Migration, family and networks: Timorese seasonal workers' social support in Australia

Abstract

This paper explores the social support of Timorese workers under the Australian Seasonal Workers Programme (SWP). The SWP, which allows citizens from Pacific Island countries and Timor-Leste to work in Australian agriculture for six to nine months, has become the major source of remittances for seasonal workers from Timor-Leste. The paper describes how access to the internet and the availability of social media devices can help to maintain long-distance family relationships, support migrants' well-being and alleviate the effects of socio-spatial segregation to some extent. However, the need to earn remittances in a fixed period of time forces them to accept a trade-off in the quality of their social and personal lives in rural Australia. According to the New Economics of Labour Migration (NELM), isolation and separation from families are part of a rational household strategy to accumulate remittances. This paper argues that insufficient attention has been paid to the social costs borne by workers and left-behind households and that the sustainability of the SWP depends to a large extent on the ability of workers to find ways of meeting their needs for social support. The analysis is based on data from participant observation and semi-structured interviews with 50 Timorese seasonal workers in Australia and Timor-Leste.

The transnational village in Timor‐Leste

“…Their living and working conditions are monitored, and in spite of the isolated incidents where workers have been over‐charged for sub‐standard housing or underpaid, they are generally in keeping with Australian standards (Howes, 2020). Although the repetitive and isolated nature of much harvest work (Wu, 2021), the stark reality of what Pritchett et al (2019) calls the ‘place premium’, the reality that an individual from a poor country can earn more simply by dint of being physically located in a rich one, makes it very much worthwhile. While total earnings vary according to the season and the capacity of the individual, Wigglesworth and dos Santos (2018) reports that for workers in Australia, between A$8000 and A$15,000 is typical for a six‐month period, and is far more than they could hope to make at home in Timor.…”