Pacific Islands Guestworkers in Australia

This is the first book to examine the contemporary seasonal migration of Pacific Islanders to Australia through the Seasonal Worker Program (SWP). It reflects on this new age of guestwork from a broad social, economic, political and cultural perspective in both source countries and destinations. In so doing, it offers a critical perspective on different phases of managed labour migration from nineteenth century practices of ‘blackbirding’ to the present day. This book examines why and how guestworker policies and programmes have developed, and the 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, and draws upon studies based in Australia, Vanuatu and other Pacific Island countries. The book 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 evolving regional geopolitics.

Dr Kirstie Petrou is a human geographer at the Climate and Sustainability Policy Research group, Flinders University.  Her research interests include migration, urbanisation and development in the Pacific.

John Connell is a Professor of Geography in the School of Geosciences, University of Sydney.  He works mainly on small island development issues in the Pacific region and has published several books on migration and colonialism.