Building Arabic businesses

Alternative pathways to employment generation in Sydney's Auburn-Bankstown corridor

• Urban Research Centre

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07 April 2011This study engaged with a group of owner-managers with Arabic ancestry in the Auburn-Bankstown corridor within Sydney’s West Central planning sub-region. It sought to examine the barriers and impediments to employment generation and growth faced by these owner managers and whether or not such impediments are predicated on a set of distinct business practices performed by this group.

Two major factors acted as prompts for this study. First, the 2005 NSW government’s Metropolitan Strategy City of Cities which set a target of 61,000 net additional jobs by 2031 for the West Central planning sub-region. More recently the NSW 2010 Metropolitan Plan for Sydney has increased this target to 98,000 net additional jobs by 2036. In tandem West Central has been designated an important sub-region for urban renewal with expectations for 95,500 new dwellings by 2031 and an additional 213,000 people by 2036. Research undertaken by the Urban Research Centre (2008) has already demonstrated that such targets are highly optimistic and will be difficult to achieve, especially with a satisfactory mix of full time and part time jobs.

The second prompt is that examination of special data from the ABS has shown that the Auburn-Bankstown corridor has above-average concentrations of small and medium enterprises that identify as being operated by owner-managers from non- English speaking backgrounds (NESB). The selection of Arabic businesses as the focus of this study is based on this group being significantly larger than other ethnic business groups (Korean and Chinese) with high concentrations of enterprise activity within the Auburn-Bankstown corridor.

The question, then, that guides this study is whether or not the large component of Arabic businesses has unrealised or blocked potential to deliver significant employment growth in Sydney’s West Central.

This report was prepared for Industry & Investment NSW.