Migrants and the Workers' Compensation System: The Basis of an Ideology

Abstract

Considerable mythology surrounds the issue of workers' compensation and much of it focuses on migrant workers from non-English speaking backgrounds. In the context of massive employer pressure to reduce the costs of workers' compensation (to employers), and recent legislative changes aimed at achieving this in most states, it is important to explore the nature of migrant workers' experiences of compensation and the social reasons affecting their compensation outcomes. This article discusses these issues in the course of presenting some of the findings of a year-long study of migrant workers in the NSW compensation system recently undertaken by the Centre for Multicultural Studies at the University of Wollongong. It concludes that the popular derogatory stereotype of the malingering migrant worker misrepresents reality. It operates powerfully as an ideology; that is, a set of ideas which draws on aspects of reality to advance sectional interests: in this case, those of employers and insurance companies.