From 16th century witch-trials, to Donald Trump’s anti-migrant campaigns, political players have often found scapegoating to be an expedient strategy for deflecting responsibility and winning votes. In Australia, we see this play out at almost every election. But just as defiant women weren’t responsible for 16th century famines, migrants and migration aren’t responsible for Australia’s big problems. To the contrary, scapegoating migrants often means we lose opportunities to push governments to pursue policies that could make a difference for everyone, including migrants.
Australians’ top concerns this election are for health services and hospitals, economic stability, housing affordability, and open and honest government. These issues affect every single person in Australia, and for migrant women this is no exception. For recent migrant women who face the largest pay-gap in Australia, lack of access to Medicare, Centrelink, emergency and long-term housing support, and child-care subsidies make getting by during a cost-of-living crisis even harder. Despite this, Australian media and politicians have a habit of blaming migrants for each of these issues, crowding out opportunities to explore the root causes of the problems facing our health, housing and economic systems. So, what solutions do we lose out on when we get distracted by migrant scapegoating?
When it comes to health and hospitals, long emergency department wait times, and workforce shortages have affected everyone. In Australia, migrant women make up a large part of the healthcare workforce, and according to the 2021 Census, there are over 90,000 migrant women on temporary visas who work in healthcare, the vast majority of whom have no access to Medicare, despite paying taxes. Supporting healthcare workers by recognising their overseas qualifications, valuing their multilingual skills, paying them adequately, and protecting them from harassment and abuse is key to improving wait times and reducing staff resignations. But this can’t be achieved if politicians ignore this workforce’s diversity and demonise large parts of it.
Most Australians want greater economic equality, which has been shown to lead to greater economic stability. Scapegoating migrants puts both goals at risk. While migration grows the economy by increasing demand for goods and services, creating jobs, this growth isn’t equally distributed. Migrants, particularly migrant and refugee women, know this better than most given they’re more likely to have a smaller piece of the economic pie. While migration grows the economy, and doesn’t impact the wages of Australian-born workers, demonising migrants puts our economy at risk by worsening inequality. If we want a stable economy, we need an equal one, which means pursuing policies that make sure big companies pay their fair share, and that everyone, including migrants, has access to adequate social security, affordable healthcare, paid-parental leave and effective and protected bargaining power at work.
We see this urgent need for fairer policy in housing as well. With women’s homelessness rising 10% from 2016 to 2022 (compared to men’s 2% increase), the housing crisis can’t be solved through simple scapegoating. Like income, migrants have a much smaller part of the housing pie than those born in Australia and are more likely to live in overcrowded homes, as are international students who are more likely to live in group households or in purpose-built dorm-style accommodation inappropriate for non-students. Despite this, migrants are still blamed for the crisis. But if we don’t take the bait, we can push governments to build more social housing and treat housing more like a right (rather than an investment) to tackle the root cause of this crisis.
With Australians still holding open and honest government as a top concern this election, it’s worth noting that blaming migrants is a dishonest tactic, often used by those in power to distract from inadequate policies and systemic problems. What is certain is that we deserve better, more accountable governments, who propose real solutions that could benefit us all.
This article was first published in edition #141 of The WRAP on February 2025.