murray–Darling Basin TalkBack Classroom sponsored by the NMA and the Parliamentary Education Office (PEO). We explore how key themes of local scale, place-based identities, youth voice and critical engagement are developed in these programs and consider how they relate to the environmental agency of children. We then reflect on the potential for the kinds of environmental agency promoted through these programs to help build the capacity of local communities to progress larger goals of environmental restoration and sustainability in the Murray–Darling Basin. The evaluation research reported here forms part of the Committing to Place research project, an Australian Research Council Linkage grant involving the University of Tasmania, the National Museum of Australia and the Murray–Darling Basin Commission.     

“Software,Jobs Go Begging,Threatening Technology Boom”: Computer Services Employment in U.S. Metropolitan Areas, 1982 and 1993

The campaign to promote the networking of America underscores the importance of information infrastructures that can support regional competitiveness. One crucial element of a regional information infrastructure is a computer services (CS) industry that supports computer systems, provides backward and forward linkages among all sectors of the economy, serves as engines for economic growth, enhances production efficiency, and encourages innovation. But research on metropolitan CS has been limited, and where CS are analyzed directly, spatial units of analysis vary and CS are rarely disaggregated. This paper situates CS employment within spatial analyses of producer services, outlines infrastructural characteristics, analyzes CS distribution across metropolitan areas in 1982 and 1993, and considers the implications of the findings. The data suggest that while large metropolitan areas are most likely to have a diverse base of specializations in multiple CS types, many smaller metropolitan areas possess CS specializations. We conclude that ranking in the urban CS hierarchy is more likely to be a function of local economic structure than metropolitan population. The uneven dispersion of CS capacity across metropolitan areas potentially has negative ramifications for implementation of national policy and development of underserved regional economies.     

Spatial Concentration in Australian Regional Development,Exogenous Shocks and Regional Demographic Outcomes: a South Australian case study

ABSTRACT

As a tribute to the massive contribution of our friend and colleague Graeme Hugo to the population and settlement geography of Australian rural areas, this paper presents a longitudinal study from his home State. It forms part of a wider study of the long-term demographic relationships between Australia’s rapidly growing regional cities and their surrounding functional regions. Of particular interest is the question of what effect the accelerating concentration of population and economic activity into a given regional city will have for the longer term demographic sustainability of its functional region as a whole. Taking the case of Port Lincoln, regional capital of most of South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula, it examines the nature of change in the functional region over the period 1947–2011, and investigates the forces feeding, and partly counteracting, the population concentration process, informed by concepts of evolutionary economic geography. In particular it traces the demographic impact (particularly differential migration and ageing trends) of exogenous shocks to the region’s essentially primary productive economic base during the period of major change from 1981 to 2011.     

FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT IN U.S. METROPOLITAN AREAS, 1979-1983

Ordinary least-squares multiple regression is used to construct a path diagram showing the direct and indirect effects of corporate location factors on the share of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the 44 largest metropolitan areas in the United States during the period 1979-1983. The results show that the metropolitan areas with the most rapid population growth over the period 1970-1980 correspond to the centers with greater shares of FDI. The growth in Fortune measure, an indicator of the market dynamics of the metropolitan areas, has a direct effect on the level of investment. The growth of employment in manufacturing and in finance, insurance, and real estate, used as indexes of labor supply and of producer services, have indirect effects on FDI. The results show that foreign direct investors tend to concentrate in centers offering strong markets and strong bases of producer services, regardless of their regional locations.     

南京都市区就业空间结构与区位模式演变研究

就业空间是城市空间的重要组成部分,映射出城市经济与社会现象的多样性.论文采用经验贝叶斯克里金、非参数局部加权回归、多中心密度函数等方法综合刻画南京都市区就业空间结构特征,并从就业结构化分散、就业中心增长转型、就业异质性集聚与土地混合利用3个方面剖析其就业区位模式特征.研究发现:①南京都市区就业郊区化与多中心化并存,"分...     

The Sponge City Hypothesis: does it hold water?

The notion of sponge cities has attracted considerable attention in the media, in the policy arena, and in academia. It rests on the notion that some regional centres ‘soak up’ population and business from a ‘pool’ of surrounding areas, thereby appearing as ‘oases’ of growth in areas of population decline. Specifically, the notion of sponge cities rests on two premises and a deduction: some large towns and provincial cities are growing; surroundings areas are losing population; therefore, the growth results from the relocation of people from outlying farms and smaller towns to the nearby growing centres. Despite its popularity, the notion has largely gone untested. Investigation of migration trends in Dubbo and Tamworth (New South Wales, Australia), frequently cited as sponge cities, over the period 1986–2001 shows that the reality is much more complex than the simple metaphor suggests. The contribution made by the ‘pool’ to the growth of the regional ‘sponges’ is relatively minor. This calls into question the value of the notion of a sponge city—and the use of metaphors in social science more generally.     

NEW APPROACHES TO DELINEATING METROPOLITAN AND NONMETROPOLITAN SETTLEMENT: GEOGRAPHERS DRAWING THE LINE

The federal government's Office of Management and Budget, with staff support from the Census Bureau's Population Division, is responsible for maintaining the statistical standard that provides criteria used to define metropolitan settlement and that delineates individual metropolitan areas for use in federal statistics. Review of the current standard, which dates from 1990, is now under way in conjunction with the 2000 census. Reviews of the emergence of the metropolitan form of settlement in the United States and of previous geospatial units representing metropolitan settlement are provided. A framework of geospatial units to represent the various elements of settlement at the close of the 20th century, including metropolitan and nonmetropolitan forms, is offered. Three papers that provide new approaches to delineating metropolitan and nonmetropolitan settlement in the United States are introduced. [Keywords: metropolitan and nonmetropolitan settlement, geospatial units of analysis, federal government, statistics.]     

"Making Place": The "Pacific Solution" and Australian Emplacement in the Pacific and on Refugee Bodies

In September 2001, Australia effected a "Pacific Solution" to its "refugee problem": the interception and transfer of "unauthorised boat arrivals" to processing centres in the Pacific Third World. These centres were agreed to by poor countries that were approached precisely because of their vulnerability and dependence upon Australia, in exchange for increases in aid. Australia thereby created a regional refugee problem and, in so doing, Australian seignorage also demands that the laws of those sovereign countries be placed in stasis so that people not convicted of a crime may be detained indefinitely. The Pacific region, in effect, came to be mapped in terms of its utility to Australia, both downplaying and concealing complex economic, social and political issues. This essay studies the Pacific Solution as a means of Australian "emplacement" in the Pacific and on refugee identity/bodies. Both refugee identity and the Pacific Third World are assessed in terms of their utility in serving as sites for Australian emplacement, whereby and wherein the borders of Australia are reinforced, to the detriment of extant "local" emplacements.     

POLYCENTRICITY OR DISPERSION?: CHANGES IN CENTER EMPLOYMENT IN METROPOLITAN SYDNEY, 1981 TO 1996

Much recent literature in urban studies, geography, and planning portrays an inexorable evolution toward polycentricity as a new “postmodern” metropolitan form. However, detailed and comparable empirical investigations, at once both comprehensive and disaggregated, are more elusive. A study by Gordon and Richardson (1996) of employment trends in Los Angeles—the archetypal polycentric metropolis—produced the surprising conclusion that a process of generalized dispersion rather than a clustering in major suburban subcenters seemed well established for the period 1970 to 1990. This paper adapts the Gordon-Richardson methodology to an investigation of centered versus noncentered employment trends in Sydney, Australia, between 1981 and 1996. Based on a detailed statistical analysis, the study suggests some parallels to the Los Angeles experience in the 1980s but uncovers a recentralization trend in the 1990s. The findings underline the importance of locality-specific factors and the need for further systematic and comparative research.     

Industrialisation and South Australia

Like Australia as a whole, South Australia experienced rapid industrialisation from the 1930s, but employment growth rates in the state were generally well above national levels. Conversely, restructuring of Australian manufacturing since the mid 1970s has had especially severe consequences in the state. This paper documents and seeks to explain the distinctive pattern of industrial change in South Australia. Drawing on the contemporary literature on geographically uneven development, it argues that the state's experience must be explored in the wider context of the dynamics of capitalist development. International, national and local forces have combined in a complex fashion to produce the specific pattern of manufacturing growth and restructuring evident in South Australia. Analysis focuses on the activities of capital, labour and the institutions of the state, key agents of economic change.     

Population turnaround and the peopling of the countryside? Migration from Sydney to country districts of New South Wales

The notions of ‘population turnaround’ and migration equilibrium are examined in an analysis of outmigration from metropolitan New South Wales to non‐metropolitan districts, with particular reference to the 1976–81 period but with inclusion of data from the 1986 Census of Population and Housing. While the outmigration from Sydney has been substantial, and in some respects resembles the ‘turnaround’ which was underway in other western countries, it has been spatially confined. While the outmigration from Sydney lessened during 1981–86, it still remained significant. Meanwhile, regional labour force migration and movement from other state capital cities was contributing more to the population inflow in southern, western and some northern areas of New South Wales. An analysis of economic correlates of outmigration and more recent sample survey data suggests that while economic factors have been significant in the outmigration, environmental and lifestyle factors have been influential, and that some of the traditional economic models of migration have not been validated. A conceptualisation of outmigration involving economic and environmental push and pull factors, and various forms of trade‐offs is proposed as a partial explanation of the phenomenon.     

POPULATION AND EMPLOYMENT INTERACTIONS IN THE GROWTH OF UNITED STATES MICROPOLITAN CENTERS

This paper examines population and employment growth in 219 emerging metropolitan (micropolitan) areas in the United States during the 1980s. In the spirit of Carlino and Mills (1987) and Clark and Murphy (1996), a partial adjustment model is used to examine the simultaneity of population and employment change, while controlling for the area-specific effects of amenities, fiscal conditions, and demographic composition, as well as for broad regional differences. The statistical evidence does not provide strong support for the simultaneity of micropolitan-area population and employment change during that decade.