Temporary Migration, Corporeality and Conditional Multiculturalism: Body Odours, Stereotyping and Shame

In early 2012, Australian politician Teresa Gambaro claimed that temporary migrants on 457 work visas needed to be taught Australian values including hygiene practices to overcome issues of body odour in public spaces. Gambaro's comments highlight the corporeal and embodied practices and issues in migration and migration debates in terms of the conditionality of multicultural tolerance. They point to the fact that expanding the conditions by which nonwhite temporary migrant others are to be tolerated is, in the longer-term ineffective in combating racist stereotyping-the task at hand is to develop ethical means by which the other, regardless of temporary migration status or differential and diverse body odours, is welcomed unconditionally. This paper examines the Gambaro case by opening questions about migrants on temporary worker visas, cultural difference and the performativity of bodies in terms of perceptions of hygiene (how the body emits differently and how this works in terms of claims of tolerance). It examines how Gambaro's comments fit within a history of concern over the odours of migrant food and bodies, how stereotyping temporary migrants operates to attribute abject otherness to migrant bodies, and how the this produces unethical shaming of temporary migrants. The paper ends by discussing some of the ways in which ethics of cohabitation can be deployed in a context of welcoming diverse bodies that do things (and smell) in diverse ways.