Immigration and Albanese’s labour party: a social democratic approach?

This paper examines how the first-term Albanese Labour government navigated temporary labour migration from 2022-2025. Drawing on party documents, ministerial statements and departmental sources, it traces the government's shift from a reformist phase that activated the social democratic dimensions of three competing impulses, neoliberalism, multiculturalism, and labourism, to one of political retrenchment in which pursuing rights-based reforms was limited. The paper argues this trajectory reflects a structural condition of social democratic migration politics in Australia: the social democratic elements of these impulses are not sufficiently strong to contest their neoliberal counterparts when migration becomes politically salient. The paper contributes to comparative debates on social democratic parties and migration by demonstrating how the dominance of market logics and the electoral salience of migration together entrench securitisation and undermine social democratic parties’ capacity to pursue durable rights-based reform.