Dr Apollo S Nsubuga-Kyobe – long standing board member of the Ethnic Council of Shepparton and District – gave one presentation at the FECCA 2019 Conference on the topic of Regional Youth Settlement: Dichotomies, Challenges, and Opportunities, North East Victoria –Shepparton Case Study.
As Western countries have been implementing dispersal policies to direct migrants to regional/rural/remote areas on the grounds of burden sharing and regional development, increasingly, they have settled in regional Australia either of their own accord or through the government’s settlement programme (Regional Settlement Institute, Canberra, 2018). Notable, migrants themselves are increasingly targeting rural destinations that promise easier access to employment and a quieter life than large cosmopolitan cities could offer. Some experience of settling in regional Australia advances dichotomies and challenges, this paper explores case studies from North East Victoria- Shepparton; views on drawbacks in sociocultural transformation. Openness to cultural diversity as an important role at the new regional site impacts the migrants’ youth, causing dichotomies and challenge undermining the opportunities for socio-economic advancement and compensational advantages.
- As families settling in regional Australia are stabilising and their youth going to school, they attempt to assimilate/integrate relating to mainstream, thus, at times parents tend to view their children as disappearing away from the families and is believed in –lost sheep.
- Regional mainstream societies tend to be closed societies, thus not easily taking in the new arrivals ways of life –viewed as alien (not easily brought in).
- With the spirit of the parents wishing their children to achieve as much in the new land, (may be such is the reasons for the parents’ sacrificing to come to Australia and settle in the regions), this tend to get parents push their children to aim high for the achievements (dichotomy, -challenge, -opportunity). This would be occurring within/among polarised youth grappling with sustaining own family cultural values and pressures against the assimilations/integration).
- Some parents may push so hard arguing that they left their country for better life, thus, they would like to see the children failing and becoming detached in this new country (Caitlin Nunn et al.)
- As the youth tend to believe that they are well amercing and assimilating into the mainstream live styles, with improved language English accents, this may not imply being well taken into the closed societies. Generally, the world out-there is not mutual and friendly as some would presume, and blending into new societies takes time (Emmanuel, 2019). Through case studies’ approach of African Australians, this paper explores ways and best strategies of well settling youth in regional Australia.
Adaptation from “Attachment Theory” and “Ubuntu Philosophy” may provide some solutions to the problems.
