This section summarises the findings of the interviews with stakeholders. A total of 29 interviews were conducted with representatives from: • The Victorian Government and Consul Generals of India and China in
Melbourne;
• Peak educational associations and educational institutions including university, TAFE and private providers;
• Victoria Police members;
• Student unions and associations and ethnic community organisations;
• Youth service providers and community associations from the western suburbs of Melbourne.
This section of the report summarises and describes the findings according to key themes. As a means of clarifying the data, this section is organised around the four broad questions addressed in the interviews. These include:
• What are the safety issues affecting international students and are these different to those affecting students generally? Are there students from particular countries who are less safe than others? • Why does violence against international students occur?
• To what extent is crime against international students motivated by racism as opposed to opportunism?
• What needs to be done to prevent future violence against international students and who is responsible?
The findings are presented within these four key questions. First, the findings are summarised within themes that then shape a broader discussion on the spectrum of views expressed through the interviews. Discussion of safety issues for international students Across the discussion about perceived safety issues facing international students, four main themes can be identified. While there is some overlap between the themes, they can be broadly divided according to the following categories of opinion which shape the discussion and analysis of the findings:
• International students are no more or less safe than anyone else in the community;
• International students are less safe due to structural issues such as housing affordability and financial constraints which lead to a concentration of international students in parts of Melbourne that are less safe and to employment in occupations that exposes them to higher levels of risk to their safety;
• International students are less safe due to their lack of local knowledge, lack of situational awareness, youth and lack of information;
• Safety risks increase in line with ethnic and racial differences. International students are no more or less safe than anyone else in the community: Six of the fourteen interviewees expressed the view that international students are no more or less safe than others in the community. This view was aligned with the belief that Melbourne is generally a safe place and that incidents of violence against students had been sensationalised in the media. Two interviewees believed that, given the growing numbers of international students, it was a statistical probability that there would be an increase in the numbers of violent incidents affecting that population in line with rates of violence in the broader population. What made attacks on international students more visible was increasing media attention and the increased likelihood that international students would report incidents of violence.
We have had assaults happen to our students, we have 6,000 students, and that’s in Melbourne alone, we’ve always had attacks on our students. I’ve been 10 years in this industry and it’s always been around but it’s the awareness of it happening. … I think two things have happened, one is that students are now more likely to report when something has happened than before, which is a good thing. Secondly, because there were a few attacks which gained a lot of media attention…
More broadly, the view was that Melbourne is generally safe but that the individuals in each case of violence were ‘… in the wrong place at the wrong time.’ A concern that was more broadly expressed, however, was that the media attention has sensationalised the issue and that media coverage has contributed to creating a misleading impression about that rate of attacks against international students, out of proportion with the actual incidence of violence.
I have to say I don’t have any knowledge or understanding that the attacks on students of any sort are greater than attacks on anybody else in the community. Having said that, we do hear a bit about it, in the press you know, recently. So I do think that [the issues have been] sensationalised, I just think for every student that might have been bashed, there’s probably five other drunks coming out of King Street nightclubs that got bashed as well. So my feeling is that without the data I can’t say that the problem is – well I can’t even say it’s a problem if you know what I mean.
The general view was that media reports of incidents of violence are often misleading and generate unnecessary fear when the risks of attack or robbery are actually relatively low. In effect, four of the interviewees believed that the issues of safety for international students have been
blown out of proportion and that there is no evidence to suggest that international students are more or less safe than the general community. International students are less safe due to socio-economic issues: Thirteen of the interviewees, including a majority of interviewees from Victoria Police, believed that international students were made more vulnerable than the general population due to broader socio-economic issues and that not all international students faced the same level of threat to their safety. Four inter-related issues included:
• the shortage of, and high cost of, rental accommodation that forces international students to live in areas that are less safe with lower levels of policing;
• the need to work in jobs that require shift work or unsafe working conditions such as taxi driving; and
• the need to use public transport in unsafe areas at unsafe times due to lack of access to private transport options; and
• the perceived exploitation of some international students by unscrupulous landlords and employers that causes these students to take greater risks with their safety in order to reduce the financial constraints of maintaining work, study and living arrangements. The high cost of accommodation and the shortage of rental accommodation in Melbourne is a major issue that was identified as affecting international students. This forces international students to seek accommodation in outlying areas where rent is more affordable, in housing that might not be acceptable to the established population. International students in this situation spend more time on public transport as well as having to live in areas that are characterised as poor and marginalised. housing in the western region of Melbourne was highlighted by two of the interviewees as being risky, although housing in outlying areas in the northern and south eastern regions of Melbourne were also mentioned:
So suddenly the numbers have gone up, currently you’ve got 45,000 Indians in Victoria, the majority lives in the western suburbs or northern suburbs, because the houses are run down. You and me may not rent those houses, but the poor students, they don’t know. They come here to work, study, they just quickly come there, put the pillow down, sleep and go back to work. So the concentration is in these areas, the offenders, they are always there, in every country they are there.
One of the associated risks identified by two of the interviewees was the lower concentration of policing combined with the traditional dominance of Anglo-Australians in these areas:
My understanding is that people who haven’t had a lot of exposure from different cultural backgrounds and very much more in the outer suburbs area, I’ve also heard that’s a link to lower policing areas. The CBD is so heavily policed these days, if anything happened the police would be there very quickly. I think the outer suburbs communities know that where there are less resources things can happen and people often get away with it a bit more.
however, the police saw the issue of suburban concentration slightly differently, placing more emphasis on the situational context of when and
how students are out in public in various suburbs rather than on locale or suburban concentration alone:
I really think that having access to a vehicle is one of the key factors…. [As is taking] the last train on your own, [walking around] battler-type suburbs …Walk[ing] home on your own....
As one senior officer noted:
Most of our assaults have occurred where the student goes to university during the day, has a job that keeps them at work quite late, they then catch transport home quite late; they’re safe until they come off the station, that’s when they’re walking from the station to their accommodation, wherever that may be, that the assaults appear to be occurring.
A related risk stems from international students’ vulnerability to exploitation by unscrupulous landlords or migration agents who overcharge for sub-standard accommodation, therefore magnifying the need to work longer hours and travel long distances.
Again, their housing; they are open to exploitation by rogue landlords because they don’t have much money, they’re not aware or not able to access the same kind of support networks that Australians are, so that makes them vulnerable to landlords who want to put 12 of them in a bedroom and charge them exorbitant rent.
Another closely related set of factors were identified by stakeholders, including that such housing is located near train lines or public transport routes that are less safe and that international students are travelling at unsafe times, due to the type of employment necessary in order for them to survive in Melbourne. Much of this employment in itself is risky and exploitative. All these factors combine to increase the risk of crime victimisation:
…these people will get low paid jobs, they don’t have much money, which means they end up working the jobs that Australians don’t want to do, they end up working night shifts in supermarkets, being taxi drivers, doing all these things, which means they have to catch public transport home late at night. Their residence is fairly spread around Melbourne but they end up living in areas of higher crime.
An important and inter-related issue raised by one interviewee is the relationship between social exclusion and having limited housing options. The view was that existing housing shortages in Melbourne meant that students are more likely to be co-located with others from their home country, thereby limiting opportunities to learn about and be involved with the local Australian community. This has implications for the general student experience, but it also has safety implications due to international students’ restricted access to the additional resources that increased social capital might bring:
What’s happening is they tend to stay with and live with people from not just the same state, but the same village. They’re not mixing outside, they have very little knowledge of what life is really like in Australia. They’ve been misled about what was going to happen when they got here.
Financial vulnerability, the pressures this imposes and the risks it creates for international students was a key theme for all stakeholders from Victoria Police. One interviewee from this stakeholder group expressed concern that while visa systems were in place that requires international students to deposit sufficient funds in Australia to support them during their studies, there is no guarantee that those funds will not either be returned home or repaid immediately if they were obtained as a loan to meet the visa requirements:
Anecdotally, we hear that it’s all too common that as soon as [the students] get here, they actually send that [money] back. … If it was loaned….understandably, there would be some pressure [to return those funds quickly]
Overall, a major theme across the interviews was that the safety problems facing international students have to be seen in their socio- economic context. Being an international student alone does not increase risks to safety. The important factors are access to social and financial resources. Those people who are low on both financial and social capital are more vulnerable due to limited accommodation, transport and employment options. In other words, the narrower the options, the greater there is a greater risk of exploitation and violence. As one interviewee from Victoria Police put it:
Without [enough money to live on], they’re stuck; they’re in a very difficult situation. It means that they become desperate for money. Through that desperation they become vulnerable to exploitation, and that is the most critical link in all of this for international students.
International students are less safe due to lack of local knowledge, youth and lack of information.
A closely related and often overlapping theme with the socio-economic and structural risk factors discussed above was that international students are less safe than others due to their status as newcomers, their relative naivety and youth and their limited information and knowledge about what it means to live in Melbourne. A key factor identified by stakeholders was the difference between students used to life in a large, cosmopolitan city and those who came from rural or regional backgrounds.
The vulnerability of young people was particularly highlighted by interviewees who were engaged in youth services. Young people generally were identified as being at greater risk of crime due to their stage of transition to adult life and their greater public visibility, behaviours and patterns of employment, transport, study and housing. Ethnic and racial difference was also seen as a safety risk factor, with those most different from an Anglo-Celtic norm identified as being the most vulnerable. For international students, the dangerous implications of difference are exacerbated in part by their status as the new ‘outsiders’ to the existing local and often multi-ethnic youth cultures in the areas where international students are now living. One youth worker compared the presence of new international students to the migration of wildebeest in East Africa, where those who are vulnerable are invariably attacked by ‘opportunistic’ larger animals. This was considered by the interviewee to be an accurate analogy for new and young international
students who wander onto the ‘turf’ of more established youth cultures. Indian students were highlighted as particularly vulnerable due to the perception by local young people that they are wealthy and will carry cash and expensive electronic equipment:
And now I’m telling you right now first hand that a couple of the kids that I know working on the ground with kids for seven years and a couple of the kids who have been involved in things like street fights and all that, they know this for a fact that Indian students are getting attacked because of material possession that they have. Indian students, usually students carry a laptop in your bag, now someone stole a laptop, if someone grabbed your laptop and with an expensive laptop $1,000 and they sold it for $300, that’s good money for them. So things like that.
More generally, a number of the interviewees pointed to the fact that most international students are simply naïve young people who are particularly vulnerable when they arrive in Australia due to their inexperience settling in a new country without their families close by. Those students who were inexperienced in living in large cities were seen to be particularly at risk. As one interviewee put it,
‘... I don’t know how they would cope in New Delhi let alone coming fresh from the village to Melbourne ...’
Lack of situational awareness in and about living in Melbourne on the part of international students was seen as a highly relevant factor for Victoria Police members in particular. This in turn is linked, as other interviewees have noted above, with the contrasting backgrounds of some international students who may come from rural areas in their home countries into a relatively dense metropolitan environment and as a result are less familiar with the environmental risks that can characterise densely populated urban settings. As one officer noted:
I think probably through lack of knowledge, and in some cases naiveté… they tend to expose themselves to risks in a different way to people who are locals. I think they’re less safe because they actually put themselves in situations where they’re likely to come across danger [through lack of situational awareness]. …
A critically important theme that parallels the issue of what international students lack when they arrive in Australia by way of local knowledge, situational awareness and accurate information, however, is what frameworks and understandings of safety and risk they do have and bring with them from their own local backgrounds and experience. A key theme emerging across interviews with Victoria Police members is the need to develop a greater understanding of how international students from different cultural backgrounds evaluate what it means to feel safe, and how important cultural frames of reference around what constitutes safety, or lack of safety, in environmental terms may be to enhanced strategies for community safety for international students when they come to study and live in Australia. As one officer observed:
I guess what I think is when they’re in their own culture they know how to deal with their own culture... So when they are home and they know how to deal with their own environment, they come over here and it would be like....it’s just this wonderful country and surely nothing bad will happen to me here. ... So I think they do let their guard down from this
unrealistic expectation that...very little crime happens here [relative to their home country].
Another police member noted,
If you come from an environment where – well, actually, I was going to say it’s about....the general basics of how to look after yourself [in an environment like Melbourne] and some may not have had that, they may not have needed it back in their own country. I don’t know what their environment [back home], you know....
Lack of, or misleading, pre-arrival information about life in Australia was also seen as a major contributing factor to international student safety issues. There were various views expressed about why this was the case. One interviewee expressed the view that official Australian information is not simple or accessible enough, making it relatively easy for migration