Dr Rose Butler

Academic Visitor - Research, Department of Geography and Earth Sciences, Aberystwyth University. Supported by the Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research and Data (WISERD).  

Visiting Scholar, Department of Sociology, University of Virginia.

I welcome inquiries from prospective postgraduate students in relation to my research interests.

Youth and family

Class, including class inequality, social mobility and cross-class relationships

Migration and mobilities, particularly in regional and rural Australia

Schooling and education

Critical rural studies

ADI Executive Committee, Alfred Deakin Institute, Deakin.

Convenor, Mobilities, Diversity & Multiculturalism Stream, Alfred Deakin Institute, Deakin.

Member, The Australian Sociological Association; British Sociological Association; American Sociological Association.

Select authored commentary

Butler, R. and Vincent, E. How does class impact on Australians’ love lives? New research brings a complex issue into the open. The Conversation, 2021.

Butler, R. and Ho, C. Why do parents take such different approaches to their kids' education? The Conversation, 2016.

Muir, K., Powell, A. and Butler, R. A whacking stick is not enough to get young people into work. The Conversation, 2015.

My current research program is based around three areas:

1. Through an ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DE190100247), I am investigating the role of class, migration and place in shaping the trajectories of young people coming-of-age in the rural city of Mildura, where I have conducted research since 2010. My current book project from this study examines diverging experiences of social mobility and immobility for youth in rural settler Australia. More information about this work is available here, including a Special Issue on Race and Place-Making in the Rural Global North in the Journal of Rural Studies (co-edited with Victoria Stead and Christopher Mayes). My most recent publication from this study examines Migration, class and intra-distinctions of whiteness in the making of inland rural Victoria. In late 2024 I will be a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics.

Building on this work, I am also collaborating with Makiko Nishitani (La Trobe) and Maryanne Pale (Swinburne) on research which supports Pacific young people's working futures in Robinvale and Mildura, funded by the Scanlon Foundation.

2. I am examining the role of class difference within sustained intimate relationships between people from different class-origin backgrounds. In collaboration with Eve Vincent (Macquarie), we attend to the role that deeply encultured class-based orientations play in these cross-class relationships, and their entanglement with race, migration, gender and sexuality. Our forthcoming book, Love Across Class, with Melbourne University Publishing (May 2024), draws on in-depth interviews with 38 participants and discusses the friction, pain, solidarity, desire and humour that comes with partnering across class difference. 

3. I am investigating emerging inequalities and opportunities for young skilled migrants and their families in Australia taking place at the intersection of class, migration regimes and family wealth, and in collaboration with Anita Harris (Deakin), Sherene Idriss (Western Sydney) and Sylvia Ang (Monash). I am also developing a new edited collection on Class and Migration in Australia. This collective work builds on prior research with Christina Ho (UTS) and Eve Vincent on migration, schooling markets and racialisation within Australia's middle class; with Sherene Idriss and Anita Harris on interrogating whiteness in Australian youth studies; and with Megan Watkins (WSU) and Christina Ho on Asian Migration and Education Cultures in the Anglosphere.

I also work with organisations and governments on research which supports young people and families. This has included the Sunraysia Mallee Ethnic Communities Council, Scanlon Foundation, Burdekin Association, Mission Australia, Juluwarlu Aboriginal Corporation, Foundation for Young Australians, Raise Foundation, First Nations Foundation, University of Sydney's Global Student Recruitment and Mobility Hub, Swan Hill Rural City Council, Country Arts WA, Department of Education and Training, and Department of Social Services, among others.