Organising across borders: mobilising temporary migrant labour in Australian food production

This article builds on the growing literature on migrant worker mobilisation by analysing how the temporary migrant workforce, employed in food production, interacts with two Australian trade unions alongside ethno-specific social media groups, offshore unions and community/religious organisations. The contribution of this article is twofold. Firstly, we demonstrate divergence in union strategies, distinguishing between (i) a ‘traditional self-reliant’ strategy, where unions recruit temporary migrant workforces by using established methods and their own resources and (ii) network collectivism, where unions also engage with temporary migrant workforces obliquely through external social media platforms and alliances. Our second contribution is to examine how the components of network collectivism interact as an integrated strategy for temporary migrant worker mobilisation.