The employment paradox of international accounting graduates in Australia

The employment paradox among international accounting graduates is characterised by an official shortage of accountancy positions alongside a surplus of qualified accountants, mainly international graduates from Australian higher education institutions. The paradox arises from a policy nexus between skilled migration and higher education created to meet skilled labour shortages through international graduates. Despite evidence that accountants are no longer in short supply, accountancy continues to be listed as a profession in need of labour for skilled migration purposes. Employing Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice as the theoretical framework, the thesis addresses the treatment of accountancy in immigration policy through the question: How does policy problematisation contribute to the employment paradox for international accounting graduates? A post-structuralist ‘policy as discourse’ approach is employed within Bacchi’s What’s the Problem Represented to be? methodology to interrogate the roles of various actors in sustaining the employment paradox. Policy related texts from 1997 to 2018 are analysed to indicate the creation of two profiles for international students and graduates. The ‘consumer of education export’ profile is unproblematic due to its commercial value as an international export industry. However, the profile of ‘domestically trained skilled migrants’ is problematised through the intruder metaphor, based on racial and language discourses reflecting the history of Australian immigration policies. Despite the failure of the first profile to transition into the second as originally intended, the policy nexus continues to be defended by institutions with financial and economic interests in its continuation. The practices of these actors discursively entrench problematisations for the graduates while at the same time silencing problems created by the actors themselves. Poor labour market outcomes are positioned as deficits in the graduates rather than in the nexus, higher educational institutions, or discriminatory labour market practices. To avoid subjectification, graduates seek refuge in secondary and ethnic labour markets. Using the treatment of accountancy in immigration policy, the thesis demonstrates how policy is used to further the interests of institutions at the expense of policy subjects.