ABSTRACT
The earliest recorded Filipino migration into Australia dates from 1872 with the employment of Filipino pearl divers in Broome and Thursday Island. Almost one hundred and fifty years on, the Filipino community is one of the fastest growing migrant populations in the country, reported at 246,400 in the 2016 Census, representing 1 per cent of the total Australian population. New South Wales is home to around 29 per cent of the total Filipino migrant population, and Sydney is home to many of that population. This chapter investigates the presence of Philippine languages in NSW, using primarily census data. This presence is determined in terms of quantity, that is, how many of the 110 distinct Filipino languages are represented in Australia and vitality, that is, how many continue to be reported to be the language of the home in NSW. Such trends are discussed in consonance with pertinent socioeconomic and political occurrences, both in Australia and in the Philippines, which may have underpinned the Filipino people’s movements globally, particularly into Australia. This specific focus of analysis on the various linguistic backgrounds of Filipino migrants and the reported languages in their homes in Sydney contributes to understanding how this migrant group enriches the city’s multilingual ecology.
