Defining and understanding the client group – who are ethnic minorities and what do they characteristically have in common?

Ethnic minorities go by many names in the literature. Sometimes they are referred to as the ‘culturally and linguistically diverse’ (CALD) and sometimes they are referred to as those of ‘non-English speaking background’ (NESB1). NESB was once the most common term used, but was superseded in the 1990s by CALD because NESB had come to have negative connotations; it was now code for ‘the different other’, and was limited in explaining the dimensions on which this group differed from the majority, which were not just along linguistic lines (Australian Bureau of Statistics; ABS, 2001).