Building a New Life in Australia: The Longitudinal Study of Humanitarian Migrants, Release 5 (Waves 1-5)
May 10, 2021 | Recently Updated Datasets
Update Date: 10 May 2021
DOI: 10.26193/0AF6TZ
Building a New Life in Australia: The Longitudinal Study of Humanitarian Migrants (BNLA) aims to identify factors which help or hinder positive settlement outcomes. BNLA follows 1,509 humanitarian migrating units who arrived in Australia or had their permanent visas granted in the six months between May and December 2013. Participants include offshore visa holders who arrived in Australia holding a permanent humanitarian visa and onshore visa holders who received their permanent protection visa between May and December 2013. Wave 1 took place from October 2013 to February 2014 interviewing 2,399 principal and secondary applicants. The first five waves of data collection were conducted annually. Waves 1, 3 and 5 interviews were conducted face-to-face and waves 2 and 4 interviews were conducted by telephone. The survey and participant materials were translated into 14 languages in Wave 1 and nine languages in Waves 2–5. Interviews were conducted by bilingual interviewers; some interviews also used interpreters (interviews were conducted in nineteen languages in total in Waves 1 and 2, thirteen languages in Wave 3, eleven languages in Wave 4, and ten languages in Wave 5). Shorter telephone interviews omit some of the questions asked in the longer face-to-face interviews. Topics covered by the study include: demographics, immigration experience, housing and neighbourhood, English language proficiency, education and training, employment and income, health, self-sufficiency, community support, personal resources and life satisfaction, and life in Australia. Researchers interested in using this data should note: (1) BNLA does not include data about migrants in the family and skilled streams of the permanent Migration Program; (2) BNLA only includes humanitarian migrants who arrived/were granted a visa during a specific time period; (3) Analysis at the state level is not possible.