“We don’t feel free at all”: temporary ni-Vanuatu workers in the Riverina, Australia

ABSTRACT Seasonal worker programmes are promoted as a quadruple win, bringing benefits to participating countries, employers and workers. These benefits, however, are most often framed as economic, while the social costs of such schemes have received less attention. In 2009, Australia introduced a short-term agricultural employment scheme to provide unskilled labour for farmers, and temporary work for migrants from Pacific island states. The scheme has contributed to economic development in Australia and in the participating island nations. Migrants from Vanuatu constitute the largest group from the Melanesian states. Temporary ni-Vanuatu migrants in the Riverina region of New South Wales, Australia, have received substantial cash incomes, but this has come at some social cost, as they constitute an un-free precariat. Institutional structures have not responded by providing adequate pastoral care or monitoring, or changed employment, residential, and visa conditions. Parallels exist between the present employment scheme, century-old plantation systems, and similar labour migration schemes in New Zealand and Canada which emphasise the exploitative contexts of temporary agricultural employment schemes.