Workshop on Comparative and International Perspectives on Australian Labour Migration (July 2016)

Labour Law Workshop

Workshop on ‘Comparative and international perspectives on Australian labour migration’

Thursday - Friday, 21 - 22 July 2016

Presenters and paper titles:

  • Alysia Blackham (University of Melbourne): Temporary labour migration and pension portability.
  • Anna Boucher (Department of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney): The GenderImmi Dataset: Comparing gender equality across labour immigration policies.
  • Iain Campbell (RMIT University), Joo-Cheong Tham (University of Melbourne) and Martina Boese (La Trobe University): Temporary migrant workers in food services: Mapping and explaining high levels of precariousness in employment.
  • Iain Campbell (RMIT University), Joo-Cheong Tham (University of Melbourne) and Martina Boese (La Trobe University): Ethnicity at work: A comparative study of temporary migrants’ networks, exploitation and agency.
  • Stephen Clibborn (The University of Sydney Business School, Discipline of Work & Organisational Studies): Degrees of exploitation: Why international students in Australia are underpaid.
  • Giovanni Di Lieto (Monash University): The Transnational Future of Industrial Citizenship: Searching for a new governance model to break the temporary-permanent divide of migrant work.
  • Bassina Farbenblum and Laurie Berg (University of New South Wales and University of Technology Sydney): Remedying migrant worker exploitation in Australia – Lessons from the 7-Eleven Wage Panel.
  • Michele Grigoletti (Researcher for Fondazione Migrantes (Italy – Rome) based in Sydney): Temporary labour migration: the Italian experience in Australia.
  • Nicholas Harrigan and Amirah Amirrudin (Singapore Management University): Regulatory Regimes of Temporary Migrant Labour: A comparative study of temporary migrant workers in Australia and Singapore.
  • Lesleyanne Hawthorne (University of Melbourne): Australia’s Changing Level of Reliance on Temporary Migrant Professionals – Key Trends by Field in the Past Decade.
  • Joanna Howe (University of Adelaide): Addressing Labour Needs in Australian Horticulture.
  • Peter Mares (Adjunct Fellow, Swinburne Institute for Social Research): Locating long-term temporary migrants on the map of Australian democracy.
  • Robyn Mayes (Senior Research Fellow, Queensland University of Technology): Comparative and international perspectives on Australian temporary labour migration.
  • Marius Olivier (Adjunct-Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Western Australia): Rights-based perspectives on migrants' access to social security: Pointers emanating from the European experience.
  • Danny Ong (PhD Candidate, Monash University): Back to Fundamentals: What is an International Student?
  • Alexander Reilly (Associate Professor, University of Adelaide): The Promise and Pitfalls of Mixed Motive Migration: analysing the Safe Haven Enterprise Visa.
  • Marie Segreave (Monash University): Irregular labour migration in Australia: exploring the contours of exploitation and regulation.
  • Joo-Cheong Tham (Melbourne Law School) and Judy Fudge (Law School, University of Kent): A comparison of low-skill labour programs in Australia and Canada.
  • Maria Azzurra Tranfaglia (University of Melbourne): Temporary Migrant Workers from Italy: Expectations and Reality.
  • Anja Wessels, Amirah Amirrudin & Maddy Ong (Humanitarian Organization for Migration Economics (HOME, home.org.sg), Singapore): Labour exploitation and forced labour among migrant domestic workers in Singapore.
  • Chris F. Wright & Stephen Clibborn (University of Sydney Business School): The opening of ‘side doors’ and ‘back doors’ to a de-facto low skilled labour immigration policy in Australia.
  • Mimi Zou (Faculty of Law, The Chinese University of Hong Kong): Towards Exit and Voice: Redesigning Temporary Migrant Workers’ Programmes.
Panel presentation

About the workshop

The theme of the workshop, ‘Comparative and international perspectives on Australian labour migration’, was meant to be broad. It was intended to extend to studies that examine Australian labour migration from the vantage point of understandings of global justice, international patterns of labour migration and international governance regimes such as UN Convention on the Rights of Migrant Workers and their Families, International Labour Organisation Conventions and international trade agreements. It also aimed to embrace cross-country comparisons and comparisons of different disciplinary perspectives and methods. The theme was also meant to be critical with a key goal of the workshop to reflect on, probe and extend the field of inquiry into temporary labour migration in Australia.

This workshop was sponsored by the Centre for Employment and Labour Relations Law, Melbourne Law School; Sydney Asia-Pacific Migration Centre, Sydney University; and the ARC project on ‘The Precariousness in Law and Labour Markets: The Case of Temporary Migrant Workers’.

Panel presentation