A Multicultural and Multifunctional Countryside? International Labour Migration and Australia's Productivist Heartlands

Abstract

In 2007, Michael Woods posited the notion of 'the global countryside' as a hypothetical space within which globalising tendencies are fully realised in the transformation of rural place. Rather than viewing rural change as being 'determined' by global processes, Woods sought to encourage more nuanced accounts that could 'hold together' multiple scales in their narratives of rural restructuring. After three decades of neoliberal trade and agricultural policy reform in Australia, the country's inland regions are embedded in 'the global', yet their economic, demographic, and social fortunes are also being profoundly shaped by the processes operating at a range of other spatial scales. Within the context of the global countryside, this paper explores the interactions of rural demographic change and labour market processes. Specifically, we examine the ways in which long-standing patterns of out-migration from rural areas have seen new forms of engagement with the global in the form of international labour migration.

Demographic Change, Differential Ageing, and Public Policy in Rural and Regional Australia: A Three‐State Case Study

“…457) and programmes (e.g. the Pacific Seasonal Worker Seasonal Worker programme) (Hugo, ; Argent and Tonts, ). However, these initiatives focus squarely on farmers' financial ‘bottom lines’ and, to date, have not had a lasting beneficial impact on local population structures in the agriculture‐dependent settlement categories.…”

Rural cosmopolitanism at the frontier? Chinese farmers and community relations in northern Queensland,c.1890–1920

“…In spite of the clear cultural and political contrasts in attitudes towards race at the turn of the twentieth century and today, there are nonetheless striking parallels between aspects of the dynamics of immigration and cultural difference in late colonial Cairns and the present-day experiences and politics of immigration and cultural difference in rural areas of Australia, New Zealand, Europe and North America. The cyclical nature of Chinese migration to Queensland, the practice of sending remittances, and migrants' aim of working in Queensland to build a better life in China were unfamiliar at the time, but are replicated by twenty-first-century migrant workers (see, for example, Gidwani and Sivaramakrishnan 2003;Skaptadóttir and Wojtynska 2008;Pye et al 2012;Argent and Tonts 2015). The political discourse mobilised by the 'White Australian' opponents of Chinese immigration similarly has resonance in the rhetoric of twentyfirst-century anti-immigration politics, notably exaggerated fears of overwhelming volumes of migrants, crime and cultural dilution, as do the accusations by white farmers and agitators that Chinese migrants were taking work from Europeans and undercutting wages and prices by accepting lower incomes and working longer hours (cf.…”

Rural Economies in the ‘Age of Migration’: Perspectives from OECD Countries

“…For those rural regions that had experienced high levels of unemployment as a consequence of restructuring, it would seem that a domestic latent workforce would be available to fill these roles. However, as a number of researchers point out, processes of rural restructuring have also resulted in high rates of out‐migration and net migration loss of young people (Argent and Tonts, ; Cantu, ; Hoggart and Mendoza, ; Jentsch, ; Kasimis and Papadopoulos, ; Kasimis et al, ). This, in turn, has produced labour shortages so that when old rural industries recovered and/or new ones emerged, there has not been the excess population/latent workforce available to fill these positions.…”

“…A human capital explanation would stop at this point; arguing that the increase in immigrants filling employment vacancies in rural regions is a product of the restructuring of rural industries and a consequent demographic vacuum that required industry to source labour from elsewhere. However, employing a range of neo‐Marxist approaches, a number of researchers point to the fact that the contemporary reliance of rural economies on immigrant labour is not a simple, nor is it a natural, by‐product of the convergence of demographic and economic need (Argent and Tonts, ; Hoggart and Mendoza, ; Lusis and Bauder, ; Scott, ; Woods, ). Instead, the increased reliance on immigrant labour by rural economies is argued to be the outcome of socially regulated employment relations.…”