After more than 10 years of established seasonal work schemes in Australia and New Zealand, this report focuses on seasonal labour mobility in the context of a policy assessment framework that addresses both wins and losses when considering a sustainable future for labour mobility in the Pacific.

Interrogating both the extent of labour shortages in the horticulture industry for pickers, packers and graders and the level of non-compliance with labour standards, this report examines horticulture labour supply to develop an evidence base for analysing the effectiveness of existing practices and to identify areas for potential reform.

Students are being faced with a false choice between the liberal arts and technical fields. Philosophy, English, and history majors are warned to prepare for un- or underemployment, while classmates in engineering and computer science are assumed to have six-figure salaries waiting after graduation.

This report argues that structural reforms are urgently required to address the drivers of exploitation. There is also a pressing need for remedial mechanisms that are accessible to individual migrant workers. Against a culture of impunity, predicated on employers’ assumptions that migrant workers will remain silent, these mechanisms are critical to detecting wage theft.

This booklet brings together Devpolicy Blog posts on Pacific labour mobility from 2017 to 2018.