Who cares in Australia? Gender, ethnicity and the occupational transitions of skilled migrant care workers

Non-English-speaking background (NESB) migrant women are a large and growing proportion of the frontline care workforce in Australia. Historically, direct care worker visa pathways have not existed in Australia, and most migrants in these occupations have arrived on a visa unconnected to this employment. This thesis aims first to understand how migration, settlement and care regimes encourage permanent NESB migrants to work in the care sector. Secondly, the thesis examines how ethnicity and migration status shapes the gendered experience of care work in Australia.

Data was generated through in-depth interviews with 30 NESB care workers who arrived on a family visa or as the partner of a skilled migrant. Participants shared their experiences of settling in Australia and working in frontline aged care and childcare. I contextualised their experiences by using an intersectional conceptual framework and I drew on a critical feminist realist lens to examine the underlying structural factors that influenced those experiences.

The analysis of the interview data indicates that a pervasive gender and ethnic division between productive and reproductive work is institutionalised in the migration regime, which constrains the employment opportunities of NESB migrant women, including those arriving with professional work backgrounds. The study also establishes that the settlement regime funnels NESB migrant women with English language proficiency and under-recognised skills into low-paid frontline care. My analysis reveals that NESB migrant care workers are positioned as ethnic outsiders in the care workforce. As a result, they engaged in additional undervalued emotional labour to adapt care and work practices, to negotiate care norms with co-ethnic families, and to shield themselves from racism.

My research contributes to migration and care work scholarship, highlighting the agency of skilled NESB migrant women in adapting and resisting the institutionalised gender and ethnic inequality, which makes invisible the unpaid work of resettling in Australia and undervalues the skills they bring to the care workforce.