Problematising ‘visa determinism’: Contested and multifaceted migratory identities among student visa holders in Australia

Abstract

Sociology of migration scholarship has recently criticised the unreflective use of categorisation in migration research and practice. This article extends this critique by reflecting on ‘visa determinism’ – a heuristic that uses the visa status as a proxy for inferring people's identities, intentions and experiences. Drawing on the case of Brazilians who hold student visas in Australia, we explore and problematise visa determinism in two main ways. First, we demonstrate how migrants engage in othering to contest and repurpose the visa-determined ‘international student’ category. Second, we illustrate how intentions and migratory identities are multifaceted, and how contradictions between visa status and de facto experiences are a product of restrictive migration policies. Ultimately, this article aims to raise awareness of visa determinism as a heuristic that permeates different domains of migration. It argues that its uncontested use can legitimise the policing of migrants’ intentions and the production of migrant illegality.

Introduction

The boundaries that separate ‘international students’ from other migrant categories in Australia are often blurred. Students from overseas constitute an important part of Australia's workforce (Campbell et al., 2016; Nyland et al., 2009), and the possibilities of working while studying and potentially migrating permanently are among the main reasons why international students choose the country (Institute of Social Science Research (ISSR), 2010; Robertson, 2015; Tan & Hugo, 2017). Australia's international education sector, exalted as one of the country's major exports (Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), 2024), is interconnected with its migration system, with policies valuing qualifications and work experience obtained in Australia when granting certain permanent ‘skilled visas’. Within this education–migration nexus (Robertson, 2013; Robertson & Runganaikaloo, 2014), education functions not merely as a stand-alone sector but as a key contributor to Australia's immigration intake, often serving as a pathway to permanent residency (Baas, 2006; Campbell et al., 2016; Robertson, 2015).

However, despite this intrinsic connection between education and migration, international students have at different times been vilified and targeted for prioritising work while in the country. In a recent example, the Migration Strategy released by the Australian government in December 2023 introduced new actions to discourage ‘non-genuine students, whose primary intention is to work rather than study, from accessing Australia's international education system’ (Department of Home Affairs (DHA), 2023, p. 65). The position raised in the document, as well as in policies predating it, contradicts other policies and practices that incentivise work by international students in the country. Notably, the document was released less than one year after international students had their maximum hours of work uncapped to fill pandemic-related labour shortages in Australia. ¹

The Migration Strategy has generated several debates that continue to the date this article is being written, with the prioritisation of work by international students often described as a way of misusing and exploiting Australia's migration and education systems (Lang & Bennet, 2024). By deploying the ‘non-genuine student’ migrant category, the Migration Strategy reinforces and formalises the ‘production of illegality’ (De Genova, 2002, 2004), expanding the criteria for attributing the regularity of migrants to include the subjective notion of ‘primary intention’. Although the concept of the genuine student (and related terms such as ‘genuine temporary entrant’) predates the Migration Strategy, its prominent use in the document is revealing. The strategy assumes that the migratory identities ² of non-citizens in Australia conform (or should conform) to their visa status. It implies that student visa holders should self-identify and ‘behave’ as international students, and any deviation from this is seen as a form of exploiting Australia's visa system. This assumption relates to what this article conceptualises as ‘visa determinism’, a heuristic that uses visa status as a proxy for inferring people's identities, intentions and lived experiences.

This article explores and problematises the notion of visa determinism as a heuristic, contributing to the growing literature on critical migrant categorisation. Drawing on data collected through two separate research projects on the experiences of Brazilian student visa holders in Australia, we focus our problematisation on two main aspects. First, we explore how migrants contest visa determinism and the category of ‘international student’ imposed by their visa. Second, we explore the multifaceted intentions and migratory identities of Brazilian student visa holders. Ultimately, this article aims to raise awareness of visa determinism as a heuristic that permeates different domains of migration – policy, analysis, discourse and scholarship. It argues that its uncontested use can legitimise the policing of migrants’ intentions and the production of migrant illegality.

Migrant categorisation and visa determinism

Traditional understandings of migration have relied on dichotomous categories such as permanent versus temporary, internal versus international, regular versus irregular, and forced versus voluntary (Collyer & de Haas, 2012; Robertson, 2019). Migrants are also classified based on attributes such as age, gender, race and country of origin. Such categorisations are not neutral in meaning but are shaped by socio-political agendas and historical legacies that influence how different groups of people are perceived and treated (Schinkel, 2018). For instance, racial and ethnic distinctions frequently underpin migration regimes, where certain nationalities or ethnic groups are systematically privileged or marginalised based on deeply ingrained stereotypes and racial hierarchies (Anderson, 2013). Similarly, gender and age intersect with migration policies, often dictating who is considered more likely to be ‘integrated’ into labour markets (Fleury, 2016).

Scholarly entrenchment in legal descriptors and dichotomous categories or in narrow demographic characteristics limits the scope of analysis and understanding in migration studies. The categorisation of migrants also tends to neglect the fluid and often precarious nature of migrant identities, which are shaped by a multitude of factors, including socioeconomic conditions, geopolitical contexts and personal histories (Mountz, 2020). Furthermore, this tendency within migration studies to categorise and classify migrants based on a preconceived and oversimplified focus on legal distinctions overshadows the complex realities of migration and the lived experiences of individuals, who often navigate multiple, overlapping and shifting identities depending on their circumstances and the socio-political contexts they encounter (Crawley & Skleparis, 2018; Robertson, 2019). These non-reflexively typologies are deeply entrenched in nation-states and ethnicity-centred epistemologies, which tend to frame migrants through a lens that prioritises the interests and perspectives of the receiving states over those of the migrants themselves (Dahinden et al., 2020).

In recent years, particularly over the past decade, migration literature has increasingly explored and problematised the use of categories to classify migrants in scholarship and practice (e.g. Crawley & Skleparis, 2018; De Coninck, 2020; Sajjad, 2018; Triandafyllidou, 2022). Ultimately, these debates call for an awareness that migratory statuses and the politically and socially determined hierarchies associated with them are actively produced by states and migration policies. Collyer and de Haas (2012) argue that the rejection of categorisation in migration research is part of the postmodern paradigmatic shift in social science, which saw Weberian ideal types and clear certainties fade, giving space to a focus on liminality, hybridity and blurred categories. In the Australian context, for instance, Robertson (2019) has introduced the term ‘status-making’ to describe the process through which migrant typologies and labels are produced and maintained within various societal institutions. Robertson problematises diverse ‘types’ often employed in migration research and practice, such as ‘investor migrants’, ‘student migrants’ and ‘temporary workers’. She argues that these classifications, although seemingly descriptive, are imbued with implicit assumptions and power dynamics that shape the way migrants are understood and treated. The concept of ‘status-making’ highlights how these categories are not neutral descriptors but are actively constructed through policy decisions, media representations and academic practices, often reflecting the interests and biases of the dominant groups rather than the lived realities of the migrants themselves (Robertson, 2019).

Despite these critiques, migrant categorisation still permeates much of migration discussions. One of the main forms of migrant categorisation used unreflectively (and largely uncontested) is related to visa status. Migrants are often grouped and classified based on the visa they hold at a certain point, with an implicit assumption that de jure status represents de facto identities and experiences. For instance, non-citizens who hold temporary visas are referred to as ‘temporary migrants’ – even though many are de facto permanent migrants (e.g. Mares, 2016; Stevens, 2019; Triandafyllidou, 2022) – and those who hold skilled visas are generally referred to as ‘skilled migrants’ – even though the definition of ‘skilled’ is subjective and ambiguous (Boucher, 2020; Esposto, 2008). Similarly, holders of student visas, the focus of this article, are generally referred to as ‘international students’, even though they may be de facto migrant workers (e.g. Campbell et al., 2016; Maury, 2017). These visa-based typologies, largely taken for granted, are charged with ‘visa deterministic’ assumptions that reduce non-citizens of a country to the visa they hold at a specific point in time.

We understand ‘visa determinism’ as a heuristic. Heuristics, in their broad sense, refer to rules of thumb and shortcuts for decision-making and analysis (Hjeij & Vilks, 2023). As proposed by Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman, a heuristic is ‘a simple procedure that helps find adequate, though often imperfect, answers to difficult questions’ (Kahneman, 2011, p. 98). It is about substituting and assessing a target attribute through another heuristic attribute (Kahneman & Frederick, 2002). Visa determinism functions as a heuristic that uses the visa status (the heuristic attribute) as a proxy for inferring people's identities, intentions and experiences (target attributes). It reduces and essentialises non-citizens of a country to presuppositions related to the visa they hold at a specific point in time and assumes that de jure migratory status represents de facto migratory experiences and identities.

Visa determinism is embedded in different domains of migration, including discourse, analysis, policymaking and, to some extent, scholarship. For instance, when visa status is used as a main category of analysis to infer intentions and movement patterns, when migrants are named based on the visa they hold (e.g. skilled, temporary, seasonal, workers, students), or when inconsistencies between visa status and de facto experiences are produced as illegal, as exemplified in the introduction to this article. Although heuristics often produce adequate answers to difficult questions, they may also produce biases (Kahneman, 2011), and the ‘exposition of heuristic assumptions is an important task for sociology’ (Riley et al., 2021, p. 315). In this article, we aim to raise awareness of visa determinism as a heuristic that permeates different domains of migration, particularly on the pervasive effects that its uncontested use can have in the production of migrant illegality.

Research context and methods

Brazilians in Australia

To explore and problematise visa determinism, this article draws on narratives of Brazilian student visa holders in Australia. On the one hand, the contemporary immigration landscape of Australia provides a context of emerging migration complexity (Castles, 2010) and super-diversity (Vertovec, 2007) that suits critical discussions around migrant categorisation (Robertson, 2019). On the other hand, Brazilians are a relatively recent and understudied migrant community in the country, whose exponential increase over the past two decades has caught the attention of scholars (e.g. Casado et al., 2022; Rocha, 2019). Since the 2000s, Australia has become a major destination for young Brazilian adults and one of the fastest-growing Brazilian diasporic communities (Azeredo, 2023). The Australian Census reported almost 50,000 Brazil-born individuals residing in the country in 2021 (Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), 2021). This is double the size of this diasporic community reported in the 2016 census (27,000) and 3 times the size of what it was in the 2011 census (14,000 Brazilians). Although the census figures on Brazilian migrants in Australia are likely to be grossly underestimated (Rocha, 2008), their growth over time illustrates the substantial and consistent increase of this community in the past decades.

The predominance of ‘students’ among Brazilian migrants in Australia has been emphasised by several studies (Rocha, 2008, 2013, 2019; Wulfhorst, 2014). In 2023, there were nearly 25,000 Brazilian student visa holders in Australia – which represents more students than from neighbouring countries such as Indonesia (21,000), Malaysia (16,000) and South Korea (13,000) (Department of Education, 2023). Also, many Brazilians who currently hold other visas (such as skilled visas, for example) have held student visas in the past. Brazilians who come to study in Australia often want to improve their English language skills and enrol in English Language Intensive Courses for Overseas Students (ELICOS) schools. About 40% are transient migrants who come to study for a few weeks or months and return to Brazil after studying English language courses (Australian Government Department of Education (AGDE), 2022). However, a large fraction of this cohort extends their stay in Australia, usually by enrolling in vocational education and training (VET) courses, which are tertiary programmes that provide technical and practical training. The VET sector was highlighted in the Migration Strategy due to its lower fees and shorter durations, which, according to the document, ‘create financial incentives for non-genuine study’ (DHA, 2023, p. 61).

Although the Brazilian community in Australia is diverse, it is worth noting that it is not representative of Brazilian society. Contemporary migration from Brazil to Australia occurs in a context of increased Latin American economic complexity and growth, and the profile and networks that enable these movements are connected to sectors such as international education, mining and technology (Mason & Azeredo, 2023). Brazilians in Australia generally come from urban areas, are highly educated and skilled, and belong to middle and upper-middle classes in their country of origin (Azeredo, 2023; Rocha, 2008; Wulfhorst, 2014). At the same time, Brazilians experience downward social mobility and struggle to maintain their social position in Australia (Rocha, 2019). The oscillations of privilege and precarity are consistent with the typification of ‘middling migrants’ that has been attributed to contemporary Latin American migrants in Australia (Dewey & Fozdar, 2023; Roberts, 2021; Robertson & Roberts, 2022). As such, many Brazilian migrants transition (or attempt to transition) from student visas to other visas that provide a more permanent and secure status in the country (Azeredo, 2024a; Casado & Azeredo, 2023; Rocha, 2019). The quotes provided in this article speak largely to these experiences of ambiguities and loss of identity.

Data and analysis

This paper builds on data collected as part of the authors’ independent research projects on Brazilian migration to the Asia-Pacific. Although these projects were conducted separately by the authors in different cities, they both fundamentally aimed to explore the lived experience of Brazilian migrants and thus have enough potential for comparability (Kosmützky et al., 2010). Both authors had, as part of their semi-structured questionnaires, an equivalent set of questions directed at investigating migration trajectories, intentions and experiences, as well as individuals' feelings of belongingness and identities.

Neither of the projects had the student visa as a precondition for participation. Still, this is the predominant visa through which Brazilians move to Australia, and many participants held student visas at some point. Considering both projects together, 50 semi-structured interviews were conducted with Brazilian migrants who held international student visas in Australia, either at the time of the interview or before. These interviews were conducted face-to-face and online between 2018 and 2023, with Brazilians who resided in five Australian cities – Brisbane, Gold Coast, Perth, Sunshine Coast and Sydney – as well as returnees. Interviewees were relatively young at the time of their arrival (in their twenties or early thirties), and most of them already had tertiary qualifications upon arrival, which is consistent with the general Australian population born in Brazil (Azeredo, 2023).

As first-generation migrants from Brazil, our interest in studying the experiences of Brazilians in Australia emerged from our insider positionality, which allowed us to foster spontaneous conversation and capture cultural nuances. Interviewees were initially recruited through our existing networks and followed by snowball sampling, and interviews were conducted both face-to-face and online. Conducting the interviews in Portuguese enabled participants to express themselves with greater ease. They were translated into English to the best of our competence, with careful attention to preserving original meaning and tone. We are aware of the potential power imbalances that may arise from our dual roles as Brazilian researchers and long-term migrants. Our relatively established position in Australia may have influenced the dynamics of the interviews, and we approached these interactions aware of our privilege (Dwyer & Buckle, 2009). Additionally, we recognise the possibility of interpretation bias in our analysis due to our insider position. To mitigate this, we have opted to report extensive quotations from participants, combined with contextual explanations to guide the reader. This approach ensures that the participants’ voices remain central to the narrative and that their lived experiences are represented as faithfully as possible.

Both research projects followed a similar approach to data analysis that involved both hand-coding and the use of software (NVivo and Microsoft Excel). The findings and discussions presented in this article emerge from this data analysis. It is worth noting that none of the projects had the international student identity as a main theme to guide the interviews. Nevertheless, this theme emerged consistently as an empirically grounded finding in both projects. In this article, we use quotes and excerpts from selected interviews that are, in our understanding, representative of other Brazilians’ experiences. Pseudonyms are used, and potentially identifying factors were omitted in this article. Both studies have been approved by Human Ethics committees and carried out in accordance with ethics approval received from Griffith University (Ref. 2020/835) and the University of Western Australia (RA/4/20/4419).

Problematising visa determinism through migrants’ narratives

In this section, we use the narratives collected in our research with student visa holders to focus our critique of visa determinism on two central points. First, we show how individuals contest and repurpose the visa-determined ‘international student’ designation attributed to them, often through narratives of othering that distance themselves from others who hold the same visa but are perceived as having different intentions and social roles. Second, we explore the complexity and multifaceted intentions of student visa holders, therefore problematising discourses that construe the ‘genuineness’ of migrants based on the conformity of their aims with their visa status.

Othering and the contestation of an international student identity

Individuals on a student visa are allowed to work a capped number of hours in Australia, and the blurred lines between students and workers in Australia have been explored in several studies (e.g. Baas, 2006; Campbell et al., 2016; Nyland et al., 2009; Robertson, 2015). Our research suggests that a binary ‘worker’ and ‘student’ classification is often deployed by student visa holders as a way to categorise themselves and others. This informal and visa-independent categorisation between students and workers is a constitutive factor of ‘intra-community differentiation’ (Azeredo, 2024b) among Brazilians in Australia, and also a way through which migrants contest visa determinism. This dichotomous categorisation is illustrated in the quote below provided by Paulo, a Brazilian man who arrived on the Gold Coast on a student visa in the early 2010s and has since obtained Australian citizenship. Talking about different profiles of Brazilians who travel to Australia on student visas, he explains:

There are Brazilians who come to stay, who come to work. [And] there are Brazilians who come to study. Those who come to work are not integrated with those who come to study and come to party. Those who come to try to stay, want to do something here, run away from those who only want to study and party.

Such binary categorisation evoked by Paulo was shared by others throughout our interviews. Despite holding a student visa, individuals frequently point out that not all share the same goals in relation to their studies, with some prioritising work and others adopting a more hedonistic approach, focusing on leisure and enjoyment. In fact, some student visa holders used the term ‘os estudantes’ (the students) as a way to refer not to themselves but to other Brazilians. In these narratives, the ‘international students’ are those who are in Australia supported by their families in Brazil, often for a temporary experience. They prioritise having fun, meeting people and the lifestyle of a gap year studying overseas. Those who travelled to Australia on Brazilian government scholarships as part of the Science Without Borders programme, mostly between 2011 and 2015, were often also part of this group, since they were committed to returning to their country of origin and were still completing their undergraduate studies (see Archanjo, 2017). On the other hand, the ‘workers’ prioritise professional experience, economic capital acquisition and visa progression, despite also being on a student visa. They generally attend classes and maintain satisfactory academic progress in compliance with their visa requirements, but they are in the country to work, to eventually obtain a more secure visa status in Australia, save money or return to Brazil with international work experience in their resumes. This is often supported by a ‘hard-working’ discourse, as illustrated by Alex, another Brazilian man who lived on the Gold Coast and later returned to Brazil:

We were a hard-working crowd, and there were a lot of Brazilians who also liked to take advantage, to be a larrikin and all that … I knew the guys, but I didn’t hang out with them, you know, because not everyone had the same vibe as me, you know. The [other] crowd was more ‘party animals’, like, more about having fun. I was calmer, I worked and surfed.

This hard-working identity emerged prominently in our research and constituted a way through which migrants affirm their identity as workers, contesting the ‘international student’ label attributed to them by their visa. The hard-working identity and the binary student/worker represent ways through which the visa-based ‘international student’ category is contested and resisted. A ‘chosen identity’ is thus forged by individuals as a form of opposition to the condition of marginalisation imposed by dominant structures (Castells, 2010). These narratives of social identity affirmation highlight how individuals view their contributions to society, portraying themselves as more than just representatives of their visa status. In contesting and resisting the narrow ‘international student’ label imposed by their visa status, policies and stakeholders, individuals seek to regain control, negotiate their social role and exercise agency within restrictive migration regimes.

This informal, visa-independent, classification between students and workers is not static. Identities may change for the same person, even when they have not changed visa status. This may be because migrants’ intentions change in response to context or personal circumstances (di Belgiojoso et al., 2024) or because identities are socially constructed, fluid and multiple (Brubaker & Cooper, 2000). In their narratives, some participants recounted that they were ‘students’ when they arrived, but as soon as they decided to extend their stay in Australia beyond the initial study plan, they became ‘workers’. This is the case for Daphne, a woman who has travelled to Australia twice on an international student visa. For the first time, Daphne identified as a student. For her second entry into Australia, Daphne described a different intention and experience, despite holding the same visa:

I think that, like everyone else, I came to learn English, I came with no money, and I came with a student visa. First, I came in 97. I only stayed as a student for two months, and then I said ‘oh, two months just isn’t enough’, so I went back to Brazil to finish college, to finish my master's degree. I came for the second time again with a student visa, but wanting to stay, so I had already aroused my interest in Australia, when I came for the second time the decision was decisive.

As these examples show, migrants often contest the visa-determined labels, such as ‘international student’, by engaging in othering practices that allow them to reclaim aspects of their identity obscured by these reductive classifications. However, rather than a complete rejection of categorisation, this contestation occurs through a re-categorising action, where visa deterministic categories are used to classify others. This othering helps migrants distinguish themselves from ‘other’ international students, particularly in contexts of social stratification and downward mobility, where distinctions based on qualifications, skills or socio-economic status are emphasised. On the one hand, it shows the limitations of using the visa as a proxy for inferring migrants’ identities. On the other hand, it also demonstrates how migrants naturalise and repurpose visa-determined categories as a form of intra-community differentiation factor (Azeredo, 2024b). This behaviour reflects broader tensions between the legal policy categories that define visa status and the lived experiences of migrants, highlighting the need for more nuanced approaches in migration studies that account for the fluidity and complexity of migrant identities beyond rigid, state-imposed classifications.

Multifaceted migratory identities and intentions

Even though the binary categorisation of students and workers is used as an informal intra-community differentiating factor, the migratory identities and intentions of student visa holders are often blurred and multifaceted. Research has shown that middling migrants move for a combination of factors (Harris et al., 2020), and our work with Brazilians points in the same direction. The case of Amanda, a Brazilian woman who resides in Perth, exemplifies the many nuances of being an international student in Australia. She had a Bachelor of Commerce degree and identified as an entrepreneur in the research. She had imported equipment from Brazil and ran a small baking business from the industrial kitchen she built at her home, supplying the Brazilian community in Perth with traditional cakes and truffles. At the time of the interview, Amanda and her partner were on a student visa, and looking to apply for another student visa in the country:

I am a cleaner and a babysitter, my husband is an Uber driver and works in a car wash. So, we are coming from the ground up, to develop ourselves little by little. Whatever I have to do, I do it … We are now going through a visa renewal process, and my husband is enrolling in IT [information technology] because we really want to stay here, and we are looking for ways to get a permanent visa.

Amanda's narrative illustrates the multifaceted identities of migrants on student visas. Amanda is a worker and an entrepreneur. However, she is also a student, who wants to learn new skills and ‘develop’ herself in Australia. Her study aspirations are not independent of a work and permanent migration goal. Amanda's partner would enrol in a vocational course that could improve their migratory status and open doors to a skilled permanent visa in the future. Intentions and identities among migrants are inherently complex, shaped by overlapping personal aspirations, socio-economic factors and the broader legal and cultural contexts they navigate.

Another aspect that contributes to these blurred experiences is that, due to restrictive work visa policies, international education is often a way to remain in a regular situation in Australia while trying to obtain a secure status that reflects people's professional qualifications, familial responsibilities or personal aspirations. An example of these complexities is Victoria, a Brazilian woman who worked as a dentist and was married to a Brazilian man who worked as an engineer. They wanted to leave Brazil and chose Australia given the skill shortages in the country and Victoria's partner experience in mining, a major industry in both countries. Despite their ‘highly skilled’ profile, they arrived in Australia on a student visa, advised by their migration agent:

Last Friday marked three years that we have been here. We came with a student visa. My husband came to do his master's degree, and then we applied through the Skill List, and in June this year, we got the permanent residency … In fact, when we were deciding on where to go, we thought about Australia and New Zealand because they were accepting immigrants, countries that were actually encouraging the arrival of immigrants and we looked at how we could come, and what would be the best way. They [migration agents] told us that the best way would be to come as students.

Victoria's situation exemplified a common reality. Even for ‘highly skilled’ migrants who have in-demand occupations in Australia, the process of obtaining a skilled visa is long, uncertain, competitive and expensive. A student visa is a way to enter and remain in Australia while going through this process. Also, entering on a student visa is a way to work in the country, connect with potential sponsoring employers, develop language skills and obtain experience and qualifications that may be used in a points-based skilled visa application. This alternative is often seen by migrants as suboptimal, but compliant – student visas incur many costs and restrictions, but they are a way to remain in the country on a regular status in accordance with migration policies. Moreover, holding a student visa intersected with their other existing identities, challenging Victoria, who already saw herself as being a mother and a dentist, to reconcile these roles with the new designation as a ‘student’. Victoria recounts this experience of questioning her identity at a time when she was trying to settle in the country and integrate their daughters into the local community through school and sports: ‘When we left Brazil and came to Australia, we were two skilled people with professions. Here I have always been a stay-at-home mum, this is what I name as my occupation in any document I need to fill out.’

Health practitioners are among the most sought-after occupations in Australia and are central to debates about the role of skilled migration in addressing workforce shortages. In Australia, the recognition of medical and dental skills acquired overseas involves a rigorous assessment process to ensure practitioners meet national standards of practice. These processes are overseen by the Australian Medical Council (AMC) and the Medical Board of Australia for medical qualifications, and the Australian Dental Council (ADC) and the Dental Board of Australia for dental qualifications. However, scholars have debated the issues of skill wastage and atrophy among skilled migrants in Australia, as well as whether regulatory bodies in the country have the capacity to facilitate skill recognition at a pace that meets society and workforce demands (e.g. Cameron et al., 2019; Hawthorne, 2015; Tan & Cebulla, 2023).

Thus, the use of the student visa as an alternative to a work visa is often a product of restrictive and complex skilled migration policies, and even migrants who seamlessly fit the ‘desired’ young and highly skilled profile may resort to student visas to remain in the country regularly while navigating these policies. This is the case of Monica, who was also a dentist in Brazil and migrated to Sydney with her partner, a Brazilian medical doctor. They both also have professions considered in-demand in Australia and fit the profile of an ‘ideal’ migrant constructed by Australia's migration policies (a young couple in their early thirties, highly skilled, with work experience and higher education degrees related to in-demand occupations). Yet the migration process was not straightforward for them. They both arrived in Australia on a Working Holiday Maker (WHM) visa and tried to have their skills and occupations recognised by the AMC and the ADC:

Initially, the only visa available to us for entry into Australia and to start our journey was the Working Holiday visa, which is granted for one year. Knowing that the AMC and ADC process typically takes longer than a year, our only way to complete this skill assessment was to renew our visas as students. This way, one of us could study and work while the other focused full-time on passing the exams. So, while the student visa wasn’t our first choice, it was the only means to achieve our primary goal.

While on WHM and student visas, they worked in other occupations and prepared for the competitive and expensive process of skills assessment. At the time of the interview, they finally had their occupations recognised and were on a temporary skilled visa, planning how to obtain a permanent visa. Monica reflects on her identity during the period she remained on a student visa:

We never felt like international students at that time. We found ourselves compelled to choose a course that would buy us time to navigate through this strict examination process. Consequently, we selected a course that would provide us with useful knowledge for the future. Once my partner obtained limited medical registration, we transitioned to a temporary visa with full working rights, and he began working in an emergency department during the COVID-19 outbreak.

As illustrated by Monica, even for those with strong prospects of skilled migration, the student visa may be needed to fill a gap and ‘buy time’ while working on meeting the migration requirements for skilled migration. However, although they ‘never felt like international students’ and the student visa was an undesired situation they felt ‘compelled to choose’, they still enrolled in courses that would provide ‘useful knowledge for the future’. Although the course studied – in the field of social media marketing – was not obviously aligned with her career as a dentist, she saw in it an important area of learning that could be useful in the future. Monica's example illustrates how the alternative use of the student visa to buy time in the skilled migration process is a product of restrictive and inefficient policies, and also how work and study goals are not mutually exclusive, even for migrants whose preferences were not to be on a student visa.

The multifaceted identities of migrants challenge the limitations of visa determinism, as the narrow lens of visa status fails to capture the complexity of individuals’ roles and aspirations. In the case of people on student visas in Australia, intentions and identities are often blurred, dynamic and multifaceted, with qualification, development, work and long-term settlement interwoven and not mutually exclusive. The narratives also show how the use of the student visa by de facto migrant workers is a product of policies that restrict access to secure status and work visas. It is an undesired alternative to remain in the country regularly, given the costs, length and uncertainties of skilled migration. In this sense, the blurring of boundaries between students and migrant workers arises from the inadequacies of the migration system itself; it is a product of policies, rather than a way to circumvent them.

Visa determinism as a heuristic is widely present. However, it can have pervasive effects when restrictive migration policies use it to produce illegality, criminalising non-conformities between visa status and identities, such as in the use of the non-genuine student category mentioned in the introduction to this article. The stories presented reveal that migration categories – such as student, worker or skilled migrant – are not distinct but overlapping, showing how rigid visa policies struggle to accommodate the fluidity of migrant identities and intentions. Furthermore, restrictive migration policies based on migrants’ ‘primary intentions’ create a gap between the legal recognition of migrants and the practical reality of their lives, where staying in the country legally often requires taking alternative routes (such as student visas) due to barriers in securing skilled visas.

Discussion and conclusions

This article draws on narratives of Brazilian student visa holders in Australia to problematise visa determinism. Firstly, it explores the binary classification of ‘worker’ and ‘student’ often used by student visa holders to categorise themselves and others, highlighting the limitations of visa determinism in defining migrant identities. These identities are not static and can shift even when a person's visa status remains unchanged, demonstrating how migrants exert agency in contesting and repurposing visa-imposed categories such as ‘international student’. Secondly, the multifaceted identities of migrants further problematise visa determinism. Identities and intentions are fluid and encompass work, education and long-term settlement goals that cannot be neatly separated. Also, the narratives show how the use of the student visa by ‘migrant workers’ is a response to restrictive policies that create barriers to working visas, making it a necessary (but undesirable) alternative for staying in the country. Together, these discussions demonstrate the limitations of the ‘visa’ as a proxy for inferring migrants’ identities, intentions and experiences.

Ultimately, this article aims to raise awareness of visa determinism as a heuristic that permeates different domains of migration – policy, analysis, discourse and scholarship. Visa determinism uses the visa status as a proxy for inferring people's identities, intentions and experiences. Visa determinism involves the reduction of migrant identities, intentions and experiences to rigid categories defined by the visa they hold at a specific point in time. This reduction can ignore the complex realities of migrants’ lives, leading to oversimplified and misleading understandings of their lived experiences and motivations. As a result, migrants are often essentialised, with their diverse backgrounds and experiences being homogenised into a single narrative that aligns with dominant policy agendas.

The critique presented in this paper is rooted in existing migration literature that challenges traditional, dichotomous categorisations of migrants and underscores the fluidity and complexity of migratory identities (Collyer & de Haas, 2012; Robertson, 2019). Findings from this study align with critiques of the ‘status-making’ processes that prioritise state-centric perspectives over migrant agency, often reinforcing systemic inequalities and racialised hierarchies (Dahinden et al., 2020; Schinkel, 2018). By foregrounding the voices of Brazilian student visa holders in Australia, this study not only problematises the reductionist nature of visa-based heuristics but also contributes to the growing body of scholarship advocating for a more nuanced understanding of migrant identities.

Still, although visa determinism as a heuristic is widely present in migration discourse and analysis, its uncontested use can have far-reaching implications when migration policies construe non-conformities between visa status and identities as system exploitation. Australia's Migration Strategy discussed in the introduction of this article, for instance, targets migrants on student visas, assessing their ‘genuineness’ not by their compliance with legal visa requirements (such as enrolment, attendance and academic progress) but by their presumed intentions and identities. This approach legitimises the policing of migrants’ intentions, imposing distinctions between ‘genuine’ and ‘non-genuine’ migrants that overlook the complexities of their lived experiences and produce illegality (De Genova, 2002, 2004).

Migration systems that channel individuals into rigid visa categories, such as the international student visa, create liminal grey zones where migrants must juggle conflicting roles as students, workers and aspiring residents. Paradoxically, these systems not only fail to accommodate the multifaceted realities of individuals’ lives but also generate the very ‘illegalities’ and exploitative behaviours they seek to prevent. Rather than addressing these policy-driven incongruities, public discourse and government strategies often portray such behaviours as evidence of system abuse. Migration policies, we argue, should explicitly acknowledge the dual role of international students as contributors to the education sector and the broader economy, encouraging reforms that treat international students as integral to the country's society and facilitating pathways to more secure visas that reflect migrants’ de facto experiences.