Interracial Marriage - Australia

Australia

The Australian Government does not release information on the ethnicities of marriage partners, but provide information on their countries of birth.

• In 2009 there were 120,118 marriages recorded in Australia. About 42% involved at least one partner who was not Australian born.
• 15.% of Australian-born women, and 17.4% of Australian-born men, married somebody who was not Australian-born.
• American (68%), Greek (62%) and Irish-born (62%) women were the most likely to marry an Australian-born man than a man born elsewhere.
• Indian (12%), Chinese (16%) and 'other South and Central Asia'-born (16%) women were the least likely to marry an Australian-born man than a man born elsewhere.
• American (63%), Lebanese (62%) and Irish-born (62%) men were the most likely to marry an Australian-born woman than a woman born elsewhere.
• Chinese (2%), 'other North Asia' (7%) and Vietnamese-born (8%) men were the least likely to marry an Australian-born woman than a woman born elsewhere.
• Chinese-born men were the most likely to marry a woman from the same country (91%).
• Italian-born men were the least likely to marry a woman from the same country (8%).
• Indian-born women were the most likely to marry a man from the same country (80%).
• American-born women were the least likely to marry a man from the same country (10%).

Indigenous Australians have a high interracial marriage rate. According to the 2000 Census in 1996, 64% of all married or de facto married couples involving an Indigenous person were mixed (i.e., only one partner was indigenous). In 55% of such couples, the Indigenous partner was female.

Most of the early Chinese-Australia population was formed by Cantonese migrants from Guangzhou and Taishan, including some from Fujian, they came during the goldrush period of the 1850s. Marriage records show that between the 1850s and around the start of the 20th century, there were about 2000 legal marriages between white women and migrant Chinese men in Australia’s eastern colonies, probably with similar numbers involved in de facto relationships of various kinds (ex: Cohabitation, sexual intimacy.) The number of intermarriage declined, as stories of viciousness and the seduction of white women grew, mixed with opposition to intermarriage. Rallys against Chinese men taking white women became widespread, many Australian men saw the Chinese men intermarrying and cohabiting with white women, as an threat to the white race. In late 1878 there were 181 marriages between European women and Chinese men, and 171 couples cohabiting without matrimony, resulting in 586 Eurasian children. Such numbers of Intermarriage will continue until 1880s and the 1930s.