Social mobility is a concept that looks at how generations do compared to the ones before them. Current research typically compares levels of income and education, what people do for work, what their social networks look like, to try and understand if children are better off than their parents and grandparents.

With this current project, we aim to understand what the process of social mobility looks like for Indigenous Peoples, the factors unique to Indigenous social mobility, and the impact that increasing wealth has on connections to community and culture. It follows from a three-country study of Indigenous entrepreneurs conducted in Canada, the United States, and Australia.

Findings from this past project shows that their connections to family, friends and culture are strong and diverse, and that an important measure of success is continued engagement with their Indigenous communities. Yet, public and academic discourses perpetuate the belief that social mobility impacts negatively on Indigenous people, suggesting that individuals who are socially mobile, eventually “wealth out” of their Indigenous communities and connections.

Working as a team of scholars from Canada and Australia, Dr. Côté and Dr. Evans will conduct the first ever longitudinal study of Indigenous social mobility and the impact on Indigenous connections to community and culture through a 2nd wave of interviews, starting with Indigenous entrepreneurs in Australia.

While this first study did show that Indigenous entrepreneurs have rich and diverse connections with their Indigenous communities and culture, we cannot answer the question of whether or not these connections are being maintained (or strengthened/weakened) without the benefit of a second conversation that occurs a few years later. To strengthen our position and the findings of the past study, we are in process of contacting participants from the past study The Making of Success: The Participation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in the Brisbane Marketplace to do exactly that. If you were a participant for this past project, we hope to touch base with you about another chat soon!

The second part of the study will be a survey of 250-300 Indigenous entrepreneurs in the state of Queensland. This will help us in gathering baseline data on indicators of social mobility that are important to Indigenous people, and that are culturally and historically sensitive.

We hope to contribute to the conversation around social mobility, entrepreneurship, Indigenous studies, and identity. By unpacking the way in which social mobility is measured, conceptulised, we aim for a better understanding of the processes, indicators, and consequences of social mobility for Indigenous people.