Immigration and Social Cohesion within the Neighbourhood

Qing Guan, Australian National University
James O'Donnell, Australian National University

With immigrant populations continuing to grow across the world and heightened concern for inter-group conflict, social cohesion has become an increasingly critical issue today. Evidence are relatively consistent in support of a negative relationship between ethnic heterogeneity and social cohesion at the neighbourhood level, though mixed evidence are found at other subnational levels. In this paper, we use panel data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamic in Australia survey to examine the relationship between the share and distribution of immigrants in the neighbourhood and social cohesion at neighbourhood and community levels. Crossed-effect models are used to disentangle the relationship, controlling for a number of variables and random effects at individual and neighbourhood levels. A negative relationship is largely substantiated for non-immigrants for attitudinal and behavioural measures of cohesion. Mixed evidence are observed for immigrants. More opportunities for inter-group contact attenuate cohesion for non-immigrants while immigrants benefit from higher exposure to non-immigrant neighbours. Living in a socioeconomically more advantaged neighbourhood almost always relates to more cohesive and bounded feelings of the residents. Results from this study contribute new evidence to the understanding of how neighbourhood population and socioeconomic characteristics relate to cohesion and bounding in the neighbourhood and local communities.

Keywords: Inequality, Disadvantage and Discrimination, International Migration, Neighbourhood/contextual effect analysis, Migrant Populations and Refugees

See extended abstract.