Mining industry - Research Paper Example

As such, when looking at the relationship between these two countries, there will be no doubt to mention of the tension between the local laborer and the immigrant. Immigrant labor is the type of labor that occurs when individuals depart from their mother country to another country in search of better terms of labor and improved standard of living (Brakman, et al 2007). In other words, it means the movement of people from their homelands into a new place in search for employment on both temporary as well as a permanent basis (Debrah 2002).

For a long time, the perception was that when people move, it is because they are attempting to escape harsh conditions back home because the land that they are headed to is perceived to be at a higher level development wise than their homeland. In other words, it is the movement of labor from an underdeveloped economy to a developed one (Debrah 2002). Nowadays, this will not always hold water because there are cases of people who move from the developed countries into the developing world still in search of greener pastures (Tang 2000).

Coming back to the topic at hand, the relations between the Chinese and the Australians can be looked in terms of the terms of employment of the host country in comparison to the home country (Morrow 2012). Also of importance is the matter of the problems that arise from the movement. When looking at the working conditions at the mines, it is clear that these were not the best places to be. A lot of the work that was given to the Chinese was in the form of menial tasks such as ‘running’. This involved the taking of the empty cars to the white miners or even descending deep into the mines to dig for gold or coal (Walker 2008).

The fact that the Chinese were willing to earn less than the white miners is rather in dispute. It was the only choice they had (Walker 2008). A Victorian newspaper, at the time, suggested the setting aside of inferior diggings for the Chinese since