ABSTRACT
In 2011, an Australian federal court ruled that the owners of a popular Melbourne dumpling restaurant must pay $AU200,000 in unpaid wages and superannuation to Chinese immigrant chef Chang Chang. Sponsored by the restaurant to work in Australia under the 457 temporary skilled worker programme, 1 Chang had worked 13-hour days for an illegally low wage. Aware he was being exploited, he waited three years until he was able to secure permanent residency before taking legal action against his employer. In 2009, accounting graduate and Indian national Nitin Garg was fatally stabbed in a Melbourne park while walking to his job at a fast-food restaurant, in one of a chain of attacks on Indian student-workers in Melbourne and Sydney across 2009 and 2010. Th e stories of these two men, both noncitizen workers seeking out permanency, speak to a wider picture of how immigration in Australia is changing, and how forms of noncitizenship are central to these changes.
