Ethnic diversity and social cohesion in Melbourne

People and Place

Volumn 15, Issue 4, 2007, Pages 49-64

  Healy, Ernest ^a  

^a MONASH UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ETHNIC GROUP; IMMIGRANT; LANGUAGE; SOCIAL CAPITAL; VOLUNTARY APPROACH;

AUSTRALASIA; AUSTRALIA; MELBOURNE; VICTORIA [AUSTRALIA];

EID: 39549104571     PISSN: 10394788     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (24)

1. For example, in response to the recent inter-ethnic violence in First World countries, such as has occurred in France and the U.K., academic Jock Collins advocates an even stronger commitment to multiculturalism as a means of managing this risk. He suggests that multicultural policy had an ameliorating affect on the 2005 Cronulla riots in Sydney, in so far as they were not as serious as those that occurred elsewhere. In the early 1990s, academics Kalantzis and Cope went further in claiming significant economic benefits from multiculturalism. They argue that ethnic diversity, developed and maintained by an active policy of multiculturalism, enhances international trading links between Australia and the economics of origin of Australian migrants. This argument fell within the orbit of the 'productive diversity' policy of then Federal Labor government. See J. Collins, 'The land mark of Cronulla', in J. Jupp and J. Nieuwenhuysen (Eds), Social Cohesion in Australia, Melbourne, Cambridge University Press, 2007 and B. Cope and M. Kalantzis, Productive Diversity: A New, Australian Model for Work and Management, Pluto Press, Annadale, NSW, 1997
2. R. Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions In Modern Italy, Princeton, Princeton University Press, p. 91
3. ibid., p. 173. Putnam contends that the patterns of community association that are the most effective in generating social capital are intensely horizontal in nature. Contrary to vertical relationships, horizontal networks of social engagement bring 'together agents of equivalent status and power'.
4. R. Putnam, Bowling Alone, Simon and Schuster, 2001, p. 118
5. M. K. Smith, 'Robert Putnam', The Encyclopaedia of Informal Education accessed 8/8/2007
6. R. Putnam, 'E Pluribus Unum: diversity and community in the twenty-first century, the Johan Skytte Prize lecture', Scandinavian Political Studies, vol. 30, no. 2, pp. 137-174 accessed 8/8/2007
7. ibid., p. 145
8. For example see Collins, 2007, op. cit., pp. 61-69.
9. Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), Voluntary Work, Australia, Catalogue no. 4441.0, Canberra, July 2007, p. 3
10. ibid., pp. 4-5
11. ibid., p. 20
12. Department of Community Services Victoria (DVC), Indicators of Community Strength at the Local Government Area Level in Victoria, Melbourne, 2005, p. 10
13. At the same time, the DVC takes the positive contribution of ethnic diversity to the local creation of community strength for granted. One objective of the research is to build and support 'Communities that embrace diversity: supporting and advocating for indigenous communities, young Victorians, women, and culturally and linguistically diverse communities'.
14. In the hierarchy of spatial units used by the ABS, the smallest is Collector District (neighbourhood scale units of 200-300 households on average), the next largest spatial unit being Statistical Local Area (SLA). SLAs are in turn constituent parts of Local Government Areas (LGAs). The number of SLAs which comprise LGAs varies from one to four within the Melbourne Statistical Division (which approximates the Melbourne metropolitan area).
15. A. Leigh, 'Diversity, trust and distribution', Dialogue, Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, vol. 25 no. 3, 2006, p. 44
16. ibid., p. 48
17. There are 79 SLAs within the Melbourne statistical division.
18. The Simpson's diversity index (SDI) provides a summary statistic of the diversity of a community. The SDI is based on two assumptions. The first is that a community that has more subgroups on a given measure is more diverse (for example, birthplace or language groups). The second is that a community with a more even spread of cases (individuals) across subgroups is more diverse than a community where cases are heavily concentrated in relatively few subgroups.
19. Australian Bureau of Statistics 2006 Basic Community Profile data provide birthplace counts for 35 languages spoken in the home, plus the residual category 'other languages' where the counts are small. In practice, therefore, the Simpson's diversity index calculation used here is based on the distribution of residents across a fixed number of language categories.
20. Data source: ABS, 2006 census, basic community profiles
21. These data are derived from customised ABS 2006 census data sets held by the Centre for Population and Urban Research.
22. E. Healy, 'Ethnic ALP branches: the balkanisation of Labor', People and Place, vol. 1 no. 4, pp. 37-42
23. Department of Immigration and Citizenship, migrant settler database 2005-2006, held by the CPUR
24. For example, academic James Jupp argues that, unless we are confronted with overt social 'breakdown' or ethnic conflict the conditions of social cohesion have been met. He highlights Australia's status as'... an orderly, cohesive, harmonious and just society by world standards' and maintains that current concerns about the potentially negative affect of ethic diversity on social cohesion are simply the latest manifestation of a long and largely unjustified preoccupation with imagined external threats. See J. Jupp, 'The quest for harmony', in Jupp and Nieuenhuysen (Eds), 2007, op. cit., p. 18