Shifting dynamics of Chinese settlement in Australia: an urban geographic perspective

摘要

The so-called Asian Century has brought with it sweeping changes in the profile of migration to Australia. This paper focuses on examining post-2000 migration from Mainland China, which has rapidly ascended to now become Australia's top non-Commonwealth country of origin. Significantly, the profile of post-2000 Mainland China-born (MC-born) migrants has changed to mirror broader global shifts towards highly skilled, education-related, and investment-focused migration, all of which reflect the mobility of wealthy and/or educated cohorts. Little empirical work has focused on the degree to which this change in the profile of migration has led to the formation of novel settlement patterns. This paper aims to examine the socio-economic characteristics of MC-born migrants in Australian cities, to identify sub-metropolitan areas of concentration, and to visualise spatial change in settlement patterns over time. The data indicate that although Sydney is still home to half of MC-born migrants at a national scale, the number of migrants has increased at a more rapid rate in medium-sized capital cities such as Adelaide and Perth. Results reveal an increasingly decentralised and suburbanised concentration of MC-born migrants at a metropolitan scale that is linked to areas of earlier Chinese settlement, or corresponding to access to educational resources and employment opportunities. The observed patterns support the segmented assimilation theory in that the spatial settlement patterns among MC-born migrants assume variegated forms based on individuals' socio-economic characteristics and metropolitan-scale factors.