Migration from India to Australia

Temporary Migration of Indian ICT Workers to Australia

This article examines the temporary migration of information and communications technology (ICT) workers from India to Australia under the 457 temporary business entry visa category that was introduced in 1996. The number of Indians arriving in Australia under this visa class has risen more rapidly than that of any major source country, suggesting the competitiveness of Indian ICT workers in the Australian labor market. The article examines the main characteristics of Indian ICT workers migrating temporarily to Australia, analyzes the underlying causes for the considerable increase in numbers and points to some concerns connected to their temporary migration to Australia.

Gendering Skilled Migratory Streams: Implications for Conceptualizations of Migration

The dominant paradigm in studies of international migration has largely neglected the significance of skilled women in migratory streams. Much recent analysis of international migration has been overly influenced by conceptualizations developed in the context of the migration of women who engage in unskilled labor, or of ungendered but implicitly androcentric theorizations of skilled migration, whether arising from a modernization thesis or globalization thesis. In this paper I explore the legacies of such theorizations and the ways in which the presence of skilled women can challenge these conceptualizations. This paper suggests the need to rethink the household-labor market-immigration nexus in the light of issues of social stratification which a focus on skilled women migrants raises.