Off the scale but out of sight: The rise and rise of temporary migration

They are Italians making cappuccinos at the front bar of cafes in Glebe and Carlton, and Indians washing dishes out the back. They are accounting lecturers from Britain running classes in Brisbane full of students from Beijing. They are American mining engineers and Taiwanese meatworkers, Filipino nurses and French au pairs. They are also medical specialists, climate scientists and the CEOs of ASX 200 businesses. They are the Indian IT contractors who come to city offices to fix computers, and Malaysian students who enter the same office late at night to push vacuum cleaners and polish desks. Some are even more invisible, their cut-rate work surfacing in supermarkets as mounds of cut-price cucumbers. These are Australia’s temporary migrants, and though they are not officially part of the nation, they are changing it.