Intensified Manufactured Non‐Belonging: Working Holiday Makers in Australia During the COVID‐19 Pandemic

ABSTRACT

Nations manufacture non‐belonging of temporary migrants through policy frameworks that produce exclusion. This precarity maximises the economic benefit of temporary migrant labour by minimising their political, social and legal rights. In this paper, we examine how non‐belonging targeting Working Holiday Makers (WHMs) is manufactured in Australia through visa design, labour regulation, and Australia's white possessive logic. Drawing on national survey data and in‐depth interviews, we demonstrate how governance arrangements position WHMs outside the national community and make them vulnerable to discrimination and exploitation. We indicate how the COVID‐19 pandemic intensified these precarious dynamics of manufactured non‐belonging via policy exclusions, media reporting, and government messaging that framed WHMs as labour units and threats to Australian jobs and health. This was exacerbated for racially marginalised WHMs. The study underscores the need to address structural inequalities and develop socially inclusive policy responses for temporary migrants.