Técnicas para el procesamiento y análisis de los datos cuantitativos

In relation to Sudanese-background settlement in Australia, the vast majority of Sudanese arrivals (89%) have come to Australia since 1996. DIAC (Community Profiles 2006) notes that, nationally speaking:

The median age of the Sudan-born in 2006 was 24.6 years compared with 46.8 years for all overseas- born and 37.1 years for the total Australian population. The age distribution showed 26.6 per cent were aged 0-14 years, 24.4 per cent were 15-24 years, 36.4 per cent were 25-44 years, 10.2 per cent were 45-64 years and 2.5 per cent were 65 and over. Of the Sudan-born in Australia, there were 10,320 males (54.2 per cent) and 8730 females (45.8 per cent). The sex ratio was 118.2 males per 100 females.11

11 _{DIAC, ‘Community Information Summary: Sudan-Born’, http://www.immi.gov.au/ media/publications/statistics/comm-}

However, it should be observed that country of birth is not a wholly reliable guide to the numbers of Sudanese- background people from migrant and refugee backgrounds in Australia, especially in relation to younger people, since many younger Sudanese-Australians were born outside Sudan while their families were in transit in refugee camps in neighbouring countries such as Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia and Chad, or in other host countries such as Egypt, while seeking asylum and humanitarian entry to a new country. Nor does it reflect the number of first generation Australian-born Sudanese youth, the eldest of whom will be around 15-16 years of age in 2010, who identify strongly as Sudanese-Australians.

The 2006 ABS Census data show that Melbourne is the most popular city of residence for Sudanese arrivals at 31%, or about 5,900, of Australia’s national total of approximately 23,000 residents of Sudanese background, followed by Sydney (28% or about 5,300). Turning to the City of Brimbank, this LGA has a high level of recent arrivals and migrants across the general Brimbank population, particularly in relation to young people aged 12- 24. According to the Brimbank City Council Youth Policy and Action Plan 2008-2013,

Approximately one quarter of young people in Brimbank in 2001 aged 15 to 24 years were born overseas. ... The municipality continues a long tradition of welcoming migrants and refugees. Over the past six years, Brimbank has become the third highest settlement location for newly arrived migrants in Victoria and the second for Humanitarian Visa arrivals. Around one quarter of the 8,985 new arrivals to Brimbank between 2001-2006 were aged 10 to 19 years, and another one third were aged 20 to 29 years. Of the 2,750 humanitarian arrivals to Brimbank over this period, 23% were aged 10 to 19 and 20% were aged 20 to 29, making the total percentage of youth arrivals 43%. Many of these humanitarian arrivals were from Sudan and other African countries.12

These figures should be viewed in the context of the Census data (ABS 2006) showing that overall 12,889 young people aged 15-19 lived in Brimbank with rough gender parity across young men and young women in this age group (6,643 males/6,246 females). These figures are projected to change only marginally for the total 15-19 year age group by 2010 with a slight increase in males (+135 from 2006) and slight decrease in females (-47 from 2006) by 2010.13

In 2006, Sudanese-background residents accounted for about 0.7% of the total population of Brimbank LGA (ABS 2006). Almost all Sudanese young people aged 15-19 in Brimbank are likely to come from refugee family backgrounds. The majority ethnic Sudanese background in Brimbank is Dinka, but there are also other Sudanese language and tribal groups. Many but not all young Sudanese speak good to fluent English, and many are bi- or multilingual in languages including Sudanese Arabic, Swahili, and a range of Sudanese indigenous and tribal languages. Not all Sudanese young people live with one or both parents and some do not have close relatives in Australia, relying on extended family, friends and community support systems. There are experiences of ongoing intergenerational conflict for some young Sudanese men and women as they and their families meet the challenges of settling in a new country where community values may differ at times from what is culturally acceptable in the home country.

As noted above, some young Sudanese people from refugee backgrounds now living in Australia were neither born nor have lived in Sudan itself, but nevertheless strongly identify culturally and ethnically as Sudanese and have strong links with the wider Sudanese inter-generational community. Consequently, some young Sudanese people continue to deal with issues related to the trauma and displacement associated with their refugee

12 _{http://www.brimbank.vic.gov.au/Files/YouthPolicyandActionPlan2008to2013.pdf, page 7.}

experiences and/or with that of their parents, siblings and extended families, and there is a developing research base on the Australian and international settlement experiences of Sudanese adults and young people (e.g., Ben-Moshe et al., 2006; Deng and Andreou, 2006; Pyke and Grossman, 2008; Holtzman, 2007).

Many Sudanese living in Australia have Christian faith-based identities and networks, reflecting the original humanitarian intake from South Sudan which is dominated by people with Christian and animist belief systems. However, an increasing number of more recent Sudanese arrivals are Muslim, in line with recent shifts in the geographical and cultural demographics of refugee populations from this region. Important cultural attributes for all Sudanese communities regardless of religious affiliation include strong extended family and kinship structures, expanded group-based social networks, and high educational aspirations for themselves and their children. However, many Sudanese-Australians are dealing with the challenges of interrupted education and/or placement at inappropriate educational levels based on age rather than educational skill level. They face limited employment opportunities, but English language skills are less of a barrier for young Sudanese people than for their parents and other older adult community members.

As highlighted elsewhere in the report, the Sudanese community, and in particular young Sudanese men, are over-represented in media reports as both social antagonists and as victims of high-profile assaults and fatalities. Because of their relatively recent arrival in Australia, there is a comparatively low research base around Sudanese young people, crime and community safety compared with other ethnic groups; recent contributions in this area include the Centre for Multicultural Youth (CMY) submission to the Inquiry into the Impact of Violence on Young Australians (2009), the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission report, Rights of Passage: The Experiences of Australian-Sudanese Young People (2008), and the Victorian Legal Services Board’s report from its recent Racism Project, ‘Boys, you wanna give me some action?’: Interventions into Policing of Racialised Communities in Melbourne (2010), which focuses on the experience of African-background youth, many of whom self-identified as Somali or Sudanese (Smith and Reside, 2010: 7).