Pirates, terrorists or doctors of philosophy?

[Gheelle.T]

I found this interesting article and thought I should share with you. The author discuses the difficulties African Professional specially Somalis face finding jobs in Australia... Enjoy

 

 

ABDULKADIR SHIRE and Ali-nur Duale are masters of disguise. The two Somali men, now in their fifties, have spent more than thirty years between them applying for jobs in Melbourne. Their tactics have ranged from the shrewd (omitting their nationality and native language on their CVs) to the downright devious (“de-Arabising” their first names by replacing them with initials). But their real skill is one that not many people would think of bringing to the job market: making themselves look unintelligent on paper.

 

They call it “downskilling”: cutting from their resumés any hint of a qualification or achievement that might make them appear too smart for the jobs they’re applying for. In Duale’s case, that means hiding a PhD in applied entomology and a distinguished career developing crop protection programs for farmers in Africa and India. In Shire’s case, it’s a Masters in petrochemical engineering and a diploma from Victoria University that don’t get mentioned.

 

But both men have given up that battle. Last October, after seventeen years and more than 300 failed job applications, Shire packed his bags and moved to Brisbane, where he is now helping his wife start a family daycare business. Duale is resigned to continue working as a casual interpreter for a refugee translation service.

 

“People say, ‘Why can’t you get a decent job, with all your qualifications and experience?’” says Duale, who is often described in his community as the most qualified Somali in Australia. “And I have to lie and tell them I just want to do something to help my own people. I’ve even told my children this untruth.”

 

No one has calculated the loss of allowing so many of our best and brightest residents to work as drivers, translators, cleaners or security guards. The “PhDs driving taxis” headlines have come and gone, but hundreds of experienced doctors and accountants and engineers are still driving cabs and doing menial part-time jobs on hourly wages to sustain their families and relatives overseas. Hundreds more have given up entirely, resigning themselves to a perpetual life in the slow lane.

 

Africans, the newest, most foreign group in our cultural melting pot, are invariably suffering the most. Some say it’s always been this way: the waves of Greeks, Italians, Lebanese, Vietnamese and other migrant groups who arrived between the 1950s and 80s all struggled just as hard to find sustainable jobs. But the evidence strongly suggests otherwise. As an Englishman who was offered his first professional job within two weeks of landing in Australia, the stories of Duale, Shire and dozens more Somalis I’ve met have forced me to reassess my opinion of Australia as a place where opportunity is guaranteed for new arrivals.

 

WHEN Lindsay Tanner, former finance minister and federal member for Melbourne, resigned last June, many members of Victoria’s African community felt they had lost one of their own. Not only was Tanner a critic of the hardening of Labor’s asylum seeker policies, he was also the most visible and vocal of the country’s pro-African “champions” – a regular guest at community events, and a loud advocate for greater training and job opportunities among the country’s least-employed migrant communities. Just a week before his resignation, Tanner launched a report by the Australian Human Rights Commission that found evidence of anti-African sentiment in virtually every sphere of Australian public life.

 

Of course, you don’t give up such convictions easily. Within weeks, Tanner was back to assisting two Melbourne-based projects he is particularly close to: the Corporate Leaders Network’s African-Australian Project, through which ten high-profile companies – including the National Australia Bank, IBM, Australia Post, BHP and Telstra – have committed to develop training and placement opportunities for African-Australian graduates; and the Horn-Afrik Employment, Training and Advocacy Project, a homespun initiative with 250 “Horn of Africans” – migrants from Eritrea, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Somalia – on its books.

 

The next year or two could be make-or-break for both projects. The Corporate Leaders Network has promised to “ramp up” its focus on African jobseekers, and after two job-training workshops in which black faces were notably absent it has reserved a third of the thirty-five places at its next workshop for Africans. The Horn-Afrik project, run by a Somali-Australian out of a dingy room in a tower block in Carlton, has secured federal funding for two more years; yet this project, the only African-run initiative linking the Victorian government and industry to support professional jobseekers, has found jobs for only seventeen people in the past three years – and ten of these have since returned to the taxi ranks.

 

As Australia grapples with increasingly polarised views about our multiracial future, such scoresheets challenge what Immigration Minister Chris Bowen recently called “the genius of Australian multiculturalism.” Conservative commentators continue to portray African communities – and particularly Somalis and Sudanese – as hotbeds of criminality and covert fundamentalism, while popular media outlets stir perceptions of their members as gang members and dole bludgers. But what few people have yet broached are the obvious links between fathers who struggle to find work and children for whom job satisfaction is a concept from another planet.

 

“If we’re losing the fathers, we will lose their sons,” warns Horn-Afrik’s project officer, Omar Farah. “They will drop out of school, live on the dole, and some will go into crime. If your husband is unemployed, your father is depressed, your parents are talking about going back to Africa – how can you expect that family to be striving to adopt ‘Australian values?’”

 

 

Read more

 

http://inside.org.au/pirates-terrorists-or-doctors-of-philosophy/

[Chimera]

Somali communities' key to success is allignement and close-relationships with well-established model minorities:

 

Australia = Koreans are the key.

Canada = Chinese/ Jews are the key -- Somali Canadians have already taken the initiative there.

United Kingdom = Indians are the key

Netherlands = Indonesians are the key

America = I think Somalis there are holding their own (outside of a few dumb fools, and the terrorism stigma.)

 

etc.

 

The experiences of these model minorities in the jobmarket/education sector and society in general could be very beneficial for Somali progress.

[FatB]

this is the biggest bull, i have never seen nor incountered such discrimination - hell masters in petrochemical dude there are like 3 companies in all of auss that need those qualies

 

and seriously such qualifications are way to high for most of the western countries

[Archdemos]

thanks Ghelle for a good read,

[Alpha Blondy]

lol@adam

 

'model minorities' - how can Somalis ever emulate Indians when we have different political, social, cultural trajectories. Indians, unlike Somalis are not from a post-conflict and semi-nomadic countries. they've adjusted fine to the pressures of modernity in all its complexities.

[Chimera]

Somali parents and Indian parents both want their sons and daughters to succeed at school, at the work-place and society in general. A display of bankrupt - red-herring - verbal acrobatics won't change this simple fact.

[Alpha Blondy]

^answer the question!