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Indochinese Refugee
Families in Australia: A Multicultural Perspective
(Published
in Cultural Diversity and the Family (Ashfield: Ethnic
Affairs Commission of NSW, 1997), Volume 3, as part of
the International Year of the Family Project)
Contents
1
Introduction
2
Indochinese family concepts and values
3
Indochinese refugees in Australia
4
Impact of settlement on the family
5
Needs and challenges
6
Multiculturalism and Indochinese families
7
Conclusion
8
References
1. Introduction
First among the
nine priority issues proposed for discussion during the
International Year of the Family (IYF) in Australia is
the need "to recognise the diversity of families in
Australia in terms of their composition, life stage,
culture and race, and to celebrate their central
contribution to Australia's social and economic welfare
and cultural heritage" (IYF National Council, "Issues in
Brief", 1994: 4). This paper aims to address this
important issue in relation to refugee families in the
context of Australia as a multicultural society. It is
an attempt to reflect on the impact of cultural
diversity, both as a reality and a government policy, on
families of refugee background due to their traumatic
life experiences and generally more disadvantaged
backgrounds, using the Indochinese as the focus of
discussion.
After some
preliminary discussion on multiculturalism, the paper
will look at the resettlement of refugees and more
recently migrants from Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia and
Laos), their settlement patterns, labour force
participation, social and residential mobility,
traditional family concepts and values; and the effects
of migration to Australia on the family system, the
kinship and social networks, and on major areas of
needs. The general impact of multiculturalism on
Indochinese families will be briefly assessed before
discussion is made on their prospects for the future
after nearly 20 years of settlement in a predominantly
Western society. Although reference is made to
Indochinese in Australia in general, the situation in
New South Wales will also be discussed where relevant.
1.1.
Multiculturalism and Refugees
Multiculturalism is
now seen as the acknowledgment of the demographic
diversity and social reality that is today's Australia.
More importantly, it is a government policy to promote
social justice by taking into account the ethnic
composition of the nation's population and by responding
to their diverse needs and aspirations in order for them
to achieve equal access and participation in the life of
the community (AIMA Council, 1984: 13-14; and OMA, 1988:
vii). As Dunn (1993: 242) puts it, multiculturalism in
Australia "is a policy which demands social, economic
and political integration by way of celebrating cultural
diversity".
According to the
Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs (DIEA,
Current Issues, May 1993: 1)), immigration (including
the Refugee and Humanitarian Program) is closely related
to multiculturalism, as both provide a platform from
which the skills and resources within a culturally
diverse population can be developed and used as assets
for the forging of a fully Australian identity.
Multiculturalism will also foster economic, social,
political and cultural growth, providing links with the
rest of the world, especially in the Asia-Pacific
region. This recognition has also been given at State
level, especially in New South Wales where the State
Government introduced as a government policy the Charter
of Principles for a Culturally Diverse Society in 1993
and is in the process of implementing it through the NSW
Ethnic Affairs Commission. Multiculturalism is thus the
foundation on which the settlement, hopes and
aspirations of the Indochinese and other refugees or
migrants in Australia are built.
1.2 Indochinese
Migration to Australia
The settlement of
Indochinese refugees has been of major "historic
importance" to Australia which has not previously taken
such a large number of refugees and migrants from Asia (Viviani
1980: 2). Numbering more than 150,000 persons so far
since 1975, the Indochinese represent for the first time
the largest number of such settlers whose languages and
cultures are markedly different from previous waves of
refugees from Europe. Their presence has generated
intense and ongoing debates in political and academic
circles about the long-term effects of increasing ethnic
diversity on the social cohesion of the nation, about
their ability to integrate into a predominantly European
society, and their high level of unemployment -
averaging three times the national rate (Blainey, 1984,
1994a and 1994b; and Lewins, 1987: 261-273).
The Indochinese are
also significant in the history of refugee resettlement
in Australia, because they largely gave rise to
Australia's current Refugee, Humanitarian and Special
Assistance Program with its many policy issues, long
application forms and complicated processing. No such
bureaucratic procedures for refugees existed previously.
After the communist victory marking an end to the
Vietnam War in April 1975, thousands of refugees
scrambled out of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. While the
Lao and Cambodian refugees went by land to Thailand,
many of the Vietnamese escaped by boat to other
neighbouring countries such as Hong Kong, Malaysia and
Indonesia. Some of these "boat people" also took the
risk of coming directly to Australia (Viviani, 1984; and
Grant, 1979). Faced with this situation, the Australian
Government decided to put in place for the first time in
1976 an "articulated" refugee policy and administrative
"mechanisms" to implement it "as a matter of humanity
and in accord with international obligations... towards
the solution of world refugee problems" (MacKellar,
1976: 44).
Indochinese
refugees are selected for settlement here by Australian
immigration officials from Southeast Asian refugee camps
under the Refugee, Humanitarian and Special Assistance
Program (RHSAP), and from Vietnam and more recently
Cambodia in the case of family reunion under the Orderly
Departure Program (ODP). The latter was introduced in
1979 to allow Vietnamese residents in Australia to
sponsor relatives from Vietnam in order to stop them
from becoming "boat people" and come directly to
Australia. Starting with 691 Indochinese refugees (676
Vietnamese, 12 Lao and 3 Cambodians) being accepted in
1974/75 under the RHSAP, the number steadily increased
to 132,178 persons (10,5046 Vietnamese; 16,479
Cambodians and 9,488 Lao) by 1993/94. During this
period, more than 2,000 Vietnamese and Cambodians also
arrived in Australia directly by boat. Except for the
more recent "boat people", these earlier arrivals were
mostly allowed to remain.
The Indochinese in
Australia consist of a number of ethnic groups. Apart
from the main ethnic Vietnamese, Lao and Khmer, there
are also smaller minority groups such as the ethnic
Chinese from the three countries of Indochina, the Black
Thai and the Hmong from Laos, the Nung and the Khmer
Krom from Vietnam. The proportions of the minorities
today are unknown as ancestry was not included in the
1991 census. An analysis of Indochinese ancestry from
the 1986 census (the only such data available) shows the
ethnic Chinese to form 34% of those from Vietnam in
1986, 41 per cent of those from Cambodia and 18 per cent
of those from Laos (Viviani, Coughlan and Rowland, 1993:
21). The ancestry of the remaining Indochinese from the
1986 census were: 52% Khmer and 8% Khmer-Chinese for
those born in Cambodia; about 73% Lao, 5% Vietnamese and
2% Lao-Chinese for those born in Laos; and about 63%
Vietnamese and 3% Vietnamese-Chinese for those born in
Vietnam, (Coughlan, 1988: 24). The ethnic Vietnamese
from Indochina now form "the second largest Asian
community in Australia after the ethnic Chinese" (Coughlan
and Walsh, op.cit.: 1).
As the number of
eligible people in refugee camps dwindles, the refugee
component of the Indochinese intakes has decreased from
about 15,000 a year in the early 1980's to only 2404 in
1993/94. However, the ODP component has increased
significantly from 2000 in 1981 from Vietnam to 9,914
(9592 Vietnamese and 322 Cambodians) in 1991/92 and 6361
(5434 Vietnamese and 927 Cambodians) in 1993/94 (BIPR,
Migration Update, June 1994: 22 and 31). The number of
Indochinese accepted under the RHSAP is expected to
decrease markedly and to stop in the next few years with
the recent decisions by the UNHCR to close the refugee
camps in Southeast Asia and to repatriate the all
remaining Indochinese asylum seekers to their home
countries. Indochinese new arrivals in Australia will
eventually be mainly migrants under the Family Reunion
program, especially from Vietnam. This is already
starting to occur. Of the total Vietnamese arrivals of
7,732 in 1993-94, for example, only 29.7% were refugees
and the remainder were concessional family migrants.
When the RHSAP and
ODP components are combined with the number of second
generation Australian-born, it is estimated that there
are now at least 200,000 residents of Indochinese
background in Australia. The 1991 Australian Census of
Population and Housing showed a total of 149,614
Indochinese-born people in Australia with 122,325
(81.8%) being Vietnamese, 17,643 (11.8%) Cambodians, and
9,646 (6.4 %) Lao. The Australian-born Indochinese were
estimated in 1991 to have added another 30,000, with
25,151 being Vietnamese of whom 97.4% were under the age
of 15 (BIPR, 1991 Census Community Profiles: Vietnam
Born, 1994: 38). Of those born in Indochina, 77,654 were
males and 71,960 females, yielding a sex ratio of
108:100 (ABS, 1991 Census Birth Place State Comparisons,
pp. 1-12).
2.
INDOCHINESE FAMILY CONCEPTS AND VALUES
Despite some
similarity in functions, families can differ from one
culture to the next in terms of their definition,
membership and place in the wider society. In Australia,
for instance, couples of the same sex are also seen as
constituting families by the Australian Bureau of
Statistics (OMA, 1994: 29). The Chief Justice of the
Family Court of Australia, Justice Alastair Nicholson,
recently called for the law and society to recognise
"homosexual couples and their children" as families,
because he saw the family "less as a question of law or
a question of birth than a deep sense of bonding or
affiliation" (Sydney Morning Herald, 4/1/95, p. 1). The
concept of family is, thus, not confined to a married
couple and their offsprings.
2.1 Definitions of
the Family
With the
Indochinese, the family is part of the household and the
kinship network in which it is traditionally embedded.
These three structures form an integral system, but have
been severely disrupted in many cases by the demands and
effects of war and migration such as the difficulty of
keeping the family system intact during forced
displacement as well as the separation arising from the
stringent selection criteria imposed by the
refugee-receiving countries. For these reasons and the
fact that families can be formed and changed during
different phases of a person's life, the "family" in a
cross-cultural context is "an extremely elusive" concept
(Morrissey, Mitchell and Rutherford, 1991: xii). The
Australian IYF National Council, for instance, has
adopted a broader definition, seeing families as
"generations of care where kinship and love are the
central factors binding people together" (Edgar, BIPR
Bulletin, April 1994, p. 14).
For migrants and
refugees, there are no typical families, because they
may "consist of single men living with a relative or
friend, who later marry and have children, or bring
wives and children from their countries of birth, and
who after some settlement period sponsor dependent
parents, siblings, even aunts, uncles, cousins and
grandparents" (Storer, 1985: 13-14). As with other
communities, Indochinese concepts of the family are
based primarily on religious and cultural values, often
referring to what is ideal rather than what exists in
reality. For the Vietnamese who practise ancestor
worship, the family consists of the living (the father
as family head, his wife and young children, his
parents, older married sons and their wives) as well as
the dead within the male family line (Phung, 1979: 117).
In accordance with Confucianism, family traditions are
maintained through the male descendants. Daughters are
expected to marry and move out of the parental home to
fulfil their role of "other people's women": married
daughters are thus excluded from their paternal family
structure.
For the Lao and
Cambodians who are more influenced by Buddhism with its
ancient Indian mythology stressing individual merits,
the traditional family is a more inclusive concept. They
are furthermore still steeped in local traditions from
the old countries, and see the family as consisting of
all the living members of a household who can span
across two or three generations represented by a number
of married couples or nuclear families closely related
by blood ties, including married daughters and their
husbands (Whitaker et al., 1972: 48). This is true
especially in the rural village context where more than
80 per cent of the people in Laos and Cambodia are
found. The Vietnamese used to have a family system, like
that of the Lao and Cambodians today, where married
daughters remain in the parental household until the
birth of 2 or 3 children before they move out with their
husbands to establish their own household (Coughlan and
Walsh, op.cit.: 3).
In practice, only
the well-to-do can accommodate large households with at
least three generations living under one roof. With
increasing population, the lack of farming land in rural
villages had forced many young families to move to urban
areas to seek paid employment, especially in Vietnam. As
the war intensified from 1968 to 1973 in Indochina,
thousands of rural people were forcibly moved to safer
urban areas, further disrupting the traditional extended
family. Thousands of men, conscripted into military
service, were killed, and many others were imprisoned or
interned in re-education centres after the war in 1975,
leaving their wives to act as household heads or "family
generals" at home. These factors and the high costs of
living in cities meant that families of the nuclear type
and single-parent families became very common in urban
areas in Indochina, well before many refugees arrived in
Australia in 1975.
2.2 Family Roles
and Beliefs
In terms of family
values, the three Indochinese communities are influenced
by their traditional subsistence agricultural economy,
Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism and local spiritualism.
In addition, old sayings and proverbs are the means by
which people not only base their personal conduct, but
also resolve their personal problems: a respected and
persuasive elder or conflict mediator in the village
often use proverbs to argue for a solution to a family
conflict rather than the written law of the court in the
cities.
Human societies in
Indochina, even in modern times, are basically agrarian
with centuries of farming traditions. More than 80% of
the population live on the land, the village or hamlet
nestling among bamboo groves and palm trees surrounded
by irrigated rice fields, the houses haphazardly built
next to each other surrounded by chicken coops and
buffalo pen with the family garden next to them, and
sometimes a Buddhist temple on a prominent site in some
of the bigger villages. For the Indochinese refugees of
the older generation, this is the life they remember
"within the depths of their hearts", even after having
moved to the cities or "crossed the Pacific Ocean" for a
new way of life (Nguyen XT, 1990: 32). It forms their
fondest memories, the source of their nostalgia.
From this
subsistence agrarian base, the Indochinese learn that
mutual cooperation between members is crucial for the
survival of the household, whether it has only one
family or a number of families living together.
Household members, in addition to their gender-based
roles, are expect to observe this rule as soon as they
are physically able to carry out household tasks such as
cleaning, cooking, getting water and firewood, and
helping with agricultural activities. The family head
has the role of coordinating the members and their
day-to-day responsibilities in the family, including
religious worship in the family house or at the temple.
As a corporate and production unit, the family needs as
much labour contributions from all members as possible:
the more workers, the more productivity. For this
reason, the subsistence farming system also means that
large families are preferred over small ones "because
children had economic and social values" (Hassan et al.,
1985: 269).
The majority of
Cambodians, Lao and Vietnamese believe in Buddhism,
although the first two communities follow the more
strict Theravada tradition (Little Wheel) while the
Vietnamese, influenced by the Chinese, adopt the more
liberal Mahayana (Big Wheel) tradition. Essentially,
Buddhism sees life as a vast sea of suffering created by
ignorance, anger and greed. Happiness can only be
attained by overcoming these desires and by doing good
through the four precepts of: (1) not destroying life,
(2) not taking that which is not given, (3) not
indulging in unlawful sexual intercourse, and (4) not
uttering that which is untrue. Buddhists believe in
re-incarnation and the pre-determination of life (Karma
or fate): a person's present life is influenced by his
or her good and bad deeds in the previous life, and he
or she will continue the cycle of birth and death until
all earthy desires have been overcome and the person
attain spiritual liberation or Nirvana.
With Buddhism,
"father and mother should be considered as the East, for
they are the foremost. Wife and children should be
considered as the West, for they are subsequent to you"
(Subasinha, 1993: 20). The Buddha also taught about the
obligations between parents and children, stating that
the parents' obligations are to: (1) restrain their
children from committing sin, (2) establish them in
virtuous deeds, (3) educate them in the arts and
sciences, (4) have them provided with suitable husbands
and wives, and (5) give them their inheritance at the
proper time. On their part, the children have to: (1)
support and protect their parents and supply their
wants, (2) perform the duties devolving upon their
parents, (3) maintain the good name of the family, (4)
conduct themselves in such ways as to deserve the
inheritance of the parental property, and (5) give alms
in the name of their parents when they are dead, and
make them participate in the merits accruing from this
deed (Ibid.: 15)
It is of interest
to note that these prescriptions are very similar to
those given by Confucius whose teachings are closely
observed by the more traditional Chinese and Vietnamese.
Among other things, Confucianism institutes ancestor
worship where the spirits of the dead of different
generations in family are remembered (not revered)
through food and paper money offerings during important
occasions such as New Year, harvest, birth, marriage and
funeral. On each of these occasions the dead are invoked
to take part in the joy and celebrations of the family.
More importantly, the spirits of the dead are believed
to have the power to protect the living and to bring
them good fortune or to make them sick: the more they
are remembered, the more their positive influence.
Confucianism, in the family context, is really "a way to
maintain the extended family together" (Nguyen VH, 1993:
2). Thus, filial devotion, obedience and respect of the
dead are highly valued, for they are believed to bring
rewards to the living, as taught also by Buddha.
Obedience is expected between ruler-subject,
father-children, and husband-wife. For other family
members, this translates further as obedience of
grand-parents by parents and their children, father by
sons, mother by daughters, older siblings by younger
siblings.
Family happiness is
achieved when harmony exists in the family, and family
harmony is essential for harmony in society. This is
illustrated by a Vietnamese proverb which says
"contented husband, contented wife: together they can
drain the water of the South China Sea". In addition,
Confucianism prescribes that for a man, value should be
placed on (a) self-improvement so that (b) he can manage
his family successfully, before (c) he can rule the
country, and finally (d) pacify the world (On Lien,
1993: 88). However, the ideal woman should uphold the
"Four Values" of good house-keeping skills, gracious
appearance, pleasant speaking, and virtuous conduct. She
should also observe the "Three Submissions": to her
father when single; to her husband when married; and to
her son when widowed. As Pham (1990: 2) puts it, this
belief system means that "a woman is born to cook, sew,
keep the house clean, shopping, budgeting and raising
children... A man would degenerate if he washes dishes
or change nappies..."
In addition to
Buddhism and Confucianism, the Vietnamese and Chinese
also believe in Taoism, another Chinese philosophical
system which believes in duality of nature represented
by the concept of Yin (negative) and Yang (positive),
respect for and living in harmony with nature, patience,
simplicity, and moderation in behaviour. To a large
extent, Taoism also plays a big influence on people's
conduct. Although it does not touch directly on the
values and social interactions between members of a
household, it prescribes how they should relate to other
people and the physical world around them.
These religious and
cultural beliefs exert strong influences on Indochinese
attitudes to family life. Although they serve as ideal
life models for their adherents, they may also be
impediments to actions in a legalistic Western context.
For example, the Buddhist belief in Karma (fate) means
that Lao or Cambodian parents may explain the birth of a
disabled child as punishment for their past deeds and
may regard the child as an embarrassment to be hidden
away. The belief in women's submission to men in
Confucianism may mean that a Vietnamese wife prefers to
put up with domestic violence for as long as possible
before seeking help from relatives or outside
authorities. The Taoist belief in maintaining harmony
with nature by "doing nothing" may mean inaction in the
face of a grave injustice or disruptive conflicts in the
family. This would, of course, apply only to older
Indochinese who have assimilated these beliefs, but not
the younger people who have adopted more liberal Western
ideals.
These family roles
and value systems belong to the ethnic Vietnamese,
Chinese, Cambodians and Lao. There are, however, small
numbers of ethnic minorities from Indochina living in
Australia who have other family values in addition to
those they share with the majority groups. Minorities
with their own distinctive language and culture are the
Hmong and the Black Thai from Laos, and the Nung and
Khmer Krom from Vietnam. There are probably "montaignards"
(highlanders) among the Vietnamese but so far they have
not identified themselves by forming their own
association or informal social network. In general, many
members of the minorities from Indochina have
assimilated the family values and religious beliefs of
the majority society into their own cultures, unless
they lived isolated from the latter and could still
maintain their own autonomous traditions.
The Hmong, for
example, see the family in much the same way as the
Chinese, having migrated originally from Southern China.
However, they do have their own system of kinship and
social structure which see the lineage and the clan as
the basic unit of society rather than the family. When
two Hmong persons get married, they not only acquire
each other as husband and wife but also members of their
respective clan and lineage as close affinal relatives
(Lee, 1986: 26-27). A Hmong, thus, has equal obligations
to these relatives as to members of his own family. A
man's social position depends not only on how well he
manages his family but also how well he relates to his
patrilineal relatives, those of his wife and mother and,
to a lesser extent, the descendants of his paternal
female relatives.
Among the Black
Thai who believes in animism, women play an important
role in ritual performance, and are seen as the keepers
of family traditions. Like the Lao and Cambodians,
theirs is a matrilineal society where inheritance of the
family property is passed to the youngest daughter and
her husband. The Chinese, Vietnamese and Hmong have many
clearly demarcated clans and clan names after which all
the children of a married man are named and identified.
The Lao do not have such system, and children used to be
given only a first name until recently when surnames
were invented in the fashion of Western societies. The
use of only a given name is still prevalent among rural
people today. This means that children in this setting
are identified neither with the father's family group
nor the mother's, but only with the procreating couple
concerned.
2.3 Traditional
Family Functions
In the confines of
the traditional village , the family is the basic social
and economic unit, a micro-society onto itself. For the
Vietnamese, Chinese and the Hmong who all practise
ancestor worship, the family is not only a cluster of
people united by blood ties, but also a shelter and a
place of worship. The allocation of physical space
inside the house to various categories of household
members reflects the importance given to different
generations, gender and age groups in the family.
The sleeping
quarters of grand-parents are usually at the right-hand
side at the rear of the house, and those of the parents
and younger children on the left next to the
grand-parents (Nguyen XT, 1990: 32-33). Male and female
older children sleep in separate quarters at the front
part of the house next to the entrance and the family
fireplace so that daughters can get up early in the
morning to clean and cook, and sons can feed the family
horses and buffaloes without disturbing the rest of the
household. The family altar is located in the most
sacred part of the house, the back middle wall opposite
the middle door. Next to the middle door is the second
most important place in the house, the reception area
for guests.
The Vietnamese and
Chinese house, thus, acts as the physical means by which
the family fulfils its functions of: worshipping its
ancestors, teaching family moral code and proper
behaviour to its children, mediating and resolving
disputes, looking after its aged, caring for sick family
members, providing childcare and assistance to the
new-born, and finally performing rituals to the dead
before burial (Ibid.: 33). Thus, the family dwelling,
often with at least 3 generations under its roof,
becomes "the source of a person's identity, support,
guidance, well-being and welfare, the cradle where all
members learnt the value of Vietnamese culture, where
the historical, literacy and cultural heritage was
transmitted to the following generations" (Nguyen T,
1994: 72).
As in other
societies, Indochinese families serve functions which
ensure the maintenance of the social structure through
the kinship network at the broader level and, within the
family, the allocation of power and tasks based on age
and gender such child-rearing, physical and emotional
support. Members of the household are given their
specific roles and functions to fulfil, based on their
positions in the household such as grand-parents,
father, mother, children, aunt or uncle. Ideally, the
male head of the household is the decision-maker, and
other members carry out his directives, including his
wife.
Beyond this role
and task differentiation for its members, the family
serves as the focus of kin-based solidarity and social
integration for the individual (Levy, 1966: 377-403).
For Indochinese steeped in Confucianism, the family is
custodian and transmitter of family and social
traditions, culture and moral values though ancestor
worship and the need to maintain the male family line
honour rather than any individual pride. Thus, a
Vietnamese or Chinese would more readily identify
exclusively with a family and kinship group than with an
organisation of his own ethnicity. The family's
reputation and welfare are more important than the
personal desires of its individual members (Vu, 1976:
18-19).
Apart from
providing child-rearing, physical and emotional support
for its members, the family is also a model for wider
social roles and stratification in Indochinese
societies. This is evident by the fact that terms of
address prescribing social obligations, status and
positions are based on those used in the family. A
person is not addressed merely by his or her name but
always by the position within the family, such as Uncle
Ho or Younger Brother Chu. Relationships are thus
expressed linguistically with appropriate terms used in
conjunction with a person's given name.
By extension, this
form of address is also used with strangers based on the
other person's age and gender. A stranger is called
uncle, older brother or nephew, depending on which age
group he looks like belonging to. A learned person or
someone in high office is always accorded a higher
status by being addressed as "big brother" even though
his age may be lower than oneself. Thus, many Khmer
Rouge members called Pol Pot "Big Brother Pol Pot".
Where one wishes the relationship to be closer,
first-degree kinship terms such as "father" or "mother"
may be used with an unrelated person. Thus, terms used
in the family pervade other spheres of social
relationships in Indochinese communities, not only to
denote the importance of family ties and their extension
to other people to make one's relationship with the
outsider closer, but also to see all members of that
society as an inclusive single family nation.
3. INDOCHINESE
REFUGEES IN AUSTRALIA
Indochinese tend to
settle more in certain States and local government areas
of Australia than in others. In Sydney, for instance,
the more educated and wealthier recent migrants from
Hong Kong, Taiwan, India, Korea and Malaysia tend to
settle in more expensive or longer established areas in
the Hills and Northern districts, while most of the
Indochinese live in less exclusive Inner West and South
western suburbs whose residents tend to concentrate in
low-skilled "working class" occupations.
3.1 Settlement and
Residential Mobility
Based on 1986
census figures, Coughlan (1992:87-89) stated that 76% of
103,707 Indochinese born residents in Australia lived in
New South Wales and Victoria, with almost 17%
concentrating in the Fairfield/Liverpool area of Sydney.
The situation is not very different today. The 1991
Australian census reveals that in terms of distribution
in different States, New South Wales and Victoria still
have by far the largest number of Indochinese with
61,624 persons (41.8%) and 53,314 (35.6%) respectively,
a combined total of 114,948 persons or 77.4% of the
Indochinese population in Australia. This was followed
by 11,472 (7.6%) in South Australia; 9,603 (6.4%) in
Queensland; 8,931 (5.9%) in Western Australia; 2,935
(1.9%) in the ACT; 500 (0.3%) in the Northern Territory;
and 385 (0.25%) in Tasmania (ABS, 1991 Birth Place
Comparisons, op.cit.).
Within New South
Wales, the 1991 census again shows that the Indochinese
are found mostly in the Fairfield Local Government Area
(28,617 persons or 46.4% of Indochinese in the State),
followed by Bankstown (6,746 or 10.9%), Canterbury
(4,891 or 7.9%), Marrickville (3,955 or 6.4%), Auburn
(3,450 or 5.6%), Liverpool (2,378 or 3.8%) and
Campbelltown (1,689 or 2.7%). These areas have been
traditionally preferred by Indochinese and other
recently arrived refugee groups, because of their
proximity to the former migrant hostels where they used
to be housed after arriving in Australia. As a result of
these settlement concentrations, the central business
districts of some of these suburbs have developed to
cater for the consumer needs of the Indochinese and
other Asian groups. Many specialty shops have been set
up, attracting further migration to these districts.
This is true of Cabramatta and Bankstown in Sydney, and
Springvale in Melbourne.
According to
Viviani, Coughlan and Rowland (op.cit.: 22-29),
Indochinese residential concentration is influenced by
three major factors: the time of arrival in Australia,
migration status and length of residence. Time of
arrival can influence how quickly refugees can get into
the labour market: during a period of economic boom, it
will be easier to obtain employment in contrast to a
period of economic recession. Migration status as
refugees may qualify entrants for more government
support services, but restrict them from accessing a
wider range of jobs due to their low level of
occupational and English language skills. On the other
hand, the longer Indochinese refugees have been living
and working in Australia, the more likely they are to be
able to save money to buy houses and move to other
areas.
Being refugees
without adequate means, most Indochinese families depend
largely on public transport to commute to work and
prefer to settle near railway lines, bus routes and
readily available services. Indochinese who could find
employment have been able to move from rented
accommodation into private houses, in many cases five
years after arrival in Australia. These moves, however,
tend to be in suburbs adjacent to their original area of
settlement. In Brisbane, for example, the ethnic Chinese
from Vietnam appear to move out and own their homes
faster or in "new suburbs" than the ethnic Vietnamese
who tend to buy in "old" areas where they initially
settled (Viviani, Coughlan and Rowland, op.cit.: 74).
Dunn (op.cit: 237-38), in his study of Vietnamese
concentration in Cabramatta, finds that "Vietnamese
families are keen to buy housing" but the new home
purchases tend to be in new housing estates within the
Fairfield Local Government Area where Cabramatta is
located.
Apart from housing
being more affordable in these areas than elsewhere in
Sydney, proximity to Cabramatta seems to be preferred
because of the many services available there rather than
the desire to isolate from the mainstream society. It is
said of the Cambodians, for example, that their
concentration in the Fairfield, Liverpool and
Campbelltown Local Government Areas has been influenced
by: (1) the location of English language classes and
other settlement services such as CES and DSS in the
South western Sydney metropolitan region; (2) the
allocation of public housing by the Department of
Housing and housing affordability in these areas; (3)
employment opportunities; and (4) the existence of the
extended family network and community facilities such as
their own temples and community facilities giving them a
sense of common identity with other local Cambodians
(Henderson, 1993: 38).
These ethnic
concentrations do not mean that some Indochinese
refugees will not attempt inter-state migration. Almost
all Cambodian and Lao refugees originally settled in
Tasmania have moved to mainland States in search of
employment. Of the 1,200 Hmong from Laos in Australia, a
quarter have migrated from Sydney, Melbourne and Hobart
to Innisfail and Cairns in Queensland during the past
five years. The trend is continuing with another six
families leaving Hobart for Toowoomba in December 1994
to do market gardening there. These are the more
enterprising who have accumulated sufficient capital
after many years in the southern States.
In addition to
factors such as length of residence, occupational
skills, availability of employment and the accumulation
of capital for home purchases, family reunion has also
played a major role in the Indochinese distribution in
Australia. As more Indochinese refugees are settled
here, family reunion cases also increase, but mainly
from Vietnam and Cambodia. Of the new arrivals in
1992-93, for example, 5,651 were family migration
entrants from Vietnam compared to 1,902 refugees. For
Cambodians, the intake for the same year was 343
migration cases and only 5 refugees. These family
reunion arrivals, sponsored under assurance of support
by already established refugee relatives in Australia,
tend to find accommodation close to their sponsors or in
the familiar suburbs occupied earlier by the latter such
as Cabramatta and Bankstown in Sydney, or Fitzroy in
Melbourne. The result is that although many Indochinese
have moved elsewhere, these suburbs continue to
experience concentration with the more recent arrivals,
making them appear to change little in their demographic
composition.
3.1.1 Consequences
of Current Settlement Patterns
Critics of the
current government non-discriminatory immigration policy
have argued that the increased ethnic diversity of the
Australian population would eventually lead to race
riots and break-down in social cohesion. Britain and the
United States are often cited as examples where the
"melting-pot" has boiled over into racial wars in the
streets such as the Los Angeles riot in 1992. Beyond the
concerns over numbers, critics also fear that large
concentrations of a particular ethnic group in one area
will create "ethnic ghettoes" and prevent the group's
integration into the Australian community. Such ghettoes
will also become breeding ground for gang crimes and
other undesirable behaviour.
"Potential
ghettoes" are residential areas or housing estates where
there are large numbers of disadvantaged residents
living in a confined space with problems such as high
unemployment, delinquency, drug addiction and the
reputation as neighbourhoods with many needs. Based on
this concept and new figures from the 1991 Australian
census, Birrell (1993: 26-31) argues that Cabramatta
with its 19,407 Vietnamese residents qualifies as an
ethnic ghetto, because it has the largest number of
Vietnamese in Australia and conveys a negative image of
crimes and high unemployment in the minds of outsiders.
This is despite the fact that the Vietnamese there live
dispersed among houses and units in many streets in the
area. They do not live insulated from the general
community, and have not dominated or taken over whole
blocks of living space for their exclusive control
(shops, schools and other amenities). The Vietnamese
made up only 11% of the total population of Fairfield
municipality of 175,145 in 1991, and it is difficult to
say that they have formed a ghetto among such a large
mix of culturally diverse people.
To test the
existence of ethnic ghettoes in Australia, Jupp,
McRobbie and York (1990) analysed data on local
government population distribution from the 1986 census,
supplemented with field work in Sydney, Brisbane,
Melbourne and Wollongong. They concluded that there were
"almost NO GHETTOES in metropolitan Australia" but
certain areas could become "potential ghettoes" (Vol. 1:
72-73). In their view, suburban commercial centres
dominated by Chinese and Vietnamese businesses such as
Cabramatta in Sydney or Footscray in Melbourne provide
"focal points" which make the Asian presence more
visible, but they are not ghettoes or places which
produce poverty and crimes. Such "focal points" of
shopping activities should not be discouraged as they
are "economically and financially very beneficial" to
the local community (Ibid.: 76). Dunn (op.cit.: 242-43)
sees Cabramatta as a manifestation of the success of
multiculturalism in Australia, a cultural expression
with many positive aspects. To many Indochinese and
Asian residents, it provides socio-economic adjustment
to a new society as well as making a "spatial
contribution" to cultural diversity.
3.2 Socio-economic
Mobility
In general,
Indochinese refugees came here without financial assets,
and usually depend initially on relatives, government
services and welfare agencies within their own
communities or on mainstream charity organisations such
as the Smith Family or the St. Vincent de Paul Society
for general assistance with orientation, housing,
clothing and used furniture after moving out from
government migrant hostels. Once employed, they soon
establish themselves in the community and become
self-sufficient within 3 to 5 years of arrival.
Government bodies and community organisations may
continue to serve many Indochinese refugees, but these
service users consist mainly of recently arrived people
and the long-term unemployed who lack proficiency in the
English language.
3.2.1 Educational
Attainment
In the 18 years
since their settlement here, many Vietnamese have
graduated from universities and are now establishing
themselves as professionals in medicine, dentistry and
engineering. Among first generation Vietnamese aged 15
and over, 8% did not attend any school at all, 13% left
school before the age of 16, 79.7% had no qualifications
but 57.7% continued their education after the age of 16
compared to 50.4% among the total national population.
While only 3.1% of the Vietnamese had basic vocational
training, 6.8% held post-secondary qualifications (7.6%
for men and 5.8% for women), compared to 13.9% among the
Australian-born population (BIPR, Vietnam-born Community
Profile, 1994, p. 18). The level of education is much
lower for the Lao and Cambodian: 20% of the Lao in NSW
did not go to school or had left school at an early age
- the figure for Lao-born females being even higher at
60%. Overall, 80% of the Lao had no formal
qualifications (Yamine, 1994: 18).
Apart from
disruption by long years of war and living in refugee
camps, the lack of formal qualifications is due to the
fact that Indochina did not have many educational
facilities, especially in rural areas where many
refugees now in Australia came from. At best, there
might be a junior primary school in some of the larger
villages, but high schools and tertiary institutions are
found mainly in the bigger cities. For this reason, only
a few parents who are well-off can send their children
to the cities to pursue further education or vocational
training, despite the literacy rate being reportedly 25%
for Cambodia, 16.1% for Laos (Economist, 1990: 210) and
15% for Vietnam (Fraser, 1992: 78). On the whole, boys
have more opportunity for further education than girls,
due to the belief that men are the providers and women
the home-makers. Despite this traditional attitude,
Indochinese women have found it necessary to join the
labour force in Australia in order to help supplement
the family incomes, usually in low-paid unskilled jobs
as a result of having had less education than men.
3.2.2 Labour Force
Participation
Being refugees with
low levels of English and work skills, the Indochinese
have experienced a high unemployment rate, generally
more than three times the national average. According to
the 1991 census, the unemployment rate was 39.8% for
Vietnamese-born people over the age of 15 (44.9% among
females and 36.1% among males), 36% for Cambodian-born
and 33% for Lao-born, compared to 11.6% among the total
Australian population (BIPR, Vietnam-born Community
Profile, op.cit.: 20; and Yamine, op.cit.: 19). The
unemployment rate for all Vietnamese females was 44.9%
compared to 36.1% for males, probably because fewer
women have traditionally been given less opportunity for
formal education than men. Furthermore, the Vietnamese
show a "twin-peaks" age-related unemployment pattern:
highest among those aged 15-24 with 45-65% being
unemployed, and those aged 40-65 with an unemployment
rate of 40-65% (Viviani, Coughlan and Rowland, op.cit.:
50-51). This "twin-peaks" phenomenon would equally apply
to the unemployed in the Lao and Cambodian communities.
Indochinese who are
employed are found mostly in low-skilled manufacturing
jobs. The 1991 census shows that 89% of the Lao-born in
New South Wales were wage and salary earners in low
skilled or unskilled jobs, while fewer Vietnamese were
in this category with 60.7%. For the Cambodians, this
category of occupation is represented by more than 90%
of those in the work force. Only 4% of Vietnamese in NSW
were managers and administrators with another 11.7%
being professionals and para-professionals, compared to
3.7% and 7.9% for the Lao. Vietnamese tradespersons were
represented at 14.2% in 1991 with 18.1% being males and
7.9 females. No statistics are available on the Lao or
Cambodians who are self-employed or employers, as very
few are found in these categories.
These figures
indicate that the Indochinese are much like other Asian
groups in their employment patters, a few highly
educated in middle-class occupations and a large group
with less education in working-class occupations (Jayasuriya
and Sang, 1990: 12). Apart from lack of proficiency in
English and work skills, the high rate of unemployment
can be partly attributed to the current economic
recession in Australia and to fundamental structural
changes in the Australian economy, resulting in severe
cuts in the numbers of unskilled and semi-skilled jobs
in the manufacturing sector in the late 1980's. In
response to this process, many women have taken up
self-employment through setting up small business and
shops, or doing part-time work. Some have become
full-time "outworkers" in such industries as textiles,
footwear, electronics, food and grocery packaging,
sometimes assisted by their husbands and children.
Indochinese women have, thus, joined in this general
trend, making the home and the family garage into
"outwork" premises. In a survey of 224 women outworkers
in NSW in 1987, it was found that 38% were doing paid
work in the clothing industry, involving mainly migrant
and Indochinese women (NSW Women's Directorate/EAC,
1987: 12).
3.2.3 Mobility
Blockage and Class Formation
Given the current
economic situation in Australia and the educational
backgrounds of Indochinese refugees discussed above,
what can be said about their social mobility since their
first arrival here in 1975? Unfortunately, there have
been very few studies on this issue relating to the Lao
and Cambodian communities, as most research so far has
focussed on the Vietnamese and other larger groups
(Wooden, 1991; and Campbell, Fincher and Webber, 1991).
These studies generally support the argument that there
has not yet been substantial social mobility in the
Australian Vietnamese community.
A small number of
Vietnamese doctors and professionals have had their
qualifications recognised through further re-training in
Australia. The Vietnamese "had achieved Australians'
levels of university attendance by 1986... and are
likely to have exceeded these since then" (Viviani,
Coughlan and Rowland, op. cit.: 90). There have been
many hundred Vietnamese university graduates in various
fields compared to the half dozen Lao and Cambodian
young people with tertiary education . This small number
is largely because the latter two communities are so
much smaller than the Vietnamese and are also more
educationally disadvantaged. Those in the medical
profession are the most visible with private practices
in many areas dominated by Indochinese, but the majority
of computer and science graduates have found it
difficult to get work. The number of Vietnamese in
professional and white-collar positions are still
relatively small and thus have not made significant
impact on Vietnamese social mobility.
Coughlan (1994:
16-17) found that among 450 Vietnamese households he
surveyed in Melbourne during 1990-91, 52.4 % experienced
"no occupational mobility", 25.7% upward mobility and
21.8% downward mobility. The exception seems to be the
ethnic Chinese males, of whom 56.6% have changed
occupations since their arrival. Most of the Vietnamese
employed either continued with their first unskilled
jobs or remained in the same line of manufacturing work,
and those with downward mobility had become unemployed
by choice or through retrenchment. Much the same
mobility pattern is found with a survey of 393
Vietnamese households in Brisbane which concluded that
"clear signs of social mobility" were identified "for a
minority" but there are "several groups... who have done
poorly in relative terms" such as the young unemployed,
single parents, and families dependent on long-term
welfare support (Viviani, Coughlan and Rowland, op.cit.:
89). Tran and Holton (1991: 174-75), on the other hand,
argue that based on a sample survey of 403 adult
Vietnamese in Sydney and 225 in Adelaide there has been
"a significant degree of upward mobility between first
job and current job in Australia", particularly for
those with previous work experience in Vietnam who are
more likely to be employed in administrative and
professional positions. However, they find that women
tend to do less well "in virtually every aspect of
social mobility".
Ip (1993: 57-71) in
his study of Asian small business in Sydney and Brisbane
found that many of the owners were "reluctant
entrepreneurs" who were unable to obtain employment in
their professional fields after migrating to Australia,
either because of non-recognition of their
qualifications or unemployment. Faced with "blocked
mobility" and a drop in socio-economic status, they
decided on a new direction by becoming self-employed
through small business. Despite the long hours and hard
work required, many find much satisfaction in "being
their own boss". Many Indochinese former professionals
and public servants who venture into small business, are
also prompted by the same barriers to mobility. Arriving
as refugees with little capital, most spent at least
their initial years in Australia working in factories to
save enough to get into business in order to remain
employed and prepare their children for better prospects
in white-collar employment.
In a study of 165
ethnic small business owners (including 36 Indochinese)
in Marrickville, Leichhardt and Western Sydney, Castles
(1992: 185) finds that one fifth of the sample had
experienced unemployment through retrenchment in the
manufacturing industries. He argues that it "is clearly
not the case" where ethnic people get into business
because of "a cultural predisposition", but "downward
social mobility" and the lack of suitable employment
which motivate the setting up of a small business
(Ibid.: 188-189). The number of Indochinese small
business operators is, however, small compared the rest
of the Indochinese population. The 1986 census, for
instance, only recorded 4.3 % of Vietnamese males and
5.6% females as being self-employed, and 2.8% and 3.3%
respectively as being employer out of a total of 83,048
Vietnamese in Australia (Ibid.: 183). No figures were
available on the self-employed from the 1991 census, but
Vietnamese managers and administrators were recorded as
being 4.7% for males and 3.8% for females, a slight
increase from the 1986 figures. Although this small
number of Vietnamese self-employed and employers cannot
be said to represent marked social mobility, they
provide casual employment opportunities for women and
young people who may not otherwise find employment in
the mainstream labour market.
An analysis of the
incomes and labour force participation rates of
Indochinese from the 1976, 1981 and 1986 censuses leads
Coughlan (1991: 53-54) to the conclusion that they have
now emerged as "four distinctive economic classes".
Included in the first, the upper class, is a small
number of educated professionals and business people
with high incomes and successful careers. The second
larger group, the middle class, consists of people with
long-term employment and stable average incomes, either
in blue-collar or office work positions. The third
group, the marginal class, are those living "marginally
above the poverty line" with unstable employment due to
their lack of skills and low level of English
proficiency, easily retrenched during by any down-turns
in the Australian economy. The fourth class of
Indochinese is the "poverty class" whose members live
under the poverty level, usually subsisting on long-term
social security support with little prospects of
escaping from their present predicament, because of age
or characteristics similar to those in the marginal
class. In Coughlan's view, the first group is expected
to grow in size as more young Indochinese become
educated and enter the professions while the second
group will decrease with the difficulty of obtaining
long-term stable jobs in a fast-changing Australian
economy. The third and fourth groups will also increase
with the addition of unemployed young people and an
ageing Indochinese first generation. This "mobility
blockage" over time, at least for the first generation,
seems to be supported by research on Indochinese
refugees in resettlement countries such as the United
States, Britain, France, the Netherlands, Belgium,
Germany and Switzerland. Reviewing this international
literature, Gold and Kibria (1993: 34) conclude that
"the optimistic media presentation of the Vietnamese
economic situation" is not supported by these studies,
and "many Vietnamese appear to be mired in poverty and
situated in sectors of the economy that offer little
chance for movement into the mainstream".
In summary, it can
be said that despite media reports on individual success
stories, the overall employment and social mobility of
Indochinese refugees in Australia are still fraught with
barriers. Recent DSS figures reveal that 55.3% of
Vietnamese arriving in Australia in 1989-90 and 70.0% of
those in 1990-91 were receiving unemployment benefits in
May 1994, despite having been here for 3 to 4 years.
This has occurred largely because they have to compete
for work with other recently retrenched workers and with
"large numbers of other new arrivals" (Healey, 1994:
50). Although migrants of non-English speaking
background represented only 14% of the work force in May
1994, they made up 27% of the long-term unemployed in
Australia. This trend could have in turn lead to the
development of ethnic-based under-classes as suggested
above.
4. IMPACT OF
SETTLEMENT ON THE FAMILY
In a recent feature
article in Time Magazine (8 April 1991, p. 23) on the
impact of Indochinese settlement in Australia, it was
stated that:
"The average
Indochinese refugee family still lives in an overcrowded
flat or a small house, the husband labouring in,
perhaps, a car or soft drink factory; the wife a lowly
paid piece worker in the garment industry; the parents
unemployable because of their age and lack of English;
the children, who may have missed years of schooling,
struggling to master the language while at the same time
attempting to keep up in a class in which most other
pupils are native speakers. In such struggling families,
tension can run high. Children can become near-suicidal
over their inability to fulfil their parents'
expectations. Some find their way into street gangs that
hang around the pinball parlours of predominantly
Indochinese suburbs".
How accurate is
this media stereotype of Indochinese families and their
children? Coughlan and Walsh (op.cit.: 1), writing about
Vietnamese families in Australia, also observes that the
substantial differences in the culture, economy,
environment, politics and social institutions between
Vietnam and Australia mean that "the Vietnamese family
institution in Australia has been subjected to enormous
forces which have caused metamorphosis in this
institution... and relations within the family,
especially power relations, are continuously being
reaffirmed and renegotiated. The remoulding... has not
been painless, and has frequently been a cause of
anguish for family members".
In Indochina, the
family was the basis of society in which parents and
elders are responsible for decision-making for the
family in economic production and allocations, child
rearing, the provision of emotional and material
security, and the general welfare of family members. The
family acts as a channel for the transmission of
cultural values and religious beliefs from one
generation to the next. A person's identity and position
in society are determined by his or her family's
reputation, and socio-economic status. In Australia,
these functions do not always operate to the same
extent. Despite the rhetoric, the family here is taken
less into account by the society at large which places
the economic production function in the hands of one or
two able-bodied members of the family, relegates child
care to professionals, and regulates family power
relations through myriads of legislations. The functions
of cultural transmission and teaching of social values
are vaguely left to formal institutions like the school,
the media or the Church. Parents, weighed down by the
law, often do not know where to turn for help.
This transition
from a society where the family has all-encompassing
functions across the generations and in all areas of
basic human needs to one where family members only come
together at nights and weekends but rarely communicate
because of differences in interests and immersion in
television-watching or electronic games, has greatly
affected the Indochinese refugee families, their
division of labour, the roles of individual members and
their traditional family values. This will now be looked
at in the following sections, beginning with Australia's
immigration policy which prescribes what kind of
families and which family members can be accepted for
resettlement.
4.1 Impact of
Asylum and Settlement Policy
Like all refugees
who escaped in stressful circumstances, a large number
of families experienced separation between various
members during escapes, with the male family heads or
able bodied young people leaving first to be followed a
few months or years later by the rest of the family
members. Most had to make a number of unsuccessful
attempts before finally being able to get away (Ly,
1976: 5-7; and Tran, 1988: 56-65). In many cases,
husbands had been separated from their wives and
children by military service and could not escape with
them. For others, family members might have been killed
through the mass extermination campaign of the Pol Pot
regime (Osborne, 1980: 7-20; and Henderson, op.cit.:
77-85). Still others might have starved to death or
endured untold hardships during long months of hiding
out from the enemy, waiting for a chance to escape to a
safe neighbouring country (Xiong and Donnelly, 1986:
201-244).
Many Vietnamese
drowned while escaping in leaky boats on the high seas:
women and young girls on these risky sea journeys were
also raped by pirates while the men were thrown
overboard (Carrington, 1992: 85-94). Long periods of
camp life also imposed their toll on families (Poussard,
1981: 25-51) as Indochinese women in Thai refugee camps
became prey to local Thai civilians or camp guards, and
some were abandoned by their husbands because of the
stigma attached to rape victims. A few Vietnamese
families sent their young sons ahead in the hope of
being able to join them at a later stage but many could
not do so, thereby leaving the young boys in the care of
relatives or strangers in refugee camps. These boys
usually ended up being "unaccompanied minors" or wards
of State once accepted for resettlement in another
country. Without support from their natural families,
some of these young people have become involved in petty
criminal activities within the Indochinese community.
Despite this, the
majority of Indochinese families eventually come to live
together, at least as nuclear families in Australia
through the Family Reunion Migration Program. A few have
managed to bring an elderly grand-parent with them, but
members of the extended family network have often been
left behind or had to accept resettlement elsewhere.
Today, many Indochinese have joined the global immigrant
community and, thus, have close relatives scattered in
Europe, America or other parts of the world.
Apart from problems
due to war and the difficulty of escaping as complete
families, the selection criteria used by resettlement
countries also contributed to this scattering of
Indochinese refugees across the globe, or the
fragmentation of the extended network. After the first
few years of intakes, refugee fatigue and the huge
demand for resettlement places forced many governments
to introduce more stringent procedures to screen genuine
refugees, and to apply more selective criteria on the
Indochinese and other subsequent refugee groups. Because
of the family reunion requirements upon which
Indochinese and other refugee intakes to Australia have
been based, many married children or independent
siblings of sponsors already in Australia have found
themselves excluded as ineligible. Families with less
education or with disabled children or elderly members
have little opportunity of being accepted when
preference is given to younger able-bodied families with
at least one adult member possessing some degree of
English language or job skills.
These selection
criteria and the traumatic uprooting of the refugees
have many consequences for Indochinese families and
their settlement outcomes. Once in Australia, for
instance, many Indochinese refugees had to re-examine
their concept of the family, especially the
three-generation extended household they used to have in
Vietnam. They now only have a nuclear family, or at best
an incomplete extended family with some members left
behind or dispersed elsewhere. This affects their
settlement and family obligations in two ways: (1) the
need to find employment in order to have money to fulfil
their filial duties towards parents and other relatives
left behind in Indochina or the refugee camps in
Southeast Asia; and (2) strong guilt feeling for those
with extended family members still in the old country
and with no prospects of returning for a visit.
This financial and
psychological "double burden" becomes a source of
tension within the family, preventing members from
enjoying the peace and freedom they find in Australia,
when both the husband and wife have to work to fulfil
these obligations. The tension is exacerbated when the
husband tends to send more of the family income to help
his parents overseas than those of his wife because of a
strong sense of filial duty, This also tends to create
resentment in the wife when some of this money is earned
by her. Family separation, thus, continues to be the
main concern of those refugees who have no prospects of
reunion with other members now living in other parts of
the world (NSW Ethnic Affairs Commission, 1979: 17).
Another effect of
government refugee resettlement policy and the trauma of
escape is on the family structure of the Indochinese
refugees. There is little research on Indochinese family
structures prior to 1975 so that it is not possible to
know what proportion of the population in rural and
urban areas have extended or nuclear families in
Indochina. Coughlan and Walsh (op.cit.: 7) cite a study
by Hendry in the late 1950s which found that out of 157
people surveyed in various work places in Saigon in
South Vietnam, 43.9% were living with nuclear families,
43.9% with extended families, 5.7% with friends and
relatives, and 6.4% were boarders. This at least
indicates that in urban South Vietnam, nearly half the
people in the sample still lived in extended families,
and this proportion could be expected to be much higher
in rural areas.
In Australia, the
1991 census figures show that Indochinese households
with more than one family only comprise: 5.9% for the
Cambodians, 5.5.% for the Lao and 4.9% for the
Vietnamese. In other words, Indochinese families in
Australia are mostly of the nuclear type, which accounts
for 88.8% of the Cambodian households, 87.4% of the Lao
and 86.0% of the Vietnamese (BIPR, Immigrant Families,
1994: 7 and 9). When compared with 74.7% for the
Australian average and with 73.5% for the
Australia-born, the Indochinese clearly have
significantly more nuclear families. This is a pattern
which is contrary to their traditions or to the
sensational stories in the media about large Vietnamese
refugees overcrowding Australian suburban apartments.
However, this pattern of Indochinese family structure is
not unexpected, given the traumatic circumstances under
which they escaped and were selected for resettlement in
Australia.
Of those living in
vertically extended households (with parents and married
children), 67.2% were Cambodians, 71.1% Lao and 63.7%
Vietnamese. For horizontally extended households, 18.9%
consist of Cambodians, 21.1% Lao and 21.5% Vietnamese.
More than 20% of all Indochinese households have 6 or
more people in them in 1991, and 17% of the Cambodian
and Vietnamese families are one-parent families (Ibid.:
3), the latter reflecting the problem of family
separation or the death of the family head in the war as
mentioned previously.
It is clear that
the Indochinese in Australia have lost their extended
family network, because of the effects of displacement,
government refugee selection criteria, and economic
imperatives. This loss has been further reinforced by
the nature of accommodation in Australia where almost
all dwellings are built with 3 bedrooms on the
assumption that they will be occupied by typical nuclear
families consisting of a couple and their two children.
This makes it difficult for new arrivals to establish
preferred traditional extended households. Moreover, it
is not always possible to find housing close to each
other, and families have to be scattered in various
streets or suburbs, thus further weakening the extended
family network.
4.2 Influences of
Work Patterns and the Mainstream Society
Refugee parents
working shift work or shop-owner parents often put in
from 10 to 15 hours a day away from their families,
leaving little time to provide adequate supervision or
support to their children. In many cases, this has
affected the children's school performance when parents
cannot participate in their learning activities. This
lack of appropriate support in the home is often
compounded by academic and social problems young
Indochinese encounter at schools such as racism,
harassment, lack of motivation from repeated failures,
boredom and lack of cross-cultural counselling services
for both parents and students.
Furthermore, many
parents may not have the English skills or the education
background to assist their children with the latter's
studies. These parents are sometimes keen to learn how
to support their children, but do not know where or how
to obtain help. Often, such help is not available within
the system, as most youth workers focus on young people,
and few actually work with the parents to provide the
support they need. Parents are sometimes worried about
the fact that the moral guidance and support for the
older of their children can be taken over by the state
through government-funded youth workers, often without
their awareness of what transpire between these young
people and the workers, especially when many youth
workers have ear rings and long hair - the very kind of
attributes parents do not want in their youngsters.
There are other
less tangible, but equally powerful factors which have
significantly affected many aspects of the Indochinese
families. They include the mainstream school education
system, the media (especially television), the law, and
the welfare system.
The school system
is seen to teach only academic subjects without any
attempt to inculcate any moral values in children, and
in some cases, may even be perceived to be against
parents by reporting harsh disciplinary actions to the
police. The media constantly project consumer messages
which encourage children to demand the most expensive
personal items which the parents could not even afford
for themselves such as Reebok shoes and design clothing.
The legal system is perceived to encourage rebellion by
having law to protect children and women against the
slightest signs of violence and discipline. Finally, the
welfare system is further seen by the more traditional
patriarchal Indochinese as adding the final blow to
parental authority with its easy social security
benefits and its refuges for victims of domestic
violence or homeless children. The system is thus seen
as working against the family by seemingly giving
children many rights and freedom while restricting
parents in the exercise of their customary ways of
dealing with family conflicts and marital discords.
Being aware of the
existence of these outside support networks is seen by
many Indochinese as sufficient to encourage some young
people to resist their parents, or wives to disobey
their Confucian husbands. The alleged victims have only
to telephone the police or the Department of Community
Services, and they will be taken away from the families
without the alleged offenders having any opportunities
to explain themselves or to use their own social
networks to arrive at a reconciliation. This use of the
law to take away family members for the latter's own
protection is seen as heavy-handed and destructive to
family life in Australia, for it involves protracted
court appearances and legal expenses without necessarily
improving family relationships.
The influences of
these systemic factors, compounded by the demands of the
rigid work patterns of working parents, have brought
about changing division of labour and role relationships
in the Indochinese families in Australia.
To begin with, the
traditional roles of grand-parents as carers of
grand-children and as respectful elders of the family no
longer apply in most instances in Australia. Having the
aged pension or other government financial benefits,
they no longer depend on their married children for
material support. Thus, some of the older parents may
not feel the obligation to assist in child care as much
as they used to in Indochina. Their Eastern wisdom and
life experiences may also be seen as being less relevant
to the new Western life style of the younger people in
Australia. More importantly, few grand-parents can speak
English when their older grand-children may be able to
speak English only, making communications between the
two generations difficult. This has lead to a reversal
of roles: young people now have the information and
knowledge to help the family through its day-to-day
activities while the older members become dependent on
them for guidance or assistance with English and
accessing services outside the family. In such a
situation, relationships cam become strained when the
younger people resent socially dependent family members,
or when they manifest a clear lack of respect for the
cultural values espoused by their conservative parents
and grand-parents.
Another major area
of change is in the division of family labour. We have
seen the subsistence agricultural base of the old
country has lead to the development of strong mutual
cooperation as a survival strategy involving all members
of the family, with clearly defined tasks and
obligations for grand-parents, parents, husband, wife,
sons and daughters. Role allocation is based on age,
family positions and gender. In Australia, mutual
assistance cannot always be expected when family members
have their own separate tasks to perform in their own
individual spheres. Young people spend most of their
time at schools, studying in their rooms. listening to
Western music or watching television, instead of being
with other members of the family. Girls may still be
required to help with household chores, but not boys.
Family members go their different directions and pursue
different interests rather than working together in the
rice fields as in the old countries. Although there is
still a sense of mutual obligations, family members no
longer feel very dependent on each other when each now
can earn their own living, and often keeps their
earnings to themselves.
In Indochina, the
husband is usually the provider of the family, although
in rural areas all members of the household participate
in economic production . In Australia, the husband tends
to be the only breadwinner/producer while the rest of
the family are consumers. Often, the wife may share in
this responsibility when one income is not sufficient to
meet the needs of the family. In the case of some
Indochinese families, however, the husband may find it
difficult to get employment and the family may depend
entirely on the earnings of the wife. This reversal of
their traditional roles can have debilitating
psychological and social effects on both parents and
their children such as loss of self-esteem and respect
for the male family head as he now assumes household
duties while his wife becomes the bread-winner with the
children acting as the source of information or advice
for their parents and grand-parents. Wives may become
decision-maker while husbands have to share in household
chores such as cleaning, cooking and washing dishes.
Confucian values may cause family tension when
traditional autocratic, male-dominated decision-making
changes to individual free choice and democracy as
female family members are given equal rights to assert
themselves by the Australian community at large.
The allocation of
power shifts when the functions of traditional elders as
family conflict mediators become lost as women and older
children prefer outside formal channels to sort out
their difficulties by seeking protection from the law or
escaping to temporary refuges in their moments of
crisis. Often, however, the legal and welfare systems
cannot support the victims indefinitely because of lack
of resources and cultural sensitivity. In addition,
racism from other refuge residents and delay in
obtaining longer term public housing may also mean that
many women or run-away young people have to return to
their own community without having their needs
satisfactorily addressed. In some cases, having gone to
the system for assistance, the victims may even face
being ostracised by their own community after their
return because they are seen to have brought shame to
their own people by "going public" with their "ethnic"
private problems. Many young Vietnamese who have been in
detention centres for criminal offences, for example,
have been disowned by their parents, and have no family
home to return to after their release.
4.3 Changing Family
Functions: Private Problems and Public Responsibilities
Indochinese in
different States of Australia have established their own
organisations for mutual support as a replacement of the
traditional extended family networks they had lost and
as a means of channelling their cultural and religious
contributions to the new country. It has been said that
"whilst reliance on friends and kin decreases with time,
informal networks remain the single most important
support for most Vietnamese and are the most important
social resources within the Vietnamese community"
(Nguyen T, 1994: 92). Although formal groups and
regional associations are not new to many urban
Indochinese, this becomes a matter of necessity in
Australia in order for the members: (1) to provide
mutual help to each other in the face of an alienating
and unfamiliar environment; and (2) to rediscover their
identity, and re-assert their cultural values after the
displacement and resettlement trauma they went through,
using the formal group to fulfil the traditional
functions of the family. These formal organisations give
the refugees a sense of community, and "personal
identity defined in family terms now also becomes
defined in terms of the economic community" with the
associations being seen as a "surrogate for the
homeland" and the extended family they have lost (Viviani,
1984: 181).
The 1992 Directory
of Ethnic Community Organisations in Australia,
published by the Department of Immigration, Local
Government and Ethnic Affairs, listed no less than 130
Indochinese organisations, including 29 in New South
Wales and 52 in Victoria. Many other groups were not
listed but are known to exist. For instance, there are
more than 40 Vietnamese associations of various kinds in
NSW, and 16 Lao community groups. Government funding to
a number of the bigger organisations has assisted them
in such activities as providing information and
settlement assistance to new arrivals, aged
accommodation, child care service, community
development, family and youth support, or simply
presenting their rich cultures at major cultural events.
The Indo-China Refugee Association in various States and
other mainstream welfare agencies have joined with
Indochinese over the years to implement numerous
projects such as sponsorship of new refugees to settle
in Australia, women's health, AIDS education, juvenile
justice, drug and alcohol education, youth camps, school
support, English classes and employment-related
training. Many of these activities still continue today.
These formal
organisations have greatly affected the Indochinese
family and its functions in Australia. They were set up
in response to the erosion of family roles relating to
the provision of material and emotional support which
was traditionally assumed by the extended family. These
organisations in turn change the roles and expectations
of the family by supplanting them with formal services
and activities such as the representation of culture to
the community at large through organising cultural
events, counselling, the resolution of family conflicts
and support for women subject to domestic violence, and
more commonly assisting anyone with emergency material
needs.
From being a total
economic production unit with all members playing
various productive roles, the Indochinese family in
Australia now becomes a unit of consumption. Only one or
two adult members now work for incomes and produce for
the needs of the whole group, unlike in the old country
where all members help in the rice growing or the
fishing and gathering of food. As stated in the IYF
National Council Discussion Paper (1994: 3), the private
caring and responsibilities of the family are put in the
public domain through the formal intervention of
community agencies and government departments. Whereas
in Indochina, most of the refugees operated within a
kinship group, they are now in a new society which
stresses nonkinship orientations (Levy, 1966: 430-433).
The Indochinese refugees have adapted, in turn, by
forming their own informal support networks as well as
more formalised community structures.
5. NEEDS AND
CHALLENGES
Settlement in
Australia has undoubtedly provided Indochinese families
with better life chances and living conditions. There
remains many challenges and needs, but there are also
many improvements, especially for those with the
incentives and the skills to help themselves. In the
initial stages, however, Indochinese, like other refugee
groups, experience a great deal of unsettling change to
their lives, when faced with the enormous cultural and
linguistic differences between Indochina and Australia.
In particular, the more disadvantaged like the elderly,
women and middle-aged men often go through long periods
of adjustment in the absence of the traditional extended
family and other support networks. For many of them, it
is not unlike "fleeing the tiger only to meet the
crocodile" (Ngaosyvathn, 1993). Faced with no other
options, the answer is not whether to flee the danger
paused by the crocodile, but how to deal with it for
maximum beneficial effects.
5.1 Employment and
Training
Employment, above
all other human activities, is the first priority for
people, because it gives them not only economic security
by being able to earn a wage, but also their
self-respect and dignity. This is very important for
refugee families which have lost nearly everything and
which are forced to depend on the generosity of
governments, non-government agencies and the United
Nations High Commission for Refugees while in transit to
a country of resettlement or waiting to find asylum in a
refugee camp. Once accepted for resettlement, many
refugees are usually eager to be on their feet, to be
able to support their families, and accept the first
jobs on offer. As has been pointed out earlier, many of
these early arrivals now find themselves confined to
these early menial jobs with little prospects for
advancement or change. Others have found it extremely
difficult to obtain employment, due to many personal
factors and barriers.
Under the refugee
and family migration programs, settlers are not selected
primarily on the basis of their qualifications or
knowledge of English. Moreover, many professionals find
their overseas qualifications unrecognised in Australia,
but continue to look for work in their professional
field, however long that may take, rather than being
employed in unskilled jobs. Faced with limited job
opportunities in their fields of preference, Indochinese
refugees in America, for example, are said to have
become "discouraged workers", and have withdrawn from
the labour force, with labour participation rate
dropping from 55% in 1983 to 39 % in 1987 (US Office of
Refugee Resettlement, 1987: 131). Only 31% of
Indochinese American households "are fully
self-supporting, with the remainder experiencing a high
rate of welfare dependency. The low level of welfare
payments means that 64% of those who depend on them live
below the poverty line (Gold and Kibria, op.cit.: 30).
According to
Iredale and D'Arcy (1992: xiii), the average refugee in
Australia tends to stay in the same industry and the
same job, putting in 40 hours or more working hours per
week, mostly involving non-professional blue/white
collar occupations which require little formal training.
Some have tried to supplement their incomes with second
or third part-time jobs, often in the so-called informal
cash economy (shops and small business) within their own
ethnic communities (Time, op.cit.: 23). Like the
"outworkers" who put in between 40 and 60 hours a week
to earn only $5,000 to $15,000 a year (NSW Women's
Directorate/EAC, op.cit.: 32), these "underground"
workers may earn a certain amount of money annually for
their long hours of "moonlighting", but may not appear
in any official records.
Similarly, some of
the unemployed may sometimes manipulate the welfare and
cash economy system without getting into full-time jobs
(Gold and Kibria, op.cit.: 32-33). Viviani, Coughlan and
Rowland (op.cit.: 90) find that apart from the lack of
jobs, the high rate of Vietnamese unemployment has been
partly the result of those refugees aged 45 or over
tending to leave the work force voluntarily before
retiring age because of "exhaustion" (from, for example,
doing two jobs for 10 years to pay off the mortgage),
ill-health or "the effects of long-term stresses related
to previous trauma" such as being imprisoned for many
years in re-education camps in Indochina. For these
reasons, it is possible that some Vietnamese calculate
the physical and financial costs of continuing with
earning low wages in factories against the incomes from
unemployment benefits based on the size of their
families, and decide "like other Australians" that it is
more cost-effective to become unemployed.
Thus, the period of
residence, job quality options and level of skills
appear to correlate with the rate of unemployment for
many refugee groups, with a higher rate of unemployment
for the less skilled and more recent arrivals, and a
lower rate for the more qualified and longer residents.
This pattern is reflected in the number of Indochinese
on social security benefits. A recent study by Birrell
(1993: 20) reveals that 32.6% of migrants who arrived in
1989-90 still did not have work and were on Job search
or Newstart benefits. For those arriving in 1990/91 and
1991/92, the rates were 30.7% and 31.1% respectively.
Figures were not available for Lao and Cambodian new
arrivals, but the study found that for Vietnamese
arriving here in 1989-90, 59.6% still remained on
unemployment benefits in May 1992, compared to those
arrivals with better English and job skills from the
United Kingdom (19.6%), Hong Kong (3.4%) and China
(12.5%).
In Australia.
English classes and job training have been provided to
many new arrivals in order to help them get into the
labour market, but there is a long waiting list for such
training in areas with large number of new migrants. In
some communities, this means that only a small number of
people have undertaken these courses. For example, its
is estimated that based on English class enrolment
figures available in October 1993, only "12% of the
Indochina Chinese community with low level English
language skills have undertaken English language
courses" (Migliorino and Chan, 1994: 29). The current
employment crisis in Australia has hit hard those
refugees and migrants who lack English skills and who do
not know how to access services and so are forced to
remain unemployed, or to confine themselves to long-term
employment in menial work in factories (Campbell,
Fincher and Webber, op.cit.: 190-191).
The Refugee Council
of Australia (1993: 46-49) has suggested in a recent
paper on refugee unemployment that attempts to improve
the employment prospects of refugees will need to
involve: (1) improving existing settlement provisions
for all entrants of non-English speaking background to
Australia, and (2) meeting the special needs arising
from the refugee experience. For this to occur,
Australia will need to: (a) recognise refugees as being
different from voluntary migrants, (b) develop a
consistent policy on the selection of refugee and
humanitarian settlers, and (c) take a rational
integrated approach to their resettlement. On a more
localised level, Coughlan (1991: 54-55) suggests the
development of community-based employment programs which
will use the skills of Indochinese refugees that "are
not readily useful in Australia" such as family and
community farming projects for those refugees with
farming skills, or handicraft cooperatives for women and
the elderly. In the United States, such ethno-specific
self-sufficiency schemes have brought "enormous
benefits", including financial rewards so that refugees
are no longer a drain on State welfare. There are also
personal and psychological benefits in such schemes
which allow the regaining of self-esteem, and help
Indochinese refugees to integrate into their new
country.
5.2 Racial
Discrimination
Refugee settlers
have benefited much from their new life in Australia,
but sometimes this can be dimmed by negative reactions
from sections of the host society, especially if this is
persistent over time. Although there are incidents of
open racism in the form of verbal abuse, indirect
discrimination through the media or in employment is
more common. For example, while criminal elements exist
among Indochinese as with other communities in
Australia, Indochinese offenders are almost always
described by local police and the media in the most
colourful and racial terms. A shooting in a restaurant
may be described as "gang warfare" when there may be
only one gun man. The presence of Indochinese and other
Asians in Australia has frequently aroused debate in
certain quarters about threats to social cohesion with
an increasing multicultural population. Illegal gaming
by Asian residents, prostitution, gold chain and handbag
snatching incidents by half a dozen Asian youth in
Cabramatta are often used by the media to taint the
whole community, especially the Vietnamese (Waxman,
1993: 94-96).
Statements are
often made that Cabramatta is "unsafe" at night, or that
the Vietnamese and Asian communities are creating
problems in Australia by adding to unemployment,
violence, rising real estate prices in some suburbs and
declining prices in others, environmental degradation,
urban decay, exploitation of the welfare system, crimes
and urban decline. While other migrant groups are urged
to take up Australian citizenship, negative criticisms
have been levelled at Vietnamese refugees for their high
rate of becoming Australian citizens with 71.7% of all
Vietnamese living in Australia compared to 61.4% for all
overseas born (BIPR, 1991 Vietnam Born Community
Profile, p. 14). For some critics, this has not been a
sign of Vietnamese commitment to their new country, but
rather another way to exploit Australian social welfare
and other benefits.
It is not unusual
to find in the Sydney newspapers big headlines like
"Terror as Asian Gangs Rule the Streets" (Sun-Herald,
30/5/93), "Chinese, Key to Heroin" (Telegraph-Mirror,
11/12/91), "Bandits Hit Rich Asians" (Sunday Telegraph,
21/3/93), "Crime and Culture in Cabramatta" (Sydney
Morning Herald, 27/4/93), "CIB targets Asian rackets"
(Perth Sunday Times, 21/2/93), and "Terror Gangs Target
Asians" (West Australian, 16/3/93). This is only a small
sample of the most colourful headlines, often on the
front page, that any casual visitor to Australia would
easily come across. What is common to these newspaper
headlines is their direct mention of the term "Asian"
along with the crimes, most invariably referring to
Vietnamese in the case of home invasions, despite the
fact that people of other ethnic backgrounds may also be
involved.
Although Cabramatta
is branded by the media as a "crime capital", this has
not been evident from national crime and prison
statistics. Francis (1991) in a study of prison
statistics between 1947 and 1966 showed that Asian and
African-born migrants had much lower criminal rates than
migrants from the U.K., Canada and New Zealand. Figures
from the 1986 national prison statistics also show that
the Asian-born had a low rate of conviction and
incarceration at approximately 1.6 per 100 prisoners.
Jayasuriya and Sang (op.cit.: 11) notes that the
aggregate data with regard to almost all the major
social indicators such as crime rates, fertility levels,
divorce rates, health status and educational performance
suggests that there are no significant differences
between Asian and other migrant groups in Australia.
What is at issue is
the tendency by the mass media to locate Asian criminal
activities within the culture and ethnicity of the
individual perpetrator while ignoring other major
contributing factors in the society at large. From the
standpoint of local Asian residents, the cause of
Vietnamese criminal activities does not lie in some
cultural explanation but has more to do with the local
high unemployment, communication problems, frustration
and occupational blockages, structural prejudices, and
distrust of the police and legal system due to their
high costs or negative personal experiences. The
negative image depicted in the mass media and the
political point-scoring on criminal activities in
Cabramatta by politicians help to reinforce stereotypes
about Indochinese and Asian migrants in Australia in the
mind of the community at large. They have also alienated
the Indochinese and Asian communities from the
mainstream society by making them feel unwanted or
undesirable. Above all, such negative attitudes make
Indochinese question whether their commitment should be
to their new country and community at large, or to their
local ethnic group.
5.3 Youth and
Education
Employment and
education are the most important issues for migrant and
refugee families: the first is to secure a job that
provides an income to meet the basic necessities of life
in the family, and the second is to allow one's children
"to enjoy a greater range of employment opportunities
and a better standard of living than their parents"
(Milne and Zelinka, 1991: 5).
Like many
first-generation migrants, Indochinese parents hold high
hopes that their children will achieve what they cannot:
getting a good education in Australia and having a
well-paid satisfying job. Many encourage the love of
learning and provide as much support as they know how
for their children. For this reason, Vietnamese parents
are sometimes perceived by teachers as pushing their
children too hard, although this "push" has paid off
well for the few who make it through Year 12 in the top
20 in the State, or who score enough marks to be
admitted to universities. In 1992, for example, six of
the top ten High School Certificate students in South
western Sydney were Asian, mostly Indochinese (Liverpool
Leader, 3 March 1993). In 1994, two Vietnamese students
were on this list. These success stories, however
encouraging, only tell the story of a very small number
of achievers when considered in the context of the total
student population in the State who are not high
performers.
Identified through
the language spoken at home, students from the larger
Asian communities (Chinese, Indian, Indonesian,
Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Lao, Filipino and Vietnamese)
in 1990 totalled 36,842 persons or 5% of the overall
enrolments in public schools in New South Wales (16,455
or 44.6% being in high schools). With increased
migration from the Asian region, enrolment of Asian
students also increase to 48,565 or 6.4% of total
student numbers in 1992, of which 21,907 or 45% were in
high schools (NSW Department of School Education:
Students of Non-English Speaking Background, June 1990
and Mid-Year Census 1992). Students from smaller Asian
communities were included under the "Others" category
and cannot thus be identified. There are also no
comparable figures for HSC students, or tertiary
enrolments.
Despite this lack
of data, it is obvious that there are many Indochinese
and Asian students in government schools. With
university and other tertiary entrance now requiring
higher entrance scores and the payment of fees, it is
possible that many of these students will end up missing
out on tertiary education, because they cannot afford to
pay these fees or cannot reach the tertiary entrance
rank required. Some will eventually enrol in TAFE
courses, but most tend to leave the education system
after Year 10 or Year 12. Indochinese refugee parents
often see only university studies as worth pursuing, and
often fail to appreciate the value of tertiary courses
in TAFE colleges or other specialist tertiary
institutions. This contrasts with their attitudes to
studies at the primary and secondary levels with no
preference towards any particular institution: the
majority are satisfied with having their children in the
public school system at these levels.
In general,
Vietnamese students achieve more of their educational
aspirations than Lao or Cambodian students, due to the
importance placed by parents on "hard work, family
cohesion and moral rectitude" as central Vietnamese
social values (Viviani, Coughlan and Rowland, op.cit.:
38). On the other hand, there are also many Vietnamese
young people who, like their Lao and Cambodian
counterparts, cannot cope with the Australian
educational system. Reasons for this include the
disrupted education as a result of years of war in the
old country and a lack of appropriate support services
for parents and students in Australia, especially in
relation to conflicts within the family.
Indochinese parents
perceive many problems within the educational system in
Australia where children are not taught to love and
respect their country through the daily saluting of the
national flag, to hold certain core moral values which
help maintain order in society, and above all to have
discipline. Schools are seen as too free and powerless
with students, with too many laws preventing school
staff from acting on unruly behaviour by students. The
problem of lack of discipline is one that is of great
concern to a great many Indochinese parents who find it
impossible to teach their children to have patience and
to be persistent in their efforts in the face of
"freedom", readily available social security support and
many other attractions outside the family home. A
Vietnamese proverb illustrates this point well: "loving
a child is to give him discipline, hating a child is to
give him sweet words" (Nguyen V H, 1993: 5).
For some parents,
attempts at disciplining their children are met with
much resistance from the young people themselves, and
parents who inflict corporal punishment fear incurring
the wrath of various authorities such as doctors,
community workers, the school, the police, the courts
and the Child Protection Council. As one father whose
three sons had all failed to get into university stated
recently, parents have no rights and no hope for their
children in this country with so many legal barriers;
all parents can do is to feed their children; things
like school and work success are a matter of luck when
parents are not allowed to discipline their children and
when children show little respect for authority figures
as they can easily get government support. Many
Indochinese parents are also frustrated by their
inability to help with their children's studies, due to
their own low level of education, and lack of awareness
of their children's schooling needs.
The educational
needs of young Indochinese and their family conflicts
will be greatly alleviated if parents receive more
support and parenting education in their own languages
which relates to the Australian setting. Many
Indochinese young people readily adopt Australian social
values, but their parents often resist such values or
are unaware of them. Parents have high expectations for
their children to succeed in the mainstream society.
However, as put by a Lao refugee, the parents "want
their children to take in 50% Australian culture and 50%
Laotian culture... but this is not happening... the
children want to forget about their background" (Yamine,
op.cit.: 36). This has resulted in inter-generation
clashes, with some of these young persons dropping out
of school, running away or becoming involved in gang
activities.
5.4 Access to
Services
Generally speaking,
all three Indochinese communities in all the States of
Australia have been able to establish their own
ethno-specific services to meet their welfare,
education, religious and cultural needs, and to help
their communities to become self-reliant and to
integrate into the Australian society. Thanks to support
from local members and to government financial or land
grants, many Asian Buddhist groups have also been able
to build temples or community centres with matching
funds raised within their communities. There are now
four Buddhist temples in Sydney for the Lao community,
two for the Cambodians and two for the Vietnamese. The
ethnic Chinese from Indochina have also built two
temples which incorporate the worship of Buddha with
Chinese ancestral practice.
5.4.1
Government-funded Services
In NSW, most of the
ethnic-based community facilities are in the Fairfield
local government area where many Indochinese live. As
there is no suitable emergency accommodation, some of
the temples have also acted as refuge for a number of
young people without family or for the aged who have
problem with their married children. Due to the large
number of Indochinese, the NSW Department of Housing
under the Local Government and Community Housing Program
has so far provided the following grants to the
Indochinese communities: $360,000 for an Indochinese
women's refuge; $593,000 and land worth $400,000 to
build home units for Vietnamese residents; and $667,300
for eight semi-detached cottages for Lao aged
(Department of Housing, Annual Report, 1991-92).
In the area of
welfare and community services, the Department of
Immigration and Ethnic Affairs provided $11 million in
1994-95 for 214.5 grants for ethnic organisations to
employ grant-in-aid (GIA) workers in different
Australian States, and 93 smaller projects under the
Migrant Access Projects Scheme (MAPS) for office
equipment or research projects. Of this number, ten GIA
grants were made for services in NSW (two for
Indochinese in general, one Lao, two ethnic Chinese from
Indochina, three Khmer and two Vietnamese). The MAPS
funding consisted of one in NSW (for Vietnamese), two in
Victoria (one for Vietnamese and one for Hmong), three
in South Australia (one for Cambodian, one for
Indochinese and one for Vietnamese), one in Tasmania
(for Vietnamese), and one in the ACT (for Lao).
Annual welfare
grants from the NSW Ethnic Affairs Commission to
Indochinese organisations totalled fourteen in 1994 and
1994/95 for a total amount of $260,000 out a $3 million
grant budget. Of this number, one was a community
development grant to the Indo-China Refugee Association
for a family support pilot project, one to the Indochina
Chinese Association for an aged project, five to the Lao
community (including one capital and two cultural
grants), two to the Cambodian community (one capital and
one community development), and six to the Vietnamese
community - all community development grants for women,
youth and general welfare activities (EAC, 1993-94
Annual Report, pp. 102-131).
There are other
government funding sources, but the above are the two
main funding bodies for Indochinese and other migrants.
Most of these grants, however, are for community
development projects while individual settlement
assistance (casework) and family support have been given
low priority. Although these two areas have the biggest
number of people in need, especially recent arrivals
with little English and familiarity with the service
system in Australia, the emphasis has been to give
seeding grants to projects which address needs at the
group and community level and which have a short life
expectation of only one to three years. Specialised
direct services are available from mainstream community
agencies such as Burnside and Care Force also have
services and projects which are aimed at Indochinese in
resolving family conflicts or helping the unemployed,
the aged, women, sole parents, people suffering from
substance abuse, and the disabled.
For these special
needs groups, however, services are not always available
from their own ethnic organisations which tend to offer
more general settlement assistance such as emergency
relief, form-filling, information and referrals. To
access the more specialised services, Indochinese
families need to be fluent in English or have an
interpreter. Because of language and cultural barriers,
many of these specialised services are not always used.
Relatively speaking, Indochinese refugees tend to use
their children, relatives and friends to help with
family needs, and will only go to seek outside
assistance as a last resort, and then mainly with
organisations of their own ethnic backgrounds because of
language problem. This means that the few funded
Indochinese organisations are hard pressed to serve a
large number of clients, especially with the sizeable
Vietnamese population. Funding is often inadequate and
services are insufficient, especially in relation to
casework.
5.4 Access
Difficulties
At the level of
their own communities, Indochinese welfare organisations
exist to provide services for all settlers from
Indochina. In practice, however, they are mainly
accessible to members of the majority groups. In other
words, a Vietnamese or Cambodian welfare agency is used
by ethnic Vietnamese or ethnic Khmer, but not ethnic
Chinese or other minorities from Vietnam or Cambodia.
This is due to language and cultural barriers between
these distinctive groups, particularly with older people
who might not have interacted much with the Vietnamese
or Cambodian society at large before coming to
Australia.
As stated by
Phoumindr (1993: 77) in relation to the Lao refugees:
"in terms of access
and equity (for minorities within the Indochinese
communities), the services provided directly by the
Government or funded to the community sector, may not
reach them effectively, due to the many complex social
layers which exist in the Lao community. There is no
easy solution to the problem, and the problem is not
unique to the Lao".
The Hmong from
Laos, for instance, lived in the highlands isolated from
the lowland majority: only the younger generation had
any Lao education and could speak Lao. Hmong elderly
refugees in Australia cannot go to a Lao welfare worker
for assistance as they do not speak Lao and will need an
interpreter, just as they would do with a mainstream
agency. Because of this and the fear of being ridiculed
by untrained workers in a small community, some minority
members prefer not to seek formal assistance from a
majority agency (Yamine, op.cit.: 25-26 and 30-31). In
the United States, attempts to remedy the situation by
appointing multi-lingual workers from Indochinese
minorities have not been successful, because the
language and ethnic barriers are compounded by social
class differences and prejudice. Members of the majority
ethnic Lao or Vietnamese would not lose face by seeking
assistance from a Hmong or Chinese from their own
country because they regard such a worker as belonging
to an inferior minority, and some have not hesitated to
make their views known to the funding authorities.
On a broader level,
the Lao and Cambodians, being so much smaller in numbers
than the Vietnamese, also experience major problems with
regard to accessing services and sharing resources being
dispensed by government departments which often provide
demand-driven rather than need-based services. This
means determining service provisions on the basis of
numbers rather than individual needs. Thus, services
that target Indochinese refugees in one broad brush
often end up reaching mainly Vietnamese. For example,
Indochinese youth work often concentrate on Vietnamese
youth, although Lao and Cambodian young people
experience the same needs and are involved in similar
offences in Cabramatta. There are more than Indochinese
15 youth workers in Sydney, but only two of them work
with Khmer and Lao youth. The Lao are characterised by
"humbleness, non-aggressiveness and silence in the face
of injustice" and these values "serve to bring adverse
results to the community when they have to compete in
the society at large" (Phoumindr, op.cit.: 77). The same
can be said about the Cambodians, but there is more
general awareness of their plight in Australia because
of the mass media publicity on the genocide under Pol
Pot and the recent "boat people" from Cambodia.
What is of concern
is that as pointed out previously, government funded
projects tend to be of a policy and community
development nature. Ethnic groups are funded to lobby
for more and better services from government and
mainstream community agencies, while the latter are
funded to support ethnic community workers to be more
skilled in their lobbying and policy activities rather
being skilled in their own direct service provision.
Examples of funding for such mutual development are Care
Force, Indo-China Refugee Association, Burnside and the
Cabramatta Community Centre working with Cambodian, Lao
and Vietnamese community workers. The Indochinese
refugees who really need direct services and on whose
behalf these funded organisations all claim to work are
lost and forgotten in the merry-go-round of endless
meetings between workers inside the confines of their
offices. While the needs of many refugees have been met
through such projects, the settlement problems of others
have not always been solved by the myriad of funded
workers but by their relatives and the passing of time.
5.5 Housing
In the area of
emergency or crisis accommodation for Asian women in
Sydney, two refuges were established in 1992, one for
Indochinese women set up by the Vietnamese Women's
Association, and another for young Asian women under the
Cabramatta Community Centre. Funding was also recently
approved for a third Asian women's refuge, again being
auspiced by the Vietnamese Women's Association in
Liverpool. The Association is said to deal with at least
three domestic violence referrals a week involving
Vietnamese women. Emergency or crisis accommodation
often takes up to 3 months to obtain, but this is mostly
available to women who experience domestic violence and
have been living temporarily in women's refuges.
Many Asian women
living in mainstream women's refuges sometimes find the
racist treatment they receive from other residents more
distressing than the situation they left behind in their
own home. They are, thus, reluctant to use this type of
crisis accommodation. Despite the high need for
emergency housing, 1991-92 figures from the NSW
Department of Housing revealed that, although 29% of
applicants for crisis accommodation were of non-English
speaking background, 75% of them were culled out at the
first stage compared to 61% of English-speaking
background applicants.
In terms of general
access to public housing, Federal and State cost-sharing
arrangements in housing should mean that government
housing is readily available. However, there is still a
long waiting list, which can vary from one State to
another. In New South Wales, the waiting period is at
least six years for government in a preferred area and 4
years in any other areas, compared with six months to a
year in Victoria and other States. Refugees are not
given no preference as such over other applicants. The
numbers of Indochinese in public housing are not known.
In general, newly arrived refugees apply for housing
assistance as soon as they can but are not given any
special treatment. If they meet all the eligibility
criteria, they are placed on the waiting list for the
area they nominate. Among the Lao, for example, Coughlan
(in press, p. 14) reports that, based on the 1991
census, 44.2% were in rental accommodation, of whom 54%
are in government-owned dwellings - giving an overall
high 23.2% in government housing.
Many Indochinese
are aware of "the poverty trap" brought about by being
tenants in government housing (Wulff and Burke, 1993:
23-27). This is caused by the requirement that employed
tenants pay full market rents, but the unemployed only
pay about a quarter of the full amount. This may make
some tenants reluctant to obtain employment in order not
to pay full rent, and may lock the latter into a cycle
of poverty.
For this reason,
many Indochinese families have tried to buy their own
homes, often in cheaper new estates at the outskirts of
Sydney, rather than waiting for or remaining in
government housing. For instance, among the 1991-92 NSW
Homefund borrowers, 271 were from Vietnam, 28 Laos, and
smaller numbers from other Asian countries (NSW
Department of Housing: NSW HomeFund Loans, 1991-92).
According to the 1991 census, the Indochinese
home-ownership rate is 13.3% for Vietnamese and 14.7%
for the Lao for those who own their homes outright,
compared to 41% of the total Australian population. The
rate for those who are purchasing or paying off their
houses was: 26.2% for the Lao, 37.2% for the Vietnamese,
and between 7% to 70% for the Cambodians (BIPR,
Immigration Update, June 1994: 42).
These rates appear
low when compared to the Australian average of 68.3%,
90.3% for those born in Italy, and 78.1% for those from
Eastern Europe (Hellwig et. al., 1992: 78). Most
Indochinese refugees have settled here only since the
mid-seventies, and have not yet paid off their mortgages
or saved enough to buy a house outright. Asian-born
residents in Australia commit 18.6% of their incomes to
household purchase payment, second only to the
Oceania-born (Ibid.: 42 and 60). Many of them are known
to have been able to discharge their mortgages within 7
years. This financial outlay has sometimes resulted in
households, especially with Vietnamese, undergoing what
is called "housing stress" when their wages are in the
lowest 40% but they commit more than 30% of their
incomes to housing payments (Junankar et al., 1993:
50-51). Nevertheless, this financial sacrifice, even if
the family bread-winner may have to work on two jobs,
has meant that some of the refugee families have also
sold their first house and are now moving up into their
second and better one. However, most of the more recent
arrivals still depend largely on the rental market.
Figures from the
1991 census also indicate that the median size for all
family households in Australia is 2.6 persons, 4.2 for
the Cambodians and 3.9 for the Lao and Vietnamese (BIPR,
Immigrant Families: A Statistical Profile, 1994 : 10).
Given that the average dwelling occupied by Indochinese
has 3 bedrooms, accommodation for the Indochinese may be
more crowded than the average Australian-born
households, with 1.4 person per bedroom for the
Cambodian-born, and 1.3 for the Lao and Vietnamese born.
However, according to Coughlan (in press: 15), this does
not suggest crowding as a major problem by Australian
standards. In reality, many Indochinese households live
in more crowded condition than the Australian norm. This
is because households headed by a person born in
Indochina are ten times more likely to have two or more
families in them than households with an Australian-born
reference person (BIPR, op.cit.: 8). In 6.0% of all
Vietnamese households, more than one in nine persons
live in households with eight or more residents (Coughlan
and Walsh, op.cit.: 13-14).
5.6 Family Reunion
Like earlier
immigrant groups to Australia, Indochinese refugees have
sponsored their relatives under the Family Reunion
program to join them in Australia. The Family Reunion
program consists of two components: the Preferential
Family category and the Concessional Family category.
Preferential Family migration includes a spouse, a
fiance, an unmarried dependent child, a parent who meets
the "balance of family" test, a child under 18 coming
for adoption, an orphaned unmarried relative under 18, a
relative capable of helping an Australian resident in
special need of assistance, an aged relative dependent
on the sponsor, and a last remaining sibling or
non-dependent child of the sponsor. Concessional Family
migration includes: a non-dependent child, a parent who
does not meet the "balance of family" test, a brother or
sister, and a nephew or niece.
In 1988, the
Australian Government introduced a tightening of the
parent category with the "balance of family test ",
followed by further restriction on the spouse/fiancee
category because of its potential for exploitation and
the tendency for certain migrant groups to marry within
their own groups, thus not mixing with the larger
community. The changes have arisen largely as a result
of concerns over these issues and the large number of
Family Reunion cases during the 1980's, mostly brothers
and sisters in the Concessional category. This leads
Birrell (1990: 14-15), for instance, to suggest that
unless a more restrictive policy was adopted, Australia
would end up with many low or unskilled migrants from
Third World countries in Asia and the Middle East. He
argued that Family Reunion migration was like "the
chains that bind", because of its snow-balling effects
and the large number of siblings common to Third World
families. Once one of these siblings are in Australia,
the pioneer settler would sponsor as many of his or her
siblings as possible and the spouses of the latter would
then in turn sponsor their parents and siblings. One
chain, thus, leads to another, and forever continues.
In response to
these concerns, the Australian Government introduced a
refundable maintenance guarantee bond of $3,500 for each
principal applicant and $1,500 for each adult dependent,
a non-refundable health care levy of $822 per sponsored
person, together with English class fees for Family and
Independent Entrant applicants in 1992, further making
it difficult to access the program. For a family of
four, such financial outlay can amount to over $10,000,
which is a large amount of money for sponsors,
especially former refugees without large incomes or
financial assets. The result is that many refugees will
"lose their families twice": once by the separation and
need for reunion, and once by the Australian maintenance
guarantee bond which many cannot afford to pay (NSW
Grant-in-Aid Cooperative, 1992).
Another barrier,
introduced on 1 January 1993, was the imposition of the
waiting period of 26 weeks before newly arrived migrants
can claim Social Security benefits, which means that
sponsors who are unable to support their sponsored
relatives for 6 months after their arrival will be
reluctant to lodge applications for them to come and
settle in to Australia, especially during periods of
high unemployment. Despite these restrictions,
Indochinese and other Asians place special social
meaning on the Concessional category of relatives, and
will try to sponsor those willing to come and settle in
Australia. Most parents in Indochina usually have 5 to 7
children and it is often the case that only one or two
of these grown-up children live in Australia. Parents
who have less than an equal number or more of their
children in Australia are unable then to come to
Australia.
These changes in
policy appear to have lead to a reduction in the number
of family reunion arrivals. According to BIPR
(Immigration Update, June 1994: 22), the overall number
for migration arrivals from Vietnam has decreased
markedly since the introduction of the assurance of
support bond and the health care levy, from 9,592 in
1991-92 to 5,651 in 1992-93 and 5,434 for 1993-94. When
we look at the top 10 source countries of Australian
migrants, Hong Kong (with 12,913 in 1991-92 and 6,520 in
1992-93) has overtaken Vietnam since the adoption of
these rules for the Family Migration program. The less
developed source countries like Vietnam and Cambodia
have been affected by these policy changes which seem to
have been based on "anecdotal evidence, poorly
interpreted statistics, unjustified expectations of an
anti-immigration backlash, and plain fear of being
ripped off" (Einspinner, 1994: 4).
6.
MULTICULTURALISM AND INDOCHINESE FAMILIES
At the Federal
level, multiculturalism is implemented through the
Access and Equity Strategy which seeks "to ensure that
equitable access to government programs and services by
all members of the Australian community is not impeded
by barriers related to language, culture, race or
religion" (OMA, 1992: 2). Its aim is to achieve better
services and fairer outcomes from government programs
for all Australian residents.
The 1992 Access and
Equity Evaluation Report notes that the impact of the
Access and Equity Strategy ha been variable for both
clients and government departments. The Strategy had
bought about an awareness "among managers and a climate
conducive for" changes to occur (Ibid.: 10). There have
been improvements in language, information services and
cross-cultural awareness. Many departments have included
access and equity as part of their corporate plan and
culture in an attempt to implement the Government's
social justice policy, of which the Access and Equity
Strategy is one element.
A recent study of
the Lao community and multiculturalism in Australia
concludes that in the short time span since its formal
adoption in 1989, multiculturalism has helped further
the promotion and the appreciation of cultural diversity
as a national asset by assisting ethnic groups to
maintain and share their cultural heritage through
government funding and participation in the cultural
life of the nation. It has served to promote tolerance
of ethnic differences. However, it has not been able to
reach the grassroots level, particularly with ethnic
communities which are ridden with intra-community
conflicts as these conflicts have not been prevented
through the policy (Phoumindr, op.cit.: 76-77). How much
have Indochinese families benefited from
multiculturalism in Australia ? It is difficult to make
an evaluation of their overall impact on all the major
areas of needs within the Indochinese communities
discussed above since there has been no systematic
examination of this issue.
The following is an
attempt to look at three areas of needs to see if the
three objectives of multiculturalism have been reached
with Indochinese refugees: language maintenance,
government language service, and equal employment
opportunity.
6.1 Cultural
diversity and Language Maintenance
In the area of
cultural maintenance, only 5 of the 166 community
managed ethnic schools in New South Wales provide
Indochinese language classes in languages other than
Chinese. Many Chinese from Indochina, however, have
their own ethnic schools, especially in Western Sydney
run by the Indochina Chinese Association or the
Australian Chinese and Descendants Mutual Association.
Altogether, Chinese language schools account for 50% of
the total number of ethnic schools in NSW, with an
enrolment of more than 9,800 students, although only a
small percentage of their students are from Indochina.
These ethnic schools have been able to carry on mainly
through the dedication of its members, supported by
small Federal and State government grants.
The NSW School
Education Department also conducts Saturday community
language classes in selected areas. Of the 12 priority
languages other than English (LOTE), for example, five
are Asian: Mandarin, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean and
Vietnamese. Thus, two of these five languages, Chinese
and Vietnamese, cater for the need of the Indochinese.
The NSW goal is that half of the Higher School
Certificate students will study an Asian-Pacific
language by the year 2000. Currently, however, few
government schools make Asian languages part of the
mainstream courses, due to lack of teaching resources
and qualified teachers compared to traditional languages
such as Italian, German and French. This has meant that
in NSW, for instance, only 1,306 students enrolled in
Chinese in Years 7-10 in 1991. There is no course at
this level in Vietnamese, although enrolment for Years
11-12 was 141 for the same year (a 33 per cent increase
since 1988). .
The introduction of
Asian languages, however, reflects Australia's desire to
establish closer trade links with the Asian region more
than their relevance to the number of speakers living in
Australia. Language maintenance as a means to foster
pride in one's cultural heritage and to improve
communications across the generations within the family
has not been promoted or seen as a priority. Many
schools, thus, continue to offer only French and German
"taster" language courses in junior high schools and
then report them to be the most "in demand", although
overall there has been a decrease in enrolment of 30%
and 32% respectively in these two languages from 1988 to
1991.
At present, parents
in suburbs with a large number of Asian residents who
wish their children to be given locally relevant
language studies such as Chinese or Vietnamese are often
advised to move their children to areas where these
languages are taught instead of waiting for the schools
to introduce the new courses. For this reason, many
Asian parents still have to set up and operate their own
ethnic schools outside the mainstream school curriculum
in order to teach literacy in their own languages to
their children, and to maintain their cultural and
linguistic heritage. The problem is that very few ethnic
school grants are now given to new groups so that newly
arrived groups such as those from the Indian
Subcontinent cannot form their own ethnic schools. Thus,
older established communities have more access to
government assistance.
Another concern
with ethnic schools is the lack of recognition by and
linkage with mainstream language studies in high
schools. This results in few ethnic schools with
developed curriculum for advanced levels of language
studies which could be integrated into courses in public
schools; and few students pursuing ethnic school courses
beyond their primary school years. A recent review of
the program has made recommendations which will address
these issues, but progress in the implementation of
these recommendations is very slow and uneven because
many ethnic schools depend on volunteers who are not
necessarily professional language teachers capable of
devising curriculum and linking up with mainstream
courses. The School Education Department also appear to
give this very low priority, and will only move at its
own pace.
6.2 Social Justice
: Access to Language Service
As has been pointed
previously, Indochinese and other refugees without
proficiency in English face the difficult task of
learning English, and having to adapt to a bewildering
new socio-linguistic environment. Among the Vietnamese
population of 119,859 persons in 1991, 22.2% of those
aged less than 25 reported not speaking English well,
while another 2.8% could not speak English at all. Of
those aged 65 and over (3,835 persons), 90.7% spoke
English "not well" or "not at all". For those aged more
25 years, 43.9% reported speaking English "not well" and
12.3% "not at all" (BIPR, 1991 Census Vietnam-born
Community Profile, 1994: 32).
To give all
residents equity and social justice in government
service provisions, both Federal and State governments
provide language service to those who need them as a
matter of policy. Many government departments endeavour
to use interpreters when necessary. Many have also
translated information materials on their services into
Indochinese and other community languages. At the
Federal level, language service is provided mainly
through the Translating and Interpreting Service (TIS).
State government agencies provide most of their
interpreting and translation services through the Ethnic
Affairs Commission and through the employment of
multi-lingual staff. There are also private commercial
interpreters and translators which can be engaged on a
fee-for-service basis.
This has been a
great step forward. However, some major concerns remain,
particularly in regard to access and availability.
Firstly, some languages are not available. The most
readily available languages are those with large number
of speakers and users such as Chinese and Vietnamese.
For smaller communities like the Cambodian and the Lao,
it is difficult to access interpreting service,
especially in an emergency, because there are only
casual interpreters in these languages and they are not
always available for emergency situations. This applies
to both Federal and State language services. For
Indochinese minorities like the Hmong or the Ngung
people, no service is available because of the small
demand and the lack of accreditation facility in these
languages, thus forcing families to rely on their own
members, friends and relatives. While the problem.
The second area of
concern is the impact of government policy on user-pay
in relation to State and Commonwealth government
language service. TIS raised almost $3 million from this
cost-recovery scheme during 1991-92 (DIEA, Fact Sheet,
12 May 1993). This figure was expected to increase to
$5.7 million in 1992-93 when TIS would be providing
services through 2,000 professional interpreters in more
than 100 languages and dialects.
Figures from the
Ethnic Affairs Commission of New South Wales reveal that
the number of translation assignments at its head office
has decreased since the user-pay system came into
effect, from 7808 in 1989-90 to 5902 in 1990-91, and
5248 in 1991-92 (EAC, Annual Report, 1989-90 : Appendix
10; and 1991-92: 83). Interpreter assignments, on the
other hand, have increased from: 12031 in 1989-90 to
17110 in 1990-91 and 19737 in 1991-92 (Ibid.: 73). The
reason for increased interpreter use is most likely due
to increase in demand from the large number of new
migrants rather than the fact that service agencies now
pay the charges instead of the clients having to do it.
With translations, the clients have to pay themselves
and, thus, only have documents translated if they are
really essential, thus reducing the number of
translating assignments.
Regardless of these
interpreter figures, many government agencies still use
clients' children, relatives and friends as interpreters
because of time and budget constraints,. This is true in
particular in emergency situations with the police or
hospitals. The lack of training on how to obtain
interpreters also lead some departmental officers such
as DSS and DOCS to ask clients what country they came
from rather what language they speak. The result is much
wastage of money, time and resources when a Vietnamese
interpreter, for example, is called for a
Cantonese-speaking aged person who hardly speak
Vietnamese because the latter happen to come from
Vietnam. The interpreter has to be paid for, a new
interpreter has to be arranged, and another appointment
needs to be made, thus wasting money and the time for
both client and staff. This is one of the major
concerns.
To compound the
problem further, some interpreters are known to give
clients lectures or to make racially based comments on
clients from another ethnic background with service
providers such as nurses and doctors. Some service
providers are also reluctant to meet the scheduled
cost-recovering fees charged for language services.
State government departments such as the Police Service
and School Education, for example, receive special
language service allocations from State Treasury but may
not spend them because of the unpredictable nature of
their contacts with clients, the advanced notice
required to obtain an interpreters or the amount of
paper work involved.
The third problem
relates to finding a mechanism to distribute translated
information materials so that they reach those who need
them most. The smaller Indochinese groups such as the
Lao and Cambodians are already suffering from lack of
translated government information, as the decision to
translate is usually based on demands and the size of
the community. However, even for the bigger communities
with translated materials available, migrant resource
centres or their ethnic welfare agencies have been used
as the best distribution points, but this only reaches
those who go to these organisations. Even if these
materials get to the people, many find them difficult to
understand as they contain bureaucratic jargons, or
literal translations which are not easy to grasp. This
is especially the case for many elderly Asians who may
not be literate in their own languages. Thus, written
translated materials need to be supplemented by verbal
information assistance, but this is not always
available.
The final concern
in language service provision is the lack of
coordination between service providers such as TIS/DIEA,
the Ethnic Affairs Commission, and the Health
Translation Service. Each of these agencies operate in
their own defined areas of jurisdiction. TIS mainly
deals with Federal departments, EAC on State matters,
and HTS for hospitals and government health matters
only. There are services areas, especially in private
sector, which are not catered for e.g. doctors. Clients
are often left by some government departments to sort
out which language service to call upon for what needs.
Amid this confusion, those who speak little English
sometimes give up their quest for professional
interpreting service and will use whoever they can find.
It would be of great benefit to them if there was a
coordinated approach to information on the subject with
the availability of a single pamphlet on all language
services, for instance.
6.3 Economic
Efficiency: Equal Employment Opportunity
A major component
of the Australian Government's multicultural agenda is
the promotion of economic efficiency through the maximum
use of the skills possessed by the residents of
Australia, regardless of their cultural and ethnic
backgrounds. This will allow for fuller participation by
migrants and refugees in the labour force. The question
of recognition of overseas qualifications has often been
raised in relation to attempts to help new arrivals with
foreign training find employment in Australia.
Although refugees
are not accepted for resettlement with their
occupational skills as a prime consideration, the
Australian Government's refugee selection criteria are
sufficiently strict to ensure that Indochinese family
heads are educated enough in their own countries in
order to be able to cope with life in Australia. For
this reason, there are many professionals among the
Indochinese refugees, and many Vietnamese have high
school and university education. In Australia, 4.4.% of
the Vietnamese described themselves as managers and
administrators for the 1991 census, with another 10.9%
being professionals and para-professionals. However,
only three are known to occupy prominent managerial
positions in the Federal and State public sector.
For Indochinese who
are in white-collar jobs, the issues of concern centre
around promotion opportunities and work experience. The
effects of EEO legislation has been patchy for many
immigrant groups. Niland and Champion (1990: 28), in
their review of EEO programs in New South Wales, had
expected to find model programs in the NSW public sector
given that equal opportunity plans for staff of
non-English speaking background had been mandatory for
the last 10 years, but they found few examples. In the
private sector, there were even fewer firms with formal
EEO policies and programs for immigrant workers. The
1990 EEO survey of the NSW public sector by the Office
of the Director of Public Employment shows much
improvement since 1985, although 12% of female NESB
staff and 18.2% of NESB male staff experienced racially
based harassment at work (ODEOPE, 1992: 137). Language
accents continue to be cited as a major barrier to
promotion for NESB staff (Niland & Champion, op.cit.:108;
and Public Service Commission, 1990: 15).
Thus, the skills of
many migrants and refugees in Australia remain untapped,
due to these personal and structural barriers. Chapman
and Iredale (1992: 379) find that "immigrants with no
formal Australian training are treated very similarly to
each other in the Australian labour market", regardless
of whether a migrant has got a Ph.D. or dropped out of
high school in the old country. In other words,
immigrants are only given some recognition through
better jobs and wages after they have obtained
additional formal Australian skills. Stromback et al.
(1992: 15) found that Vietnamese males with good English
language skills had "a distinctly lower unemployment
rate than groups with lower levels of proficiency" but
unemployment rate among Vietnamese women bears no
correlation with knowledge of English. This finding,
however, is not reflected in the level of Vietnamese
unemployment and English proficiency, as revealed in the
1991 census. Vietnamese females aged 44 years and over
were less proficient in English than males: 47.5% did
not speak English at all compared with 20.9% of the men
(BIPR, 1991 Census Vietnam-born Community Profile, 1994:
32). The unemployment rate for all Vietnamese females
was 44.9% compared with 36.1% for males, with unmarried
females being the highest at 50.7% (Ibid.: 20). There
is, thus, an obvious correlation between English
proficiency and unemployment.
The question of
language skills aside, Coughlan (1992: 94-101) suggests
that Indochinese and other humanitarian entrants have
not been as successful in the labour market as other
migrant groups, because they suffered disruption to
their education and professional careers, and wasted
long periods in refugee camps without acquiring useful
job skills. A 1994 study by the Centre for Population
and Urban Research at Monash University suggests that
recent refugees and migrants have not been able to find
employment because of lack of appropriate support and
programs which would meet their low skills and need to
become proficient in English (Riley, Sydney Morning
Herald, 12/9/94, p. 3). According to the Monash
University study, the Australian Government's 1994 White
Paper on employment, by focusing on high worker mobility
and ongoing retraining, assumes that unemployed people
are able to access such retraining programs.
This has also been
found to be incorrect in a recent report on retrenched
workers' rights by the NSW Ethnic Affairs Commission and
the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (1993:
21-36). Due to language barriers, many Indochinese do
not have the ability to retrain, and many are also not
aware of retraining schemes available to them. They are
thus likely to become part of the marginalised jobless
and ethnically based under classes in Australia. One
solution is to put less stress on retraining and to
create more jobs in industries which can be taken up by
low-skilled people from non-English speaking background.
Unemployed people find little point in being on one
training scheme after another when there are no jobs
available.
In summary, the
Federal Government's Access and Equity Strategy
initiated in 1985 and extended in 1989 as part of the
social justice objective still has much ground to cover
before Indochinese and other refugees in Australia can
have equitable access to government services and the
opportunity to participate fully in Australian society.
The 1992 evaluation of the Strategy shows that many
barriers still remain, including the unavailability of
interpreters, the inappropriate use of interpreters, and
the inappropriate use of media for information
dissemination. What is of most concern is that "very few
Commonwealth departments collect comprehensive ethnicity
data on either their clients or their employees" ( Milne
and Zelinka, 1991: iii). Without such data, appropriate
services cannot be planned and delivered to ethnic
clients. In some areas like social security, immigration
and settlement services, much confusion prevails due to
ever-changing government regulations, making it
difficult to keep up-to-date. OMA (1994) has now
published a new guide called "Achieving Access and
Equity" to assist government departments implement the
Strategy with better outcomes. Among the new initiative
is the promotion of client participation in the policy
formulation, design and delivery of government services.
7. CONCLUSION
The Indochinese are
not only refugees who arrived here in traumatic
circumstances, but more importantly they are also Asians
with their own ethnic division into ethnic Vietnamese,
ethnic Chinese, Lao, Khmer, and smaller distinctive
minorities. Viviani (1984: 173-74) notes that these two
factors have a crucial bearing on the outcomes of their
settlement in Australia. Despite these concerns, there
is no doubt that the majority of Indochinese families
have been able to re-establish their lives in Australia,
even though they had to wade through many deep waters
and strong currents. Many who came here originally with
only themselves and few belongings have bought their own
houses, and nearly all possess at least a car, and some
families now even have two cars. In the space of fifteen
years, some have moved from working in factories to
running small business for themselves. In the public
arena, the Indochinese may not have made much inroad
into Australian society, but the Vietnamese have been
the first to have entered local government politics in
greater numbers than other longer-established Asian
groups: there are currently four Vietnamese local
councillors across Australia.
Although the
Indochinese and other Asians living in Australia are the
focus of much negative media attention, this public
image will become more positive as their contributions
to their new country increase over time. The first
generation, despite higher than average unemployment
rates, are at least finding the peace and freedom they
had sought in their escape from totalitarian regimes in
Indochina. They are now establishing a new base, albeit
at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder, but from
this foundation the second generation will be able to
enjoy many more job opportunities and a better life
style. In doing this, their families have changed from
being predominantly extended to one family households,
from a hierarchical autocratic family system to one
where there is now more democratic decision-making
between husband and wife, parents and children - for
many, not without much social and emotional pain.
There is no doubt
that living in Australia has considerably reduced the
relevance of the traditional family beliefs and
functions of the Indochinese. Mutual cooperation by
family members can no longer be expected when they stay
together less and spend more time away from each other
due to each having different tasks to perform and
different work commitments. Religious beliefs based on
Buddhism and Confucianism become less influential, from
lack of interest as parents are more absorbed with
trying to provide materially for their families than to
instil moral values in their children. Parents are more
eager to re-establish themselves in their new country so
that their children will have a better life, but this
has been at the cost of losing much of their cultural
heritage and traditional values. In addition, the law in
Australia gives more equality, freedom and protection to
women and children, with the result that traditional
Indochinese role expectations of women and children have
been adversely affected. Women no longer have to submit
to their father, husband, or brother, as prescribed
under Confucianism.
Nevertheless, the
Indochinese and their families have been able to
re-establish themselves here and are now accepted as
part of the mosaic of cultures which comprise Australia
today. This is largely due to the impact of
multiculturalism. It is true that at this stage of the
process, multiculturalism still face many challenges.
Many government and mainstream services still lack
cultural relevance to ethnic people, and some are not
easily accessible to people of non-English speaking
background. This has lead to under-utilisation by groups
like Indochinese who in turn set up their own service
organisations. While this will enrich the country with a
diversified and culturally sensitive system of service
provisions, it may also lead to the marginalisation of
ethnic services. In order to avoid this in the
long-term, there needs to be more involvement by local
neighbourhood centres and gender-based service providers
(Morrissey et al. (1991: xiii and xiv) so that ethnic
organisations are not left to shoulder the
responsibilities of look after their own communities by
themselves.
Despite this, there
are many positive indications that, as a government
policy, multiculturalism will assist in the process of
integration by Indochinese families into the Australian
society, if the policy is nurtured carefully to steer
the nation in a creative and rewarding direction. As
Wallace-Crabbe (1992: 6) states, multiculturalism should
serve as a vision to blend the diverse cultures of the
people together so that they live in harmony as a
nation. Although this is a major challenge it also
attests to the tolerance of all Australians for the
reality of cultural diversity in this country. The
experience of the Indochinese refugees has largely shown
that this vision is being pursued and, to a great
extent, achieved despite some shortcomings and
resistance from certain quarters of the mainstream
community.
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