People and Place
Australian Forum for Population Studies, Monash University
Subscriptions $25 (Australia), $30 (overseas)
Reviewed by Jeremy Smith
A new journal publishes research on migration patterns, labour markets, the urban sprawl and the environment. People and Place is a product of the Centre for Population and Urban Research at Monash University.
The contributions to the first edition are quite scant in their detail and say very little about the nature of the research program of the recently established Australian Forum for Population Studies. Even more disturbing is the fact that the political implications of much of the analysis in this first offering are hidden in a series of highly compressed articles.
Many of the topics broached are of enormous interest. Demographic predictions for Australia, labour market movements, the status of temporary residents, rates of unemployment amongst the most recently arrived immigrants, poverty and public housing and the spectre for Bill Clinton of a flood of Haitian refugees are issues which all get an airing.
Much of the data presented and some of the analysis are useful. In particular, tables demonstrating various scenarios of Australia's population growth and the numbers of new migrants falling victim to Australia's worsening unemployment can help to shed light on debates over immigration, economy and ecology. Some of the analysis even suggests (albeit remotely) that these issues interact in more complex ways than may appear at first sight.
However, much of the promise, or perhaps potential, of these studies is unfulfilled. Brevity could be blamed — most contributions barely breach the 1500 word barrier — but the problem appears to be more fundamental.
Much of the research collapses complex phenomena into a simplistic, narrow and politically convenient empiricism. This can be seen most readily in papers by Katherine Betts, Bob Birrell (the editors) and Charles Price.
Betts' examination of the problem of Haitian refugees has two strengths. First, it looks at the racist treatment of Haitians within the framework of US immigration laws. Second, it gives a broad history of refugee flight from the Caribbean. But it is not broad enough on two counts.
It glosses over the Bush administration's lame duck approach to the overthrow of the democratically elected regime of Jean Bertrand Aristide. This complicity with the military coup which initiated the refugee exodus created the problems facing the Clinton administration now. Also, Betts states that Clinton's promise that all refugees would receive a fair hearing over their asylum claims "heightened" the rstates the importance of the crisis in Haiti to the refugee problem on the US south-east coast.
Bob Birrell's analysis of unemployment and recent immigrants reveals similar explanatory blind spots. The evidence that he has gathered demonstrates that recent arrivals are experiencing unemployment at incredibly high rates, especially those from non-English speaking backgrounds. However, little explanation is offered as to why unemployment has worsened for these migrants.
Underlying Birrell's analysis is a polemic with other, left-wing, immigration researchers, notably Robert Ackland and Lynne Williams, over the effect of immigration on economic performance and unemployment. Against Ackland and Williams, Birrell suggests that, in the current climate, immigration would exacerbate Australia's high levels of unemployment. Yet this is never explicitly spelled out; rather, it is an implied political conclusion around which the research is structured.
Charles Price's piece on "ethnic intermixture" in Australia is simply mediocre. His concern is the prevention of Australia's slide into a nation of "warring tribes". As in Birrell's article, the political conclusions are submerged in a sea of empirical data; the connotation, however, is that the loss of ethnic identity amongst migrants is a necessity if we are to avoid the conflicts of eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Underscoring his analysis is a highly simplistic and ahistorical understanding of ethnic conflicts.
Generally, the problematic elements of these three essays sum up much of what is wrong with People and Place. Its research program is designed around right-wing views of immigration which produce a very limited picture of what is actually going on.
These views remain buried within the arguments themselves, which lends the research the veneer of objectivity necessary to give it a politically innocuous appearance. However, the arguments still lead the unsuspecting reader to conservative conclusions, with few alternative explanations even considered.
Not only is this poor sociology; it is politically misleading, even arrogant. Many of the issues canvassed are, in fact, extremely complex. However, they are presented in the framework of simple models from which only conservative results can be drawn.
In the debates around the relationship of environment, economy and immigration, the complexity of late capitalism has been suppressed in the arguments of anti-immigration greens. People and Place will not broaden their horizons a great deal and, for most of us, it will shed little light on the real issues.