Overseas migration streams

Net overseas migration (NOM) appears to be the biggest contributor to NT population growth outside of natural increase, but there has been relatively little research done on overseas migration patterns to the Northern Territory. Dr Kate Golebiowska is our leading researcher in this area, with a PhD looking at regional international migration in Canada and Australia. Kate has been doing some work on how different patterns of overseas migration to the NT may be to patterns experienced in the rest of Australia. This work is the foundation for what research agenda we might then usefully pursue. Kate has found two interesting issues worthy of further investigation – a relatively high level of ‘temporary’ migration, and a substantially different mix of family, skilled, and refugee in-migrants than experienced in Australia overall.

 

Overseas migration broadly comes from two sources – ‘permanent’ migrants and ‘long term’ migrants who are on temporary visas of twelve months or more. Although total NOM figures are published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, details of long-term arrivals and long-term departures for States and Territories are not. Figuring out the contribution of long-term migration requires matching the total NOM figures (ABS) with the permanent arrivals and departures published by the Department of Immigration. Kate’s calculations suggest that between 2001-02 and 2005-06 the net long-term movements in the NT represented between 55.4 per cent and 84.1 per cent of NOM.  Long-term movement therefore contributes more to NOM than the permanent movement. This pattern adds to the transient nature of the NT population overall with a transient (and predictably transient) immigrant population.

 

A more detailed understanding of the character of the permanent (settler) migration in the Territory can be obtained by looking at the recent composition of the migration streams. The three largest streams are family migration, skilled migration and humanitarian migration (including refugees and so on). The graph shows the proportion of immigrants to Australia and NT by each stream for years 2001 – 2006.

 

The composition of international migration in NT differs from that Australia-wide in all three principal streams. A striking difference can be observed in the percentage contribution of the family stream in the NT and in Australia – it has been decreasing but it remains still higher in the Territory than in Australia in 2005-06. While in the former, the skill stream has represented the largest and generally growing proportion of the settler arrivals, in the NT it has represented the second largest contributor, but with much lower proportions. The 2005-06 may mark the beginning of a slow convergence towards the national trends though with the skill stream’s contribution at 35 per cent and (still behind that of Australia as a whole) the family stream’s contribution decreasing to 30 per cent. Finally, the humanitarian entrants have recently represented a higher proportion of all settler arrivals in the Territory than their proportion has been in settler arrivals for the whole of Australia. Continued monitoring of these trends warrants attention as they may indicate that a revision of migrant support services is needed (family, humanitarian streams), or that the Territory needs to attract skilled migrants (professionals, business people) more vigorously.

We need to understand the reasons why these patterns have emerged, and their consequences for the Northern Territory – policy implications, economic implications (like workforce planning) and social and cultural implications. There is a lot of work to do in our international migration research…