Summary: Cosmopolitan Melbourne: Katie Fraser <strong>Steering Past Settlement: Cases from the African Legal Service</strong> <em>Katie Fraser (Footscray Community Legal Centre)</em> How does Melbourne’s social and cultural geography shape legal problems and unlawful behaviours? The western suburbs have long been a settling point for new arrivals; however, as gentrification continues and the inner west becomes unaffordable, new refugee arrivals from Sudan and Burma are being settled further out in the western suburbs. Here public transport links are less developed, and a private vehicle is essential for access to language classes, schools and other essential services. Driving without a license, driving with a suspended license, and driving without insurance are all inevitable consequences of this geographical imperative to drive. Such problems are compounded by certain public policy initiatives. For example, the Centrelink implementation of “welfare to work” policies pressures unskilled workers—including many refugees and other new arrivals—to take factory work, which tends to be available during time periods and at industrial locations not serviced by public transport. In these ways, policy, landscape and cultural differences combine to cause shame and high financial costs, creating barriers to settlement and barring the participation of some in “cosmopolitan” and “multicultural” Melbourne. Other social consequences include high costs on the road and the broader losses associated with social isolation. This paper will draw on evidence from the African Legal Service project, which has been run from the Footscray Community Legal Centre to provide legal advice services to African clients. It will examine geography as one of the barriers to social inclusion for new arrivals, and suggest ways in which spatial and cultural isolation can be overcome.
