South or Southern European Australians have been widely research in academia and referenced in various scholarly and journalistic works as a distinct pan-ethnic grouping within Australia. The group can be divided into nation-based subgroupings, such as Portuguese Australians and Italian Australians.
History
Dr Andonis Piperoglou has written how some of the earliest Southern Europeans arrived in Australia around 1902. In an Australian Journal of Politics and History, the article outlined how Greek immigrants established themselves in the oyster industry of New South Wales. During the 1920s, as immigration from Mediterranean Europe grew, there were accusations from Anglo-Celtic Australians, including the Australian Workers' Union, that the group were arriving in unmanageably large numbers. There were also complaints that the new workers were competing in labour industries, such as the sugar cane industry in Queensland. Negative stereotypes and depictions in media of the group persisted in this period, often relating to hygiene and eating habits. During the 1930s, Griffith University's Robert Mason has proposed that the pan-ethnic group were significantly involved with anarchism in Australia, producing leaders in the movement with Italian and Spanish heritages. Actions and attitudes towards Southern Europeans in this period has been compared with the historically poor treatment of Poles and Italians in Germany. In the 1940s, there continued to be resistance to the recruitment of the group as a labour force. However, due to lack of interest from Australia's preferred immigrant groups, namely British people and other groups from Northwestern Europe, by the 1950s, South Europeans were the country's main source of workers. In the early 1960s, Dr Charles A. Price's various Southern Europeans in Australia publications became established studies of the pan-ethnic grouping in relation to migration and integration. Price's works primarily relied upon Australia's naturalisation records. During the 1950s and 1960s, there was significant migratory flow into the country by Eastern Europeans and Southern European people. In this period, discriminatory attitudes against the newcomers by the native-born Australians have been compared with some Northwestern European Americans' prejudice toward Southern European Americans, and the enactment of the National Origins Formula of the 1920s in the United States. South Europeans in Australia, however, appeared to progress "through the ethnic pecking order faster" than their American counterparts had. Towards the end of the 1960s, it had become harder to attract significant numbers of the group to Australia, and some were returning home to Southern Europe. Rules on family reunion were relaxed as a countermeasure and recruitment attempts increased in the region. Published in the Mediterranean Journal of Educational Studies in 1998, Dr Yiannis Dimitreas proposed that the group had remained only partially integrated up until the 1990s, and manifested cultural elements of their ancestral nations in Australia:
This means that until the present period of the 1990s, the experiences of Southern Europeans in Australia was the experience of a Southern European microcosm with different national origins in the context of one single nation state, namely Australia. Their efforts towards the creation of Mediterranean space has been both a real and imaginary reflection of the social tensions, political conflict and economic antagonism found within single nation states of their European homeland prior to and after their migration and settlement in Australia.
In 2005, MP Tony Abbott wrote how "Fifty years ago, some Anglo-Australians mistrusted southern European Australians", as a historical context to intolerance in the country, in relation to the debate surrounding a possible burka ban in Australia.
Academic research
1993 research, published in Population and Development Review, studied the reproductive behaviours and fertility of the group in Australia. Research published in 1999 demonstrated that first-generation Southern Europeans retained higher marriage rates than native-born Australians. 2001 research into Australians youths, published in the Asian Journal of Social Psychology, showed that, while Southern European Australians were considered a minority group, they were more likely to be in a relationship than Chinese Australians. In 2005, research conducted by sociologist Katharine Betts showed that Southern European immigrants were more likely to favour immigration from their birth-nation, than they were to endorse immigration from Asia. A 2004 study published in Diabetes Care journal, compared Australian-born and Southern European-born Australians' risk of diabetes, using, among many factors, body mass index. A study of the Mediterranean diet, in relation to heart disease and colonic cancer, compared intragroup eating behaviours, with elderly Greek Australians living in Melbourne compared with Southern European Australians aged 25-65. The results found that the pan-ethnic group consumed more pork, shellfish, meat in general, eggs, soft drinks and alcohol, and less chicken, organ meat, fish, stone fruit, bananas.
