Migrants and employment - Challenging the success story

The Australian government claims that its emphasis on skills in the migration program has paid off, with recent migrants achieving superior labour market outcomes to previous cohorts, and contributing more to the 'productive diversity' of the Australian workforce. Such sentiments are supported by most contemporary scholars of migration. Their conclusions stem from the adoption of a human capital approach where migrants' labour market outcomes are seen to directly reflect their individual skills and other attributes, as opposed to social and institutional practices such as discrimination or exclusion. In this article we subject the prevailing 'success story' about skilled migration to scrutiny, and point to alternative ways of interpreting the empirical evidence (namely, longitudinal survey data) as well as alternative ways of explaining the incorporation of migrants in the Australian workforce. © 2004 The Australian Sociological Association

Retention of the aboriginal health, ageing, and disability workforce: Protocol for a Mixed Methods Study

Background: Despite a plethora of research into Aboriginal employment and recruitment, the extent and nature of the retention of frontline Aboriginal people in health, ageing, and disability workforces are currently unknown. In this application, frontline service delivery is defined as Aboriginal people who are paid employees in the health, ageing, and disability service sectors in roles that involve direct client, participant, or patient contact. There is a need to identify the factors that inhibit (push) and promote (pull) staff retention or departure of this workforce from the sectors. This study will provide additional insight about this topic. Objective: The objective of this project is to uncover the factors that influence the retention of frontline Aboriginal workers in the health, ageing, and disability workforces in New South Wales (NSW) who do not have university qualifications. The aim of the proposed project aims to discover the push and pull factors for the retention of the frontline Aboriginal workforce in the health, ageing, and disability sectors in NSW in relation to their role, employment, and community and design evidence-based strategies for retaining the Aboriginal frontline workforce in the health, ageing, and disability sectors in NSW. Methods: The proposed research will use a mixed methods approach, collecting both quantitative and qualitative data via surveys and interviews to capture and represent the voices and perspectives of Aboriginal people in a way that the participants chose. Results: Indigenous research methodologies are a growing field in Aboriginal health research in Australia. A key strength of this study is that it is led by Aboriginal scholars and Aboriginal controlled organizations that apply an Indigenous methodological framework throughout the research process. Conclusions: This study uses a mixed methods design. The survey and interview questions and model were developed in partnership with Aboriginal health, ageing, and disability service workers rather than relying only on research publications on the workforce, government policies, and human resources strategies. This design places a strong emphasis on generalizable findings together with an inductive approach that explores employers and workers’ lived experience of the Aboriginal health workforce in NSW. Excluding workers who have graduated from university places a strong focus on the workforce who have obtained either school or Technical and Further Education or registered training organizations qualifications. Data collection was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, and results will include the unique experiences of Aboriginal workers and employers delivering services in an extremely challenging organizational, community, and personal context

Social Workers in the new human service marketplace: Trends, challenges and responses

This paper examines employment trends in social welfare occupations and challenges to the industrial and cultural recognition of professional social work in the new human services market place. Following examination of the threats posed by market reform and the crisis in public confidence in some domains of human services work, I focus on three key concerns. First, through analysis of Census data from 1996 to 2001, I compare trends in the employment of social workers, welfare workers and community workers. Second, drawing on the work of Nancy Fraser (1997), I argue that the challenges facing social workers can be understood as problems of ‘recognition’. Using this framework, I examine the external contests to the valuing of professional social work and also the internal challenges, that is, threats from within the social work profession to the industrial and cultural recognition of social work. Finally, I will consider how social workers, particularly new graduates, can respond to the challenges facing them in the new human services marketplace. I propose that social workers should claim a position as practice leaders and I outline practical strategies for achieving this goal