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Session D2: Settlement patterns and processes

1.Nicholas Biddle: Disaggregating the urban Indigenous population: the processes and impacts of residential segregation

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Abstract

More than three quarters of the Indigenous Australian population live in urban or regional Australia. However, there is a large degree of residential segregation with those Indigenous Australians who live in urban centres substantially more likely to live in neighbourhoods with relatively few non-Indigenous Australians. Furthermore, those urban neighbourhoods that Indigenous Australians are concentrated in are more likely to have poor employment prospects, low education attendance, poor quality housing and low levels of volunteering. This paper documents the level of residential segregation and socioeconomic concentration of Indigenous Australians in large urban centres. It also looks at some of the processes that impact on changes in segregation patterns including inter and intra-urban migration. The final part of the paper considers the implications of the results for the outcomes of Indigenous Australians in urban Australia and the prospects of meeting the ‘closing the gap’. The potentially positive aspects of residential segregation are considered, however the paper also discusses the role of segregation in entrenching socioeconomic disadvantage and the development of negative stereotypes.

Author bio:

Dr. Nicholas Biddle is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research (CAEPR) at the Australian National University (ANU). He has a Bachelor of Economics (Hons.) from the University of Sydney and a Master of Education from Monash University. He also has a PhD in Public Policy from the ANU where he wrote his thesis on the benefits of and participation in education of Indigenous Australians. Nicholas is currently working on a three year study funded by the Ministerial Council for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs looking at population and socio-economic dynamics. He previously held a Senior Research Officer and Assistant Director position in the Methodology Division of the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

2. John Taylor: Indigenous urbanisation: real or imagined?

Full paper | Audio | Video | Slideshow pdf 769KB

Abstract

In demographic terms, the process of urbanisation is marked by an increasing concentration of population in towns and cities and a concomitant decline in rural residence. From this perspective, the Indigenous population of Australia has experienced rapid urbanisation since the middle of the last century due to the combined effects of migration from rural areas, natural increase and increased census identification. This paper charts this rise in Indigenous urbanisation and attempts to establish the contribution made by different components of growth. It finds that social processes associated with enumeration and out-marriage now contribute more to urbanisation than spatial processes involving migration.

Author Bio:

John Taylor is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research at the Australian National University and a member of the Australian Population Association. For the past 20 years he has been engaged in applied research on the measurement and policy implications of demographic and socio-economic change among Indigenous Australians at varying scales of analysis from the local to the regional and national. He has published widely on these issues in Australian and international books and journals. He currently heads a MCATSIA-sponsored research team at CAEPR involved in regional analysis of Indigenous population trends.

3. Evelyn Peters: Harlem on the Prairies? Aboriginal residential settlement patterns in Canadian cities, 1996-2006

Full paper | Audio | Video | Slideshow pdf 199KB

Abstract

About one half of Canada’s Aboriginal peoples live in urban areas, and urbanization rates have increased steadily since the early 1950s. At the turn of the century, policy makers and academic researchers expressed concerns that Aboriginal people would concentrate in inner city areas and create ghettos like those found in some US cities. These concerns have not evaporated and media reports frequently refer to urban areas with relatively high concentrations of Aboriginal people as ghettos. However indices measuring Aboriginal segregation are consistently low to moderate. This paper explores changes over a decade in Aboriginal settlement patterns in prairie cities that have large Aboriginal populations evaluating concerns about segregation. The paper also describes some Aboriginal residents’ view about issues of ghettoization and explores some of the demographic factors that are behind these patterns.

Author bio:

Evelyn Peters received a Ph.D. from Queen's University (1989), specializing in urban social geography. She held a faculty position at Queen's University for ten years before moving to the University of Saskatchewan as a Canada Research Chair. She teaches and conducts research on urban topics, focusing in particular on issues concerning urban First Nations and Métis communities.