Answering the phone at a taxi call centre was not the job Gabriel Bul Yak, a man with a masters degree in international development, an MBA and a PhD on the way, envisaged for himself.
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He, like the overwhelming majority of the ACT South Sudanese community, has never worked in a job that aligned with his credentials.
Mr Bul Yak and University of Canberra academic Dr Nawal El-Gak are soon to release a research paper with damning findings about how employment barriers and systemic discrimination are stifling their community.
The study, conducted through the Centre for Creative and Cultural Research, took a random sample of 72 participants from a pool of 800 South Sudanese living in Canberra.
It found, despite 42 per cent of people having tertiary qualifications, 53 per cent were unemployed and 96 per cent were searching for work.
Just three of the participants had jobs in their field of expertise.
Dr El-Gak said 89 per cent reported experiencing discrimination based on their race, skin colour, accent, or not having a Caucasian name when applying for jobs.
"Young people are questioning, if i can't find a job, what is the meaning of doing a degree or a masters," she said.
"Another bad impact is people get a feeling they don't belong in the community. You feel underestimated and for all your efforts there is no reward. That creates stress and humiliation."
Dr El-Gak said interestingly 127 South Sudanese women work in the family day-care industry in the ACT – a lifeline without which she said unemployment would be even higher.
Mr Bul Yak said through forums participants voiced concerns about the reality of multiculturalism and diversity in Australia.
One participant said she planned to move to the USA, where there were more people of African descent, so at least she would "struggle among the crowd".
Mr Bul Yak said the argument that all migrant communities have struggled to establish themselves had wore thin, particularly with those who have lived in the Australia for more than a decade.
"People do the bad or undesirable jobs, they work their way up to get a university degree but find once they have it their only option is to go back to the beginning – the same sort of jobs," he said. "There's no progress."
Dr El-Gak said the ACT government had funded the research and been very responsive about better understanding the issue but more public and policy attention was needed.
"Discrimination is really a serious issue," she said. "If we ignore it we lose a lot. There's a serious social impact, an economic loss for the country and the cost to the tax payer for Centrelink."
