Navigating the dilemmas of mutual aid: International student organising in Sydney during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

In 2020, thousands of international students found themselves stranded in Sydney, Australia, with the suspension of international travel and closure of borders. While many lost their livelihoods due to lockdowns, the Australian government excluded international students and other temporary visa holders from all forms of income support and disaster relief—resulting in food and housing insecurity and social isolation. This article describes and analyses the forms of mutual aid and support that international students organised to address their situation. In providing an account of their efforts, we consider them as forms of care infrastructure and draw particular attention to the institutional relationships that were involved: interfaces with faith, community and labour organising; confrontations with state agencies and the higher education sector; and institutionalisation into a formalised and state-funded community organising initiative—the Oz International Student Hub. We examine the evolution of these relationships as responses to a series of strategic dilemmas, as students sought simultaneously to care for one another and to confront the forces that produced their precarity and isolation. And we draw out a series of lessons we can learn from their efforts about how mutual aid can avoid the pitfalls of charity and state welfare, while institutionalising more durable political spaces that do not have to be invented anew with each fresh crisis.