Learning from Leeton: A case study of refugee settlement in rural Australia: Full report

This report describes how refugee-background migrant settlement in rural Australian communities has often been framed within the context of public discourses of refugees as a burden, cost or threat, or as unwilling or unable to integrate into – become a part of – local communities.
Rural and regional communities have been impacted by national and global structural changes impacting their economies as well as government policies that have sought to significantly increase the numbers of refugees and migrants settling in these communities, and away from larger metropolitan centres.
We argue in this report that, while refugee-background migrants can have a positive impact on rural communities, it is important that we learn from the experiences of rural communities that already have a history of refugee settlement.
Those experiences can provide evidence-based information that can maximise the potential for success – for the refugee-background migrants themselves, local rural communities and, of course, government settlement policies – what we might call a win-win-win outcome.