Columnists

Punjabi is the Fastest Growing Language in Australia

MANPREET KAUR SINGH

It's official – Punjabi is the fastest growing language in Australia, according to the census figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics a few days ago.

While there were only 23,164 Punjabi speakers in Australia in 2006, that number has grown by 207% over five years, with 71,230 people stating Punjabi as their mother language in 2011. Punjabi is now listed at number 13 amongst the languages spoken in Audstralia, with 0.3% of the country's population speaking the language.

For the first time ever, the population of Punjabis in Melbourne has outnumbered that of Sydney, with over 31,000 Punjabi speakers residing in Victoria and 1,704 Punjabis in New South Wales. Queensland has just under 9,500 Punjabis whereas South Australia and Western Australia are home to 5,000 Punjabis
each.

More than 80% of Punjabi speakers are first generation migrants who were born on the subcontinent, whilst 12.5% were born in Australia. While a handful of Australian Punjabis were born in other countries like Norway, Bahrain, Kuwait, Zimbabwe, etc, and 15 even declared an aboriginal status, only 663 Punjabi speakers of Australia were born in Pakistan.

Although Punjabis have been immigrating to Australia since the 19th century, they’ve only begun to arrive in large numbers over the last ten years. Historically, they formed 0.1% of all migrants entering Australia in the year 1911, and until the 1970s, only a handful of Punjabis ventured their way to the 'lucky' country.

But this was a mere trickle, since the first year that a hundred or more Punjabis came to Australia was 1975, and the first year that 1000 or more Punjabis arrived in Australia was as recently as 2003! But ever since, there has been a steady wave of Punjabi arrivals, peaking sharply in 2008, when 12,630 left the land of the five rivers to come to the land down under.

It is worth noting the largest component of the population from the subcontinent - which has doubled in five years - is from Punjab, as the census figures show that 37,389 Punjabi speakers have arrived in Australia between 2006 and 2009 alone!

Sikhism is the predominant religion among Punjabi speakers of Australia, with 81% Punjabis (or 57,641 people) stating they are Sikhs. Hinduism comes second, as 13.3% Punjabis are Hindus, and Islam comes in third, with 1.4%.

Sikhism is now in the top 20 religions practiced in Australia, coming in at number 16. A total of 72,296 people in Australia practice Sikhism, which equates to 0.3% of the country’s population. There are more Sikhs in Victoria than in NSW and
interestingly, Victoria is the only state in which Punjabi speakers outnumber the Sikh population. In all other states, there are more Sikhs than the number of Punjabi speakers.

Looking at the other data published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), it seems plainly obvious that the recent surge in Punjabi arrivals into Australia is directly attributable to the presence of international students here. The most common age for Punjabis in Australia, both male and female, is 25-29 years. Only 37% of Australian Punjabis are citizens of the country,
whereas 60% are not; only 8% Punjabis own their houses outright, 27% are paying a mortgage, but nearly half of them, 45%, live in rented houses.

These statistics make a striking contrast with the national average for Australia. Even more stark is the fact that 27% of Australian Punjabi women don’t earn any income, which again, is way above the national Australian average. Yet, the
overall household income of Punjabi households reflects the national average of $1500-$1999 per week.

All of the above figures were based on the census carried out by ABS on August 9, 2011, preliminary results of which were released late last week. The total population of Australia, which was deemed to be 21.5 million on that day last year, has already increased by 1.1 million, to 22.6 million in June this year.

Considering that, the number of Punjabi speakers would already have grown close to 80,000 and other figures can be projected accordingly. To get a detailed snapshot of Punjabi speakers in the country, visit www.sbs.com.au/punjabi.

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