Multicultural Youth Australia is an ARC linkage project [Project ID: LP150100291] led by Professor Johanna Wyn and with a research team including Babak Dadvand (UniMelb), is a collaboration between the University of Melbourne and nine partner organisations. These include: Centre for Multicultural Youth (Victoria), Department of Premier and Cabinet (Victoria), Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (Victoria), Multicultural Youth Affairs Network (New South Wales), Access Community Services Limited (Queensland), Migrant Resource Centre (Southern Tasmania), Youth Coalition (Australian Capital Territory), Multicultural Youth (South Australia) and Youth Affairs Council (Western Australia).
Multicultural Youth Australia reports on the status of Australia’s multicultural youth aged 15 to 25. It offers a national status-reporting framework that provides the much-needed evidence base about how migrant youth in Australia are faring in social, economic and political spheres of life. Multicultural Youth Australia also provides insights into a range of areas that have significant research and policy implications. It collects national data that can help shed light on complex areas and topics such as youth identity, belonging, and participation.
Using a mixed-methods research design, the project collected data from a survey of 1,920 participants. A further 98 multicultural youth participated in qualitative research between 2016 and 2018. Focus groups and interviews were conducted in regional and metro locations in Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania. The collected data tapped into a range of topics relating to the everyday experiences of young people such as belonging, discrimination and racism, social networks, and cultural participation. In order to store and share the data, the research team created an online repository called the Multicultural Youth Australia Knowledge Hub. The Knowledge Hub was developed with the eScholarship Research Centre, a social and cultural informatics research centre at the University of Melbourne that specialises in archival sciences.