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As discussed in Section Two, a key focus of this research was to explore the causes of violence against international students and the extent to which violence is motivated by racism as against opportunism. This is largely in response to the polarised public debate that has arisen in response to the reported incidents of violence against Indian students in particular which we discuss in Section Two. In order to explore this, each of the research methods canvassed views and opinions about this issue as well as international student experiences of racism. As reported in Section Five, there was a similar disjuncture about the causes of violence between the views and opinions expressed by stakeholders and international students. With some exceptions, most stakeholders interviewed attributed the causes of violence primarily to opportunism and believed that perpetrators of crime are alienated uneducated young men who seek to inflict violence against others either for ‘fun’, in order to steal property, or to develop enhanced reputation, ‘street cred’ or status amongst their peers. A key theme arising from the interviews was that socio-economic and situational factors contribute to international student vulnerability to violent crime, meaning that international students were more likely to be ‘in the wrong place and the wrong time’.

however, police interviewees also contributed the view that at least some of this violence is what they termed ‘expressive’ – that is, young male offenders who themselves feel alienated or disenfranchised are trying to say something through the commission of violent crimes against others. This may reflect the offender’s own sense of social disadvantage or powerlessness, and needs to be understood in tandem with the focus on opportunism and elements of ethnic and racial targeting in such attacks. Moreover, the image of the hardened, ‘alienated’ young male offender is at odds with police knowledge on offender profiles specifically in relation to international student attacks. One Victoria Police member commented,

A lot of the perpetrators of these crimes are sort of cleanskins, they’re young, they’re adolescent, they don’t tend to have a record, and they’re not necessarily hardened criminals.

Student naivety and behaviours were also a major contributing factor in crimes against international students. Similarly, most domestic student respondents to the student survey attributed the violence to opportunism. In contrast, the evidence from the student survey and interviews suggest otherwise. Key findings to support this included that almost half (49.9%) of international student respondents report experiencing threats to safety that have a racist element including verbal abuse, physical intimidation, robbery or physical attack. Disturbingly, a small proportion of domestic student survey respondents expressed vehemently racist

views in relation to international students lending some support to the international student perspective. International student interviewees also attribute racism as the most important cause of violence and that racist abuse as being part of the violent incident and that robbery was a minor factor in the reported crimes. A theme that arose particularly from the international student interviews was also that police responses to crime against international students were widely perceived as being inadequate, unhelpful and/or incompetent. There were also claims of directly racist treatment by Police. It was also clear that international student survey respondents were much more reliant on official sources of support when their safety is threatened than their domestic student counterparts.

To reiterate from the earlier discussion, this research does not identify definitive conclusions about the causes of violence, nor would we suggest that there is one simple explanation. Rather, our understanding is that the causes of violence are highly complex, situational and are an outcome of the combination of individual circumstances combined with broader social processes. Similarly, we are aware of the limitations of available crime data and the extent to which the role of racism and ethnicity can be attributed to any one case. Addressing these gaps in data is an important priority in itself. At the same time, the disjuncture between the views of stakeholders and domestic students on the one hand, and the experiences of racism reported by international students on the other, fit with theoretical explanations of the workings of racism. In particular, theories of ‘racism denial’ are resonant here. There is no evidence of explicit discrimination on the part of the decision makers and the service providers we spoke to (although examples of ‘race hate’ were expressed by some domestic students). Rather, there was a wide inability to recognise that racism is a factor in the broader community safety context. The dominant view is that issues of violence are an outcome of the interrelationship between broader social pressures and the behaviours of international students themselves. In contrast, evidence reported by international students suggests that their lived experience includes dealing with racist threats and that this has an impact on their capacity to feel safe. This is effectively unacknowledged by many of the stakeholders.

As discussed earlier, racism denial is elusive and difficult to quantify. There is a dearth of research on the experiences of targets of racism. To reiterate, racism denial is actually often seen as common sense, benign in its intent and shaped by context. There is no simple expression of racism denial but rather a combination of often contradictory practices, expressions and beliefs that play out differently, with different effects in different contexts. Evidence of this belief in ‘common sense’ and contradictory beliefs were found throughout the stakeholder interviews. While most stakeholders were clear in their concern for international student safety, a key theme was the belief that the victims became targets due to their youth, appearance as appearing unable to defend themselves or that they took risks that made them vulnerable. At the same time, contradictory views that could be interpreted as racist in themselves were expressed by the same interviewees. Some of the comments made by stakeholders were of particular concern given that they express a view that is tolerant or accepting of a degree of violence on the basis that it has always happened. More generally, however,

the views that contribute to racism denial were those that were based on stereotypical views of international students and their behaviours such as,

…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.

This quote is intended as an example of the difficulty in ‘pinning down’ the construction of race denial and its effects. The statement is no doubt true in some places, and there was no intent on the part of the interviewee to be patronising or racist. At the same time, the beliefs underlying this statement fail to account for the diversity of students and their circumstances, the reasons why it might be the case that some international students might ‘stick together’ and the potential role that students’ relative sense of safety in Australia might play in their clustering together. It also emphasises the responsibility of students to ‘make an effort’ rather than highlighting the role of perpetrators or the conditions in which violence arises. The role of fear or a sense of exclusion from the local environment is likely to at least partly explain why some students choose to live with people they know from their home country and the literature discussed in Section Three as well as the evidence gathered through the student survey would support this. Results from the student survey showed that more than one-third of student survey respondents (36%) believed that Melbourne was ‘somewhat unsafe’, ‘unsafe’ or ‘very unsafe’ for international students. This suggests that a large proportion of international students fear for their safety – a suggestion that is further supported by the international student interviews where one quarter of the interviewees had been the victim of violence and a further 32 per cent had been close to someone who had experienced violence. Of more direct relevance to this question, is that the lived experience of racism is clearly a major contributing factor to this fear. As reported earlier, more than one-third (34%) of student interview respondents who said they had experienced threats to their safety said that there was a racist element to that threat. What this evidence clearly indicates is that, while we cannot be definitive about the causes of all violent crimes that have occurred, racist motivations are an important dimension of why violence occurs. More broadly, racism impacts on the extent to which international students feel safe whether or not they have been victims of violence themselves. As discussed, however, violence is situational and the socio-economic conditions in Melbourne create the context for potential violence. While not articulated to the same degree by students, a key theme in the stakeholder responses was about the extent that housing shortages, strains on public transport infrastructure and labour market conditions generated key risk factors for international students. A shortage of rental accommodation and rising house prices mean that there is currently an acute shortage of affordable housing in Melbourne (Condon 2009). This is particularly the case in the inner city where educational institutions are largely concentrated, meaning that international students are commonly forced into sub-standard accommodation. The alternative for many international students is that they live in more affordable areas with higher crime rates. Combined with international students’ relative lack of private options for transport, international students are forced to travel by public transport, often in areas that are less safe and at times that are

more risky. Employment options open to international students compound these pressures with much part time employment being of a casual and part-time nature in the hospitality, transport or services industries – much of which requires work at night. These pressures combined were widely identified by stakeholders as impacting on international student safety and have similarly formed a basis for much of the government response detailed in Section Two.

There was agreement across all non-police respondents, however, about who the perpetrators of violence are. Perpetrators of violence were consistently identified as being groups of young, uneducated and alienated men. Police interviewees, however, suggested that without being able to draw on specific data about offenders from the Victoria Police database, they could not speak with certainty about offender profiles other than to say that they were overwhelmingly male. Police officers did stress, however, that anecdotal reporting suggested that where groups of offenders were responsible for assaults against international students, there was no evidence of ethnic or racial homogenisation within the groups, with the majority being mixed- race, mixed-ethnicity groups of offenders across the cultural spectrum, sometimes including but definitely not limited to young male offenders of Anglo-Celtic background, and sometimes not including Anglo-background youth at all.

As with the police observations on this issue, there was broad recognition by stakeholders in general that perpetrators of violence are often from multi-ethnic backgrounds. Youth and community service providers also indicated that those who were known to be involved in crime are often relatively new arrivals to Australia themselves and had grown up in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. The role of territorialism in the violence was also acknowledged by some stakeholders. More widely, the role of alcohol and drugs in making Australians ‘crazy’ was also acknowledged, particularly by international students and in relation to violence that occurs in the CBD.

The data gathered through this research is limited in what it can say about identifying offenders and what their motivations are. Accounts of violence from international students is also sketchy in relation to the identity and motivations of attackers however the role of ‘difference’ was identified as important by a number of the interviewees. As quoted earlier, the view of one international student was that,

Maybe some bad guys are trying to turn into [target] different races. They are trying to start [target] international students who are studying here or they think that may be international students do not belong here. Or they think that the society is being ruined by or interrupted by international students. (Chinese male university student, 25 – 29 yo)

This view about the significance of the difference is an important consideration, particularly in light of the historically unprecedented entrance of Indian and Chinese students to Australia. As discussed in Section Two, this migration mix represents a major shift from previous waves of migration which has been dominated by white European waves of migration. Beliefs that Indians and Chinese are ‘taking over’ may be common and as a group, international students from these countries are highly visible due to physical, racial and cultural characteristics that are

a major departure for the Anglo-Celtic norm. These factors are complex and as one community service provider observed, the reasons for hostility are historically specific and embedded in many factors including class, gender, race and geography. As she described:

...it is built into the geography of the place....I think the Indian students are the new group that are significant and are copping it now...Sudanese do well as migrants...but a different kind of thing happens in that international students...there is a tension about class as well...the Indian students are a highly aspirational, middle class and they want to achieve and education is a pathway for them and there is resentment for them... and then there is this group of men who are from poor and marginalised (backgrounds) and they think education is elitist and something that they attack...the tension is there...there is a strong strain in Anglo working class culture of anti elitism and anti education...you think you are better than us... there is a thread of racism in that community...

More broadly, however, the connection was made by contributors to this research between an increase in violence and broader social pressures. For example, one stakeholder talked about the congestion and pressure within the Melbourne CBD and the ‘hot spots’ generated by large numbers of young people in the city at clubs and venues. Compellingly, one police officer spoke of his fears that:

We’ve got a generation [with which] we’re going to have a real problem. And we’re seeing it now in their teenage years with violence...and I think if you override that with the media’s use of violence, in movies and things like that, and even video games, I think they become a little bit desensitised to [violence], and I think that there’s a strong combination there. ... As they grow up and mature [from the 12-19 year old age group], hopefully there will be some changes. But I think we’re going to see some very, very violent people coming out of this particular [youth] demographic as time goes on.

Accommodation pressures were widely identified as a major factor with the high price of accommodation forcing international students to live in suburbs characterised by high levels of disadvantage. The same pressure results in the need for travel on public transportation in areas known to be unsafe. International students are more vulnerable as a result of the material aspects of life as they have to work late hours, catch public transport and live in less than optimum accommodation. Combined, there is evidence that international students become ‘intruders’ in areas where there is a high degree of social marginalisation amongst the local population and the literature on hate crimes is useful here. Moreover, international students, unlike domestic students do not come into a network of social supports such as family and community. As such they are more reliant on each other for social support, overcoming isolation and information. This has been interpreted as lack of participation and engagement with broader society.

Our view is that while there is evidence that there are clearly some people who commit acts of violence that are motivated primarily by racial hatred, the reasons why these acts are carried out are often more complex and need to be seen in the context of broader community power relations. As discussed earlier, singular incidents of violence cannot be

seen in isolation from broader patterns of social and economic power relations. Importantly, the extent to which racist attacks can occur, as hage (2002) puts it, is directly connected to the amount of ‘breathing space’ that government and culture allows. hage (2002) suggests that one of the effects of incidents of extreme racism allows greater room for ‘non-extreme racism’ to flourish. That is that it is that the blame for racism can rest with a few ‘bad guys’ who are the perpetrators rather than examining the broader and embedded nature of racism that is institutionalised in broader and unequal social relations. The operation of ‘racism denial’ plays a role here. This research suggests the need for a greater interrogation of the role of racism in relation to crimes against international student safety as well as closer attention to the broader community conditions in which international students are living. For example, one stakeholder highlighted the dangerous conditions of one particular railway station that is well known as a place for drug- dealing and violence and is located close to where large populations of international students live and have to travel to work in jobs at night. Despite common knowledge that no-one is safe using this particular station, no government action had been taken to improve the conditions. As they described:

International students have to work …at times that are late at night... or they are studying late in town so they have to catch the train...anyone in their right mind knows that West Footscray station is not a good place at night...there are a lot of drug dealings going on and a lot of un-savoury characters are there at those times at night and it is damn scary...very scary – but these young people have to use it...the councils don’t listen to improve it and in some ways the system doesn’t care...they don’t care about local residents and we don’t shout enough about it and they certainly don’t care about international students so they are kind of forced