Multiple frames of reference: Why international student workers in Australia tolerate underpayment
研究国际学生工容忍低薪的原因，通过调查1433名国际学生和访谈40人，提出“同伴参照框架”新概念，发现本国低薪参照并非主因。
This article advances research on why international students, who comprise a growing segment of the workforce in many countries, are underpaid. By revisiting Piore’s dual frames of reference theory, the article builds an important knowledge base around migrant workers’ tolerance of low pay. The research uses mixed methods incorporating a survey of 1433 international students, and interviews with 40 of them. Drawing on segmented labour market theory and examining workers’ ‘multiple frames of reference’, the article seeks to explain migrant workers’, in this case international students’, tolerance of extensive and persistent underpayment. While migrants’ reference to lower pay in their home country has long been accepted as explanation for their acceptance of low pay, it is not found to be a significant factor. The new concept of ‘peer frame of reference’ is developed to explain their tolerance of underpayment.