13/04/2021
How the pandemic has hit Australia’s fastest-growing migrant group – Monash Lens
There is indeed a cruel irony to the fact that our most essential workers are amongst
our most underpaid and casualised. They are essential, yet (apparently) dispensable.
In contrast, researchers have shown that professionals who are able to work from
home earn on average 24% more than essential workers, and are more likely to be in
salaried positions and thus have access to paid sick leave.
These predominantly white-collar workers are privileged in two senses – they’re able to
insulate themselves from the risk of contracting COVID-19 by practising safe social
distancing, while maintaining their source of income during periods of restrictions. The
inequality in health outcomes between those in secure and insecure work thus re ects
their income inequality.
Compounding the unequal impacts of their concentration into precarious roles,
temporary and undocumented migrants have been excluded from JobSeeker and
JobKeeper payments.
This has left hundreds of thousands of the estimated 2.17 million temporary visa
holders in Australia with no income or support beyond under-resourced migrant
services.
An additional, unquanti ed group of “informal” migrants who do not have visas, likely
numbering in the tens of thousands, have been potentially left with no support of any
kind.
All this despite the often underpaid labour of temporary and undocumented migrants
structurally upholding key sectors of the Australian economy, including the horticultural
sector in certain regional areas, as well as sections of the hospitality sector in
metropolitan areas.
The Nepali migrant experience
Nepali temporary migrants have been acutely affected by the pandemic, due to their
concentration in casualised, precarious work in the healthcare, hospitality and services
industries.
https://lens.monash.edu/@politics-society/2021/04/12/1383007/tracing-the-impacts-of-the-covid-pandemic-on-australias-fastest-growing-migrant-…
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