Framing Migrant Women’s Labour Participation beyond Productivity Potential and Empowerment

Framing Migrant Women’s Labour Participation beyond Productivity Potential and Empowerment

Across Australian settlement policy, newly arrived migrant women’s employment is often framed through capitalist logics of productivity potential in terms of workforce participation or small‑business entrepreneurship. Drawing on preliminary analysis from our ARC Linkage project Place‑based employment and enterprise of young migrant women in Western Sydney (conducted in partnership with seven organisations based in the region), this presentation argues for a fundamental reframing: migrant women’s labour participation and survival are inseparable from wealthier host country’s implications in the global expansion of colonial, racial capitalist economies and thereby responsibilities in their dignified care and survival. 

The project generated rich qualitative data through 44 interviews and focus groups with newly arrived migrant women living across Liverpool, Cumberland, Canterbury‑Bankstown, Fairfield, Parramatta and Campbelltown. Participants held diverse migration statuses, with the largest groups on humanitarian/protection visas and partner/spousal visas. Interviews were conducted online, while focus groups were held across Navitas campuses and the Western Sydney Migrant Resource Centre. Across these encounters, women consistently described ‘starting from scratch’: learning English, navigating credential recognition, retraining through TAFE or university, and undertaking career switches to secure basic survival.

About the Speakers

Dr Sukhmani Khorana is a Scientia Associate Professor in the School of the Arts and Media at the University of New South Wales. She is an internationally recognised scholar of media, migration, and belonging. Sukhmani is a Co-Director of the UNSW Media Future Hub and leads an ARC Linkage project on employment and enterprise for young migrant women in Western Sydney.

Quah Ee Ling is a fire dragon feminist and an Associate Professor in Culture & Society at School of Arts, Western Sydney University (WSU). She is the sole author of three books Fire Dragon Feminism: Asian Migrant Women’s Tales of Migration, Coloniality and Racial Capitalism (Bloomsbury 2025), Transnational Divorce: Understanding Intimacies and Inequalities from Singapore (Routledge 2020) and Perspectives on Marital Dissolution: Divorce Biographies in Singapore (Springer 2015).