Facilitating migrant and refugee settlement in Australia: a socio-economic model for regional development

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Australia’s population growth and distribution is mostly centred along urban and coastal areas. Within Queensland, 61.6% of residents live in ‘major cities’, 20.5% in ‘inner regional’ areas, 14.8% in ‘outer regional’ areas, 1.8% in ‘remote’ areas, and 1.3% live in ‘very remote’ parts of the State (Queensland Treasury 2019). Under the Australian government’s humanitarian program, a considerable number of refugees settle in Australia each year. Given this current trend of urban settlement, where and how to successfully settle refugees is an important issue for Australia. This research offers a conceptual framework for enabling sustainable refugee settlement away from urban areas, and into regional Australia. Currently however, due to various economic, social, political, and policy reasons, migrants (including refugees) predominantly settle in metropolitan cities of Australia which has become a highly contested issue in contemporary Australian media and political discourse. While there is evidence to suggest that there is an initially higher rate of unemployment among refugees, there is also a shortage of workers in Australian regional agribusiness. Presently, a large proportion of this shortage is met by temporary overseas workers, which is a paradox because of its inherent limitations and convenience. Despite serious interest among the various stakeholders, there is a knowledge gap as to how to facilitate successful refugee settlement and integration in regional areas. The current situation of COVID-19 provides an opportunity given that new migrant arrivals are essentially on hold leaving gaps for employers in regional locations. We posit that a regional employment policy has numerous inter-connected benefits: a) it can narrow the existent skill shortage gap, b) it contributes to the economic growth of regional Australia, c) it ensures that work experience of refugees is utilized in relevant sectors, d) as integrating members of a regional community, refugees build and contribute to social capital. The proposed concept is a paradigm shift from charitable view of refugee/migrant settlement to regional socio-economic development while ensuring a meaningful life for new arrivals. Dataset contains transcripts of interviews conducted with nine individuals. For more information concerning this dataset, please contact Ataus Samad [email protected] ORCID 0000-0002-8387-7419