This public lecture is now available as MP3 (please listen to the file below in three parts) and the PowerPoint slides as a PDF file (as a courtesy to the presenter, please contact him for permission to refer to his PowerPoint notes for the purpose of further research).

Australia is currently the 6th destination country for migrants from Russia, after Germany, USA, Israel, Finland and Canada. The 2006 population census of Australia enumerated over 67,000 people with Russian origin or who identified themselves as Russian. There are also sizeable groups of Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Armenians, Moldavians, Tatars, Bashkirs, Jews and other nationalities from Russia. In Australia, ‘Russian’ is a widely-used term that refers to immigrants who arrives at different times, maintain different associations with Russia, and achieved different degrees of integration into Australian society. Research indicates that economic migrants who arrived since the 1990s and comprise many highly educated, independent professionals are highly integrated into Australian society. In contrast, migrants from Harbin (North China) who arrived in the 1950s to 1960s are the least integrated. Given the diversity of ‘Russian’ migrants, it is better to speak of a ‘Russian speaking community’, rather that a ‘Russian Diaspora’ to Australia.

Sergey Ryazantsev is Professor of Economics of Population and Demography.and Head of the Centre for Social Demography and Economic Sociology at the Institute of Socio-Political Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. His latest monographs include: Modelling of Flows of Labour Migration from the Countries of the Central Asia to Russia (2011) and Chinese Migration to Russia (2010). 

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