Immigration and Discrimination Law: A Story of the Collusion of Legal Categories against Temporary Migrants in Australia

Discrimination on the basis of immigration status is commonly encountered by temporary migrants in Australia. It can be understood as an internal border, taking its character from immigration law but implicating a broad array of government and private sector entities, restricting access and choices, and leading to social exclusion. As Australia is now home to large numbers of long-term temporary residents, their exclusion is problematic for those individuals and also for the broader society. The concept of legal categorisation allows us to understand why discrimination law is unable to address immigration status discrimination. On the one hand, there are straightforward textual issues that appear to explain it, however, viewing the issue from the position of the values and characters of each domain or category of law is helpful. This reveals that the values of discrimination law are fundamentally compromised in their encounter with immigration law, to the point where they actively cooperate with immigration law to enforce the social exclusion of temporary residents. This in turn reveals a feature of immigration law that must be accounted for if this issue is to be effectively addressed.