Revised Submission to the 2009 African Australians Project

Dr David Lucas

Adjunct Associate Professor,

Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute

ANU

As President of the African Studies Association of Australasia and the Pacific (AFSAAP) I should like to congratulate the Australian Human Rights Commission on its 2009 African Australians initiative. Our organization only heard of the project indirectly, through members who were connected to NGOs, but, as the writer of our Newsletter, Habari kwa Ufupu, I have referred our members to the Project webpage on several occasions.

.

In my email of March, 30th, 2009, I drew your attention to the AFSAAP website, particularly to the 2008 issue of our journal, and to relevant papers given at our two 2008 conferences. Please see

This, however, is a personal submission. I have worked on African Demography for over 40 years, including work in Lesotho, Kenya, Nigeria, and Zambia. Since 1976 I have been in the Demography Program at the Australian National University, which has a distinguished record in African demography (see Lucas 2003). I have revised this submission because of recent changes made to the Project; these are marked with asterisks (**)

In my discipline it is common to describe the limitations of our methodology and also of non-coverage, that is persons in the target population who, for various reasons were not included in the inquiry. Following the structure of your Discussion Paper I have identified a few methodological and other points below which might deserve mention in your report.

Page 5. Focus of the Project.

“Unfortunately, the media usually focuses on crime or on political commentary about African Australians…”

This bold statement really needs to be really supported by a scientific content analysis. I have been collecting press cuttings on African Australians for several years and would certainly dispute the word ‘usually’. Many of my press cuttings refer to triumph over adversity and other success stories, related to family reunion and academic achievement. For example, in 2006, The Australian carried an article describing how Sudanese refugees were ‘moving on at Australian universities’ (O’Keefe, 2006).

Page 5. Framework for the Project

As far as I can see the consultation process did not include any venues in regional or rural Australia. I think that the report should consider whether the concerns of this population have been sufficiently addressed.

** Since writing this paragraph I note that the range of venues has been expanded to include smaller towns such as Lismore and Mildura. I assume that the report will show the numbers attending and their characteristics, or at least their sex. Using the 2006 Census CDATA it should be possible to show which locations with African populations were missed.

Of the three groups identified as possibly experiencing greater vunerabilities, the first was young people, which I assume includes children of all ages.

My view is that other particularly vunerable groups would include:

  • Women and children arriving in the ‘women at risk’ category
  • Members of small ethnic/ancestry groups (e.g. from Francophone Africa), especially monoglots
  • Persons who have been traumatised

With regard to the ‘women at risk category’, as co-organizer of the 2008 African Studies conference at The Australian National University, we obtained funding from the Freilich Foundation initially for three women refugees to contribute to our conference. After a long search, we eventually identified three Sudanese, all with post school qualifications: one was a male social worker, one a female student. The dialogue between the third and her Australian counterpart is recorded in Arfish and Olliff (2008). My suspicion is that because mothers have too many domestic and work responsibilities, and insufficient English, it would be difficult for many of them to attend your Project’s consultation sessions.

Arfish and Olliff and discussants at our conference also referred to the problems of African children at school although perhaps other children with distinctive features such as ‘rangas’ (redheads) are prone to this type of treatment.

The published census data for 2006 do not give enough detail of small ancestry groups. For example, Afar, Namibian, and Tutsi, and certainly many others are thrown together in the category ‘Southern and East African’, not elsewhere classified. This group numbers 2,861 persons and could well include dozens of ancestries.

Page 9. Obviously the selected themes (training etc.,) are crucial.

** Some of the difficulties faced by non-English speaking migrants have been recognized for decades. For example, in 1976 the Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, in releasing the results of the 1973 Immigration Survey, emphasized the “vital importance of fluency in English” and that “there had been significant advances in the provision of English language courses”. (MacKellar 1976). It seems possible to me that the provision of English courses has deteriorated since the 1970s.

However some of the questions appear to be directed towards people with some education, containing terms such as “ ’securing meaningful employment’ ” and ‘underemployment’. I have been informed that even Africans with tertiary education find such terms hard to understand.

** I have asked Swahili speakers to translate ‘underemployment’ from English into Swahili. Unfortunately back translation from Swahili into English results in a range of responses, such as ‘restricted work’ which is not quite the same thing.

** I note that the Project has now that recognized that Africans prefer face-to-face situations to written submissions.

Page 19. Project Partners

My feeling is that however active the Community Reference Group is, some groups or subgroups will be missed out. Melbourne is reputed to have 60 Sudanese community groups. I recently attended a multicultural meeting were the speaker referred to “groups within groups” and “groups outside groups”.

Page 19, Background Papers

Given that so much is already in the public domain, this Project should provide an opportunity for innovative analysis and description. I assume that the Background Papers will focus specifically on African immigrants. Details of the African experience of the authors would be useful

As a demographer I would suggest the demographic analysis would include the following:

  • an evaluation of claims that the Africa-born were under-counted in the Census
  • a sub-national view, particularly of movements in and out of areas to which refugees have been directed by their sponsors.
  • indentifying all African ancestry groups, regardless of size, and then showing their home language and proficiency in English
  • I would also suggest analysis by single years of age and sex for the Africa-born by region of birth from 10 to 24 years to see if they are slipping behind in the educational system. I have co-authored an article on this theme comparing Black and Whites in South Africa (Amatoeng et al., 2004).

The literature review should be an important extension of the bibliography by Dimock (2008) and I will encourage AFSAAP to update this work regularly, either online or in our journal.

Page 19, Translation

“…you can make your submission in your first language’

This is an area in which I did some research many years ago (Lucas and Ware 1977). It is good for the Discussion Paper to recognise the diversity of languages, and I assume that the Final Report will enumerate the numbers choosing each of the ten languages.

However it must also be recognized that in some instances:

  • a lingua franca may be a better choice than the first language; for example in describing education and training, the ‘school language‘ might be best
  • because of the rich vocabulary of English, there is often no exact equivalent for many terms in African languages

Page 21, Final Report

I have asked our Editor of our journal to consider commentary on the report in a 2010 issue of The Australasian Review of African Studies, and I hope that our 2010 Conference Organizer will include a panel discussion on the report.

Page 26. Confidentiality

The Final Report will “include a list of submissions” and “publish selected submissions on its website.” This is excellent, although if my memory serves me well, some statutory authorities publish all non-confidential submissions.

Honours

My final point does not relate to the Discussion Paper. I am a regular reader of the New Year and Queen’s Birthday Honours. Some migrant communities regularly do welI, but I cannot remember seeing a person honoured for services to an African community in Australia.

References

Amoatoeng, A., I. Kalule-Sabiti, and D. Lucas, 2004. ‘South Africa’s human capital in the 1980s’, Applied Population and Policy, 1(2):123-131.

Arfish, Hala, and Louise Olliff, 2008. ‘ “It’s difficult to stay, and it’s hard to leave”: stories of refugee journeys in Australia,’ Australasian Review of African Studies, 25(2):104- 109.

Dimock, Liz, 2008. ‘Africans in Australia: a Bibliography’, Australasian Review of African Studies, 25(2):133-154.

Lucas, David, and Helen Ware, 1977. ‘Language differences and the family planning survey’, Studies in Family Planning, 8(9): 233-236.

Lucas, David, 2003.’Forty years of African demography at the ANU’, Australasian Review of African Studies, 25(2):96-98.

MacKellar, M.,1976. ‘Report on migrants experiencse’ News Release IEA 49/76

David Lucas. Revised 31 July, 2009.

1