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A Wellbeing Approach to Mobility and its Application to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians

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Abstract

This paper demonstrates that key models of human mobility across several disciplines can be considered as specific cases of a broader conceptualisation of mobility in terms of its contribution to wellbeing. It is argued that this wellbeing perspective offers important advantages for the formulation of policy in areas that must respond to mobility in cross-cultural contexts, and particularly in regard to policy relating to highly mobile, indigenous peoples. An applied example is provided through a discussion of how this conceptualisation of mobility offers a different understanding of the mobility of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, one that may have led to superior policy outcomes.

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Notes

  1. There is even great uncertainty over the size of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population at the time of European settlement, with estimates varying from a few hundred thousand to over one million persons (Davidson 1990).

  2. Taylor (2006); Morphy (2006, 2007); Foster et al. (2005) and others have expanded on the limitations of the Census and other data collections for the purposes of analysing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander mobility, and temporary mobility in particular.

  3. The ABS does map the Census data to an ‘Indigenous Geography’ in which the country is divided into a number of Indigenous locations, areas and regions, but since the abolition of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, these have not been the basis upon which program funding is allocated regionally.

  4. Addressing this information gap is one of the main objectives of the Population Mobility and Labour Markets research project current being undertaken by the Cooperative Research Centre for Remote Economic Participation.

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  1. Cooperative Research Centre for Remote Economic Participation, Curtin Business School, Curtin University, GPO Box U1987, Perth, WA, 6845, Australia

    Alfred Michael Dockery

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  1. Alfred Michael Dockery
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Dockery, A.M. A Wellbeing Approach to Mobility and its Application to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. Soc Indic Res 125, 243–255 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-014-0839-8

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