Tom Aechtner

Indian Catholic Migrants and Australia’s Changing Religious Landscape

About this project

This is a UQ–IITD Research Academy joint PhD project and scholarship. Through this HDR project, PhD candidates will receive a scholarship to study at UQ and IIT Delhi, and will be offered a jointly awarded PhD from both UQ and IITD. The scholarship includes a living stipend and UQ tuition fee scholarship for 4 years, as well as a relocation grant for travel between UQ and IITD. Australian domestic and international students in Australia, as well as Indian national students, are welcome to apply.

Project description

Indian migrants have been described as “one of Australia’s most dynamic and influential communities” (UQ, 2025). As the nation’s second-largest immigrant group, they are typically young, highly educated, and significantly more religious than Australia’s general population (Charles-Edwards et al., 2025). While Australia has experienced declines in religiosity since the mid-20th century, first- and second-generation Indians are reshaping the country’s religious landscape (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2022). Notably, around 10% of first-generation Indian-born residents are Catholic, contrasting with India where Catholics represent less than 2% of the population (Andrews, 2025; Charles-Edwards et al., 2025). Many of these migrants, disproportionately from Kerala’s Syro-Malabar Catholic tradition, are highly skilled and professionally qualified. While enriching Australia’s workforce, they have also become a prominent demographic within Australian Catholicism. Catholic Indian migrants may be acting as a stabilising force for Australia’s Catholic numbers, amid steep attrition in mainline Protestant denominations (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2022). These trends are evidenced in such developments as Southeast Queensland’s first Syro-Malabar Catholic church, St Thomas the Apostle, alongside growing Indian representation in non-Syro-Malabar parishes and the appointment of Indian-born priests across the country (Mukherjee, 2025). These patterns suggest that Indian Catholic migrants are not only sustaining Catholic communities, but also shaping parish life and leadership in significant ways. Despite these shifts, research on Indian Catholic migrants in Australia remains scarce. This project seeks to address the gap through a social scientific mixed method analysis of the experiences and social contexts of Indian Catholic migrants in Australia, situating them within the expansion of the Indian diaspora and Australia’s evolving religious topographies. It will reveal the understudied ways that Catholic migrants are influencing Australian religion and culture, while also identifying how Catholicism serves to mediate belonging and civic participation, while providing coping mechanisms and social stability amidst the intricacies of diasporic life.

Outcomes

Deliver in-depth, social scientific insights into how Indian Catholic migrants in Australia negotiate identity, civic participation, and belonging within Australia’s evolving religious and non-religious milieu. It will articulate the roles that religion plays in mediating diasporic integration and community formation in Australia’s secular, multicultural contexts. High-quality academic outputs, including peer-reviewed journal articles, conference papers, and worldclass HDR thesis, advancing theoretical understandings on religion, migration, and the Indian diaspora in Australia.