Rochelle Ball, BA (Hons) (University of Newcastle), PhD (University of Sydney)
State Society and Governance in Melanesia

Email: rochelle.ball@anu.edu.au

Biographical Statement

Rochelle E. Ball is a geographer with long-term field experience in the Philippines and Hong Kong. She has written extensively on international migration issues. Her pioneering doctoral (Sydney University) and post-doctoral work (Cornell University) on the global labour migration of Filipino nurses was the first PhD on international contract labour migration (from the Philippines) from a globalization perspective. Her subsequent research has been primarily based in the Philippines and has examined the impact of globalised labour markets for labour exporting developing nations on: households; national labour markets; industry stakeholders; the political and economic coherence of the nation state; and bilateral and multilateral governance of international labour flows.

She has conducted a number of consultancies for Australian government departments focusing on a range of labour market issues such as gender and life long learning, international labour market skills assessments and the impacts on international migration on Australia. Her most recent book documented and examined the wide ranging experiences of child migrants to Australia, encompassing often traumatic departures from their homelands, culture shock and often new sets of traumas in adjusting to life in Australia. She has co-authored (with Stahl, Inglis and Gutman) a book on international migration and its implications for Australia.

Her university teaching for over fifteen years on focused on: a critique of neo-liberal international development approaches and management; food security issues; and the economic, political and social impacts of globalisation processes primarily in the Asia Pacific Region.

Research Interests

She is project leader of the International Labour Mobility in the Pacific Project. This project will evaluate the Labour Mobility Pilot Program from Pacific Island Countries to Australia beginning summer, 2008-2009.

She has strong research interests the impacts of international contract/temporary labour migration on labour supplying developing countries in Asia and the Pacific and receiving countries; national, bilateral and multilateral governance of international migration; security, development and migration; gender and development; the labour and human rights of migrants; the impact of diverse forms globalisation processes for development; food security; harnessing migrant remittances for sustainable and appropriate development.

Key Publications

• Worlds Turned Upside Down: Stories of Migrant Children in Contemporary Australia, Ginninderra Press, 2005.
• "Globalised labour markets and trade of nurses- the case of the Philippines: some implications for international regulatory governance" in J. Connell (ed) A Global Health System? The International Migration of Health Workers. Routledge, pp. 30-46, 2008.
• "Trading labour: socio-economic and political impacts and dynamics of labour export from the Philippines, 1973-2004: some implications for national and international governance" in A. Kaur and I. Metcalf (eds) Mobility, Labour Migration and Border Control in Asia, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 115-138, 2006.
• with Piper, N., "Trading labour-trading rights: the regional dynamics of rights recognition for migrant workers in the Asia-Pacific" in K. Hewison and K. Young (eds) Transnational Migration and Work in Asia, Routledge, pp. 213-234, 2006. (primary author).
• "Divergent development, racialised rights: globalised labour markets and the trade of nurses- the case of the Philippines". Women’s Studies International Forum, 27, pp. 119-133, 2004 (Referred).
• with Piper, N., "Globalisation of Asian labour migration: implications for the nation-state, citizenship and human rights" Political Geography, vol. 21, no. 4, pp. 1013-1034, 2002 (primary author, Refereed)

Career Highlights

Rochelle has worked as a Lecturer at universities in Hong Kong (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 1991-2)) and Australia (The University of Wollongong (1992-5) and the University of NSW @ ADFA (1996-2004), and has worked as a private consultant in Australia and in the People’s Republic of China(2006-7). She has been a Visiting Research Fellow in the South East Asia Program (Dept. of Development Sociology) at Cornell University (1989-90), RSPACs at ANU (1999-2000), and in the School of Physical, Mathematical and Environmental Sciences, UNSW @ ADFA (2004-06).