South Africans in Australia miss home

Study says immigrants to Australia do not immediately fit in, despite similar culture

Electrician Mark Campbell says his assimilation into Australian life “felt like a hand in a glove”.

Campbell’s most alienating moment since he left SA two years ago was during a barbecue at a friend’s house when he had to stand with men discussing Aussie rules football. “I realised that in SA I would not have befriended these people. From then on I only made friends with people who had similar interests,” he says.

A study has found that South African emigrants to Australia do not immediately fit in, despite a similar culture and language, along with good educational qualifications. South Africans tend to grieve and yearn for their homeland while experiencing low levels of self-esteem, say authors Nigar Khawaja and Lesleyanne Mason, both of the School of Psychology and Counselling at Queensland University of Technology.

Both researchers are themselves migrants, with Mason being a former South African. Their findings suggest a typical South African in Australia is a reluctant immigrant who fits the description of an “anticipatory refugee”. This was described as a person who left their country of origin ahead of a situation that could prevent an orderly departure.

Back in Johannesburg, Nicky van Aardt ascribes her pending move to New Zealand to a desire to explore other options, including the possibility of raising a family in a safer environment. “To be honest, I am going to observe what happens,” she says.

She and her graphic designer husband are due to leave SA for Auckland in February. “We’re not going out of fear or anger,” the 28-year-old magazine editor insists. New Zealand, along with Australia and the UK, are some of the preferred destinations for South Africans seeking a new life abroad.

Khawaja says at a deep level South Africans in Australia felt pushed out of the country due to the (real or perceived) level of violence. They also felt job opportunities in SA were compromised.

“They seem to be reluctant migrants as they felt the pressure to leave for a safer and better environment,” Khawaja says.

Published recently by the South African Journal of Psychology, the research was based on the experiences of 101 predominantly white South African emigrants living in the suburban regions of Brisbane and Melbourne.

Previous studies had indicated that migrants from a place culturally similar to the new country find the adjustment easier than those who come from a culturally different environment.

“There has been an assumption that South Africans from a European descent settle in Australia easily due to the language and cultural similarity,” says Khawaja.

However, studies conducted in New Zealand found that South African immigrants also had mental health concerns, just like Indian or Chinese migrants. “This was an interesting finding and it made researchers think about the reasons,” says Khawaja.

This lack of clear answers inspired Khawaja and Mason’s study. They found South African emigrants coped well in Australia, where they experienced mild psychological distress.

On further examination, it was found that the first factor causing distress was the longing for the homeland, followed by low selfesteem associated with social and emotional loneliness, together with violence in SA.

However, as the migrants stayed longer in Australia the distress abated. (I can vouch for this)

Apart from a fear of violent crime, reasons often cited by South African emigrants for leaving were job insecurity, the AIDS epidemic, corruption and perceived declining standards in health care and education.

But the head of the forced migration studies programme at the University of the Witwatersrand, Loren Landau, says people will always find ways of justifying and legitimising a decision they have made.

“Even if someone left because they don’t like living without the privileges they once had, they are likely to say something more politically correct: that it’s because of crime or poor services,” he says.

In SA, Campbell ran a “successful” medium-sized electrical contracting company. His decision to emigrate was motivated by a desire for a new life.

“I was tired of chasing the money, chasing bad-paying customers and the government’s policy towards white-owned business,” he says.

Also influencing the decision to emigrate was his wife’s frustration with politics. “My wife was fed up with the (African National Congress president Jacob) Zuma rape case. She did not want to have Zuma as the president,” he says.

‘I was tired of chasing the money, chasing bad-paying customers and government’s policy towards white-owned business’.