Received: 24 October 2022
| Revised: 4 November 2023 | Accepted: 7 November 2023
DOI: 10.1002/ajs4.304
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Sticky places for regional immigrant settlement: A literature review Leena Bakshi1
| Fiona Haslam McKenzie2
| Julian Bolleter3
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Department of Geography and Planning, University of Western Australia, Crawley, Western Australia, Australia
2 Department of Geography, School of Social Sciences, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, Western Australia, Australia 3 Australian Urban Design Research Centre, The University of Western Australia, Perth, Western Australia, Australia
Correspondence Fiona Haslam McKenzie, Department of Geography, School of Social Sciences, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA, Australia. Email: fiona.haslam-mckenzie@uwa.edu.au
Abstract Since 1996, migration-related schemes have directed new immigrants, refugees and humanitarian entrants to regional Australia to mitigate the need for skills and declining population growth in these locations. However, a key concern of these schemes is the uncertainty of long-term immigrant retention in regional locations beyond the stipulated visa category period. We draw on the metaphor of stickiness: the ability of geographic clusters to attract and retain to examine Australian regional settlement literature and identify factors and processes associated with immigrant settlement and retention. Through a systematic and rigorous review process, we identify seven interconnected factors and processes nestled amongst three core themes of sticky factors and processes that attract, enable and impede settlement and retention contributing to the growing knowledge regarding regional immigrant settlement and retention. K EY WOR DS community initiatives, education, immigrants, local government cooperation or targeted schemes to assist communities, regional
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I N T RODUC T ION
Immigrants in Australia have largely settled in urban centres since the 1947 post-war resettlement, particularly in Sydney and Melbourne (Hugo, 1999; Wilkinson et al., 2021), rather than in rural or regional areas (Daley et al., 2017). Common reasons for urban-c entric immigrant settlement are community networks, support systems, services and employment opportunities This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. © 2023 The Authors. Australian Journal of Social Issues published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf of Australian Social Policy Association. Aust J Soc Issues. 2023;00:1–42.
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