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Government policy in many countries encourages migration to regional centres to relieve pressure on major cities and to boost economic development. Migrants are more likely to remain in a new location if they have meaningful work and establish social connections there. This article explores how organisations and groups in a regional city provide newcomers with access to social capital resources which migrants can use to forge social connections. Past research has shown that migrants require a mix of linking, bridging and bonding social capital to form an effective primary social contract with their new home. This research suggests that regional cities -such as Geelong, Victoria -which are proactive in assembling diverse social capital resources and making them accessible to migrants, are more likely not only to receive more newcomers but also more likely to retain migrants and a skilled workforce. The findings have relevance to other regional centres.

The oceans of the world are regularly depicted as under threat from human exploitation with the problem portrayed as being of ‘global’ concern. In a world market characterised by the division of labour, many of those who eat fish do so without directly experiencing the ocean as a domain of productive utility. Rather, their encounters are with representations that depict the ‘natural’ world as an aesthetic object of contemplation, and environmentalist discourses that identify human activities as threatening marine ecosystems. So prevalent is this experience that tangible institutions, such as state fisheries management bodies, have emerged, acting to reinforce the ontology of this ‘contemplated’ ocean, giving weight to the illusion that humans can, and should, appreciate it only from afar. In this representation, commercial fishers are regularly depicted as transgressing a ‘natural’ boundary between humans and the environment. It is when the world is simultaneously encountered as an object of consumptive utility and aesthetic utility that the human role in the environment becomes ambiguous and a sense of crisis arises. This paper investigates disjunctions in experiences and understandings that contribute to environmental anxiety, and debates over the appropriate use of the ocean.