Fruit Picking and Farmwork as Racialised Stigma: The Children of Pacific Migrant Workers in Rural Australia

ABSTRACT

Pacific youth growing up in rural horticultural towns in Victoria, Australia, frequently experience the stigmatising labels of ‘fruit picker’ and ‘farmworker’. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in the Sunraysia region, we focus on schools as early sites of racialisation and racism, and compare the perspectives of students and teachers. While teachers often blame ‘culture’ for poor academic performance, students complain of teachers’ racism while also experiencing low confidence and poor self-esteem that hinder their academic progress. Underpinning these issues is the racial hierarchy in the towns, shaped by their particular histories of colonisation, migration and intercultural relationships. Current theories of rural multiculturalism tend to focus on everyday interactions and strategies to encourage social cohesion, with the inherent danger of neglecting the deeper structural issues. We argue that Pacific youth seeking to move beyond the casual and precarious farmwork undertaken by their migrant parents encounter structural barriers that begin in schools and profoundly shape their future opportunities.

KEYWORDS:

• Racism
• rural Australia
• second-generation
• youth
• schools
• Pacific Islanders

Acknowledgements

The ARC Linkage project had two partner organisations: Sunraysia Mallee Ethnic Communities Council (SMECC) and Mallee Sports Assembly (MSA) and the Partner Investigator from SMECC was its Executive Officer, Dean Wickham. We appreciate the contributions of all research participants, who have generously shared their experiences of living and working in regional Victoria. We also thank teachers who participated in workshops and a high school that gave us permission to run focus groups on site.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We use the term ‘Pacific’ throughout the article as a shorthand, while recognising the significant differences between these ethnic groups, in their cultural and migration histories. Migrants from Pacific nations and their children raised in Sunraysia tend to use the term ‘Pacific Islanders’ to identify as a group and as a form of solidarity, given the small numbers of their populations.

2 Sunraysia is not recognised in the Census of Population and Housing, but the Mildura (Northern Victoria) State Electoral Division, which is roughly the same region, had a population of 66,771 recorded in 2021, 76.8% born in Australia. The population of the town of Mildura was 34,565 and Robinvale 3,740. No accurate statistics are available for numbers of Pacific people but as an indication, 115 people identified as having Samoan ancestry in Mildura and 307 as having Tongan ancestry in Robinvale (Australian Bureau of Statistics, online).

3 The first project (2014-2019) was funded by La Trobe University and an ARC Linkage Project grant (LP150100385, 2015–2019), led by Helen Lee. The project’s main aim was to focus broadly on the socio-economic status and well-being of Pacific Islanders (Lee, Nishitani and Wickham 2019). Ethics approval was granted by La Trobe’s Human Ethics Committee (HEC15-107) and the Victorian Department of Education and Training. The second project (2020-2021) was led by Makiko Nishitani, funded by the Scanlon Foundation, and ethics approval was granted by La Trobe’s Human Ethics Committee (HEC 20168). It involved 25 semi-structured interviews with Pacific professionals, however only interview data from two participants (25 years old and 39 years old) from the second project were used in this article.

4 However, 44 Fijians aged 50 and over, who were mostly temporary residents, participated in this survey; without them the percentage under 18 is even higher (38.3 per cent).

5 The ‘poverty line’ was defined in Australia for 2015–2016 for a single person as an annual income of $22,516; 2 people $33,753; sole parent and 2 children $36,003; couple and 2 children $47,254 (Davidson et al. 2018).

6 For each of the other categories of work, such as factory, retail, professional, there were fewer than 8 per cent; an additional 9.6 per cent were doing ‘domestic duties’.

7 These were combined into one scheme, the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme (PALM), which came into effect in April 2022.

8 Mildura has a high rate of 17–24 year olds neither completing high school nor undertaking further education and training: 25.1 per cent compared to a Victorian average of 11.6 per cent (Mildura Rural City Council 2018: 14).

9 Groups of men drink kava in the evenings and on weekends, often until late at night, as one of their key social activities.

10 VCE (Victorian Certificate of Education) is a two-year certificate. Students who aim to apply for tertiary education are expected to take this course.

11 www.pacificislandernetwork.org.au

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by La Trobe University under grants from the Research Focus Area Transforming Human Societies (2014–2018 and 2018–2019), by the Australian Research Council (LP150100385, 2015–2019) and by the Scanlon Foundation (2020–2021).

Notes on contributors

Makiko Nishitani

Makiko Nishitani is an anthropologist and has worked with Pacific Islander migrants in Australia for over a decade. She connects with audiences beyond academia having participated in a public hearing of the Australian parliament and United Nations consultation on business and human rights.

Helen Lee

Helen Lee is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at La Trobe University. Since the 1980s her research has focused on the people of Tonga, both in their home islands in the South Pacific and in the diaspora, particularly in Australia. Currently she is lead investigator for an ARC-funded project ‘The future of the Pacific: youth leadership and civic engagement’ (2022-25).