Swinburne University of Technology - Melbourne Australia

Cultural collaboration to better meld communities

Story by Bianca Nogrady

It has been more than three decades since the first wave of Vietnamese migrants arrived on Australia's shores in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. Since then they have become an established component of modern, multicultural Australia, but it was not always a smooth journey - either for the new arrivals or for local community agencies such as the police.

Understanding and working with different ethnic communities can pose challenges for community stability and, in particular, for policing - different cultural values and language barriers tend to create mutual mistrust. It has been a particular cross for immigrants to bear, so to bridge the misunderstandings and communication gulfs that often exist, Swinburne University of Technology has launched an innovative project that aims to build trust, communication and cooperation between two test groups, Melbourne's Vietnamese community and Victoria Police.

Supported by a grant from the Australian Research Council and funds from Victoria Police, the project is also drawing on the expertise of researchers from RMIT University in Melbourne and the University of New South Wales.

Research fellow at Swinburne's Institute of Social Research Helen McKernan says the goal is to create a model for the police for working with ethnic communities that can then be applied to other ethnic communities.

She says the first and most important step is to open channels of communication and to explore how the Vietnamese community perceives the risk of crime and insecurity.

The research team wants to know more about who Australian Vietnamese groups see as trustworthy and responsible, and how these forms of trust fit with attitudes to police, law and formal authority. The researchers will also investigate police attitudes to and experience of Australian Vietnamese groups.

"Police find it very hard to solve crimes in the community and have difficulty in accessing the views and experiences of community members," Ms McKernan says.

This will most likely involve workshops with members of the Vietnamese community and Victoria Police, and also consulting them individually.

Ms McKernan says the project is a true collaboration, with both groups keen to improve their relationships, and to also throw light onto ways of improving relationships between the police and other ethnic communities.

Inspector Dean McWhirter, area manager for the Yarra Police Service in Melbourne, says that while the research will centre on one particular community, the knowledge gained is intended to be applicable to all community relationships.

"The issue is that, historically, when there's a large migrant group from another part of the world, there's a lot of community adjustment that has to take place," Inspector McWhirter says.

Founder and CEO of the Australian Vietnamese Women's Association, Mrs Cam Nguyen, says the adjustment period is particularly challenging in the 20 to 30 years after the first migrants arrive.

"Migrant communities are at their most vulnerable when they are on the cusp between the first generation and the second generation; when the second generation comes into adulthood," Mrs Nguyen says.

She says problems with identity, relationships and communication can lead to social disorders, such as excessive gambling or drugs, as people try to escape emotional problems.

These issues are not unique to the Vietnamese community, but echo throughout migrant groups, so the hope is that practical solutions developed for the Vietnamese community can be shared with communities across the country.

It is a challenging time for the police force, which now has to stretch itself across such a diverse range of communities, according to Nita Cherry, Professor of Leadership at Swinburne's faculty of Business and Enterprise. So much has already been learnt through this process - the next step is to bring it all together.

"How does the workforce in Victoria Police capture its own working intelligence around these things?" Professor Cherry asks. "People write reports and policies etcetera, but a lot of the practice-wisdom is actually in people's heads.

"The intent of this project is to give people the opportunity to articulate what they have learnt and to put it side by side with what the Vietnamese community is now saying is important to it."

Professor Cherry says there is as much to be gained from the process of this research as there is from the final outcomes. She says it is important that the people who provide and gather the data also help each other to make sense of it. "My ideal would be they make sense of it together, that we build trust through the research process itself."

Inspector McWhirter says it is hoped that a better understanding of the Vietnamese experiences will help police relationships with newer migrant groups such as the Sudanese community.

One thing is clear - this is not a research project whose findings will be relegated to a library shelf. Mrs Nguyen says all parties involved are determined to develop practical, concrete solutions.