Pacific Islands Guestworkers in Australia: The New Blackbirds?

516 Pages·2022·11.428 MB·English

by  Kirstie Petrou, John Connell

Pacific Islands
Guestworkers
in Australia
The New Blackbirds?
Kirstie Petrou · John Connell
Pacific Islands Guestworkers in Australia
“Guestworkers are not immigrants. They are workers who are not accorded full
citizenship rights and are subject to eventual removal. While the earnings of
guestworkers may be remitted to help family in their own country, their status
in the new country is always secondary. This means they are vulnerable to exploi-
tation. The difference between an immigrant and a guestworker is that a guest-
worker is expected not to assimilate because at the end of their work visa they
will be required to leave. Guestworkers become a society within a society. We
have already had an unfortunate experience with guestworkers, for example the
Kanakas brought to the North Queensland sugar industry.”
—Peter Costello, Australian Federal Treasurer (July 2006)
“[Pacific island countries] will continue to survive … because of large aid assis-
tance from Australia … and because many of their workers come here and pick
our fruit, pick our fruit with hard Australian enterprise and endeavour and we
welcome them and we always will …. But the fact is we’re not going to be
hijacked into doing something that will shut down an industry…and I’m only
talking coal, let alone all our other resources.”
—Michael McCormack, Australian Deputy Prime Minister (August 2019)
“[The aged and disability care] workforce who, whilst they do the work of angels,
are effectively treated like fruit pickers.”
—Bill Shorten, Shadow Minister for Government Services (August 2020)
Kirstie Petrou • John Connell
Pacific Islands
Guestworkers in
Australia
The New Blackbirds?
Kirstie Petrou John Connell
Griffith University University of Sydney
Brisbane, QLD, Australia Sydney, NSW, Australia
ISBN 978-981-19-5386-6 ISBN 978-981-19-5387-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-5387-3
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Preface
This is the first book to examine contemporary seasonal migration from
Pacific island states to Australia primarily to work in the agricultural
sector. It reflects on the new age of guestworkers from both ends—the
source Pacific island states and Australian destinations—from a broad
social, economic and cultural perspective; and, as the opening quotations
suggest, from a political perspective. It seeks to offer a critical perspective
on different phases of managed labour migration. We first trace the ante-
cedents of present policies and practices in nineteenth-century ‘black-
birding’ that brought thousands of Pacific islanders, mainly from the
New Hebrides (Vanuatu) and Solomon Islands, to work in Queensland
sugar plantations. After a century-long hiatus, labour migration from
Pacific island states to Australia began again in the 2000s (modelled on
temporary migration schemes from the Caribbean to Canada, and from
the Pacific to Aotearoa-New Zealand). In a normal season about 10,000
agricultural workers arrive in Australia from the Pacific island states
(especially Vanuatu and Tonga), alongside some from Timor-Leste, work-
ing in various agricultural activities, mainly in Queensland and New
South Wales. These numbers may expand significantly in the future as
Australia negotiates new strategies with island states, as one approach to
supporting island economies, and in response to China taking a more
active interest in the region. That also depends on responses to and out-
comes of the COVID-19 pandemic. This book examines why and how
v
vi Preface
these policies and programmes have developed, what impact this has had
in Australia and for the people, villages and islands of the sending states.
It particularly focuses on Vanuatu, the main source of labour, based on
studies in Australia and in Vanuatu. It therefore traces new patterns of
migration, with intriguing economic and social consequences, that are
restructuring parts of rural and regional Australia, in response to labour
demands from agriculture and an evolving regional geopolitics.
Adelaide, SA, Australia Kirstie Petrou
Sydney, NSW, Australia John Connell
Acknowledgements
We conducted fieldwork in Vanuatu and in Australia at various times and
for various durations through the 2010s (and early but mainly indirectly
in 2020). Conversations were conducted in Bislama, Vanuatu’s lingua
franca, and English. Our Bislama and Tok Pisin helped in gaining trust
and the greater ability to converse with workers and their families. All the
translations from Bislama were done by Kirstie. One or both of us visited
the Pacific island states that were involved in Australia’s guestworker
schemes (with the exception of Nauru and Solomon Islands) at least once
during the decade. COVID-19 constrained fieldwork we would like to
have conducted, resulting in occasional over-dependence on secondary
sources and on generous colleagues. Limited research possibilities have
meant some dependence on key informants, particularly loquacious
workers and social media, which occasionally necessitated ‘educated
guesses’ and ‘valiant assumptions’, and the all-too-frequent use of ‘some’,
‘many’ and other unhelpful adjectives. We have sought to move some-
what away from the basic but limited quantitative data to provide frag-
ments of the everyday lives and narratives of the workers and their
families, and those who have helped them, that shed some light on their
attitudes, objectives, feelings and emotions. Workers and others directly
quoted have been given pseudonyms. Unless otherwise indicated cur-
rency is demarcated in Australian dollars. A few direct quotes from sea-
sonal workers that appear throughout this book have been used in our
vii
viii Acknowledgements
previous publications as listed in the reference list. This includes our
2019 paper in the Journal of Australian Political Economy and our 2018
paper published in Rural Society.
Many people have contributed to the long process of writing this
‘quick’ book. Above all we thank the many seasonal workers who shared
their experiences with us. We are indebted to Richard Curtain and
Richard Brown for their generous and helpful comments on an earlier
version of this manuscript. Others, located across several countries,
kindly responded to our queries and probing emails, notably Michelle
Carnegie and Sarah James. And we are particularly grateful to our kith
and kin for their patience and support.
Adelaide and Sydney
October 2021
Contents
1 Introduction: A New Age of Temporary Migration? 1
2 The Pacific Island Countries 9
3 Two Centuries of Pacific Migration 39
4 The Revival of Guestwork 83
5 E arly Days 107
6 T aking Part 137
7 D estination Australia 187
8 S ocial Worlds 251
9 H ome Again 297
10 A New Phase: Stepping up a Gear? 363
ix
x Contents
11 Th e New Blackbirds? 385
12 H osts and Guests 429
B ibliography 453
I ndex 493