Yes, it makes perfect sense. I think I saw this linked in to Facebook by another site and that was the post about ‘creating more jobs’, but I couldn’t chase it up. It just grabbed my attention as lately refugees have been mostly discussed as a threat, crisis etc.

I think it’s really important to consider the way that visa regimes can entrench or exacerbate these inequalities. The report on the 7-Eleven issues highlighted the fact that workers on student visas were intimidated into staying quiet due to their visa restrictions (student visa holders can work a maximum of 20 hours per week).

Likewise, refugee visa applicants, especially those who arrive by boat, may not have any official right to work or receive government income support. This obviously creates extreme vulnerability and leaves people with little choice other than exploitative employment.

Thanks, Agi! Some of the participants in Roberman’s study tried self-employment, too; and it was another aspect of the irregularity of their employment. Generally, migrants are over-represented in self-employment because barriers to entry tend to be low, as I explained before with reference to Vietnamese nail-salons here on Language on the Move:

Barriers to employment are highest in the professions, where usually (part of) the qualifications and training process needs to be re-done and/or certifying and registration exams need to be undertaken in the local language. That’s why migrant lawyers are rare. Linguistic barriers to employment are lowest for self-employment in areas with little state regulation. That’s why migrant-owned corner stores are frequent.

While self-employment is much hyped by neoliberal politicians, for many people it is not a choice but forced on them because regular employment is shrinking. As Richard Seymour explained in The Guardian with reference to the UK:

The rise in self-employment is not a measure of entrepreneurial spirit, as touted by the government, but a sign of a lacklustre labour market. […] a great deal of what is classed as self-employment is fictitious. There are many workers who are taken on by firms as independent contractors and thus denied access to employment rights, sick pay and pensions, saving employers a bundle. These workers are in no real sense autonomous enterprises. They have little control over the work process or its aims and are, like the majority of workers, paid employees.

The figures in the Quartz article you refer to seem to confirm this point: the diagram reports that, after 9 years in Australia, 15% of the income of humanitarian entrants comes from “their own unincorporated businesses.” The author seems to think that this is a great figure but 15% of one’s income is not much. Surely, if these unincorporated businesses were reasonably successful, they would constitute the main source of the self-employed person’s income …