Do Social Trust and a Sense of Community Matter for the Engagement of Australian Migrants?

Abstract

Previous studies have shown mixed results regarding the potential association between trust and community participation. Only a few studies comprehensively investigated the relationship between different forms of social trust. Most of the previous studies distinguished the different forms of social trust separately. This article investigated trust and a sense of community with a more comprehensive framework in a rarely investigated population, migrants in Australia. The increasing social capital approach has been gaining importance in studying the social/political participation of (ethnic) minorities as this has primarily been seen to suit ‘ethnic’ social capital. The article aims to fill the theoretical gap by including trust and a sense of community and examining their associations with civil engagement in society using the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey data, a longitudinal survey in Australia with a particular focus on bringing the heterogeneities among groups of migrants. There has been an increasing number of people born overseas—a third of the population, according to the latest Australian Census in 2021. The results show that it is likely that the Australian-born population requires trust to engage in the community, particularly, in the case of volunteering, but this is not significant in the case of migrants. A high sense of community matters for both types of participation, political and volunteering, among Australian-born and the first generation of migrants. The results for the second generation of migrants in the context of trust and sense of community are limited, and other factors may influence their community engagement.