Abstract
In 1986, the late Stephen Castles authored an obituary for Western Europe’s post-war guestworker migration schemes, which had proven to be far less ‘temporary’ than anticipated (Castles 1986). Twenty years later, as Europe again looked to temporary migration as a fix for labour and skill shortages, he questioned whether elements of past schemes were being resurrected in contemporary policymaking (Castles 2006). At the same time that Castles was querying the return of guestworkers in Europe, Australia was doubling down on its eschewal of the guestworker model, with then treasurer, Peter Costello, declaring that, “Australia has never been a guestworker country… I don’t think Australia will be a guestworker country and I don’t think Australians want to see that” (cited in Wright and Clibborn 2020). This article seeks to pick up the threads of Castles’s analysis by evaluating evidence of a guestworker resurrection in Germany and by comparing these trends against recent shifts in Australian migration policymaking.
Conference
| Conference | Borders, Labour and Mobility: The Jean Monnet Project on Comparative Migration (PROCAM) |
|---|---|
| Country/Territory | Australia |
| City | Melbourne |
| Period | 25/08/22 → 26/08/22 |
| Other | The Project on Comparative Migration (PROCAM) hosted by Monash University, Australia, analyses the implications of intra- and extra-EU migration in the context of the post-Brexit EU. Australian policy makers have a particular interest in the future development of the EU Single Market and its labour markets after the UK’s exit from the EU. This conference aims to address contemporary issues in labour mobility and immigration policy in the Asia-Pacific region and Europe. This project was co-funded by the European Commission (Grant No. 620162-EPP-1-2020 and Monash University. |
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