Settlement Dimensions of the Vietnam-Born Population in Metropolitan Sydney

Australia has the largest Indochinese population per capita in the world, and Sydney supported sizeable populations from Vietnam in 1986. These populations became socially visible because of physical characteristics and clustering and have generated the response by some commentators that ghettos are forming. This paper examines the extent of residential concentration of Vietnamese-bom population in Sydney and changes over time in the distribution of settlement with reference to new immigration and internal migration. Gravitation group migration has reinforced concentration, but the result has not been ghettos, although there have been specific local problems of unemployment and housing access which may constrain residential mobility for some time. Manufacturing and residential restructuring have affected unemployment and have constrained dispersion. Institutional factors have reinforced concentration. Some residential mobility will be required for entry into a diversity of labour markets, if unemployment is to be reduced in the context of the restructuring of manufacturing production.