Elsevier

Geoforum

Volume 70, March 2016, Pages 51-59
Geoforum

Perspectives on the geography of intolerance: Racist attitudes and experience of racism in Melbourne, Australia

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2016.02.005Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Deconstruction of racist attitudes assists understanding experiences of racism.

  • A new approach to attitude–experience interaction within two embedded samples is deployed.

  • Host society racist attitudes are reflected in out-group status attribution.

  • Out-group status varies by locality according to the nature of the ethnic mix.

  • Local ethnic and socio-demographic profiles point to tailored anti-racism strategies.

Abstract

Given the challenge presented by worsening racial and religious relations in many western countries around the world, a closer look at the interplay between racist attitudes among potential perpetrators and experiences of racism among likely targets, focusing on out-group status, can better inform the dynamics of culturally diverse societies. Melbourne, Australia is ideal for such an analysis given its highly diverse population. Building on recent scholarship detailing a new approach to examining the attitude–experience relationship, we add an important spatial dimension by investigating how patterns of association vary spatially within specific localities over and above citywide effects. Findings indicate significant associations between racist attitudes and experience of discrimination at the citywide and, in distinct ways, at the local (Local Government Area) level. Such relationships are shaped by socio-demographic and ethnic diversity profiles, embodying attribution and degree of out-group status, in complex and nuanced ways.

Introduction

In an age of globalisation and international migration, competing discourses associated with attitudes towards cultural diversity, the socio-cultural composition of neighbourhoods, and experience of racism characterise settler societies such as the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand (Forrest and Dunn, 2006a). Among central issues for intergroup relations in such increasingly multiracial, multicultural societies is the response of majority group members to ‘strangers in our midst’ (Miller, 2016), and its impact on minority ethnic group immigrants, at both national (Talaska et al., 2008, p. 263), and local levels (Bowyer, 2009). Two questions are suggested: how are any relationship between racist attitudes and experiences of racism constructed, and to what extent and in what ways are such relationships manifested generally and in place-specific (local) contexts?

In addressing the first major study question, it can be noted that, until recently, very few studies have focused on associations between majority attitudes and minority experience of racial discrimination (EoD). Most analysed either one or the other, perpetrator attitudes or target experience (e.g. Dovidio et al., 2002, Flynn, 2005, Hyers, 2007 Swim et al., 2003), although in two European studies, Pereira et al. (2010) found a positive relationship between prejudice and discriminatory behaviour, while Kauff and Wagner (2012) found such behaviour was negatively related to pro-diversity attitudes.

More is known about the spatiality of receiving society attitudes to recent immigrants, though again the analyses are largely two-dimensional, treating the broad spatial context of attitudes or experience (Robinson, 1987, Clayton, 2006 Bowyer, 2009, Hopkins et al., 2015). Forrest and Dunn, 2006b, Forrest and Dunn, 2007 noted an ‘everywhere different’ aspect to racist attitudes in specific localities, where demographic profiles and differences in attitudes were associated with variations in out-group status (discussed below), or social distance, more or less affecting different ethnic groups. Two Canadian studies have also shown significant differences in the spatiality of racist experiences (Ray and Preston, 2009, Ray and Preston, 2013).

Habtegiorgis et al. (2014) have addressed the gap in the literature involving relationships between perpetrator attitudes and target experience of racism with a new approach (used in this paper) which analyses two embedded though not mutually exclusive samples. Our objective is, for the first time in an intra-urban context, to explore interactions between attitudes towards ethnic minority groups, minority group experience of racism, and their spatial context in Melbourne, one of Australia’s two largest immigrant receiving cities (Forrest et al., 2003).

Section snippets

Attitude, experience and the spatiality of racism

In Australia, 27 per cent of the population were born overseas, compared with 20 per cent in Canada, 13 per cent in the USA and 24 per cent in New Zealand (OECD, 2014). In a society so strongly influenced by immigration, cultural diversity has, to some degree, been accepted as a normal aspect of people’s lives, as part of everyday multiculturalism (Wise, 2005), representing Australians as open to diversity and willing to engage with others (Ho and Jakubowicz, 2013, pp. 4–5; Forrest and Dunn,

Methodology and data

Habtegiorgis et al.’s (2014, p. 182) recently developed approach to relationships between racist attitudes and self-reported EoD using two embedded samples, proceeds in two main stages. The first measures racist attitudes towards specific target out-groups. The second measures the specific EoD reported by these target groups. The common element is out-group status: if racist attitudes relate to specific ethnic groups in a statistically significant way, and those groups are the targets of more

Linking attitudes and perceptions of out-groups among perpetrators

Assessment of responses to relationships from Habtegiorgis et al.’s (2014) first stage of analysis (Table 4) between expressions of racist attitudes (each column represents one of the nine attitude elements) and major nominated out-groups was restricted to Australian-born respondents as proxies for key perpetrators of such attitudes as the majority or ‘host’ group.

Spatial contextual effects

The second major research question – do attitudes to ethnic minorities and experience of racism occur in local spatial contexts (Table 5) – can now be addressed for the groups of LGAs derived from the social area analysis and the compositional elements set out in Table 1. Holding constant gender, age, education and out-group status, five of the entropy groups had significant levels of locality-based EoD. For two, (groups 2 and 4) the relationship with EoD was negative: some 40 per cent less

Conclusion

Using procedures aimed at disaggregating relationships between aspects of racist attitudes among members of a receiving society (as potential perpetrators), experience of that racism among minority ethnic groups (as targets), and the spatiality of their interaction at the sub-district (LGA) level this study has, for the first time at the intra-urban level, essayed a better understanding of the totality of the interplay between attitudes towards and experience of racism and its spatial

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