Northwestern European Australians

Northwestern European Australians are Australians of Northwestern European (Celto-Germanic) ancestry. Northwestern European Australian people may trace full or partial heritage to Great Britain, Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, German-speaking Switzerland, Scandinavia, the northern regions of France and/or other nations or territories within Northwestern Europe or culturally related.

Northwestern European Australians

Australia
Total population
North-West European Australian – 12,820,662 (59.6%) (2011)[1] of which North-West European – 1,043 (>0.1%) (2011) British – 9,166,372 (42.6%) (2011) Irish – 2,087,758 (9.7%) (2011) Western European – 1,427,140 (6.6%) (2011) Northern European - 138,349 (0.64%) (2011)
Languages
Australian English German · Dutch · Scandinavian languages · Irish · Scottish Gaelic Other Northwestern European Languages
Religion
Predominantly: Christianity Minorities: Irreligion · Judaism · Islam
Related ethnic groups
Northwestern Europeans · Northwestern European Americans · Northwestern European Canadians

As Northwestern Europe is also a cultural category, rather than exclusively geographical; the group can include Australians with ancestry from bordering or ethnoculturally related places, including Finland. Along with Eastern European Australians and Southern European Australians, the pan-ethnicity is one of several subgroupings of European Australians.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics lists North-West European ancestry with five subcategories, including North-West European, British, Irish, Western and Northern European.[2] As of the 2011 census in Australia, 12,820,662 Australians had Northwestern European origins, constituting 59.6% of the Australian population.[1]

Terminology

Census

Along with Eastern European Australians and Southern European Australians, the census in Australia lists Northwestern European Australians under a "North-West European" header for ancestry. This features five subcategories which, in order as listed by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, are: North-West European, British, Irish, Western European and Northern European, some of which have further national or regional subgroups.[2]

Use in academia

Notable scholars have made use of terms relating to Northwest Europeans in Australia, or Northwestern European Australians, in order to identify the grouping. Professor Mary Kalantzis has used the category to analyze Australians from Northwestern Europe in the national census.[3] Professors Gustav Ranis and Christian Joppke have used the term with reference to the country's historical immigration programmes and preferences.[4][5]

Historian Henry Reynolds has explored the discriminatory use of the category by members of the Commonwealth Parliament, and ANU's Dr Francis Harry Bauer used the pan-ethnic grouping to describe the colonial settlers of northern Australia.[6][7]

History

Colonisation of Australia

Australia, alongside similar English-speaking settler nations (Canada, the United States, and New Zealand), prioritized Northwestern European immigration for growing its population and expanding into new territories, for much of its early history and post-independence era. Sociologist Christian Joppke has written how the racial promotion of the pan-ethnic grouping had caused former British colony nations, such as Australia, to become "tainted by the flip side of racial exclusion, which had targeted primarily Asians."[5] Dr Francis Harry Bauer of Australian National University described the environment-based culture shock for Northwestern Europeans resettling areas of Australia:[7]

Nevertheless, the curtain was rising on actual settlement in northern Australia, a play which had no script and a cast which had not even seen the stage. And a vast stage it was, about 4,500,000 km2 vast, fifteen times the size of England, Scotland and Wales. It was a land almost inconceivable to northwest Europeans.

Early 20th century

At the first Commonwealth Parliament meeting in 1901, the preference for Northwestern European immigrants was expressed by Senators. Historian Henry Reynolds, whose work has focused on the colonisation of Australia, wrote:[6]

Members and Senators agreed about the centrality of race. They agreed that there was a demonstrable hierarchy of races with the northwest Europeans, the Nordics or Caucasians at the top and the Africans, Melanesians, and Aborigines at the bottom.

Immigration from 1901 to 1947 contributed to a population of 7.5 million in Australia, made up almost entirely of Northwestern Europeans. Around 90 percent of the country had ancestry from Great Britain, with 7 percent made up of other Northwestern Europeans (and around 1 percent Southern Europeans).[8] Policy on immigration actively sought to assist the arrival of British people. For other Northwestern European peoples, while they were not actively encouraged to emigrate by policy, their access to Australia was basically unrestricted. Southern and Eastern Europeans, on the other hand, were comparatively limited in this period.[9] Economist Gustav Ranis has noted that pre-1929 labor migration largely followed cultural and ethnic trends, with most immigration to Australia being from the pan-ethnic group.[4]

Post World War II

The Second World War had temporarily halted migrations of the grouping to Australia. In the aftermath of the war, displaced Northwest Europeans were targeted for resettlement in Australia. [10] In December 1945, The Tweed Daily published an article quoting Immigration Minister Arthur Calwell, detailing how; "Tens of thousands of northwestern Europeans who have suffered ruthless oppression and war for years want to come to Australia as soon as possible."[11]

By 1949, Harold Holt, serving as the government's new Minister for Labour and National Service, expressed a renewed interest in German migration to Australia, which resumed the "carefully crafted immigration program which initially favoured British and North-Western Europeans."[12] While attracting an "ethnically desirable mix of Northwestern Europeans", the government was mindful to screen out potential war criminals, or fascist collaborators, from the new arrivals. It also took steps to ensure new immigrants would work only in "labour-starved" industries, rather than compete with native-born workers.[13] In the decades after the Second World War, many of the group, such as Germans and Dutch people, were attracted to industrial cities, such as Newcastle, New South Wales.[14]

Modern period

Toward the late 20th-century, an almost exclusively Northwestern European-descended populace was joined by significant migrations of Southern Europeans and Asians.[15] Despite the cessation of the discrimatory White Australia policy, the grouping has retained much of its ethnic status in 21st-century Australian society. In modern times, non-British Northwestern European diaspora in the country, such as Irish Australians and German Australians, have gradually been immersed into the pan-ethnic grouping, and are perceived as "fully included in the idea of the Australian nation".[16]

Demography

By the 1980s, research by Mary Kalantzis found that of the nearly 25.8 percent of women (aged 20–64) in Australia who were born abroad, 2.3 percent were born in Northwestern Europe (with 7.7 percent, and 1.5 percent born in Southern Europe, and Eastern Europe, respectively).[3] In 1988, Northwestern Europeans were one of the slowest groups to apply for Australian citizenship. First-generation Anglophones, such as Canadian Australians and New Zealand Australians, were least likely to become citizens at all.[17]

North-West European population in census by ancestry (2011)[1]

Category	ASCCEG	Group / national ancestry	Population	Percentage
North-West European	2000	North-West European, nfd	1,043	<0.1%
British	2100	British, nfd	6,262	<0.1%
British	2101	English	7,238,533	33.7%
British	2102	Scottish	1,792,622	8.3%
British	2103	Welsh	125,597	0.6%
British	2104	Channel Islander	1,127	<0.1%
British	2105	Manx	1,983	<0.1%
British	2199	British, nec	248	<0.1%
Irish	2201	Irish	2,087,758	9.7%
Western European	2300	Western European, nfd	70	<0.1%
Western European	2301	Austrian	42,341	0.2%
Western European	2303	Dutch	335,493	1.6%
Western European	2304	Flemish	611	<0.1%
Western European	2305	French	110,399	0.5%
Western European	2306	German	898,674	4.2%
Western European	2307	Swiss	28,947	0.1%
Western European	2311	Belgian	10,022	0%
Western European	2312	Frisian	222	<0.1%
Western European	2313	Luxembourg	212	<0.1%
Western European	2399	Western European, nec	149	<0.1%
Northern European	2400	Northern European, nfd	3,728	<0.1%
Northern European	2401	Danish	54,026	0.3%
Northern European	2402	Finnish	22,420	0.1%
Northern European	2403	Icelandic	929	<0.1%
Northern European	2404	Norwegian	23,037	0.1%
Northern European	2405	Swedish	34,029	0.2%
Northern European	2499	Northern European, nec	180	<0.1%
Australia	Not applicable	Not applicable	12,820,662	59.6%

ASCCEG = Australian Standard Classification of Cultural and Ethnic Groups
nfd = not further defined.
nec = not elsewhere classified.[2]

Education and employment

The 1981 Census in Australia showed that immigrant Northwestern European women were more highly educated than Yugoslav (and other Southern European) immigrant women.[18] Research has found that Northwestern Europeans are significantly represented in professional occupations, or as white-collar workers, and less so in manual jobs (blue-collar workers in Australia.[14]

Language

Non-Anglophone Northwestern European immigrants were shown to have the highest English language fluency of all immigrant groups by the 1981 census. Both men and women from the group also ranked highest in those who had switched entirely to English-speaking.[18][19]

Academic research

A study conducted at Macquarie University found that the group, particularly Germans and Netherlanders, became desegregated from native-born communities more quickly, and completely, than any other immigrant group in Australia.[14]

See also

• European Australians
• Northwestern European Americans
• Northwestern European Canadians

References

1. "The People of Australia – Statistics from the 2011 Census" (PDF). Australian Government. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2014-07-14. Retrieved 2015-03-19.
2. "2901.0 - Census of Population and Housing: Census Dictionary, 2016". Australian Bureau of Statistics. 2016. 2. North-West European 20. North-West European, 21. British, 22. Irish, 23. Western European, 24. Northern European.
3. M Kalantzis (1988). "Ethnicity meets gender meets class in Australia" (Paper 13 ed.). University of Wollongong. p. 5. By the 1980s, 25.8 percent of Australian women aged 20-64 had been born overseas. Splitting this figure by origins, 11.4 percent of Australian women were born in non-English speaking countries other than Australia; 2.3 percent in Northwest Europe, 1.5 percent in Eastern Europe, 7.7 percent in the Mediterranean region
4. Gustav Ranis (2019). Comparative Development Perspectives. Routledge. p. 336. ISBN 978-0367020125. The pre-1929 world witnessed massive migrations, but the "international labor market" remained segmented by culture, policy, and prejudice. Chinese and Indians migrated, but mainly to tropical regions, northwestern Europeans moved mainly to North America, Australia, and South Africa.)
5. Christian Joppke (1990), "Are "Nondiscriminatory" Immigration Policies Reversible? Evidence from the United States and Australia", Comparative Political Studies (Original Scientific Paper: UDK 331.556.44 (94 = 861/ = 866) ed.), SAGE Publications, pp. 45–63, In the English-speaking settler states (Australia, the United States, Canada, and New Zealand), the notion of nondiscriminatory immigration policy has the precise meaning of eschewing ethnicity, race and national origins .... past policies that had blatantly resorted to them. More than that, the settler states' ethnically selective immigration policies, which all had prioritized northwestern Europeans, were tainted by theflip side of racial exclusion, which had targeted primarily Asians.
6. Tarcisius Kabutaulaka (2019). "Re-representing Melanesia". In Stewart Firth; Vijay Naidu (eds.). Understanding Oceania: Celebrating the University of the South Pacific and its collaboration with The Australian National University (Pacific Series). ANU Press. p. 197. ISBN 978-1760462888. Writing about people of mixed descent in Australia, historian Henry Reynolds argued that racial categories that had already taken root in Europe and North America were transmitted to Australia ... Reynolds described how, at the first ]Commonwealth Parliament meeting in 1901, 'members and Senators agreed about the centrality of race. They agreed that there was a demonstrable hierarchy of races with the northwest Europeans, the Nordics or Caucasians at the top and the Africans, Melanesians, and Aborigines at the bottom' (2005:85).
7. Francis Harry Bauer (2013). "What Man Hath Wrought: Geography and Change in Northern Australia". In Don Parkes (ed.). Northern Australia: The Arenas of Life and Ecosystems on Half a Continent. Academic Press. p. 2. ISBN 978-1483244563.
8. Lois Foster; David Stockley (1988). "Immigration: Nature and consequences for Australian society". Australian Multiculturalism: A Documentary History and Critique (Multilingual Matters). Channel View Publications. p. 7. ISBN 978-1853590078. Pre-war migration policy, in all its aspects, resulted by 1945 in a total population of something greater than 7.5 million. The ethnic composition of this small population was overwhelmingly British, with the remainder divided among Northwestern Europeans (about 7%), Southern Europeans (about 1%), other whites (about 1%) and a further 1% of non-whites, mainly Aborigines.
9. Kathryn A. Manzo (1995). "Australia". Creating Boundaries: The Politics of Race and Nation. Lynne Rienner Publishers. p. 187. ISBN 978-1555875640. Official policy had long consisted of active assistance to potential British migrants; of a laissez-faire attitude toward northwestern Europeans; of limits of immigration from southern and eastern Europe; and of sharp restrictions on Asians.)
10. Dirk Hoerder (2002). "New Migration Systems". Cultures in Contact: World Migrations in the Second Millennium. Duke University Press. p. 534. ISBN 978-0-8223-4901-3. Shifts in Australia's immigration illustrate the changes in economic relations and cultural attitudes. Following World War II, displaced persons from Europe predominated; northwestern Europeans were part of the main immigration flow in the 1950s, and southern Europeans figured prominently in the 1950s and 1960s.
11. "Tens of Thousands Want To Come to Australia". The Tweed Daily. 24 December 1945.
12. Maren Klein (2016). "The German Community in Australia: High on Ancestry but Low Engagement?". In Bruno Mascitelli; Sonia Mycak; Gerardo Papalia (eds.). The European Diaspora in Australia: An Interdisciplinary Perspective. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. p. 97. ISBN 978-1443888165. Germany had to cope with millions of people uprooted by the war crowding into a much diminished territory, while Australia had decided to actively grow its population through a carefully crafted immigration program which initially favoured British and North-Western Europeans. Harold Holt is reported to have stated a renewed Australian interest in German migrants as early as 1948 (Steinert 1995).
13. Angelika E Sauer (1999), "Model Workers or Hardened Nazis? the Australian Debate about Admitting German Migrants, 1950-1952", The Australian Journal of Politics and History (Volume 45 ed.), Wiley-Blackwell, Studies identify the three pillars upon which Labor immigration policy rested: first, the goal of introducing an ethnically desirable mix of Northwestern Europeans ... second, security issues related to screening out war criminals and fascist collaborators; and third, the devices built into the programme to ensure that migrants would be channelled into certain labour-starved sectors of the economy to protect the Australian-born work force..
14. James Forrest; Michael Poulsen; Ron Johnston (2006). Peoples and Spaces in a Multicultural Nation: cultural Group Segregation in Metropolitan Australia. Espace populations sociétés (journal). Immigrants from northwestern Europe, Britain and New Zealand show an emphasis on white collar (managerial-professional-clerical/sales) backgrounds with smaller numbers in the blue collar (manual) occupations ... Nevertheless, there was considerable population growth after World War II. Among non-host groups, many war refugees from northwest Europe were attracted to Newcastle ... Thus greatest de-segregation is apparent among those who arrived from Europe in the first decades after World War II – Germans, Dutch, other northwestern Europeans)
15. Brian Taugher (1989). "Drugs, Young Men and Crime: Two Decades of California Experience". Australian Crime Prevention Council. p. 29. Australian Risk Factors: First, Australia’s Population is rapidly diversifying. To an earlier population of largely northwestern Europeans (English, Irish and Dutch) were added many southern Europeans (Italians, Greeks and Turks) in recent decades. And even more recently, Asians from many lands are proudly becoming Australian. Australia, like California, is becoming a leader on the Pacific Rim.
16. Val Colic-Peisker (2008). "The Hostland". Migration, Class and Transnational Identities: Croatians in Australia and America. University of Illinois Press. p. 81. ISBN 978-0252033605. In Australia, two different groups of white ethnics take different places in the ethnic ranking. The first group is made up of northwestern Europeans who arrived in large numbers in the nineteenth century, most notably Irish and Germans who are nowadays fully included in the idea of the Australian nation. Immigrants from eastern and southern Europe - Italians, Greeks, Yugoslavs, Poles, Jews, and others - arrived later
17. M. D. R. Evans (1988), "Choosing to be a Citizen: The Time-Path of Citizenship in Australia", International Migration Review (Volume 22 ed.), SAGE Publications, pp. 243–264, Some immigrant groups, Mediterranean and Third World immigrants, have a much more rapid transition to citizenship than others. Northwestern Europeans begin more slowly, but catch up several decades later. Anglophone immigrants are altogether less likely to become citizens.
18. M. D. R. Evans (1990). "Labour Markets Resources of Yugoslav Immigrants in Australia: Education, Work Experience, and Language Fluency" (Original Scientific Paper: UDK 331.556.44 (94 = 861/ = 866) ed.). Australian National University. pp. 45–63. Yugoslav born women (and other Mediterranean born women) are much less educated than immigrant women from Northwestern Europe ... Language maintenance is lower still among Northwestern European men, of whom ... 51 percent have shifted entirely to English ... Yugoslav women are less proficient in English (average fluency score of 67) than are the Asians (average fluency score of 80), the Eastern Europeans (average fluency score of 82), or the Northwestern Europeans (average fluency score of 93).
19. M.D.R. Evans; Tatjiana Lucik (2000). "The Impact of Resources and Family-Level Cultural Practices on Immigrant Women vs Workforce Participation". In Rita J. Simon (ed.). Immigrant Women. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 978-0765806482. With language skill scores averaging 85 for men and 82 for women, Eastern Europeans' language skills typically rate ten to fifteen points higher than do Yugoslavs'. Northwest Europeans have yet a bit more fluency in English (1981 Australian Census)