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Research themes
Community resilience & cohesion

Community resilience & cohesion

This theme focuses on the settlement context and the short and long-term consequences of increased immigration. It will advance research initiatives and policy and practice innovation on issues relating to settlement and social inclusion in urban and regional areas in Australia and internationally, looking at:

The spatial concentration of immigrant groups and consequences for the economic and social life of urban and regional communities
Temporal changes in social relationships, attitudes and social actions in communities experiencing increases in diversity and/or immigrant concentration; and
Negotiating settlement in Australia for new arrived immigrants.

The research generated within this theme informs and drives local and national policy and practice by identifying the factors that impede or facilitate successful settlement and social inclusion across a range places and migrant groups.

Research lead

Professor Rebecca Wickes

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Outputs View

Featured

Wickes, R, Grossman, M, Forbes-Mewett, H, Arunachalam, D, Smith, J, Skrbis, Z, Dellal, H & Keel, C 2020 'Understanding the context of racial and cultural exclusivism: A study of Melbourne neighbourhoods', Social Cohesion Research Grants Program, Victorian Department of Premier and Cabinet.

Journal articles

Wickes, R, Zahnow, R, Corcoran, J & Hipp, J. R 2019, 'Neighbourhood social conduits and resident social cohesion', Urban Studies, vol. 56, no. 1, pp. 226-248.

Hipp, J.R & Wickes, R 2018, 'Problems, perceptions and actions: An interdependent process for generating informal social control', Social Science Research, vol. 73, pp.107-125.

Wickes, R, Broidy, L & Hipp, J.R 2018, 'Responding to Neighborhood Problems: Is the Division of Community Labor Gendered?', Crime & Delinquency, vol. 64, no. 9, pp.1215-1241.

Wickes, R & Hipp, J.R 2018, 'The spatial and temporal dynamics of neighborhood informal social control and crime', Social Forces, vol. 97, no. 1, pp. 277–308.

Zahnow, R, Wickes, R, Taylor, M & Corcoran, J 2018, 'Community social capital and individual functioning in the post-disaster context', Disasters, vol. 43, no. 2, pp. 261-288.

Zahnow, R, Mazerolle, L, Wickes, R & Corcoran J 2018, 'Living near violence: How proximity to violence shapes perceptions of police effectiveness and confidence in police', Journal of Environmental Psychology, vol 53, pp. 138-144.

Reports

Ratnam, C., Wickes, R. Powell, R. and Keel, C. 2020 'Towards active engagement: Understanding how organisations are using technology to connect with diverse groups during COVID-19' Monash Migration and Inclusion Centre, Monash University. September 2020.

Lee, M, Jackson, J & Wickes, R 2020, 'Social Cohesion and Pro-Social Responses to Perceptions of Crime: Victoria report'

van Kooy, J, Wickes, R & Ali, A 2020, 'Planning for Welcoming & Inclusive Communities: Guidelines for regional growth', Funded by the Queensland Government through Multicultural Affairs Queensland and supported by Welcoming Australia through the Welcoming Cities initiative. Commissioned Project. https://doi.org/10.26180/5e670a59bce2b.

Wickes, R, Grossman, M, Forbes-Mewett, H, Arunachalam, D, Smith, J, Skrbis, Z, Dellal, H & Keel, C 2020 'Understanding the context of racial and cultural exclusivism: A study of Melbourne neighbourhoods' Social Cohesion Research Grants Program, Victorian Department of Premier and Cabinet.

van Kooy, J, Wickes, R & Ali, A 2019, 'Welcoming Regions', Funded by the Queensland Government through Multicultural Affairs Queensland and supported by Welcoming Australia through the Welcoming Cities initiative, Commissioned Project.

Wickes, R, van Kooy, J, Powell, R, & Moran, C 2019, 'The social impacts of family separation on refugee settlement and inclusion in Australia', Research undertaken as part of Oxfam-Monash Partnership.

Forbes-Mewett, H, Wickes, R, Markus, A & Nguyen, K 2018, 'International Students in Australia: A literature review of key issues over the last 20 years', Scanlon Foundation, this included employment, housing, education, language, among other major concerns, Commissioned Project.

Wickes, R, Forbes-Mewett, H, Markus, A, Keel, C & Powell, R 2018, 'Chinese and Indian Migration and Belonging in Australia. Commissioned Project', Scanlon Foundation.

Research briefs

Lee, M, Jackson, J & Wickes, R 2020, 'Social Cohesion and Pro-Social Responses to Perceptions of Crime: Victoria report'. Research Paper, University of Sydney.

Ratnam.C, Powell, R, Keel C, & Wickes, R 2020, 'The role of technology to facilitate and support intercultural engagement', MMIC Research Brief 1, May 2020.

Powell, R, Wickes, R & Segrave, M 2020, 'COVID-19: Migrant visa holders and the pain of family separation in a time of coronavirus', Monash Lens, 28 April 2020.

Wickes, R, and Piquero, A 2020, 'Hi, neighbour: The dynamics that shape Melbourne's inter-ethnic relationships', Monash Lens, 7 April 2020.

Featured projects View

Understanding the context of racial and cultural exclusivism

Led by MMIC Director, Professor Rebecca Wickes, with colleagues from Deakin University, Australian Catholic University and the Australian Multicultural Foundation, this project resulted in the report ‘Understanding the context of racial and cultural exclusivism: A study of Melbourne neighbourhoods’.

Find out more about this research project here.

Everyday guardianship: A space time approach to crime prevention

This project aims to identify the temporal, spatial and contextual elements that influence citizen initiated crime prevention action.Taking an interdisciplinary approach and applying a cutting edge methodology, it will be the first study to consider the capacity and availability of capable guardians and their intersection with the environmental contexts they frequent.

The project will generate new knowledge on the resources needed to ensure ordinary citizens can effectively respond to problems when and where they occur. Given the enormous costs of crime to society, the expected outcomes of this project will lead to the development of economically efficient and practical community crime prevention programs that benefit the wider community.

Assessment of welcoming standards accreditation, City of Greater Bendigo

The Monash Migration and Inclusion Centre (MMIC) has been nominated by Welcoming Cities, to be a preferred external assessor of local councils who submit their applications for accreditation against the Welcoming Cities Standards.

This project was to conduct the Welcoming Standards Accreditation Assessment to determine the status of the City of Greater Bendigo local council in terms of celebrating setting and achieving targets across its full range of services and partnerships against the criteria set by the Standards. A review of the Welcoming Standards Accreditation Assessment from the City of Greater Bendigo experience was also conducted.

Evaluation of social and economic inclusion program services, Wyndham Council

Wyndham City Council (WCC) has contracted the Monash Migration and Inclusion Centre (MMIC) to conduct a parallel evaluation of their Social and Economic Inclusion Program across a three year time frame from 2019-2021. The evaluation will concentrate on the central goal of the Social and Economic Inclusion Program, ‘to enhance the culture of social and economic inclusion in the Wyndham Municipality’.

WCC’s vision is for a more welcoming, better connected Wyndham where local people can find opportunity. The Council aims to achieve this by providing an integrated program for new arrivals, humanitarian migrants and asylum seekers to expand their networks and build their careers. The proposed evaluation is multi-scalar and considers the inter-connectedness and complexity of WCC’s strategic initiatives to improve social and economic inclusion in the Wyndham Municipality (WM), including during times of crisis with the event of COVID-19 from March 2020.

This approach will involve the evaluation of WCC policies and engagements both before and during COVID-19; the evaluation of the efficacy of the Social and Economic Inclusion Taskforce (SEIT) in their capacity to build networks and promote social and economic inclusion in Wyndham Municipality; and an outcomes evaluation of the WCC Flagship economic and social inclusion project: The Fresh Start Employment Program (FSEP).

Cultivating empathy through conversation

Researchers at the Monash Migration and Inclusion Centre (MMIC) and BehaviourWorks at Monash University have successfully secured funding to examine effective initiatives to combat racism and prejudice, and strengthen community resilience.

Social scientists have long struggled to figure out how to reduce intergroup prejudice. There is a need for practical ways of building empathy for immigrants among the population to create socially inclusive communities. A study recently published in Science found that brief conversations between canvassers and participants had a significant impact on reducing short- and long-term transphobia. Building on methods employed by the Science study, Monash researchers seek to reduce levels of xenophobia in the community through empathetic contact with local residents living in Melbourne.

Based on the findings, the research team hopes to identify the mechanisms associated with reducing socially harmful attitudes and contribute towards the development of scalable, cost-effective interventions to reduce ethnic intolerance across communities. This means that non-governmental organisations and activists can easily utilise this strategy to make local communities more welcoming and inclusive of diverse groups. In the face of rising intolerance, such evidence-based solutions offer a valuable opportunity to enhance community resilience.

Social cohesion and pro-social responses to perceptions of crime

Understanding community perceptions of crime and safety is important to policy makers, legislators, and subsequently communities themselves. However, such community perceptions are complex and have generally been poorly researched and assessed in the Australian context. This project sought to develop better tools to research perceptions of crime and deploy these in a large-scale study of Victorian communities.

The project was undertaken throughout 2019. It deployed a stratified and randomised sample survey of n=2,862 respondents across 70 communities in Victoria. It also comprised qualitative focus group interviews with a total samp le group of n=69 respondents across 15 focus groups. These focus groups targeted harder to reach groups less likely to be represented in the survey, but more likely to express concerns about crime.

While the project was interested in levels, frequency and intensity of people’s worry about crime, we also sought to highlight how people respond to their fears, and what impact these responses had on their lives. We also mapped out a range of risk and protective factors likely to impact negatively and positively on people’s worries. This mixed methods approach gives us unique insights into both the concerns people have about crime, the actions they take based on these concerns, and the way in which they discuss and describe their worries.