A research project funded by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship.
As a pilot project, the main purpose of this research was to test the efficacy of
conducting surveys of minority young people in Australia as a way of gaining
Tapping The Pulse of Youth in Western and South-Western Sydney 2
information that would provide insights into their lives and the ways that they
connect to their friends, their family, and their community. The aim was to
provide a snapshot of the attitudes and aspirations of young men and women
from minority backgrounds living in Western and South-Western Sydney and
of the state of inter-ethnic youth relations in the region that has the greatest
density of minority youth in all Australia. This was because there were many
claims about how Australian multicultural society was or was not working, but
little evidence to back these claims. We were also interested to explore aspects
of the lives of minority youth related to education, work, identity, people and
place. We were also interested to demonstrate that if such research was fruitful,
there was a case for extending the research to a larger sample. Moreover, we
are mindful of the limits of a single survey, a snapshot of minority young
people at a moment in time, and wanted to establish an argument for the
commissioning of a four-year annual longitudinal study of 1000 youth in
Western and South-Western Sydney so that we could follow minority youth,
as well as a control sample of Anglo youth, over four years to see what
happened to them over time
• The research was designed to provide insights into: the attitudes, aspirations
and social relations of multicultural youth in Sydney today; young people’s
understandings and interpretations of Australian values and the Australian
flag; their inter-ethnic social relations and social networks; and issues relating
to safety and feelings of belonging, identity and trust among young people in
Western and South-Western Sydney.