Multicultural Australia Papers DETERMINANTS OF ETHNIC GROUP VITALITY I N AUSTRALIA by ALAN HODGE Alan Hodge is Head of the Multicultural Centre at Sydney College of Advanced Education These Occasional Papers on aspects of Australia’s multicultural society are published to stimulate discussion and dialogue. The 4 r 1 T opinions expressed in these papers need not represent those of the publishers. o il The Clearing House on Migration Issues, 133 Church Street, Richmond, 3121, welcomes contributions to this series from individuals or organisations. MULTICULTURAL Clearing AUSTRALIA PAPERS House Already Published MAP 30 $3*00 RACISM AND EDUCATION: LESSONS FROM BRITAIN on by Jan Pettman MAP 31 $2.50 MIGRANTS IN THEIR HOMELAND: Migration A STUDY OF RE-IMMIGRATION by Ersie Burke MAP 32 $3.00 THE AUSTRALIAN MIGRATION LAW: Issues A TIME FOR CHANGE? by SoA. 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MAP 36 $3 o 50 OFFERS an extensive collection of published and unpublished documents, Australian and overseas periodicals and reprints. IMMIGRATION, CITIZENSHIP AND HUMAN RIGHTS IN AUSTRALIA PUBLISHES by Baden Powell • Migration Action, the only Australian periodical on ethnic relations; • CHOMI-DAS, a quarterly bulletin of documentation and abstracts; • Reprints of articles, papers and reports of interest to the community and selected groups; MAP 37 $3 o 50 • Kits for workshops, seminars, meetings; Bibliographies on selected topics. DETERMINANTS OF ETHNIC GROUP VITALITY IN AUSTRALIA OPEN for consultation by the public during weekdays from 1.00 p.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays to Wednesdays; 1.00 p.m. to by Alan Hodge 7 p.m. Thursdays; 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. Fridays. As space is limited, groups of 4 or more must book in ISBN 909274 15 O advance. A photocopier is available. ISSN 0155-4409 Multicultural Australia Paper no, 37 is published by and available from Clearing House on Migration Issues 133 Church Street, Richmond, Vic., 3121 Phone (03) 428-4948 133 CHURCH STREET l- MOV W t RICHMOND VIC AUSTRALIA 3121 TEL (03) 428 4948 DETERMINANTS OF ETHNIC GROUP VITALITY IN AUSTRALIA For some Australians, the ethnic origin of their forbears is an important feature of their identity, of their sense of self-classification: for many other Australians, the term "ethnicity" is mystifying; they may recognise that we all have an "ethnic" ancestry, but would maintain that".... the idea that one's ethnicity is a major factor in the individual's self-definition is an exaggeration.... Such an interpretation of the term "ethnicity" ignores the distinction (2) very clearly made by Michael Banton, that there are two ethnicities that have different functions and different characteristics. He cites Lloyd Warner's conclusion that in "Yankee City", while immigrants from England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Anglophone Canada did form ethnic groups, only Greek-Americans, Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans, Jewish-Americans, and so on were in fact classified as ethnics. This, Banton says, is one of those mistakes from which subsequent generations can learn: we need to coin two terms and he suggests "majority ethnicity" and "minority ethnicity", to denote the minus one definition of ethnicity by which Vthe dominant group in a society sets the standard by which the others are judged and is not itself judged." Members of a dominant group are thus not aware of their own ethnicity and the extent to which it helps fashion their self-concept. They remain unaware that if the majority group is large enough to occupy a whole territory, it is usually defined in political terms, such as "nation" or "state", and this replaces their need to acknowledge their "majority ethnicity". In Australia, the connotation of "ethnic" has been further distorted by the offical use of "ethnic" in such titles as "Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs", and by popular use in such concepts as "ethnic radio" or "ethnic food". To many Australians, "ethnic" is thus a synonym for "migrant", or "non-Australian", or "pertaining to Australians of non-British origins". The idea that all of us have ethnicity, inescapably through our lines of descent, is discounted in favour of a loose, ill-defined division of Australia's population into "Australians" and "ethnics". How and when an "ethnic" comes to be considered an "Australian" by all other Australians is hard to discern. Even more mysterious is the way in which individuals of like ethnic descent can form associations of like- 2. minded individuals who constitute an "ethnic group". In a culturally diverse society like Australia, it is a study of considerable interest to trace the factors that determine whether parents in an "ethnic group" are able to transmit their sense of "ethnicity" to their children, and whether this ethnicity can in turn be transmitted across subsequent generations. S\ In Language, Ethnicity and Intergroup Relations, an excellent collection _ (3) of papers edited by Howard Giles , we have descriptions of ethnic community contact and interaction in many parts of the world. While these overseas experiences are of importance to us in Australia for purposes of comparison, it is unfortunate that the Australian situation is not discussed in Giles' book. In the final summary chapter, "Towards a theory of language in ethnic group relations," there is a structural analysis of some of the factors that determine a group's ability to retain its sense of ethnic individuality and to transmit this across generations. The ability is termed "ethnolinguistic vitality", and Giles and his fellow authors choose three variables as being of particular potency in determining the likely vitality of a minority group within an ethnolinguistically different host society : status, demography and institutional support. Instructive though this analysis may be, and applicable no doubt to the many countries and minorities that were discussed in the book by the various contributors, it is in many aspects inapplicable to the Australian scene. Some of the factors seen as significant by the authors are definitely not potent in determining the vitality or durability of ethnolinguistic groups in the Australian community; and many variables that seem worthy of analysis because of their obvious relevance to this and other countries are not treated in the chapter. This paper undertakes an application to the Australian setting of such a structural analysis as that devised by Giles and his fellow contributors. We will discuss the three structural variables Status, Demography and Institutional Support against the background of Australian society in the 80s, and treat three other variables that seem to be of particular potency in our society: Aspirations, Cultural Characteristics and Host Society Attitudes. ./3 3. 1 STATUS According to Giles, "the more status a linguistic group is recognised to have, the more vitality it can be said to possess as a collective entity." ( page 309) One surmises that the writers had English-Canadians in mind. They then proceed to speak of economic status of the group, rather than of individuals who constitute the group. This concept is difficult to apply to Australia in any way that is not simplistic; there is no validity in assigning relative status to ethno- linguistic groups as a whole in the Australian community: "Do Turkish- Australians have more status than Macedonian-Australians?" is an unanswerable question. Members of such groups may be seen to have status relative to members of other groups, but we would maintain that this does not necessarily confer vitality or durability on the group as an identifiable entity within the society. In the same way, many descriptions of the class positions of migrants in Australian society make unwarranted assumptions about differences that are due only insignificantly to socioeconomic factors and more importantly can be explained in terms of demographic characteristics of the original migrating generation. In the matter of status, one might take German-Australians as a complex example: as individuals they tend to score highly on such status components as years of education, portable job skills or professional qualifications (4) ; . .................. on arrival, salary levels and similarity in residential distribution to the Australian born. One could deduce from this that a sizeable proportion of the presumed 581 000 persons of German ethnic origin in Australia representing 4.1% of Australia's population, are likely to be of reasonably high status. Yet despite the numbers of Australians of German ethnic origin, and this likely status position, one could not claim that, apart from Barossa and Riverina families, German-Australians constitute a particularly striking example of an enduring