This article explores the status of temporariness in international migration. The focus is on the impact of temporary status on migrants’ actions, behavior, and emotional responses to the daily circumstances in negotiating everyday life. Ambivalence is evaluated as an explanatory category that allows particular insight into strategies of resistance used by temporary migrants as they navigate a host society besides maintaining connections with home. Original data obtained from in-depth interviews with Indonesian migrant workers and students undertaking temporary migration projects in Australia is discussed. The case study explored in this article identifies some of the core problems temporary migrants face as encapsulated by a deficit of rights and protections that, at the same time, are expected by members of liberal states. Temporary status turns migrants into nomadic global laborers. The article argues that actions and responses that appear to be ambivalent are far from irrational, hasty, or disloyal. Rather, migrants’ decision-making in response to the uncertain and shifting economic and sociocultural environments that they enter often comprises subtle calibrations and switching actions, observable as ambivalence, in adjusting to the unanticipated demands of a new society.

中文翻译：

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临时移民在移民社会中的不安存在：对澳大利亚矛盾心理的反思

本文探讨了国际移民中临时性的状况。重点是临时身份对移民在谈判日常生活中对日常环境的行动、行为和情绪反应的影响。矛盾心理被评估为一种解释性类别，它允许特别深入地了解临时移民除了与家庭保持联系之外在东道国社会中使用的抵抗策略。讨论了对印度尼西亚移民工人和在澳大利亚进行临时移民项目的学生进行深入采访所获得的原始数据。本文探讨的案例研究确定了临时移民面临的一些核心问题，这些问题概括为自由国家成员所期望的权利和保护不足。临时身份将移民变成游牧的全球劳工。文章认为，看似矛盾的行动和反应绝非不理性、仓促或不忠诚。相反，移民在应对他们进入的不确定和不断变化的经济和社会文化环境时的决策通常包括微妙的校准和转换行动，可以观察到矛盾心理，以适应新社会的意外需求。