Challenging Racism: The Anti-Racism Research Project

A Project of the University of Western Sydney and Macquarie University

INTRODUCTION

In 1998, a research Project team was initiated on the geography of racism in NSW. The team of Chief Investigators now includes Professor Kevin Dunn (Geography, UWS), Associate Professor Jim Forrest (Geography, Macquarie) and Associate Professor Rogelia Pe-Pua (Social Science and Policy, UNSW).

In 2001 a database on racist attitudes was collected, using a telephone survey (5056 sample), funded by an Australia Research Council (ARC) Large Grant. A key finding from the Racism project is that while racism is quite prevalent in Australian society its occurrences differ from place to place. These variations have been largely overlooked by anti-racism campaigns in Australia. The findings show that most Australians recognise that racism is a problem in society. Racist attitudes are positively associated with age, non-tertiary education, and to a slightly lesser extent with those who do not speak a language other than English, the Australia-born, and with males.  The database was extended in 2006 with a reproduction of the survey by VicHealth. A sample of 4016 drawn from Victoria adds to the previous NSW/QLD findings.

Between January - March 2006 a new database was collected, funded by a second ARC Discovery Project Grant. The telephone survey (sample 4020) provides a sense of the types of racism experienced, covering forms of racist talk, unfair treatment, exclusion and attack. Respondents were also asked questions on how they felt after a racist experience, what they did about it, how frequently they experienced forms of racism and where this happened. The second database covers all of Australia's states and territories, except Tasmania. The data is currently being analysed but early findings are listed under the Publications list of this website.

In May 2007 the work on racism in Australia was further encouraged by an ARC Linkage Grant awarded to A/Prof Kevin Dunn, Prof Loosemore and Dr Phua of the University of NSW. The four year project is entitled Managing cultural diversity on Australian construction sites and involves collaborating organisations such as Multiplex Construction, Mirvac Group and the Construction, Forestry, Mining, and Energy Union.

Surveys have been commissioned to gather further data from Victoria, South Australia and the Australian Capital Territory. VicHealth has released a report on the 2006 Victoria survey (nr=4016). In September 2007 a further survey was conducted across SA and ACT (n= 1484 and n= 454 respectively). These were commissioned by the Equal Opportunity Commission (SA) and the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (ACT). The Human Rights Commission (ACT) also funded 50% of the costs of the ACT survey. The ACT/SA survey included questions on anti-racism legislation, as well as national and state anti-discrimination agencies. Participants' awareness of the function of anti-racism agencies and the Racial Discrimination Act were surveyed.

In late September 2007 funding for a Linkage Project 'Constructing regionally appropriate anti-racism strategies for Australia' was also announced by the Australian Research Council. The Project will be funded for three years from 2008. Our official partners to the grant are:

Our aims are to:

Work is currently underway to generate typologies for South Australia. Regions are being grouped using the entropy method for classification. Results will be made available on this website.

Meanwhile, a further survey was conducted across the states of Western Australia (n=851), Tasmania (n=351) and the Northern Territory (n=300). This survey was sponsored by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship. We now have a combined data set covering the whole nation. 

This website includes various data sets on racist attitudes, incidences and experiences. The website data sets are arranged by Statistical Districts (and Sub-Statistical Districts within Sydney and Brisbane) and include ethnicity data (birthplace, language spoken, and indigenous status) as drawn from the 2001 ABS Census. The findings of our research have appeared in numerous formats, including articles and conference papers. Some of these publications are presented as pdfs for your use. Our hope is that these data and publications will assist federal, state and local governments, and also local communities, in the development of anti-racism strategies.

• Project History