The regional pattern of Australia’s largest overseas-born populations

Abstract

The first decades of the new millennium have seen a dramatic increase in the level of net overseas migration to Australia. This has been accompanied by growing diversity in the origins of migrants away from the traditional source countries in Northern and Western Europe towards Asia. One result of this trend is an increasingly complex settlement geography. This Regional Graphic paper seeks to represent Australia’s immigrant geography by mapping the largest overseas-born population for regions of Australia using recently released 2016 Census data. The maps reveal a strong regionalization in migrant populations. Patterns reflect the concentration of some smaller migrant groups (e.g., Former Yugoslav Region (FYR) of Macedonia), while larger migrant groups (e.g., the UK) are more dispersed across the continent. Climate and geographical proximity to immigrants’ country of origin are possible factors driving the observed broad-level geographical variation in settlement.