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Abstract The post‐war migration programme has added more than 8 million to the Australian population, but the immigrants have overwhelmingly settled in a few metropolitan areas. At each successive census an increasing proportion of the overseas‐born resided in capital cities until 2006 when there was a small reduction. The latter shift, while small, may herald a change in immigrant settlement. In 1996 the settler intake was divided into immigrants who could settle anywhere in Australia and those that were directed to designated areas. Predominant in the latter were non‐metropolitan communities. This paper analyses how these policy shifts relating to permanent and temporary migration have created a new flow of immigrants into regional Australia. A number of developments in the Australian Immigration Program are taken in turn, and empirical evidence regarding their scale and impact in non‐metropolitan Australia assessed. Firstly, a number of surveys of State Specific and Regional Migration (SSRM) settlers are analysed and show that while there is a high degree of satisfaction among both immigrants and employers, there are some labour issues. In addition, a significant minority intend to leave their area of initial settlement once they had fulfilled their residential qualification. While refugee‐humanitarian settlers are not compelled to settle in particular areas, many are channelled into regional areas. There is often a lack of support services for them in these areas, although some regional communities are mobilising to cancel this out. There are also several elements in Australia's new suite of temporary migration programmes which are funnelling migrants into regional areas. The paper examines student migration, the Working Holiday Maker programme and the Regional 457 long‐term business migration programme. Most of these represent totally new elements in regional populations. While it is too early to make definitive judgements about the extent of this trend and its impact, immigration is bringing social and economic change to many non‐metropolitan communities. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Graeme Hugo (Sat,) studied this question.