A Greater Australia: Population, policies and governance - CEDA

Section 3.2manifested in the high achievement in education in second generation refugee cohortsin Australia. 30However, research carried out by Oliff 31 show multiple dimensions of disadvantage fortoday’s refugee children. Many refugee children may have experienced war and havehad to deal with the psychological burden of this past experience. In many cases theyhave received very little education if they got any at all prior to migration. This placesthem at a significant disadvantage when they enter the Australian education system.For example a refugee child who is 10 years old is placed in a year five classroombut their literacy ability could be that of a year one so they are unable to cope withthe year five curriculum. Even in cases where the children receive language supportfor two years, this may not be sufficient to make up for the learning that the child hasmissed. Young refugee children are often left behind because they do not have anyassistance in navigating the education system at home. The young refugee children arealso juggling settlement problems and because they are visibly different they may haveself esteem problems and are more likely than other children to be victims of bullyingand racism. These students then find it extremely difficult to cope and compete in theclassroom with other students and they become discouraged in the education system.As a result, some young refugee children have been involved in truancy and other antisocialbehaviour, perpetuating the cycle of disadvantage. Their parents, battling withpoverty due to lack of employment, cannot make the investments required for successin today’s education system.Racism and discriminationA major factor contributing to migrant disadvantage for some immigrants, especiallyrefugees, is their visible difference. While most of the immigrants to early post warAustralia were predominantly from the UK and Europe, there have been significantchanges in the composition of migrants to Australia, with a sharp increase in migrantscoming from Asia, Oceania and Africa since the 1990s. 32 This dramatic change in compositionof migrants has also brought some challenges in regards to the acceptance ofnew migrants by a very small minority of the Australian society. Studies on refugees inAustralia show that migrants from Africa and the Middle East who are visibly differentin race, religion and culture find it difficult to find employment even when they have therequisite educational and language attributes that would make them an asset to theAustralian employers. 33 In recent years immigrants of Muslim background and Africanimmigrants have been targeted in racial attacks. 34Discrimination is especially evident in the labour market. Table 6 shows the proportionof different migrant groups in lower skill, low status, low pay occupations in differentpost-school education categories. A striking pattern is evident with the proportion ofthe first generation refugee-humanitarian settlers with a bachelor degree in unskilledwork being quadruple that for the Australia-born. Similar differences are evident inother education categories. The difference is not as great when compared with thetotal overseas-born population but is still significant. Intergenerational mobility is apparentwith second generation refugee-humanitarian birthplace workers with post-schooleducation having lower proportions in low skill occupations than not only their firstgeneration but also the Australia-born population. It must however, be rememberedthat the second generation are overwhelmingly people of European or Indo Chinesebackground whose parents arrived in Australia before the mid 1990s. It remains to beseen if the children of more recent refugees from Africa and the Middle East will be assuccessful.A Greater Australia: Population, Policies and Governance143