Migrant, interrupted: The temporalities of ‘staggered’ migration from Asia to Australia

Abstract

The mobilities of increasing numbers of ‘middling’ migrants from Asia to Australia involve complex trajectories that encompass multiple transitions across statuses and places as well as ambiguities around temporariness and permanence. This article argues that during these ‘staggered’ migrations, intersections between multiple ‘timescales’ – institutional, biographic and everyday – produce specific experiences of time for migrants that interrupt teleological imaginaries of both life transitions and migration outcomes. Drawing on data from in-depth narrative interviews with middling migrants, this article focuses on two such temporal experiences, ‘contingent temporality’ and ‘indentured temporality’, and seeks to demonstrate how these experiences are produced through the overlaps and intersections of institutional, biographical and everyday timescales. The article seeks to advance empirical understandings of the temporalities of new forms of migrant mobility between Asia and Australia, as well as to contribute new conceptual approaches to scholarship on migration and time.

The mobility pathways of migrant domestic workers

“…In the formulation of Paul (2012), migrant domestic workers accumulate sufficient resources to embark on a multinational migratory scheme of steady upward trajectory from one country to the next. Diverging from the linear progressivist trajectory of stepwise migration, sociologist Robertson (2019) captures the migration undertaken by prospective Asian migrants in their pathway to permanent residence in Australia as involving a multitude of temporary visas (e.g. student, working holiday, and temporary labour) of varying temporal trajectories.…”

“…While the Philippine government has instituted robust programmes to facilitate the return of OFWs, that is overseas Filipino workers, back into the economy and society, migrant domestic workers in the UAE admit to minimally participating in these programmes. 13 While my research design does not allow for the inclusion of those who successfully return and secure a viable means of livelihood in the Philippines, a sizeable number of interviewees have returned to the Philippines with many eventually departing once again as either a 'serial labor migrant' (Parreñas et al 2019) or a 'staggered migrant' (Robertson 2019) and those in the Philippines also attempting to migrate once again. There is a high likelihood that return migrants will opt to pursue migration once again due to the challenge of maintaining a viable livelihood in the undeveloped economies in their rural regions of origin, where access to wage employment including in agriculture remains scarce, or as unskilled workers in urban areas.…”

“…The inability of migrant domestic workers to stay continuously as a permanent legal resident leads to their staggered temporary labor migration. Similar to 'staggered [Asian] migrants' (Robertson 2019) entering, exiting and reentering Australia with a variety of visas in their pathway to permanent residence, the process of obtaining legal residency for migrant domestic workers who seek long-term temporary residence in the UAE requires they maintain labour contracts for a variety of temporary durations as it entails their regular exit from and entry into the country.…”

Suspending, settling, sponsoring: the intimate chronomobilities of young Asian migrants in Australia

“…In this article, I explore narratives of intimate timelines and timings (including periods of singlehood, forming relationships, and sponsoring partners) as part of the migration experiences of 'middling' young people from China, India, South Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan and the Philippines who arrived in Australia between 2001 and 2013 on temporary visas, and who experienced 'staggered pathways' (Robertson 2019) of transition between different visa statuses over time. In doing so, I build upon three emerging and interconnected literatures that have a bearing on contemporary understandings of transnational migration: these are studies of 'middling' youth transnationalism; studies of migration through a lens of temporality; and studies that seek to understand the role of intimacy within experiences of transnational mobility.…”

New theoretical dialogues on migration in China: introduction to the special issue

“…Migration experiences are infused with feelings of flux, provisionality, uncertainty and precarity, which force migrants to keep with circular paths of lives (Griffiths 2014;Robertson 2016;Boersma 2019). As Robertson (2019) points out, the spatial-temporal boundaries that migrants encounter perpetually is contingent on the intersection of three different timescales: (1) the institutional time associated with state governance and employment regimes; (2) biographic time associated with life events and the (imagined) relations between past, present and future; and (3) everyday time associated with rhythms of everyday work and life. These complex intersections produce uneven implications for class, gender, welfare and the citizenship regime (Koh 2015;Seo 2019).…”