The survey infrastructure is funded by the Commonwealth Attorney General’s Department’s National Action Plan to Combat Modern Slavery Grants Program, as part of a national survey of temporary visa holders in Australia.

Recognising the importance of the survey for international students, key education sector peak bodies have committed resources to supporting their members to promote the survey, including:

• International Education Association of Australia (IEAA)

• Universities Australia

• Austrade

• English Australia

• ISANA

• ISEAA (International Student Education Agents Association)

• Australian Universities Procurement Network

• StudyNSW & Study Melbourne

Survey partners also include community organisations and service providers to international students in every state and territory. These include community legal centres, unions, migrant worker centres, Red Cross Australia, and the Office of the NSW Anti-Slavery Commissioner.

• The survey will run from 8 July to 31 August 2024.

• It will be conducted online on a phone or computer, taking 10-15 minutes to complete.

• Questions will be multiple choice, with the option to provide narrative responses at the end of the survey.

• The survey will be translated into multiple languages in addition to English, including Mandarin, Spanish, and Nepali.

• The survey will be confidential and anonymous.

• Prizes include 50 x $200 Mastercard vouchers.

• The survey will be disseminated directly to international students via social media, traditional media, and events. It will be disseminated indirectly through a wide range of community partners, education providers and other key stakeholders throughout the international education sector in Australia.

The survey will cover a range of problems that international students and other migrants encounter at work, ranging from non-compliance with workplace laws to modern slavery, and how international students respond to these. This includes:

• Underpayment of wages and entitlements.

• Illness and injury in the workplace (including unsafe conditions, access to medical care).

• Sexual harassment, employer coercion and modern slavery indicators.

• Problems in accommodation linked to the job or employer.

• Whether international students seek help, where they go, the outcome of help-seeking, and if they did not seek help, the barrier that prevented them from doing so.

• Knowledge of rights, common misconceptions

We will publish survey findings in public reports and other materials available on our website from the first half of 2025. We will also conduct public webinars and specific briefings for the international education sector, and for international students.

Education providers: where more than 150 students have responded, we will provide a confidential report on the survey findings related specifically to your students. No identifiable or raw data will be provided.

Our research generates real policy change. The following reforms were all in direct response to our survey data:

• On 1 July 2024, the federal government will introduce new visa protections to enable international students to report exploitation without risking their visa.

• In 2023, a new federal law enshrined basic work protections for all workers regardless of immigration status.

• In 2021, the federal government reversed its exclusion of international students from JobKeeper during COVID lockdowns (after our survey demonstrated a humanitarian crisis during the first lockdown).

• In 2019, a dedicated legal service for migrant workers in NSW is established in response to our research demonstrating lack of support for exploited international students.

There are no binding obligations. Institutions can participate in different ways, but we strongly encourage the actions set out under “How to help” to the right, especially sending an email to your international students.

We will provide participating organisations with a briefing on survey findings in the first half of 2025.

We encourage all education providers to engage with the survey findings and related collective sector-wide efforts to drive reforms, but there is no requirement or expectation of further action by any organisation that participates in the project.

The survey content and methodology have received Ethics approval from UNSW Sydney (ratified by UTS). A copy of the full data privacy protocol is available on request. Key elements include:

• The survey is confidential and anonymous.

• Participants will not be asked their name. At the end of the survey, participants will be invited to provide a phone number or email address if they are interested in participating in further research on topics covered by the survey but this is not required.

• Participants will exit the survey before entering the prize draw (structured as a separate single question survey). Participants will be asked to provide a phone number to notify them if they win, but this cannot be connected with their main survey responses.

• All data will be kept on secure servers and will only be accessible to members of the research team approved in the Ethics application.

• Where confidential findings are provided to individual organisations this will only include aggregated findings where it is not possible to identify any individual. No raw data will be shared.

• We will not publish any information that could identify any individual participant, education provider, employer or other person.

The survey is open to anyone aged over 18 who has worked in Australia on a temporary visa, including international students, graduate visa holders and secondary visa holders (spouses of students and graduates).

We will analyse how responses differ among different cohorts considering the intersection of variables including nationality, gender, education provider type and program of study, geographic location, and industry. The more survey responses we obtain, the more we can drill down into the differentiated experiences and support needs of different student cohorts.

* Our ethics approval does not cover participants under 18 years old.

Our previous surveys of thousands of migrant workers have become a reference point:

• Our 2016 survey focused on underpayment, other exploitation at work, and barriers to taking action (4,322 migrant workers).

• Our 2019 survey focused on exploitation at work and in housing, information and support needs (5,968 international students).

• Our 2020 survey focused on financial insecurity during COVID (6,105 temporary migrants).