March 2005

 

 

New Asian migrants are at the very bottom of the ethnic pecking order in the job market, according to the results of a new study from the University of Auckland School of Business.

 

The study found that anti-Asian discrimination was a significant feature of Pakeha recruitment behaviour. Researcher Associate Professor Marie Wilson commented that “it's surprising how many people think that this issue (a) doesn't exist, or (b) is resolved by the low unemployment rate. Unemployment is NOT low for ethnic minorities, and under-employment is even more problematic.”

 

Wilson’s researchers set up several cross-cutting experiments where participants were asked to rank the suitability of a range of applicants for a job. All the applicants were fictional, equally overqualified, and fluent in English.

 

Despite the bias of Pakeha participants overall, the choices of the Asian participants came out colour blind (although the range of fictional applicants did not include Māori, Pacific Island or Muslim names). Wilson suggests that ethnic minorities in New Zealand are less likely to hold inaccurate stereotypes about other ethnic groups, because they have to interact with ethnicities other than their own on a daily basis.

 

The data will be no surprise to Asian migrants and their community support networks. President of the New Zealand Federation of Ethnic Councils, Pancha Narayanan, stated that “the mechanisms are weak” for preventing direct racial discrimination in employment, during consultation by the Auckland Regional Resettlement Strategy last week.

 

This research has expanded on the themes of earlier New Zealand work by the Centre for Applied Cross-Cultural Research at Victoria University, which found last year that recruitment agencies discriminated markedly against qualified, English-speaking applicants with Chinese names. Wilson’s final paper will be presented at the Academy of Management conference in August.

 

 

 

“We need to make it as easy as possible for small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to employ migrants”, said Auckland Regional Resettlement Strategy Project Manager Alison Hudgell to ethnic community leaders last week. To overcome “employers’ perceptions about the risks associated with employing migrants” there needed to be more positive profiling of the many SMEs who had found employing migrants to be a good business decision, Ms Hudgell said.

 

Employers consulted by the Resettlement Strategy Project had stressed the importance of a credible, business-friendly body helping migrants connect with employers. Ms Hudgell highlighted the 68% success rate of ongoing job placement achieved by the Auckland Chamber of Commerce joint initiative with Work and Income, which funds and coordinates trial periods and comprehensive training support for long-term unemployed migrants. Of the migrants consulted who had got “a foot in the door”, most found their ‘Kiwi’ employers to be fair, Ms Hudgell reported. The Strategy is due for completion this July.

 

Dedicated work-brokers supporting employers and jobseekers, one-to-one support, close case management and guaranteed long-term funding were also key to the successes of the J R McKenzie Trust Refugee Employment Programmes, which were funded from 2001-2004. The January 2005 evaluation of the programmes showed increasing rates of refugees placed into full or part time work: 120 placements by April 2004 grew to 278 by December 2004.