“How Do We Put Him in the System?”: Client Construction at a Sport-Based Migrant Settlement Service in Melbourne, Australia

The empirical focus of this article is a sport-based settlement service targeting newly arrived migrants in Melbourne, Australia. This five-month study examines staff members’ everyday work routines with a focus on their participation in meetings and the production of documents. Embedded in the Aust...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Social inclusion 2019-01, Vol.7 (1), p.238-247
Main Author: Broerse, Jora
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anxiety
Australia
Clearance & settlement
client construction
Clients
Design
Empowerment
Ethnic groups
Ethnicity
Humanitarianism
Immigration
Immigration policy
Meetings
migrant settlement
Migrant workers
Migrants
Migration
Minority groups
Multiculturalism & pluralism
Otherness
Participation
policy design
Religion
sport-for-development
Sports
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Summary:The empirical focus of this article is a sport-based settlement service targeting newly arrived migrants in Melbourne, Australia. This five-month study examines staff members’ everyday work routines with a focus on their participation in meetings and the production of documents. Embedded in the Australian immigration policy context, this article shows how staff members aim to empower clients while simultaneously falling back into stigmatising refugee/client identification through administrative practices. The results indicate that staffs’ everyday client constructions reinforce the othering and categorisation of ethnic minorities and support a reductionist deficit model of presenting clients. This may limit the opportunities for migrants to identify with and participate in wider Australian society and thus has the opposite effect of what governments and the sector aim to accomplish.
ISSN:2183-2803
2183-2803
DOI:10.17645/si.v7i1.1803