Research Update – Monitoring community attitudes toward refugee settlement in Armidale, NSW, 2018-2020.
In 2017, Armidale NSW became a new refugee resettlement location under the Humanitarian Settlement Program. Around 650 Ezidis settled in Armidale from March 2018 to March 2020, when new arrivals were paused due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Armidale refugee resettlement program offers an opportunity to study a regional community’s response to refugee resettlement in Australia. While there have been many studies of refugees’ resettlement in Australia’s major centres and regional communities, very few studies have closely examined the receiving community’s response. However, the success of refugee resettlement goes both ways. It requires mutual positive relations between refugees and the receiving community, and the receiving community’s responses to the newcomers form an important contextual element of refugee resettlement. The well-being of both is entwined as refugees become part of the fabric of the receiving community.
At the beginning of the refugee resettlement program, the University of New England (UNE), in partnership with Settlement Services International (SSI), initiated research to gauge community attitudes to refugees arriving in Armidale empirically. The University of Newcastle then joined the study in 2019. To date, we have conducted five surveys to assess host community attitudes, concerns, and responses to the refugees during the first three years of their settlement. The results of Surveys 1-3 were provided in our 2019 report titled “Monitoring community attitudes toward refugee settlement in Armidale, NSW.”[i] The current paper is a research update on that report and provides the key results of Surveys 4 and 5.
Methodology
Five surveys were conducted in the first three years of settlement, in April 2018 (Baseline), September 2018 (Survey 2), February 2019 (Survey 3), October 2019 (Survey 4), and November 2020 (Survey 5). Each survey drew a new sample of 200 community members via a random dialling telephone survey. Quotas were set for age and gender to match the community profile. There was high participation in the study. Over 90% of people contacted in Surveys 1, 2, 4, and 5 agreed to the telephone interview, and 85% in Survey 3.
Surveys 4 and 5 also re-interviewed 153 (Survey 4) and 167 (Survey 5) participants from the earlier surveys. This allowed us to examine whether changes observed at the community level from one survey to the next were also occurring within individuals.
Findings
Key markers of community sentiment
The initial attitudes towards the refugees (on a scale of 0 to 100, where 0 = extremely unfavourable, and 100 = extremely favourable) coming to Armidale were positive, starting with an average rating of 69/100 and increasing to 76/100 in Surveys 4 and 5 (Fig. 1). This increase in positivity over time was statistically significant.
Fig. 1.
Consistent with the more positive attitudes in Surveys 1 to 5, concern (on a scale of 1-5, where 1 = not concerned at all, and 5 = very concerned) about the impact of refugees coming to Armidale decreased significantly across the surveys.
Fig. 2
Community attitudes segmentation
According to their survey responses, cluster analysis was used to divide the Armidale community into groups of like-minded people. The same set of indicators was used for each survey, and in each case, the Armidale community was divided into four groups. At Baseline and in Survey 2, we labelled the groups “Enthusiastic,” “Positive,” “Concerned,” and “Resistant.” The “Enthusiastic” and “Positive” groups formed the majority, while the “Concerned” and “Resistant” groups formed the minority.
Survey 3 produced a different ‘best fit’ solution. Consistent with the more positive attitudes shown in that survey, the cluster analysis identified a new group with extremely positive attitudes. We labelled this group “Champions.” The “Positive” and “Enthusiastic” groups were still present. A fourth group that formed just 20% of the sample was labelled “Resistant/Concerned” (an amalgamation of two group labels from Baseline and Survey 2). Thus, the Survey 3 solution produced the following groups: “Champions,” “Enthusiastic,” “Positive,” “Resistant/Concerned.”
Fig. 3
The same clusters were present in Survey 4, but the “Champions” group expanded to 41% of the sample. However, the community responses were more tempered in Survey 5. The Survey 5 cluster solution reverted to that observed in Surveys 1 and 2, but with an expanded “Enthusiastic” group that comprised 49% of respondents. Together, the Survey 5 “Resistant” and “Concerned” groups made up just 20% of respondents. The “Resistant” group was tiny, with only nine respondents, but these people had very negative attitudes (for example, their average thermometer rating was 6/100).
Other trends in community sentiment over time
The surveys were designed to provide successive snapshots of community sentiment, allowing us to examine trends in community sentiment during the first three years of refugee resettlement. The samples were very similar in terms of demographics, with no differences in age, gender, level of education, employment profile, or financial circumstances. Each survey also included a similar proportion of people with a migrant background or close family members who were migrants. (I NEED TO CHECK THIS FOR SURVEYS 4 AND 5)
We tested for trends from Baseline to Survey 5. As well as the results shown above, the following statistically significant (i.e., non-random) results were found:
- Ratings of others’ attitudes (scale from 0 to 100): Participants rated other people’s attitudes about the refugees coming to Armidale significantly more positively in Survey 5 than in the Baseline survey. In all surveys, participants rated other people’s attitudes lower than the community average. This was exaggerated among people with negative attitudes, whereby the more negative the person’s attitude, the more negatively they rated the overall community attitude.
- Participants reported significantly more contact with refugees in Surveys 4 and 5 to previously (Fig. 4). This indicates increasing mixing of the refugees with the community. Furthermore, the average reporting of contact was positive (Fig. 5).
Figs. 4 and 5
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- On a measure of “behavioural tendencies,” Survey 5 participants (average = 3.97/5) were less willing than Survey 4 participants (average = 4.4/5) to support the refugees’ businesses or share leisure time with them. We suspect that this is because of the pandemic, with many people staying at home during 2020 and seldom visiting businesses or mixing outside the household. On another measure, willingness to volunteer time to assist the refugees was stable in Surveys 3, 4, and 5.
Reasons for rating of concern
Respondents were asked to explain the reason for their rating of the question, “Do you have any concerns about the impact of refugees coming to Armidale?” (please note that some people indicated no concern at all). In the first three surveys, the most frequent reasons related to jobs (whether there would be enough jobs for refugees and a sense of ‘competition’ with refugees for jobs) and concern about whether Armidale has enough support services for refugees. In Surveys 4 and 5, the number of comments about jobs was much less than in the earlier surveys. Similarly, the number of comments about Armidale’s resources for the refugees reduced in Surveys 4 and 5. Furthermore, mentions about experiences of positive contact with the refugees increased in Survey 5 compared with the other surveys. Negative comments about the refugees’ integration were fewer in Surveys 4 and 5 than in the earlier surveys.
Perceived culture adoption/maintenance
A new measure in Survey 5 asked about the extent to which the refugees are (i) adopting Australian ways and (ii) maintaining their traditional ways. Responses to refugees’ culture adoption correlated with several indicators, including how positive contact with the refugees was (correlation = .51), attitudes towards the refugees (correlation = .47), and behavioural tendencies to the refugees (correlation = .40). On the other hand, perceptions that the refugees maintain their original culture did not correlate with any other measures. This illustrates how important perceptions of the refugees’ integration are to the community.
Longitudinal results
We re-interviewed participants from the earlier surveys to establish if the trends over time observed in the successive “snapshot” surveys described above could be observed within individuals. This would show us whether individuals’ attitudes were changing. Survey 4 re-interviewed 153 participants from the three earlier surveys, and Survey 5 re-interviewed 167 participants from the four earlier surveys. Seventy-six participants completed an initial survey (either Survey 1, 2, or 3) and both longitudinal waves. These people were placed into two groups according to whether they were initially in one of the positive or negative clusters in the audience segmentation. The results showed significant improvements over time in attitudes for the negative group, but not the positive group. On average, the negative group members’ attitudes and estimates of others’ attitudes became significantly more positive over time, and their concerns decreased over time. On the other hand, the positive group started positive and remained positive on each of these measures.
The results of the longitudinal surveys corroborate the “snapshot” surveys, which each recruited a new sample. This is because the differences observed from one snapshot survey to another are also present in the within-individual changes, showing that individuals’ responses to the refugees have changed. Using this triangulation of methods allows us to draw firmer conclusions. The cross-sectional “snapshot” surveys provided a representative sample but couldn’t demonstrate that individuals’ attitudes were changing. There is a self-selection bias in longitudinal surveys that can impact sample representativeness, but conclusions can be drawn about within-subject changes. That we found a similar pattern of results increases confidence that Armidale attitudes to the Ezidi refugees generally started out positive and became more so.
Sue Watt, School of Psychology, University of New England
Tadgh McMahon, Trina Soulos, Settlement Services International
Stefania Paolini, University of Newcastle
June 2021
[i] Watt, S., McMahon, T., & Soulos, T. (2019). Monitoring community attitudes towards refugee settlement in Armidale, NSW. University of New England/Settlement Services International.
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