It's no longer a cultural sin to live overseas and still call Australia home
Apr 12th 2004, 6:21 am
#1
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Joined: Aug 2003
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It's no longer a cultural sin to live overseas and still call Australia home
Here is a sign of how the nation is changing and not the media and the elite. Interesting that the young are much more accepting of the expat Aussie than the old.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/...?from=storyrhs
One commentator told us that "loudmouth expatriates" should "learn to listen to what those who live in this country have to say". Another complained of "expatriatitis". A third wrote that Hughes's peers "have spent so much of their lives elsewhere that maybe we should stop calling them 'expatriates' and just see them as ignorant foreigners".
......
The answer is no. As part of a study of the policy implications of the Australian diaspora, the Lowy Institute for International Policy commissioned UMR Research to do a telephone survey of Australians' attitudes to their expatriates.
The results are striking. It turns out Australians are far more sanguine than we might have expected about their non-resident countrymen and women: 91 per cent of the 1000 respondents agreed with the positive statement that expatriates are "adventurous people prepared to try their luck and have a go overseas", and only 6 per cent disagreed.
Most respondents also believed expatriates are successful: 75 per cent agreed they "are doing well for themselves away from home", and only 6 per cent disagreed.
By contrast, only 10 per cent of respondents believed expatriates "have let us down by leaving Australia", and a massive 86 per cent disagreed. On the issue of long-distance lectures, only 14 per cent of people agreed that expatriates "too often delight in running Australia down from offshore", and 71 per cent disagreed with the statement. Far from sniping at expatriates, then, most of us support them.
There is a second insight from the survey: the existence of a generational shift, whereby younger people are more positively inclined towards expatriates, than older people are. For example, we asked about Australians who "have been overseas for many years and have no plans to return home". Sixty-two per cent of all respondents identified these people as "real" Australians, 31 per cent did not.
........
Australia's offshore citizens represent a valuable resource: a market, a sales force, an ambassadorial corps and a constituency. Most Australians understand this.
The hope is that our opinion leaders and policymakers will catch on soon, and craft some modest but intelligent policies to encourage Australian institutions to harness this great national asset.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/...?from=storyrhs
One commentator told us that "loudmouth expatriates" should "learn to listen to what those who live in this country have to say". Another complained of "expatriatitis". A third wrote that Hughes's peers "have spent so much of their lives elsewhere that maybe we should stop calling them 'expatriates' and just see them as ignorant foreigners".
......
The answer is no. As part of a study of the policy implications of the Australian diaspora, the Lowy Institute for International Policy commissioned UMR Research to do a telephone survey of Australians' attitudes to their expatriates.
The results are striking. It turns out Australians are far more sanguine than we might have expected about their non-resident countrymen and women: 91 per cent of the 1000 respondents agreed with the positive statement that expatriates are "adventurous people prepared to try their luck and have a go overseas", and only 6 per cent disagreed.
Most respondents also believed expatriates are successful: 75 per cent agreed they "are doing well for themselves away from home", and only 6 per cent disagreed.
By contrast, only 10 per cent of respondents believed expatriates "have let us down by leaving Australia", and a massive 86 per cent disagreed. On the issue of long-distance lectures, only 14 per cent of people agreed that expatriates "too often delight in running Australia down from offshore", and 71 per cent disagreed with the statement. Far from sniping at expatriates, then, most of us support them.
There is a second insight from the survey: the existence of a generational shift, whereby younger people are more positively inclined towards expatriates, than older people are. For example, we asked about Australians who "have been overseas for many years and have no plans to return home". Sixty-two per cent of all respondents identified these people as "real" Australians, 31 per cent did not.
........
Australia's offshore citizens represent a valuable resource: a market, a sales force, an ambassadorial corps and a constituency. Most Australians understand this.
The hope is that our opinion leaders and policymakers will catch on soon, and craft some modest but intelligent policies to encourage Australian institutions to harness this great national asset.
