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In this chapter, we examine the uneven nature of development within and between rural and urban spaces in Papua New Guinea (PNG). We focus on the types of livelihoods available in urban and rural spaces and the ways these have shaped social and environmental outcomes. This analysis highlights three key issues. First, it shows the importance of thinking about development processes, networks and enclaves in addition to more traditional ways of framing development challenges and opportunities. Second, it points to the importance of PNG’s rural spaces for policymaking and politics. Finally, it notes that while large-scale development projects, such as mining and liquified natural gas, have significantly shaped urban and rural spaces over the past two decades, due to economic shifts, it is becoming less likely PNG will reshape its urban and rural spaces as dramatically in the years to come.

Speakers

Dr John Cox
Honorary Lecturer, School of Culture, History and Language, Australian National University

Dr Grant Walton
Fellow, Development Policy Centre, Australian National University

Joshua Goa
Tutor, Division of Social Work, School of Humanities, University of Papua New Guinea

Dunstan Lawihin
Lecturer, Division of Social Work, School of Humanities, University of Papua New Guinea

This presentation is based on the speakers’ chapter, ‘Uneven development and its effects: Livelihoods and urban and rural spaces in Papua New Guinea’, in the ANU-UPNG edited volume, ‘Papua New Guinea: Government, Economy and Society’, available for free download.

The ANU-UPNG seminar series is part of the partnership between the ANU Crawford School of Public Policy and the UPNG School of Business and Public Policy, supported by the PNG-Aus Partnership.

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Contrary to other immigrant-receiving countries, the impact of co-ethnic neighbourhoods on immigrants’ life outcomes has been understudied in Australia. Using microdata from the 2006–2016 Australian Census Longitudinal Dataset, this paper estimates the causal impact of the size of co-ethnic neighbourhoods on immigrant labour force participation, employment, hours worked, and income. We address the fundamental problem of individual and location sorting by applying individual-fixed effects, controlling for residential mobility, and using an exogenous measure of co-ethnic neighbourhood size. We found a negative effect on labour participation and income when we do not control for residential mobility. However, when we control for residential mobility, residence in co-ethnic neighbourhoods is no longer statistically significant and the point estimates are tiny, which highlight the importance of stringent methodological choices that control for settlement trajectories. Our findings suggest that efforts by the Australian government to settle immigrants in regional areas with a limited migrant population should not affect the labour market outcomes of immigrants.

Speaker

Dr Toan Nguyen is a Research Fellow at the Development Policy Centre, Crawford School of Public Policy, ANU.

This presentation is based on a research paper, co-authored by the speaker. The draft paper is available upon request.

This seminar is part of the Labour mobility and the Pacific webinar series.