Spatial mobility among Indigenous Australians: Patterns and determinants

There is enormous literature on internal migration in both developed and less developed countries and in the former these studies often extend to such specific communities as recent immigrants and the foreign-born population. However, very little is known about the mobility patterns of Indigenous minorities in first world countries. This paper, based on recent census data, establishes the patterns and determinants of internal migration among the Indigenous population of Australia. Results show that compared to the total population, the Indigenous population is highly mobile and largely engaged in short rather than long-distance migration. Its migration pattern peaks at a relatively young age and dominated by family as opposed to labor migration. The zero-inflated negative binomial regression result shows that, at macro-level, the incidence and volume of inter-regional migration are influenced by regional differences in economic resources, in proportions of population identified as Indigenous, as well by geographic factors such as contiguity and physical distance between areal units. The paper also brings to light some novel approaches to the analysis of census migration data.