Migration and Labour Law

Members of this cluster work collegially to produce outstanding, evidence-based and critical research at the forefront of migration and labour law. The cluster brings together researchers working at the intersection of diverse fields of law with shared concerns around the production and regulation of migrant and worker legal status, rights and conditions in Australia and elsewhere.

Cluster Strengths

This research cluster has particular strengths in: 

• The impact of technology including Artificial Intelligence on migrant worker and other worker rights, and migration processes
• Regulating to address workplace exploitation notably of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers, including the eradication of trafficking and modern slavery
• Critical approaches to law and policy affecting refugees and other forced migrants, and examinations of minoritized groups in migration processes.  
• The gendered impact of law on migrants and workers and the potential for improved gender-responsiveness of labour legislation with the goal of workplace equality
• The history and theory of international migration law and Australian refugee law and practice
• The regulation of immigration detention, and the intersections of criminal and migration law
• The regulation and training of the migration advice profession
•  Domestic refugee sponsorship and employment schemes
• The history and practice of the International Labour Organisation and UN High Commissioner for Refugees in regulating labour conditions and mobility
• Regulating digital labour platforms, supply chains and other multilateral business arrangements to protect and empower vulnerable workers
• The history and theory of labour law and its impact on worker experience and organisation
• Legal reproduction of class relations
• Industrial Democracy
• Environmental bargaining between workers and employers
• Enforcement and co-enforcement of labour law

Our Impact

Across both fields of migration and labour law, cluster members have made evidence-based law reform proposals and undertaken engagement activities through the media, with policy-makers, decision-makers and the legal profession to promote fair laws for migrants and greater accountability in workplace relations in Australia and elsewhere. UTS Law researchers are involved in numerous interdisciplinary collaborations with leading scholars based in other faculties and universities in Australia and overseas. Members of the Migration and Labour Law Cluster have obtained many government, NGO and industry grants to further impactful research.  They also undertake innovative engaged collaborations with legal organizations and teaching teams to ensure our research expertise makes valuable impacts on legal practice and professional development.  
 
The Migration and Labour Law Cluster runs seminars and activities relevant to cluster themes.

We welcome collaboration opportunities, higher degree research supervision requests and media enquiries.