Where do Aussies come from?

About 97% of Australians have non-indigenous ancestory. Of those, 28.5% are immigrants, or first generation Australians (i.e. they were born elsewhere but now live in Australia). Australian immigration statistics through time tell an interesting story.

By stitching together the results from the national Census’, we have put together a little demographic study of where those first generation Australians are from – and how things have changed over the years.

Over one quarter

of current Australian residents were born overseas

Data source: Australian Bureau of Statistics.

The animated map (Figure 1) shows a compelling story. In the 1930’s Australian immigration was dominated by the UK and Ireland. But by the 1950’s there was a large concentration of immigrants from eastern, western and southern Europe. Then by the 1980’s immigrants to Australia were from all over the world. Since the 1980’s, there has been a rapid increase in immigration from Southeast Asia, which continues to the present day.

Figure 1:  Immigrants to Australia by country/region of origin.

This time series chart (Figure 2) shows how the count of first generation Australians has grown from about 1 million in 1950 to 6.9 million in 2016. The dominant region for immigrants is now Asia, but Europe still features as a key source of migration.

Figure 2: Change in immigration from different regions. Ignore the little dip at the end – this is due to 2 million Australians not filling out the country of birth question at the 2016 census.

About the data visualisations

The visualisations in this post are contained within their own Truii Dashboard. You can link to the dashboard, or use the embed code from each chart/map to embed or link to a specific visualisation.

The visualisations are easy to create. All you need to do is sign up for a free Truii account.