Labour Migration and Rejection from Jobs

So currently my life has involved a lot of rejection; that is job rejection. Going on various job interviews for internships and graduate jobs only to hear back a week later that it I did not get the job. I don’t have a lot of words to describe this feeling of rejection other than it sucks, it makes you question yourself, your skills, your abilities, your future, your previous decisions, pretty much everything. So how to take this rejection, well my dad uses the word resilience’s, definition; the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness, an individual's ability to properly adapt to stress and adversity.

But it would be really easy to blame someone else….

Like every good arts student I have over my university life looked at labour migration, I viewed it as an important part of my history; my grandparents like many others in this country were not born here and migrated from elsewhere. What I didn't really consider was that it would impact my future, or impact it in a negative way, I was going to travel, obviously, maybe even live in another country for a while but this was a positive of open borders, and a distant future. Not something that would have a practical impact on things in my life, like my ability to get a job.

The immigration policies of a country represent more than just how many lives the country can support, they are a reflection on how generations have understood and represented ethnicity and national identity. Expressed in the selection or exclusion of certain groups of migrants throughout history. National borders have acted as filter, separating out the unwanted and wanted flow of migrants. So how would I construct Australia’s migration policies today, in 2014 when I’m thinking about my future and my job prospects? I have always believed that we should have more open borders, that Australia has a duty to accept refugees, to help people searching and wanting a better life, those people were my grandparents 60 years ago. We are so lucky in this country, we should accept other people to come and experience this amazing country (not to go all nationalistic on everyone). I believed that those people who equated their ability to getting a job or losing a job to foreign workers were naïve, and downright wrong. But I am no longer just a arts student, I am also a economics student, I get to draw nifty graphs in international economics on how an influx of labour from a country whose workers’ wages are lower, in turn lowers the wages in their destination country. Nifty equations where it’s quite reasonable for countries that have an abundance of cheap labor to manufacture goods and those countries that don’t shouldn't. It’s an easy equation it means those industries should not exist in a country such as Australia, or at least not to the extent that they do, this has meant a lot of people lose their jobs, true, just look at the car industry. It is the fun world of outsourcing; fun fact 60% of jobs in the USA (I’m not sure about Australia) are non-tradable that means they need to be provided locally, which means that 40% of jobs are tradable, they can be provided at long distances, due to the ease communications; the internet. Some of these jobs everyone knows, call centers are prime examples, but they are plenty more emerging in the future.

This prompts a little personal reflection; is the University degree I studied for trade-able? Are my skills better suited to be provided in another country? We now live in a world of economic transformation spear headed by the buzz word, globalisation, with “border free economic spaces”, driving people’s desire to migrate, while at the same time there is an increasing trend to make people illegal through a process of re-bordering. Governments have essentially transformed migration into a complex web of legality regulating migration at an all-time high, including Australia. Would I feel more secure if Australia restricted its migration? To know that the jobs I am applying for will not be overseas in 5 years time available to people who are far cheaper than me? It is ridiculously tempting to fall into this line of thought, this suspicion of the foreigner, the other person, in the other country stealing my job. However despite my lack of any internship or graduate job currently I still do not believe it is an acceptable line of thought. Resilience in my case is not just about applying to another job despite the rejection; it’s more about not falling into the temptation of blaming others. I could go into a lot of detail on Australia’s immigration policy from 1901 to present but I've been informed to not give the readers one of my arts essays. So in short I believe that we should accept people from other countries, it gives us a richer society. We have the ability to support more people and we should.  That in the end those others are just people, there should not be an us and them mentality as they deserve the same opportunities as I do, even if those opportunities are in Australia.  Also despite the gloom and doom of economics in the end all the equations and graphs conclude that trade between two countries, even in labour, is always good, that sure some people lose, but on the whole everyone wins. 

-MRouge-

Reading

Today I want to write not about a topical issue or opinion, but something that I am nevertheless passionate about. A lot of the time, I think I can take reading for granted. It’s something that you can do whenever you want, wherever you want, without needing anyone else to participate or validate you. To pick up a book, and to get lost in it is completely your own choice, and I think it is such a unique way of exploring your own emotions and reactions to situations that may not present themselves in real life. To be able to become connected to characters that someone else has made up, in a way that is different to how anyone else is connected to them, is something really unique. To interpret a story, to imagine a place, to fall in love with a character happens to every person who reads in a different way. You aren’t told how to love them, or how to picture something. It’s true, reading isn’t easy – it’s not something that you can do to necessarily relax your brain after a long, busy day, because reading requires emotion from you, and thought. Reading isn’t like watching a TV show, where you are told how everyone looks, so you can just sit back and turn your mind off. When you read, you have to imagine.

For me, reading is an escape. Using a book to forget any problems I have in real life is a habit I got used to at a young age, and it hasn’t ceased. There is something comforting about being able to lose yourself in another world, the problems, passion and pain of another person. I think it always helps to reflect on this in order to get to know yourself a little bit better, because the characters that affect you the most are the ones that are most telling of your personality, I think. Not in that they are similar to you, but your reactions to their actions are what define them, and you. So I’d like to quickly list a few characters from some of my favourite books that have had a lasting impression on me:

Eowyn (The Lord of the Rings) – Okay, the first one has to be a kick ass girl in a tale dominated by men. The Lord of the Rings has always been my favourite, but I actually remember when I read about Eowyn’s deeds in killing the Witch King, and I just remember my heart soaring. I don’t think I realised that what I was missing from the Lord of the Rings so desperately was a character I could actually relate to – I was an impressionable young teenager when I became obsessed with the story, but needed someone to look up to. And while I can’t claim to have killed any Nazgul, I think Eowyn certainly taught me that girls can be cool and important in their own right, which is a lesson that I like to think has stuck with me until now.

Max Remy (Max Remy, Superspy) – I have always been a huge and dorky fan of all spy-related novels, but I think Max Remy is my favourite heroine. She is a no fuss, smart and funny girl who goes around solving mysteries with her best friend Linden – what on earth is not to like? She was someone I so desperately wanted to be, and someone who made me laugh when I was having a bad day.

Heathcliff (Wuthering Heights) – This has got to be my favourite classic, but for a long time I had no idea why, because I really didn’t like the main character, Cathy. But the more I thought about it, the more I realised that Heathcliff is who drew me in. He’s an awful person, really, and someone so grumpy and disillusioned he can’t have been easy to be around. But to me, he’s a perfectly flawed character. He isn’t a lovely person – in fact, he quite hates most people himself. But his one redeeming quality was that he loved Cathy with his whole entire heart for all his life, and with that in mind, his actions were justified in my eyes. I felt his pain and sorrow so deeply, but the reason why is still a bit of a mystery to me.

So there are three of my favourites, but obviously the list could go on. My point is, I think it’s important to reflect and understand why certain characters had an impression on you!

Why I Don't Like Nice People

A while back there was an open letter published to Tumblr regarding the toxicity the site has become. It a community which once prided itself on being progressive and open, the site had fallen far from its ideals. When asked which was worst, Tumblr or the opening hostile 4Chan, this particular user argued that 4Chan was more welcoming.

Today, society advocates transparency, to be welcoming and opening. It also advocates that people should be nice, trustworthy and hard working members of society. In our generation we strive to be successful, to be viewed as progressive all the while keeping our friends close. 

Friends, come in all shapes and sizes. For me, (and I emphasis for me) friends are not necessarily the most trustworthy and nicest people I know. Its not to say I don't trust my friends, but its not the pre requisite. Friends should be interesting, engaging, challenging and loyal. They don't need to agree, don't need to agreeable and certainly don't need to be nice to me.

I find myself suspicious of the nicest people, The really open people, the ones who portrays that they are nice and wants to be seen as nice people. Of course everyone wants to be seen as nice and be accepted but apparently, I'm more likely to be friends with people who aren't.

Don't look at me like that, I just find them hard to understand, that there are people who are hiding nothing.

People who claims that they themselves are horrible people, understand their own flaws and knows why they're not 'poster grade' people. They are more likely to understand the flaws in others and understand that people aren't perfect. At least I know they're not trying to hide all their flaws. They're comfortable enough to say, I'm not perfect and you're going to have to deal with it.

In many ways, I don't think 'nice people' are so accepting of such flaws.

Tumblr, despite everything it set itself to be, devolved into everything but. The community of Tumblr is not unlike society itself. We expect so much from the everyday people in the street. Similar to what tumblr expects from its members, society expects everyone to be nice, full of hope, inspiring and all those other great things we learn about in primary and high school. 4Chan at the very least, is exactly what it claims itself to be. Whilst its not the most positive community on the internet, it doesn't claim to be. It doesn't set up unfair expectations on its members to follow. This self serving community, has no illusions of perfection. They don't set out to be perfect and are in doing so, can be considered more accepting.

A lot of us don't have a lot of time for anyone but ourselves. When we're not studying, we're at work. When we're not at work, we're browsing Facebook and the internet, looking for whats wrong with our friends and society. And if its not a birthday, a group dinner or something like that, we're probably not going to go out. It is so easy, to find flaws, when we've been taught to find them from day one.

Its easy to expect perfection. Harder still to accept it when its not there.

~TastyJacks~

Recognise

Ok, so I really struggled this week to come up with a topic, so if this post seems a little convoluted, you can probably blame it on my exam-brain. In any case, it is incredibly tempting to focus entirely on topical, news-item discussions – especially given the current speed at which news items have been surfacing, then fading to irrelevance, before again re-surfacing etc. As such, I think it is often important to take a look more broadly at issues which tend to simmer under the surface and rarely gain much media traction, despite their objective importance. This is why today I’ve decided to concentrate primarily on the fight for constitutional recognition of Australia’s indigenous peoples.

Needless to say, Australia has had a long and turbulent history with regards to the recognition of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in all respects. Prime examples include the failure to recognise indigenous voting rights up until the 1967 referendum and the failure to recognise native title rights until 1992 through the Mabo case. These policies of recognition finally made way to right the vast majority of the ship in the direction of reconciliation and broader recognition of indigenous Australia.  

In more recent times, you could single out our parliament’s failure to officially acknowledge and issue an apology for the Stolen Generations until as late as 2008. In contrast to the previous examples, this recognition was purely a no-strings-attached apology, designed as a purely symbolic admission of guilt for the mistakes of past government policy. I must further emphasise the point here that this recognition did not encompass the positive advancements in policy attained by earlier policies, but merely sought to apologise for the negative policy choices of past governments.

As this issue rose to contention in the mid-2000s, and prior to the apology being made by the newly elected government in 2008, then PM John Howard set out his reasons for not issuing an apology as:

1. Not wanting current generations to take responsibility of the actions of previous generations
2. Debate over the consistency of children removal and policy application
3. The apology is all symbolism and no substance, with it having little practical implications for the concerning gap between indigenous Australia and the rest of Australia.

Former PM John Howard citing his reasons for opposing The Apology

Say what you will about Howard and his policies, he definitely displayed courage of conviction in his positioning and reasoning. In spite of this, I would definitely take issue with the first two reasons he gives, particularly the first reason. I believe the “principle” of not showing accountability for past actions by previous generations is a backwards policy designed purely to shelve blame and ignore social responsibilities. Such a policy forgets the fact that the government is not just a collection of individuals governing, but a projection of Australia’s populous. Absolving the Australian Government of responsibility for the Stolen Generations would be akin to absolving the German Government of responsibility for the Holocaust, or the American Government for the Atomic Bombings etc. Maintaining sufficient accountability is a core tenet of a right and just system of government.

Despite this, I believe Howard’s third point holds a degree of validity. In secondary college, our school motto was Facta non Verba, which translates to Deeds not Words. Howard was contending that, without proper supportive action aimed at resolving major issues within indigenous communities, the issuance of an apology would be simply lip service and would hold little validity. Howard was committed in this respect, instituting “The Intervention” into the Northern Territory’s indigenous communities; a policy which has both been widely praised and widely condemned. In any case, as with any major shift in policy position, it illustrates the importance of supporting a position with strong and meaningful action, rather than just token gestures and piecemeal offerings.

Bringing this back to the constitutional recognition at hand, there have been many stalls in the process of pushing for a referendum to decide on indigenous recognition within the constitution. Interestingly (and somewhat surprisingly), the first push towards this recognition came from Howard himself in 1999, who suggested the implementation of a preamble at the start of the constitution recognising Australia’s first peoples. However, progress has stalled recently, with some likening the movement to being just a small “post-it note on the fridge” of the wider parliamentary agenda, indicating the lack of real concern or opinion either way over this issue.

Indeed, with the Abbott government recently reneging on their promise to take a referendum on recognition to the next election, it still remains to be seen if Australians will collectively ever care enough to push for this referendum, given the largely symbolic nature of it. While it is my opinion that it is a necessary step forward for reconciliation and community re-engagement with Australia’s first peoples, many still fail to recognise the importance of recognition, and much like in previous decades, deny accountability for the actions of others. This has to change in order for true progress to be made in Australian society.

For more information about the campaign for constitutional recognition, see www.recognise.org.au

#J.Nic#