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This paper is drawn from a larger study investigating community perceptions of police legitimacy in the Monash Local Government Area (LGA), in the Australian state of Victoria. Monash had seen declining results in the official government survey in the indicators that assessed police legitimacy over the preceding decade. The purpose of this paper is to explore the perceptions of both migrant and non-migrant participants to understand the role of migrant status in influencing assessments of police legitimacy in Monash LGA.

Through six focus groups, 18 interviews and one e-mail response with 31 individuals, perceptions of Victoria Police among the communities of Monash were collated and analysed.

One of the key findings of the study was that ethnic diversity and/or migrant status of community members were a key factor raised in response to questions about community perceptions of the legitimacy of Victoria Police in Monash LGA. Demographic change had been significant in Monash LGA over the preceding decade, including increasing ethnic diversity in the population and a shift in migration patterns from predominantly European to migrants from East and South Asia. In this paper, the authors suggest that the migrant status of Monash residents was a key factor that both migrant and non-migrant participants thought influenced perceptions of the police. Accordingly, because migrants make up a significant cohort of Australia’s population, we afford due attention to this previously overlooked topic.

The practical implications of this paper are as follows: existing Victoria Police partnerships in the Monash community should be continued and expanded where possible; Victoria Police should also prioritise partnerships with large, new migrant communities, for example, Monash’s Chinese communities; orientation for new migrants to Victoria around the criminal justice system, including Victoria Police, would help new migrants be more aware of their rights and what to expect of law enforcement in their new host country; police should continue to increase representation of ethnic diversity in the force via recruitment of greater numbers of ethnically diverse police members.

Although there have been previous Australian studies on migrant status as a factor in perceptions of criminal justice (see Murphy and Cherney, 2011, 2012; Hong Chui and Kwok-Yin Cheng, 2014), the paper identifies a distinct narrative around migrants’ views of Victoria Police which the authors believe warrant further investigation using an example from a local context. Furthermore, most research in this field has been quantitative. The current study provides additional new insights through an in-depth qualitative approach.

This paper aims to show that international students may become victims and/or perpetrators of crime. This paper uses interview data to examine the social influences contributing to these incidences.

A qualitative approach using data from in-depth interviews with key informers and international students across Australia, the USA and the UK underpins this study.

The results show that the interviewees generally believed that international students were not commonly perpetrators of crime. Cultural, socioeconomic and mental health factors contributed to circumstances that involved international students as perpetrators of crime.

The practical implications of this paper are a need for the host country to provide a greater level of information about laws and local customs; need for international students need to have adequate finances; a need for international students to be made aware of the illegal practices of others, including those who belong to their national group; and a for greater awareness and support of the stresses associated with undertaking higher education in a foreign country.

Based on primary qualitative data, this paper presents an original study about crime that looks beyond the common perception that international students are always victims. This paper focusses on the often-overlooked topic of international students as perpetrators of crime and the social influences that often underpin the circumstances.

Culturally familiar food is of great importance to migrants. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of food in the lives of South African migrants to Australia. How food impacts on notions of identity and belonging for immigrants is framed and discussed within the context of nostalgia, sharing and Bourdieu’s “habitus”.

Through mixed qualitative methods, including participatory research, document analysis and in-depth interviews, this study examines the everyday experiences of South African-Australians. The study employs an interpretivist approach that aims for greater understanding of the subject through the perspectives of the research participants.

Culinary rituals and traditions feature large in personal narratives of adjustment that reveal the important role of food in contributing to identity translation in a destination society and, ultimately, the attainment of belonging for migrants.

The study provides a “snapshot” of a topic that would benefit from further exploration.

The importance for migrants to have access to cultural traditions surrounding food is acknowledged in the contemporary world where increasingly mobile populations need to maintain a sense of identity and feel a sense of belonging while integrating into host societies.

Traditional cuisines are an integral part of the mechanisms by which migrants can better integrate leading to overall greater social cohesion.

The study contributes a new dimension to the body of literature pertaining to food access and security for culturally diverse groups in multicultural societies.

International students commonly need to adjust to an unfamiliar environment while at the same time juggling with their education without traditional family support. Intercultural adjustment is often stressful for these students, thus contributing to a higher risk of a vulnerable mental and emotional state. The relocation to a foreign country presents a case of temporary migration during the time that they are away. This chapter looks at the challenges international students faced during relocation and adaptation. The study will also discuss how international students cope with mental health issues and the important role educational institutions have in mental health care. Interview data will be drawn on to present the perspectives of a group of international Singaporean university students in Melbourne, Australia, aged between 20 and 25 years old. However, the discussion about mental health issues cannot be assumed to be directly related to the challenges of relocation. Interview data will only represent the perspective of a group of international students and cannot be made generalisable to all international students. Similar to other studies, findings from this chapter reinforced the challenges international students face from their migration. While they acknowledged the importance of mental health care services, there are still barriers to seeking professional help. Future studies could look into how universities can continue to bridge this gap.

Since the late 1980s, social theorists championed for the birth of a new era, in which societies were increasingly exposed to growing global risks. The presence of increasing risks including natural disasters, technological errors, terrorist attacks, nuclear wars and environmental degradation suggests that human beings are becoming increasingly vulnerable. Therefore, an understanding of vulnerability is crucial. Vulnerability is often considered as the potential to suffer from physical attacks. This approach, however, has limited capacity to explain many forms of suffering including not only physical aspects, but also mental, social, economic, political and social dimensions. This chapter draws on the vulnerability literature to present an overarching framework for the book. It starts with an outline of the concept origins, then discusses its relationship with the risk society thesis before forming conceptualisation. The chapter then points out the key similarities and differences between vulnerability and other concepts such as risk, disaster, poverty, security and resilience. The authors rework an existing “security” framework to develop a new definition of the concept of vulnerability. Finally, the authors look into the root causes and the formation of vulnerability within social systems.

If police are perceived as legitimate, communities are more likely to assist in the fight against crime making policework easier and resources go further. The problem is, members of a diverse community may view the police in different ways making it difficult for police to be everything to everyone. This study reveals two strands of emerging vulnerability in relation to law and order in a rapidly urbanising area, affecting perceptions of police legitimacy for both groups. The study also demonstrated the relationship between global processes and local issues. The chapter draws on data from a larger study which explored the legitimacy of Victoria Police in the Monash Local Government Area in Melbourne, Australia. Community perceptions of the police were collected during 6 focus groups and 18 interviews. For the past decade, Monash had experienced declining results in the government’s quarterly policing survey in areas that assessed police legitimacy. This research utilised qualitative methods to gather detailed community opinions, in contrast to the quantitative government survey. The chapter focusses on the key finding that there had been many changes in Monash during the preceding decade, including intense urbanisation and increased ethnic diversity. However, police services had not been correspondingly increased or diversified and were not thought adequate to respond to current demands. As a result, community members felt vulnerable and this influenced community perceptions of Victoria Police. Rapid urbanisation has implications for police legitimacy. It is important that police services and infrastructure are not neglected during periods of urban change in order to mitigate feelings of vulnerability in different communities.

At the turn of the twenty-first century, a “new orthodoxy” in explaining homelessness had emerged in the field of homeless research. Combining structural and individual factors, the consensus is that people with personal problems are more vulnerable than others to the structural conditions of becoming homeless.

Drawing on a three-year ethnographic study of older homeless people (aged 50 years and above) in Singapore, this chapter highlights three issues with this new orthodoxy. The first is the continued reliance on a strict dichotomy of structural and individual factors. This strict dichotomy does not reflect the realities in people’s lives. The “individual vulnerabilities” of older people in the study had structural dimensions that must be considered as well. The second is the framing of individual vulnerabilities as individual pathologies. This way of framing homelessness results in the assumption that there is something deficient with all people who are homeless that requires correction. Such a view is encapsulated in the compulsory institutionalisation and rehabilitation of rough sleepers in Singapore. The final and most fundamental issue is the problematic association of individual vulnerabilities with one’s heightened risk of becoming homeless. Older people in the study did not become homeless solely because they had more personal problems or issues than others. Rather, multiple pathways (or life events) that encompass both structural and individual factors weakened their ability to draw resources from work, family and friends and government assistance. Homelessness occurred when older people in the study ran out of all these three options.