
Customer Success Manager
My previous article on immigration looked at the national picture of emerging settlement groups, which arises from the data available on the Department of Immigration and Citizenship website. But information at the local level is also available, and very important for planning service delivery. My next few articles will each focus on a particular state, and the characteristics of recent migration in that state. To kick off, New South Wales, which had the largest number of permanent settler arrivals between 2006 and 2011 – 252,000 of them, or 30% of the national total. Who are they and where did they settle?
The breakdown of NSW arrivals by the three main settlement streams shows that 52% of the settlers arrived in the skilled migration stream. Another 40% were family reunion migrants – a number well above any other state. The remaining 8% (about 19,000 people) were humanitarian migrants, including refugees.
NSW migrants came from a greater variety of countries than any other state, with 223 different nations represented. Compared to the national trend, NSW gets far less migration from the UK and more from China. India is the second largest source of new settlers in NSW, but the percentage was actually lower than the national figure (12.4% compared to 13.4%).
Other countries with disproportionately more settlers in NSW than the national picture include Iraq, Korea, Vietnam, Nepal, Fiji and Lebanon. Though the large wave of Lebanese migration ended many years ago, significant numbers still arrive from Lebanon under the family reunion program and most settle in NSW. Among the smaller groups, NSW had more than half the national settlement from Syria, Jordan, Sierra Leone and Tonga.
Notably missing from the NSW migration numbers, with far lower than the national share include people from Malaysia (only 15% of the national total), South Africa (17%), the UK (21%). While it gets a large share of middle-eastern migration, NSW has a much lower share of African migration, accounting for only a small portion of national settlement from places like Zimbabwe (17%), Somalia (12%), Ethiopia (13%), DR Congo (16%) and Tanzania (15%), as well as emerging group Burma in SE Asia (16%).
So where in NSW are these migrants settling? The lions share of migrants arriving in Sydney settle in those diverse areas of Western Sydney which already have large overseas-born populations.
The largest number of settler arrivals went to Parramatta (14,073 people), followed by Blacktown. City of Sydney, Fairfield and Canterbury. The countries of origin arriving in these areas are as follows:
Also worth mentioning are the LGAs of:
To view comprehensive community profiles of these areas, click here.
While most of the migration is going into Sydney, particularly Western Sydney, there are also significant numbers in some regional areas. Some regional cities have been the specific focus of humanitarian migration, so they have some of the emerging smaller population groups which are not present in Sydney. Examples include:
Once the 2011 Census data is released we will get information on all these communities at the local suburb level, and our profile.id subscribers will be able to access information on population change back to 1991, and the full list of over 100 countries of birth for their areas. It will also reveal whether most migrants stay where they initially settle or move substantially into new areas.
.id is a team of demographers, population forecasters, spatial planners, urban economists, and data experts who use a unique combination of online tools and consulting to help governments and organisations understand their local areas. Access our free demographic resources here
Our specialists have deep expertise in demographics and spatial analysis, urban economics, housing research, social research and population forecasting
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