Another report on Indian students in Australia

in Monash University's Centre for Population and Urban Research Indian student migration in Australia: issues of community sustainability by RMIT academics Supriya Singh and Anuja Cabraal. The report is behind a paywall, Abstact:
"The established Indian Australian community mainly consists of people with professional occupations who came to Australia after 1970, and their Australian-born children. They come from the educated urban middle class in India, speak English fluently, and are doing well in Australia. In contrast, the wave of Indian students who arrived mainly after 2001 are more likely to come from rural backgrounds. Even though they may have bachelor degrees from India, they often have poor English. Many have enrolled in vocational courses in cookery and hairdressing in the hope, often realised of gaining permanent residence. As is now well known a number of them have been subjected to robbery and violence, often racist, and some have died. This article explores this recent history and also draws on interview data. It uses this to outline some of the differences between the established community and the growing number of students, and to describe the efforts made by the two groups to bridge these differences."
Sushi Das summary in The Age Report criticises 'cash cow' policy . Excerpts:
"THE federal government failed to safeguard Indian students because of its fixation with income from the lucrative international education industry and its desperate need to tackle labour shortages, a new analysis has found.

"The policy linking education and migration was aimed at getting 'designer migrants' to satisfy Australia's needs for a younger professional labour force at little cost," says a paper published by Monash University's Centre for Population and Urban Research.

It says students were poorly served by government policy linking education, skilled labour and migration, and this contributed to Indian students becoming vulnerable to racism.
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The analysis by RMIT academics Supriya Singh and Anuja Cabraal is based on 41 interviews with first and second-generation Indian migrants, and religious and community leaders.

They say that, unlike previous professional Indians who came from large cities and migrated with their families from the 1970s onwards, recent Indian migrants are largely students who are often financially stressed. The family investment in education as a pathway to migration is based on expectations of future prosperity for the student migrant and for his or her family, they say.

"In the small towns and villages of Punjab [from where many students migrate], the excitement was not about the excellence of Australia's education, but the brick houses that have been built with the money sent home by migrants," they say.
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Police say Indian students are vulnerable to attacks, some of which are racially motivated, because they travel to and from part-time jobs on public transport late at night and often live in poor, high-crime, outer suburbs where housing is cheaper.
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he Council of Australian Governments has agreed to introduce measures to improve the safety and well-being of international students, including an independent statutory complaints body for colleges and co-ordinated information on student safety and their workplace rights.

Melbourne's business community is set to make international student safety a priority, with the Committee for Melbourne and the Victorian Employers Chamber of Commerce and Industry promising to develop a voluntary program to provide cultural and safety information to shift workers new to Melbourne."
P.S. (28th May, 2010)
International students left in the shadows by Simon Marginson, professor of higher education at the University of Melbourne.
An excerpt:
"When we began investigating international student security in 2003, no one else was interested. Some were hostile, fearing the multibillion-dollar industry would be undermined by ''bad news'' about student problems; better to sweep those under the carpet. Thankfully, attitudes are changing.

Three research projects and 240 student interviews later, we have summarised our findings in the book International Student Security.

We researched all domains affecting the students - finances, work, housing, health, safety, relations with officials, personal and family networks, and loneliness. We looked at relations with local students and the community, and discrimination and abuse. We found:

-International students are not treated the same as local students. We identified 25 areas in which their rights are inferior, from access to bank services to welfare support, transport concessions, translation functions and postgraduate scholarships. Few of these discriminations can be justified."