Temporary Migrants as Dehumanised ‘Other’ in the Time of COVID-19: We’re All in This Together?

Abstract

Temporary migrants comprise a substantial component of the Australian workforce. Evidence of the tensions and contradictions in Australia’s reliance on temporary migrant workers was spotlighted during the COVID-19 global health crisis, particularly with regards to the actions and responsibilities of key players in the attraction, recruitment, deployment and ultimately abandonment of these workers. In this article, we interrogate the public framing of temporary migrant workers within the context of the pandemic. We employ a discourse analysis and build upon theories of precarity and dehumanisation. In doing so we demonstrate how the precarious state within which temporary migrant workers found themselves saw them cast as a dehumanised and unwelcome ‘other’, a burden to the labour market, the state and the broader society.

Introduction and overview

Migrants have become an increasingly important part of the workforce in many countries in recent years. This is evident in countries that have come to rely more extensively on migrant workers, such as the United Kingdom (Anderson, 2010), and ‘nations of immigrants’ that have traditionally encouraged permanent settlement, such as Canada and Australia (Dauvergne and Marsden, 2014). However, the distinction between ‘temporary guests’ and ‘permanent settlers’ in these countries has grown, which has compounded the precarity that many migrants face at work (see, for instance, Alberti, 2014; Harrison et al., 2020; Potter and Hamilton, 2014). This distinction has been especially pronounced in Australia due to the abrupt shift since the 1990s from an immigration policy aimed at social inclusion and equal rights towards a neoliberal approach, which aims to maximise economic returns and labour efficiency in the interests of employers (Groutsis, 2022; Wright and Clibborn, 2020). Australia’s efficiency maximisation approach to migrant labour places a primacy on the short-term needs of employers at the cost of the humans labouring in it. Temporary migration can be seen as the ultimate example of ‘flexible capitalism’ (Sennet, 1998) where workers are recruited for short-term stays to satisfy domestic labour market needs. As Ahmad notes: ‘flexible capitalism is a system characterized by “indifference” and lack of attachment more than “alienation” in the old sense – one which can brutally diminish the sense of mattering as a person, of being necessary to others’ (Ahmad, 2008: 302). In this sense, temporary migrant workers are seen as resources, a flexible on-demand commodity. Their temporariness places them in a precarious state, a non-standard existence, indentured to their employer and employed on a contract basis (e.g. Kalleberg and Vallas, 2018).

In this article, we respond to Motakef’s (2019) call for further research into the effects and scope of precarity by delving into the spectrum of dehumanisation that follows from precarious work and social contexts. Australia’s temporary migration regime has evolved into a swift resource-based delivery and disposal system (Dauvergne and Marsden, 2014; Stasiulis, 2020; Wright et al., 2017). At no point in the history of Australia’s temporary visa programme is this more evident than the recent COVID-19 pandemic where attention was turned to the public framing of temporary migrant workers. In pre-pandemic Australia, the employment of temporary migrants was cast as a convenient strategy for addressing labour demand efficiently and flexibly. This reflected the tenor of policies introduced over the previous two decades aimed at maximising the net economic benefits of labour migration for governments and employers. Specifically, this strategy has been contingent in part on policies that dehumanised temporary migrant workers by restricting their labour and social rights, including their mobility and access to public services and support; and their indentured ties to their employer (Underhill et al., 2020; Van Den Broek and Groutsis, 2017; Wright et al., 2022). This exclusionary approach was initially adopted due to assessments that Australia’s permanent immigration programme was producing negative economic impacts. As such, recruiting temporary migrant labour has been embraced as the key to swift economic returns (as defined by government). This regulatory turn has granted employers considerable power over migrant worker selection, employment and conditions. Their residency rights are contingent upon maintaining employment while also imposing restrictions to prevent temporary migrants from accessing public funds (Groutsis et al., 2015). In short, regardless of their skills and qualifications, temporary migrant workers embody a precarious state by nature of their temporariness (Paret and Gleeson, 2016).

Almost 1,000,000 jobs were lost in Australia as a result of the pandemic, with sectors relying on temporary migrant workers hit particularly hard (ABS, 2020). These job losses were foregrounded by a hard closure of Australia’s international border, which resulted in an immediate 11% drop in the population of temporary migrants who left to return to their homeland (Love, 2020). However, many who were unable to depart due to the practical barriers of international travel were left jobless. Despite being viewed as a desirable labouring commodity prior to the pandemic, temporary migrants were excluded from accessing the government’s JobSeeker and JobKeeper welfare schemes established to assist struggling businesses and those made redundant (Baker, 2020). While this was consistent with existing policies that excluded them from government support, temporary migrants’ job losses and restrictions to accessing welfare led to increased scrutiny over Australia’s treatment of migrant workers and the temporary visa regime more broadly (International Labour Organization, 2020). Many temporary visa holders were left in a state of amplified precarity, feeling welcomed and wanted only when deemed as a net benefit for the Australian economy (Clibborn and Wright, 2020; Underhill et al., 2018).

Most temporary visa holders have the right to work in Australia. Even when not mandated to work by their visa conditions, such as international students, the majority of temporary migrants choose to work during their stay (Thamrin et al., 2019). The number of temporary migrants with work rights is estimated to be around 1.7 million people (Department of Home Affairs, 2020), making up a significant component of the Australian workforce. While temporary migrant workers are an important part of the workforce in virtually all industries, hospitality, horticulture, construction and social care are especially reliant on them to perform work classified as low-skilled (Campbell et al., 2016; Clibborn, 2018; Reilly, 2015). Notably, temporary migrant workers can enter under several categories including: temporary skilled migrants, working holiday makers (WHM), seasonal workers, international students, graduate visa holders, New Zealanders, temporary protection seekers and those on bridging visas with working rights. Although some workers in these categories, for instance temporary skilled visa holders, do enjoy substantial job security and high income, temporary migrant workers in other visa categories, especially international students and WHMs who are channelled into low-paid, low-skilled jobs, have been found to experience marginalisation, underpayment and mistreatment (Underhill et al., 2018; Wright and Clibborn, 2020). For instance, wage theft and poor working conditions due to insecure visa status and poor enforcement of legal minimum labour standards have resulted in hyper-exploitation (Berg and Farbenblum, 2017; Tham, 2020a). Regardless of visa category or skill level, precarity is embedded in temporary visa holders’ migration status and work status to varying degrees, placing them on differing trajectories of dehumanisation (Ahmad, 2008; Paret and Gleeson, 2016). Notably, the dehumanisation of temporary migrant workers preceded the pandemic but was nevertheless accentuated by it (Clibborn and Wright, 2020; Wright et al., 2022). This is reflected in government pronouncements and policies implemented since 1996 that have regarded temporary migrants as a flexible labour reserve, which can be drawn on when needed and disregarded when not (Sennet, 1998).

Framing temporary migrants as ‘labour’ and a resource has opened up the way for the abuse of rights, and an indifference to and detachment from this group, resulting in a lack of visibility and voice (Dauvergne and Marsden, 2014: 226). The most acute example of this is the neglect of temporary migrant workers from any social welfare protection during COVID-19, which affirmed and deepened pre-existing exclusionary policies (Clibborn and Wright, 2020). This article highlights how these workers have been framed as devoid of human qualities deserving of protection, and instead useful only when contributing as a temporary economic resource. We build upon theories of dehumanisation to extend scholarship on migrant worker precarity. Scholarship on worker precarity including in this journal has largely focused on how worker skill levels (Dauvergne and Marsden, 2014) and immigration regulations can enhance employer control (Anderson, 2010), shape worker agency (Alberti, 2014; Paret and Gleeson, 2016), and fuel transactional exit strategies (Alberti, 2014). We extend on this scholarship by showing that a key effect of migrant worker precarity is dehumanisation. As such, we also build on the concept of dehumanisation to examine how both high-skilled and low-skilled migrants were impacted by the Australian government’s response to the pandemic, which exacerbated temporary migrant workers’ precarity, including those not traditionally considered precarious by virtue of their skills.

The central question addressed in this article is: Within the context of COVID-19, how has the discourse and subsequent framing of temporary migrant workers by public stakeholders as a burden to society, amplified their precarious state with the effect of dehumanising them? To address this question, we begin by examining how insights from theorising around precarity and its effect on spearheading dehumanisation allow us to explain and understand how viewing temporary migrants as a convenient resource sees them cast as a dehumanised ‘other’. Following this, we elaborate our research methodology and approach before presenting the findings and then concluding.

Temporary migrant: Dehumanised other

While temporary migrant workers come armed with a diverse array of human, financial and social capital, power and voice (Potter and Hamilton, 2014), this pathway is ‘generally premised on temporary workers having fewer labour, association and mobility rights than permanent migrants or citizens’ (Dauvergne and Marsden, 2014: 236). Indeed, if we take the ‘temporary’ nature of the migration category as our starting point, this group is placed in a precarious migration and worker class (Paret and Gleeson, 2016). They lack solid security and a predictable employment future where the burden of risk in the employment context is shouldered, in the main, by the worker (Ahmad, 2008; Kalleberg, 2009, 2011; Rodgers and Rodgers, 1989; Vosko, 2010) . Paret and Gleeson (2016: 279) note that: ‘Precarious work goes hand-in-hand with precarious livelihood. Not only are insecure jobs typically interwoven with periods of unemployment, but they also tend to be associated with lower wages and fewer benefits’. Importantly, skill has been identified as a key factor shaping migrant worker precariousness, with lower-skilled migrants viewed as being at greater risk of marginalisation and insecurity than high-skilled migrants who often command greater labour market demand and are also generally more valued by governments due to higher incomes that generate higher taxation revenue (e.g. Dauvergne and Marsden, 2014). Yet the intersecting features of the social and the employment context provide us with scope to question precarity for skilled migrants. In this regard, we draw on Vosko (2010: 2) who takes a broader view of precarity by including the ‘social context (e.g. occupation, industry and geography)’ and ‘social location (or the interaction between social relations, such as gender, and legal and political categories, such as citizenship)’ to furnish an understanding of the precarious condition defining temporary migrant workers (Anderson, 2010), which would seem to apply irrespective of skill level (Dauvergne and Marsden, 2014).

Several scholars have noted the lack of a consistent definition of precarity/precariousness and precarious employment (Alberti et al., 2018; Anderson, 2010; Betti, 2018; Harrison et al., 2020; Motakef, 2019; Potter and Hamilton, 2014). For Anderson (2010: 303) discussions on the state of precariousness, and the precarity that this results in, is used too liberally, as a ‘catch-all’ where, consequently, the terms have become devoid of meaning. Betti (2018) suggests that as a term precarious work has only relatively recently come into use in the public discourse, having for a long time occupied the academic realm. The point of reference that has remained static over time has been the politicised nature of the term (see Polanyi, 1957; for an historical overview of the term see Betti, 2018). While disagreement surrounds the defining contours of precarity and the consequences of its use, the various threads of scholarship loosely intersect on a shared focus on marginalisation and insecurity (Paret and Gleeson, 2016). According to Motakef (2019) this can be seen in scholarship focusing on welfare, work and a defined underclass (Bourdieu, 1999; Castel, 2002; Paugam, 1996; Standing, 2011); migration (Anderson, 2010), gender and care (Fantone, 2007; Gutiérrez Rodríguez, 2014).

The scope of precarity for temporary migrant worker arrangements is primarily shaped by employment and welfare conditions as well as migration/visa rules (Paret and Gleeson, 2016; Wright and Clibborn, 2017). As such the dimensions of precarity bleed beyond the temporary migrant’s work status, into social life more broadly. The broad scoping of precarity examined in this article is informed by Butler (2009) who notes that precarity can be understood in terms of how ‘norms operate to produce certain subjects as “recognizable” persons and to make others decidedly more difficult to recognize’ (p. 6). That is, there is an identifiable class or target of precarity.

While dehumanisation lacks a universal definition, the context within which it is discussed shapes how it is discussed: be it as an ideology (Szasz, 1973); or as a process (Bauman, 2002) experienced at an individual (Pawlikowski, 2002) or group level (Stanton, 1996). It has been applied to particular events and incidents, such as for instance bullying bystanders (Ng et al., 2020) and migration (McCarthy et al., 2020; Oh, 2019) and may be bounded by the organisation or the labour market more broadly. The concept is linguistically enacted and emotively driven and has been drawn on as a concept for analysing the experience of migrants (Bain et al., 2009; Haslam et al., 2005; Leyens et al., 2000, 2007; Ruhs and Chang, 2004). Taken together and for the purposes of this article, the language of dehumanisation as an effect of the precarious arrangements underscoring temporary migrant worker entry offers us a tool for examination.

To bring the effect of precarity to light through dehumanisation we draw on the discourse of ‘othering’. For instance, historically, the literature has captured the dehumanisation of ethnically and politically identifiable groups (Arendt, 1951; Bilgehan and Berber, 2020; Levi-Strauss, 1983). Temporary migrants are an identifiable category of workers. Leyens and his colleagues (Leyens et al., 2000, 2003, 2007) were the first to coin the idea that humanness is not a given but rather a dynamic dimension of social judgement upon which people are differentiated. Humanness is found to be reserved as a descriptor for one’s own group or the self (Haslam et al., 2005), whilst ‘others’ are denied human attributes and characteristics (Vaes et al., 2012: 65). That is, there is regard and recognition for some groups and a lack thereof of others (Blaug, 2009).

Specifically, we draw on these two threads of scholarship in two ways. First, to interrogate how the discourse surrounding the framing of temporary migrant workers during the pandemic has dehumanised them: pitching them as less worthy and less deserving of basic human rights regardless of their skill level. Second, we contribute to the scholarship by examining the precarious nature of temporary migrant worker arrangements and the effects of being cast as dehumanised ‘other’. We follow the approach in the extant literature by examining the perpetrators of dehumanisation (Bastian and Haslam, 2011) and their approach to temporary migrant workers in the Australian context by engaging in a discourse analysis and employing language as a process of dehumanisation.

The economic discourse framing labour migration as a strictly labour market issue liberates governments and institutional stakeholders from the responsibility of protecting temporary migrant workers (Dumont-Robillard, 2019: 341; Groutsis et al., 2015; Underhill et al., 2018; Van Den Broek and Groutsis, 2017; Wright and Clibborn, 2019). This precarious condition and the consequent dehumanisation of temporary migrants has been used to legitimise exploitative actions, discrimination, and even abandonment of workers invited to the country (Dumont-Robillard, 2019: 237; see also Dauvergne and Marsden, 2014; Oh, 2019; Stasiulis, 2020). Extending on this point, Ruhs and Chang (2004) have argued that employing dehumanising language and framing temporary migrants as subhuman maintains the meaning of citizenship and the status of a valued and worthy citizen worker.

However, there is a problem with this framing and the system it supports: labour is not self-contained (Dauvergne and Marsden, 2014). While ‘the aspiration [is] to tailor temporary migration programmes more and more closely to the labour market [this] simply cannot be fully achieved because the labour market remains theoretical, while people are not’ (Dauvergne and Marsden, 2014: 234). Crucially, in casting temporary migrants as devoid of human traits, it becomes apparent how they can justifiably be overlooked when it comes to basic human rights and needs, particularly amplified within the context of a crisis.

The dehumanisation theory illuminates the impact on a willingness to help, include, empathise with and care for each other (Andrighetto et al., 2014: 574; Cuddy et al., 2007), whereby those viewed as less human and thus outside of one’s social group are considered with less empathy and compassion (Andrighetto et al., 2014). The use of language and discourse is employed as a powerful tool to cast the outgroup as less human. That is, caring for the outgroup’s plight (Andrighetto et al., 2014: 575; Čehajić et al., 2009) will not come naturally if dehumanising language is employed. Such language elicits negative emotions: including anger, disgust, and fear, which can lead to reduced empathy for the dehumanised ‘other’, supporting the desire for harsh, punitive treatment (Oh, 2019: 106). According to Lakoff and Ferguson (2006): ‘Linguistic strategies. . . . preclude sympathetic responses to the plight of these (migrant) individuals, instead dehumanising them as sub-human or alien invaders.’ The result of these linguistic cues is that a moral disregard follows where caring and empathy are lost, and dehumanisation takes over. Antony (2019: 771) notes that the process of ‘moral disengagement – specifically, disengaging internal moral standards – allows us to reconstrue injurious behaviour as acceptable, thereby liberating us to perpetrate behaviours that we know to be wrong’. This process becomes inscribed in the language and the moral stance taken as a result of ‘othering’ a specific group (Antony, 2019: 773). We use the insights from conceptualisations of precarious arrangements and dehumanisation theory to interrogate the framing of temporary labour migrants in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Research method, data collection and analysis

Researching the scale of dehumanisation within a precarious context requires us to fully comprehend the role that discourse plays in the production, reproduction, reinforcement, and reframing of both explicit and implicit messaging. To interrogate these issues, we examine the language cues and strategies eliciting empathy and compassion on the one hand; and disgust, moral disregard, hate and fear on the other. To this end, we draw on critical discourse scholars in our study including Simpson and Lewis (2007), Phillips and Hardy (2002), Wodak and Meyer (2001) who challenge the normative and unidimensional approaches to understanding inclusionary and exclusionary patterns of discourse. Their work draws attention to the less visible reference points shaping the linguistic cues framing the public perception of temporary migrant workers with material implications for the temporary migrants themselves.

We conducted a discourse analysis of media and policy rhetoric to analyse how temporary migrant workers in Australia were framed during the COVID-19 pandemic. This approach was used because discourse analysis can be effective for capturing the context within which the language and spectrum of dehumanisation play out (Phillips and Hardy, 2002). The tensions in the language employed to frame temporary migrants are evidently context dependent. Pre-pandemic, there was a focus on temporary migrants in terms of an economic cost/benefit whereby they were cast as a business asset, job taker, labour resource. This took a critical turn toward a dehumanised ‘other’ when the crisis hit, framing temporary migrants as a burden, a group to be abandoned, invisible, excluded.

Our aim in the data collection was to bring in the experience of the temporary migrant as reported on in publicly available documents during the onset of the pandemic. Our motivation was to analyse how stakeholders framed and represented temporary migrant workers, and to evaluate the discourse surrounding this framing. These documents were analysed in terms of how they framed temporary migrant workers and the support they did or did not receive during the pandemic. What emerges from our analysis is the precarious positionality of temporary migrants who were presented as little more than (dehumanised) resources.

Empirical evidence surrounding dehumanising language in stakeholder discourse was collected from texts published on the highest rated and most consumed digital news platforms (Nielsen, 2020). Included in the study, based on the March 2020 Nielsen ranking, were various mainstream media reports and television media segments, the division of which is presented by publisher in Figure 1. To ensure the voices of the relevant stakeholders were included in the analysis, our examination involved a selection of the major national media outlets that represent a diversity of ownership and ideological leanings.

Figure 1.

Mainstream media segments: sourced via digital platforms. Number of texts based on publisher.

The time frame for the data collection was limited to 30 March – 1 May 2020, the height of the pandemic lockdown conditions in the Australian context. Furthermore, this period was chosen as it coincided with the Australian government’s first economic policy response to the pandemic (Prime Minister of Australia, 2020a).

The surge in news consumption during the pandemic (Meade, 2020) resulted in a higher demand for constant reporting, meaning the initial keyword search retrieved over 2000 texts. The key word search included: ‘jobkeeper’, ‘jobseeker’, ‘temporary migrant’, ‘visa holder’, ‘international student’, ‘working holiday’/‘backpacker’ and ‘seasonal worker’. Within this search, ‘jobkeeper’, which was the name of the Australian government’s wage subsidy policy, was the only keyword with an Australia-only focus. Two search engines were used to locate the articles: ProQuest and Google News.

After eliminating non-original content and focusing on stakeholder statements framing temporary migrants in Australia, 245 texts were included in the final sample. Notably, many Australian digital news platforms use content from the Australian Associated Press (AAP), which is why AAP was added to the study as the original source (36 articles). The UK-owned publications (Daily Mail and the Guardian) also used Reuters, which was not included. Furthermore, this process also resulted in duplicate articles published on multiple sites of the same publisher (e.g. Sydney Morning Herald and the Age) being excluded from the analysis.

Stakeholders included in the analysis were the Australian government, state/territory governments, opposition party leaders, unions, employers, universities, community organisations/advocacy groups, and the migrants themselves (Underhill et al., 2020). ‘Other stakeholders’ whose statements were analysed included police officers, accommodation providers, and health care professionals. In addition, opinion articles by researchers and journalists were also included to provide more personal reflection points.

Initial qualitative content analysis (Schreier, 2013) of the texts was conducted to determine the prevalence of dehumanising frames in stakeholder discourse. Thereafter, a thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006) of the statements was undertaken to understand the direction in which the stakeholders were taking the news agenda and to capture messaging. Qualitative data analysis software, NVivo, was used for both processes.

Findings

As a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries around the world opted to (re)humanise the temporary migrant by providing assistance (Berg and Farbenblum, 2020: 57) . For instance, in the United Kingdom (GOV.UK, 2020), Ireland (Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection, 2020) and Canada (The Government of Canada, 2020) temporary migrant workers’ access to standard unemployment benefits was either maintained or extended and they were also entitled to emergency wage subsidies granted to citizens and permanent residents to protect businesses and workers during the crisis. Portugal went even further by temporarily giving full citizenship rights to all migrants during the pandemic (Government of Portugal, 2020). In addition to financial aid, all of these countries provided some sort of housing and health care assistance to keep migrants safe and healthy during the pandemic (Berg and Farbenblum, 2020: 57). While New Zealand did not grant temporary migrants access to its general unemployment programme, it provided an extraordinary wage subsidy that transcended residency status for businesses to retain their employees (Employment New Zealand, 2020).

The Australian government took a very different approach. As noted above, in the wake of strict social and health restrictions, massive job losses followed. The JobKeeper wage subsidy, the centrepiece of the government’s economic response to COVID-19, was devised following sweeping redundancies and business closures (Blakkarly, 2020b,Chambers and Ferguson, 2020). In the days after the announcement of the JobKeeper scheme and the doubling of the JobSeeker unemployment benefit payment, the Prime Minister Scott Morrison made it very clear that there will be no support given to temporary migrant workers. In a statement on 3 April, Morrison said:

As much as it’s lovely to have visitors to Australia in good times, at times like this if you’re a visitor in this country, it is time . . .to make your way home. Australia must focus on its citizens and its residents to ensure that we can maximise the economic supports that we have. (Gibson and Moran, 2020)

By framing temporary migrant workers as ‘visitors’ and stating the need to focus on Australian citizens of the country, Morrison made a clear distinction between who was considered worthy of, recognition, regard, care and protection. Similar statements were made by other members of parliament whereby temporary migrants were framed as ‘international tourists’ (Brown, 2020), ‘job-seeking travellers’ (Kachor, 2020) or ‘foreigners’ (Bavas, 2020). Throughout these pronouncements it was reasserted that Australia needed to put Australians first (Smiley, 2020). This message resonated widely as is evident by the prevalence of texts quoting the Prime Minister’s statement (see Figure 2). Moreover, the majority of statements by migrants in the media data sample also quoted the Prime Minister’s words, providing further evidence of the impact of the ‘go home’ catchcry. This became the key message given by the Australian government to temporary migrant workers: an unwanted interloper.

Figure 2.

Occurrences of stakeholder statements.

The findings indicate that temporary migrant workers were relegated to ‘visitor’ and ‘tourist’ status when they lost their job and were no longer deemed resources to be capitalised on. This signals that temporary migrant workers were framed as a potential nuisance, a freeloader, a burden for the government. This stands in stark contrast to the conditions that temporary migrant workers signed up for when granted entry. Only those temporary migrants deemed to be ‘essential’ workers in critical industries, such as the healthcare sectors, food production, horticulture and, later, tourism and hospitality, were tolerated in the context of the pandemic (Brinsden, 2020; Gibson and Moran, 2020). For these workers, this toleration translated into little more than an amendment to visa conditions to allow for more work hours (for international students) (Stayner, 2020) and longer stays with a single employer (for WHM) (Brinsden, 2020). For those who lost their jobs, even in these critical industries, there was no welfare assistance.

Dehumanising language legitimised the Australian government’s exclusion of temporary migrant workers from aid. Put another way, it justified the willingness to help some (those considered useful) and to disengage from others (those who were considered a reserve army and a burden) (Andrighetto et al., 2014). For instance, an effective linguistic position surrounding the disengagement from and scapegoating of temporary migrants and migrants more broadly involved associating them with the spread of infections and disease (Esses et al., 2013). In the COVID-19 pandemic, Asian immigrants were linked to the virus due to its assumed origin (World Health Organization (WHO), 2020). This led to racist public attitudes with Asian international students having to state ‘that they are not the virus’ (Berg and Farbenblum, 2020; Doherty, 2020b). Similarly, working holiday makers were also portrayed as careless infection spreaders (McPhee, 2020), which further reduced the desire to aid their plight in these times of crisis. Instead, it reinforced the need to remove them from Australian shores.

The crisis, therefore, placed a sharp spotlight on the ideology and history underscoring the current migration regime where expectations were based on an expedient utilisation of temporary labour premised on a needs-only basis in good times and an abandonment in hardship and crisis. Indeed, the campaign suggesting we ‘are all in this together’ did not hold for temporary migrant workers. As Doherty (2020a) elaborates: ‘The government must take a broader view of what it means to be part of the Australian community. If it is true that “we are all in this together”, everyone here must be “we”.’

Similar to results from Berg and Farbenblum’s (2020) survey examining the experiences of over 6000 temporary visa holders in Australia at the time of COVID-19, our analysis shows temporary migrants feeling ‘stranded’ (Bavas, 2020; Smiley, 2020), ‘worthless’ (Heanue, 2020), and only good for their money and skills. These sentiments are captured in the following quote from an international student stuck in Australia:

[Morrison] essentially said ‘you’re not welcome in this country anymore’. We’re very happy to take your money. We’re very happy for you to participate in our economy, to do the work that generally people don’t want to do . . . to be our mail delivery people, to be our food delivery people, to be the ones who come and serve our citizens hand and foot. But apart from that, now that we’re all in this crisis, you guys can all go and – excuse my language – but you can all go and bugger off. (Alcorn, 2020)

In contrast to the dehumanising language enacted by the government, there were pockets of solidarity with and advocacy for temporary migrant workers (Underhill et al., 2020). For instance, community organisations, NGOs, migrant resource centres, unions, churches and missions, and even some employers utilised a rehumanising discourse toward temporary migrant workers (Tham, 2020b). Together, these advocates highlighted the moral and ethical responsibilities of governments and other stakeholders in protecting this group by spotlighting a ‘multicultural Australia’ frame, which includes all people currently living in the country regardless of their visa status (Daniel, 2020). Such framing also has its roots in Australian immigrant history, which argues that apart from First Nations peoples everyone has come from elsewhere and requires protection and care within Australian borders. As the director of the Migrant Workers Centre, Matt Kunkel put it:

Scott Morrison is creating an underclass of workers during a global pandemic, who will be left without a roof over their heads and limited access to healthcare. This spells disaster as we face the worst of COVID-19. There is no reason for Scott Morrison to lock temporary visa holders, who are doing the same work at the same businesses, out of this support system. (Blakkarly, 2020a)

Union representatives echoed this position noting in their campaign slogan that ‘No worker [should be] left behind’ (Patty, 2020; Unions NSW, 2020). Similarly, the opposition Labor Party argued that since the ‘virus does not discriminate based on visa status, neither should the government’ (Evlin, 2020). As such, the discourse used by the labour movement maintained a rather neutral tone – they do not go so far as to attribute humanness to the labour force, but they acknowledged that since Australia has reaped the benefits of migrant labour for years, it should provide support during times of crisis (Bonyhady, 2020). The following example illustrates this sentiment:

The treatment of these workers [at a Sydney laundry business] is disgraceful. These are hard-working families; they have been paying their taxes for years. They deserve a fair go. . .Visa-holders ineligibility for JobKeeper wage subsidies will leave them destitute. The government has to fix the faults in the JobKeeper scheme. (Statement by a union leader in Karp, 2020)

For those who continued to have work, their desperation to remain employed raised concerns for their personal health and the safety and well-being of the broader community amplifying the precariousness of their context (Berg and Farbenblum, 2020; Brake, 2020; Schneiders, 2020; Tham, 2020b). That is, they found themselves in an unfortunate bind. If unwell they needed to stay home to ensure they did not infect colleagues, however staying at home meant they suffered possible destitution. Some employers, especially hospitality businesses, understood the impossible position temporary migrant workers found themselves in and took steps to keep their staff from starving and going homeless (Valent, 2020).

At the other end of the spectrum were New Zealanders living and working in Australia as temporary visa holders. This group had access to the pandemic emergency wage subsidy, a selective process justified by the government on the basis that New Zealanders were considered ‘an integral part of the Australian economy and have built lives here which they want to continue on the other side of the pandemic’ (Blakkarly, 2020a). Yet other visa holders found themselves cast outside of the society, and viewed as ‘not quite Australian’ (Mares in Doherty, 2020a). The treatment of specific groups of temporary migrant workers suggests a hierarchy of regard and recognition and a dehumanisation of ‘others’.

International students make up the largest cohort of the temporary visa holders in Australia (Department of Home Affairs, 2020), and they have been estimated to contribute over AU$35 billion to the national economy annually in fees, taxes and spending (Arora, 2020a). In addition to their financial contribution as consumers, international students also form a large body of the Australian part time and casual workforce (Alcorn, 2020; Creighton, 2020b; Dodd, 2020; Leong, 2020; Mannix and Hunter, 2020). This did not, however, translate into their prioritisation by the Australian government. Instead, international students were encouraged to leave (Blakkarly, 2020c). In contrast to the Australian (federal) government policy of exclusion, the state and territory governments adopted more inclusive policies by setting up hardship funds to protect and assist international students (Berg and Farbenblum, 2020: 17). Similar approaches were also adopted by some universities (Hunter, 2020), as the following report indicates:

International students are very much a part of our community and we are keen to ensure they are supported at this difficult and uncertain time. Ensuring international students are supported as much as possible will assist in maintaining South Australia’s global reputation for international education and will provide peace of mind for the families of these students living thousands of kilometres away from them as we face such an uncertain time. (South Australian Minister of Trade and Investment in Arora, 2020b; see also SBS, 2020)

Researchers called the Australian government’s economic approach to COVID-19 short sighted (Creighton, 2020a). Leaving migrants without any protection was presented as a complete abandonment of a group who had, up until the eruption of the pandemic-crisis, contributed significantly to the Australian labour market and economy.

Conclusion

This article has interrogated how the public framing of temporary migrant workers in Australia within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic has amplified their precarious state to the extent of dehumanising them. This framing affirmed and deepened the already precarious position of temporary migrant workers, which was largely the consequence of government policies implemented since 1996 that had set into motion a weakening of their labour and social rights and access to support (Groutsis, 2022; Wright and Clibborn, 2020). While the dominant wisdom in scholarship examining precarity focuses on economic marginalisation and insecurity we have adopted a broader view by examining the effect of dehumanisation. The Australian government cast temporary migrant workers as less deserving and less human than citizens and simply viewed them as cogs for improving labour market efficiency during the pandemic. Embedded in the very structure of temporary labour migration schemes is the notion that migrant workers are little more than ‘pure economic inputs’ (Dumont-Robillard, 2019: 340; see also Paret and Gleeson, 2016). While previous studies have highlighted the role that skill can play in determining their precarity, in this case, all temporary migrants were marginalised and dehumanised during the pandemic, regardless of their skill level. While other stakeholders including some state and territory governments adopted more inclusive approaches, the Australian government – the key actor determining temporary migrants’ social position by virtue of the Australian government’s control over immigration policy – viewed them as a flexible and efficient form of human capital. As such, matters surrounding the social, ethical and moral aspects of the system underscoring the pathway to temporary migration, work and life (Dumont-Robillard, 2019: 341) were ignored, thus amplifying the effects of temporary migrants’ precarious position. Locating temporary migrant workers, their attraction and deployment strictly in the economic realm is the source of their precarious condition. This has been brought to light through our exploration of the dehumanising rhetoric during the pandemic.

We have used the concept of dehumanisation to demonstrate how the Australian government’s response to the pandemic shaped conditions of precarity for all temporary migrant workers, including those not traditionally considered precarious due to their human capital. This extends traditional understandings of migrant worker precarity that have focused primarily on skill levels (Dauvergne and Marsden, 2014), immigration regulations (Anderson, 2010; Paret and Gleeson, 2016), and worker agency (Alberti, 2014), which represents an original contribution to extant scholarship on work and precarity. The findings also highlight the importance of the precarious context in framing temporary migrants as dehumanised ‘others’ at a critical juncture of the pandemic, in contrast to the dominant framing of temporary migrants in pre-pandemic conditions as a viable resource to address labour market shortages. The value of this in-demand labour resource swiftly turned in the post-pandemic era where temporary migrant workers, regardless of their skill level or other measures of their economic contribution, were cast as unwelcome and undeserving non-citizens and non-humans excluded from access to crisis welfare assistance (Boräng, 2015).

The analysis of media reports at the height of the pandemic illustrated the scale and severity of dehumanisation of temporary migrants. Insecurity, vulnerability and precarity defined their experience amplified by employment instability, low control over work regulations, lack of social protection and power in negotiations over wages, as well as risks to personal health and well-being (Dumont-Robillard, 2019: 342; see also Berg and Farbenblum, 2020; Doherty, 2020b). The Australian government’s failure to see temporary visa holders as worthy of protection reinforces the acute structural inequality of society, and undermines belonging, recognition, settlement and cohesion. This group’s experience exemplifies the dignity injuries imposed on them by a politically induced position: excluded, invisible and cast as a burden (Butler, 2009; Mahalingam et al., 2019). While temporary migrants are not citizens of the nation state, they can be considered ‘labour citizens’ within the global labour-migration nexus (Dauvergne and Marsden, 2014: 239).

We note the limitations of our study are founded on the methodological approach we employed, opening the door to future research. The findings of our evaluation of how temporary migrant workers are framed emerge from data gathered and analysed during a snapshot in time in a particular national context. While this evidence provided us with deep insights within this time and place context, we were unable to trace the effect of precarity and the spectrum of dehumanisation of temporary migrant workers across the pre- and post-pandemic era. In light of this we recommend that future research should examine the depth and breadth of precarity experienced by temporary migrant workers across time and within different and comparative contexts. Further, this may also include an intersectional perspective, cutting across the gendered experience, broken down by age group and other such identity characteristics, as well as a critical race perspective to analyse elite and situated racisms. There is also opportunity to examine the financial as well as non-financial costs of neglecting the experience of temporary migrant workers in their time of need, particularly in terms of the ‘new migration’ and exit strategies such agency offers migrants. Examining the impact on receiving country labour markets in using such a strategy would be illuminating. Finally, while we presented insights from the perspective of the stakeholder bodies, insights drawing more fully on the migrant voice, which were underrepresented in the discourse analysis of media coverage, is important for understanding how the dehumanisation may shape the migrant worker experience.

Biography

Dimitria Groutsis is Associate Professor in Work and Organisational Studies at the University of Sydney Business School. Dimitria is a leading scholar in the fields of migration, labour mobility, and cultural diversity in the business context. Her work has appeared in international peer review journals, book chapters, and she has co-edited and co-authored several books. She frequently works with industry, government and non-government organisations, developing evidence-based insights. Dr Groutsis has received a number of large competitive external research grants, with total funding in excess of 2 million dollars. She is a frequent media contributor, has been the recipient of several fellowships and is the Director of the Migration, Ethno-Racial, Cultural and Intersectionality@Work Research Group (MERCI@WRG).

Annika Kaabel is a research manager at Diversity Council Australia, and a casual research assistant and lecturer at the University of Sydney Business School and Estonian Business School. Annika holds a doctoral degree in Political Science from Kiel University in Germany, where she studied labour market integration of newly arrived refugees, and a master’s degree from Uppsala University in Sweden, where her thesis dealt with the question of national identity. Her research interests are migration and integration policy, labour markets, and organisational diversity.

Chris F Wright is Associate Professor in the Discipline of Work and Organisational Studies at the University of Sydney Business School, University of Sydney, Australia. His research focuses primarily on migrant labour, comparative employment relations, and sustainable supply chains. He is co-editor of International and Comparative Employment Relations: Global Crises and Institutional Responses (2021, SAGE) and Protecting the Future of Work: New Institutional Arrangements for Safeguarding Labour Standards (2023, Emerald). His work has been published widely including in the British Journal of Industrial Relations, ILR Review, Industrial Relations, Governance and the Journal of Business Ethics.