Academic literature on the topic 'Low-wage migrant workers'
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Journal articles on the topic "Low-wage migrant workers"
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Stasiulis, Daiva. "Elimi(Nation): Canada’s “Post-Settler” Embrace of Disposable Migrant Labour." Studies in Social Justice 2020, no. 14 (March 26, 2020): 22–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.26522/ssj.v2020i14.2251.
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This article utilizes the lens of disposability to explore recent conditions of low-wage temporary migrant labour, whose numbers and economic sectors have expanded in the 21stcentury. A central argument is that disposability is a discursive and material relation of power that creates and reproduces invidious distinctions between the value of “legitimate” Canadian settler-citizens (and candidates for citizenship) and the lack of worth of undesirable migrant populations working in Canada, often for protracted periods of time. The analytical lens of migrant disposability draws upon theorizing within Marxian, critical modernity studies, and decolonizing settler colonial frameworks. This article explores the technologies of disposability that lay waste to low wage workers in sites such as immigration law and provincial/territorial employment legislation, the workplace, transport, living conditions, access to health care and the practice of medical repatriation of injured and ill migrant workers. The mounting evidence that disposability is immanent within low-wage migrant labour schemes in Canada has implications for migrant social justice. The failure to protect migrant workers from a vast array of harms reflects the historical foundations of Canada’s contemporary migrant worker schemes in an “inherited background field [of settler colonialism] within which market, racist, patriarchal and state relations converge” (Coulthard, 2014, p. 14). Incremental liberal reform has made little headway insofar as the administration and in some cases reversal of more progressive reforms such as guaranteed pathways to citizenship prioritize employers’ labour interests and the lives and health of primarily white, middle class Canadian citizens at the expense of a shunned and racialized but growing population of migrants from the global South. Transformational change and social justice for migrant workers can only occur by reversing the disposability and hyper-commodification intrinsic to low-wage migrant programs and granting full permanent legal status to migrant workers.
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Bryson, Alex, and Michael White. "Migrants and Low-Paid Employment in British Workplaces." Work, Employment and Society 33, no. 5 (March 18, 2019): 759–76. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0950017019832509.
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Using nationally representative workplace data for Britain, we identify where migrants work and examine the partial correlation between workplace wages and whether migrants are employed at a workplace. Three-in-ten workplaces with five or more employees employ migrant workers, with the probability rising substantially with workplace size. We find the bottom quartile of the log earnings distribution is 4–5% lower in workplaces employing migrants, ceteris paribus. However, the effect is confined to workplaces set up before the introduction of the National Minimum Wage (NMW) in the late 1990s, consistent with the proposition that minimum wage regulation limits employers’ propensity to pay low wages in the presence of migrant workers.
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Reber, Lisa. "“It’s better I’m dead”: oppression and suicidal ideation." International Journal of Migration, Health and Social Care 17, no. 3 (July 13, 2021): 303–14. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/ijmhsc-05-2020-0049.
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Purpose Anecdotal accounts of suicide among temporary low-wage migrant workers in the UAE are numerous, but unofficial and qualitative accounts remain unexplored. This study aims to examine how the socio-environmental context can lead some low-wage migrants, irrespective of their nationality or culture, to contemplate suicide for the first time after arriving in the host country. Design/methodology/approach The findings draw from ten months of qualitative fieldwork (2015–2016) and in-depth interviews conducted with 44 temporary migrant workers from sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, earning in the lowest wage bracket in Dubai. The study used a non-probabilistic, purposive sampling approach to select participants. Three criteria drove eligibility: participants had to reside in the UAE, be non-national and earn Dh1500 (US$408) or less a month. Otherwise, diversity was sought in regard to nationality, occupation and employer. Findings Eight (18%) of the 44 study participants interviewed admitted to engaging in suicidal thoughts for the first time after arriving in the UAE. The findings suggest that for low-wage migrants working in certain socio-environmental contexts, the religious, gendered or other cultural or group characteristics or patterns that may be predictors of suicide in migrants’ country of origin may become secondary or possibly even irrelevant when one is forced to survive under conditions that by most objective standards would be deemed not only oppressive but extremely exploitative and abusive. Originality/value This study contributes to understandings of how the emotional and psychological well-being of temporary foreign low-wage migrant workers can be impacted by the socio-environmental context of the host country. It is a first step in understanding the intimate thoughts of low-wage migrant workers on the topic of suicidality, furthering our understanding of suicidal ideation and the factors that can contribute to it.
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Dutta, Mohan Jyoti. "Singapore’s Extreme Neoliberalism and the COVID Outbreak: Culturally Centering Voices of Low-Wage Migrant Workers." American Behavioral Scientist 65, no. 10 (March 24, 2021): 1302–22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/00027642211000409.
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I draw on the key tenets of the culture-centered approach to co-construct the everyday negotiations of COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) among low-wage male Bangladeshi migrant workers in Singapore. The culture-centered approach foregrounds voices infrastructures at the margins as the basis for theorizing health. Based on 87 hours of participant observations of digital spaces and 47 in-depth interviews, I attend to the exploitative conditions of migrant work that constitute the COVID-19 outbreak in the dormitories housing low-wage migrant workers. These exploitative conditions are intertwined with authoritarian techniques of repression deployed by the state that criminalize worker collectivization and erase worker voices. The principle of academic–worker–activist solidarity offers a register for alternative imaginaries of health that intervene directly in Singapore’s extreme neoliberalism.
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McCollum, David, and Elina Apsite-Berina. "Recruitment through migrant social networks from Latvia to the United Kingdom: Motivations, processes and developments." Migration Letters 12, no. 1 (January 1, 2015): 50–66. http://dx.doi.org/10.33182/ml.v12i1.256.
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A burgeoning body of literature exists in relation to the role of social networks in connecting migrant workers with employment opportunities, particularly in lower wage jobs. This evidence points to social networks being an attractive recruitment channel from the perspective of both migrants seeking employment and employers seeking employees. This analysis presents a wide breadth of original material, which examines recruitment through social networks from the perspective of both migrants and employers. This includes data drawn from an extensive mixed methods approach involving a novel online survey of Latvian migrants in the UK and face-to-face interviews with British low-wage employers. This study seeks to offer important and timely contributions to debates about the relationship between migrant social networks and low-wage employment and the implications of these recruitment mechanisms.
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Parreñas, Rhacel Salazar, Rachel Silvey, Maria Cecilia Hwang, and Carolyn Areum Choi. "Serial Labor Migration: Precarity and Itinerancy among Filipino and Indonesian Domestic Workers." International Migration Review 53, no. 4 (October 22, 2018): 1230–58. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0197918318804769.
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This article examines the mobility patterns of migrant domestic workers in the United Arab Emirates. It identifies and explains the emergence of serial labor migration, which we define as the multi-country, itinerant labor migration patterns of temporary low-skilled migrant workers. It argues that policy contexts shaping temporary labor migration, as they impose precarious and prohibitive conditions of settlement in both countries of origin and destination, produce the itinerancy of low-skilled migrant workers. We offer a holistic analysis of the migration process of temporary labor migrants, shifting away from a singular focus on the process of emigration, integration, or return and toward an examination of each stage as a co-constitutive step in the migration cycle. Our analytic approach enables us to illustrate the state of precarity and itinerancy that follows low-wage migrant workers across the various stages of the migration cycle and produces serial migration patterns among migrant domestic workers from the Philippines and Indonesia.
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Wijayanti, Febry, and Irina Turgel. "Migration Flow and Social Protection Policy: Case Study Indonesia – Malaysia." Journal of Indonesian Applied Economics 9, no. 1 (February 28, 2021): 41–48. http://dx.doi.org/10.21776/ub.jiae.2021.009.01.5.
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Nowadays, the rest of the world concentrates on increasing global economies through the development of technology and productivity growth. This intent creates uneven economic opportunities, inequality, and social disparity between developed, developing, and undeveloped countries. On the other hand, the discrepancy between them contributes to increasing the migration flow, particularly in ASEAN. Moreover, the population movement between Indonesia-Malaysia majority is a low-skilled migrant and brings several problems for both countries. Thus, the scheme of social protection for a migrant becomes a crucial matter to implement. Hence, this paper aims to acknowledge the migration flow and assess Indonesia and Malaysia's social protection schemes. The result shows that distance is an essential variable of Indonesia's worker migrant than Malaysia's wage rate. Hence, the discourse for stopping worker migrants, particularly domestic workers, is not a great solution. Notably, the government should create a proper MoU with Malaysia to protect worker migrants, particularly domestic workers.
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Fouskas, Theodoros. "Repercussions of precarious employment on migrants’ perceptions of healthcare in Greece." International Journal of Human Rights in Healthcare 11, no. 4 (September 10, 2018): 298–311. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/ijhrh-01-2018-0010.
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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the cases of Bangladeshi, Filipina, Nigerian, Palestinian and Pakistani migrant workers and how the frame of their work and employment in precarious, low-status/low-wage jobs affects their perceptions and practices regarding health and access to healthcare services. Design/methodology/approach Using qualitative research methodology, the analysis via in-depth interviews focuses on male Bangladeshi, Nigerian, Pakistani and Palestinian unskilled manual and textile laborers as well as street vendors, and female Filipina live-in domestic workers. Findings Migrants are entrapped in a context of isolative and exploitative working conditions, i.e., in unskilled labor, textile work, street-vending, personal services, care and domestic work, which lead them to adopt a self-perception in which healthcare and social protection are not a priority. Social implications Throughout the paper it has become clear that these precarious low-status/low-wage jobs have an important underside effect on migrants’ lives, intensifying labor and health instability and exposing migrants to employment-generating activities that do not guarantee health safety. In Greek society, the impact of migration on public health is characterized by many as a “time bomb ready to explode,” especially in urban centers. Meanwhile, the economy and particularly the informal sector of the labor market is benefiting from migrant workers. More research is needed as this mode of exploitative labor and precarious employment needs to be adequately addressed to mitigate barriers in the access of labor and healthcare rights. Originality/value Via its contribution to the sociology of migration with particular emphasis on labor healthcare, the paper provides evidence that due to their concentration in precarious, low-status/low-wage jobs migrant workers have very limited access to healthcare services. The removal of inequalities and discrimination against migrant workers in accessing healthcare services and medical care is a challenge for South European Union countries and particularly for Greece. However, in spite of this, there is no uniform policy in the management of migrants with respect to their access to health services. The paper will aid debates between policy makers and academics working on migration and inequalities due to the division of labor and health disparities, will contribute to the understanding of the perils attached to precarious, low-status/low-wage jobs and in addressing health inequalities effectively.
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Hastie, Bethany. "The Inequality of Low-Wage Migrant Labour: Reflections onPN v FRandOPT v Presteve Foods." Canadian Journal of Law and Society / Revue Canadienne Droit et Société 33, no. 2 (August 2018): 243–59. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/cls.2018.10.
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AbstractThis article explores the inequality inhering to low-wage migrant labour and critically evaluates the current capacity of human rights law to account for and address this inequality. This article uses two recent human rights tribunal decisions as case studies through which to conduct this examination:PN v FR, 2015 BCHRT 60, andOPT v Presteve Foods Ltd, 2015 HRTO 675. While these cases establish the positive role of human rights law in accounting for the wider context in which inequality impacts on migrant labour, this role is also inherently limited by the purpose, scope, and function of the Tribunals. This article will identify and discuss issues illustrated in the cases that are reflective of deeper systemic and structural inequalities attending low-wage migrant labour, including: the underlying reasons motivating low-wage labour migration; the legal regulations governing migrant workers’ status and employment conditions; and, the racialization of migrant workers.
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Dutta, Mohan J. "Neoliberal Governmentality and Low-Wage Migrant Labour in India and Singapore." Journal of Creative Communications 16, no. 2 (May 17, 2021): 139–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/09732586211002927.
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Drawing on a digital ethnography and in-depth interviews conducted with low-wage migrant workers in hyper-precarious working conditions amidst ongoing neoliberal transformations in India and Singapore, this manuscript offers a comparative framework for examining the limits of pandemic communication. Interrogating the ideology of behaviourism that forms the dominant approach, the narratives point to the organizing role of structures as sites of labour exploitation. The exploitative labour conditions constitute the backdrop amidst which the migrant workers negotiate their health and well-being.
Dissertations / Theses on the topic "Low-wage migrant workers"
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Torre, Andreea Raluca. "Migrant lives : a comparative study of work, family and belonging among low-wage Romanian migrant workers in Rome and London." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2013. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/693/.
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Framed within the context of growing economic changes generated by globalisation in Europe and of the transition towards an increasingly service-based economy and therefore labour market restructuring, the present study investigates the intersecting lived experiences of work, family and belonging of intra-European migrant workers and their families in Rome and London. In particular the comparative examination focuses on the dynamics of mobility and work which Romanian women and men are embedded in and enact within the transnational geo-political space of the enlarged EU, as well as on the mechanisms and processes influencing their transnational mobilities. The analysis, based on a longitudinal multi-sited fieldwork conducted in two European locations – Rome and London - develops within three key institutional sites of migration: labour market, family and “community”/belonging. Within each of these, a specific process of migration is then explored: access to and participation in the labour market, transnational family formation and activities, formation and meanings of belonging/“community” in the two cities. The overall aim is to compare and provide an in-depth account of the various dimensions of Romanian migrants’ experiences in the context of different national and supranational policies, labour market realities, and socio-cultural institutions. Furthermore, the in-depth exploration, which combines narrative interviews and participant observation, provides empirically grounded insights into the existence of variables such as nationality, gender, class, historical experiences and long term individual or collective/family goals, which, together with social and immigration policies, labour market demands, work permit systems, and new geo-political openings of the European Union, are involved in and effectively influence migratory and settlement decisions and practices. As such, the study provides a valuable contribution to the empirical and theoretical advancement of studies on transnationalism in the current evolving space of the EU.
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Hsu, Priscilla. "Re-evaluating the American Dream for Low-Wage Chinese Workers in Los Angeles." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2013. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/673.
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The research in this thesis will look at the lives of a very specific group of Chinese immigrant workers in the restaurant industry, particularly those in the metropolitan city of Los Angeles. While unskilled Chinese workers are popular in the Chinese restaurant business because of the lack of skills required, they are quite mobile between the manufacturing and construction sectors as well. Working conditions are less than ideal for these immigrants, who find that life in America may not be what they expected prior to arrival. Though there are many organizations that seek to improve the lives of immigrants already residing in the United States, better efforts towards coordination could be put forth to ensure the availability and knowledge of these resources. Though Asian immigrants and their children have a reputation as a high-achieving model minority, there still remains a class of people who struggle with the same issues of relocation and assimilation as other immigrants. This research hopes to analyze the patterns of immigration for workers like these, to evaluate whether it is still feasible to achieve the American dream, and, if necessary, re-think U.S. immigration policy by looking to our Northern neighbors Canada and providing some policy recommendations.
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"The Emotional Well-Being of Low-Wage Migrant Workers in Dubai." Doctoral diss., 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/2286/R.I.49158.
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abstract: This dissertation research examines the impact of migration on the emotional well-being of temporary, low-wage workers who migrate from the Global South to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Unlike previous research in the UAE, this study’s sample reflects a far broader diversity of nationalities and occupations, and focuses on those earning in the lowest wage bracket. Their experiences revealed the systemic attributes of precarity and the violent structures that perpetuate them.
My research addresses several substantive debates. I found that rather than emigrating for rational reasons—as neoclassical theory of migration posits—the migrants in my study tended to rationalize their reasons for emigrating through processes of cognitive dissonance. Further, where previous scholarship has tended to conflate issues of national, ethnic, and racial discrimination, I disentangle the processes that motivate discriminatory behavior by showing how seemingly innocuous references to “nationality” can be driven by a desire to hide racial prejudices, while at the same time, conflating all as “racism” can reflect a simplistic analysis of the contributing factors. I show how past historical structures of colonialism and slavery are manifest in current forms of structural violence and how this violence is differentially experienced on the basis of nationality, perceived racial differences, and/or ethnicity. Additionally, my research expands theories related to the spatial dimension of discrimination. It examines how zones of marginalization shape the experiences of low-wage migrant workers as they move through or occupy these spaces. Marginalizing zones limit workers’ access to the sociality of the city and its institutional resources, which consequently increase their vulnerability.
Individual well-being is determined by stressful events that one encounters, by personal and external sources of resilience, and by perceptions of oneself and the stressful events. For the migrants in my study, their stressors were chronic, cumulative, and ambiguous, and while they brought with them a sufficient amount of personal resilience, it was often mitigated by non-compliance and lack of enforcement of UAE laws. The result was a state of well-being defined by isolation, fear, and despair.Dissertation/Thesis
Doctoral Dissertation Justice Studies 2018
Books on the topic "Low-wage migrant workers"
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Migrant Dubai: Low wage workers and the construction of a global city. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
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Kathiravelu, Laavanya. Migrant Dubai: Low Wage Workers and the Construction of a Global City. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
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Kathiravelu, Laavanya. Migrant Dubai: Low Wage Workers and the Construction of a Global City. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
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Phillips, Lisa. Renegade Union. University of Illinois Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.5406/illinois/9780252037320.003.0001.
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This introductory chapter discusses the story of a group of people who kept a controversial labor union, while going through some of the more tumultuous events of the twentieth century. From the Great Depression through World War II, the beginnings of the Cold War, the civil rights era, the Vietnam War, and into the 1990s, the men and women of Local 65 focused on improving the lives of the largely “invisible” people who worked in small warehouses and wholesale shops. Throughout the union's history, its members sustained a critique of the ways in which the American dream consistently fell short. A great deal can be learned from Local 65's history as labor unions and worker centers continue to launch campaigns for better pay and working conditions for low-wage workers, migrant farm workers, office workers, and workers in other non-factory-based settings throughout the United States.
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Hansen, Henrik, John Rand, and Neda Trifković. Traditional and modern employee benefits in Myanmar’s manufacturing sector. 41st ed. UNU-WIDER, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.35188/unu-wider/2021/979-2.
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Employer-provided benefits are independent elements in the compensation packages that make up firms’ payment strategies. Such benefits are aimed at attracting and retaining preferred employees and improving incentives. In Myanmar, there are two employee benefit systems: (1) an unregulated traditional system in which firms offer their employees in-kind benefits such as meals and accommodation; and (2) a modern mandatory system in which firms are required by law to offer payment schemes such as payment-while-absent and compensation for accidents. Using a survey of matched employers and employees in the manufacturing sector in Myanmar, we identify firms and workers that supply and demand the two types of employee benefits. We show that traditional benefits are widely supplied and demanded, while modern benefits are supplied by fewer firms and provided to fewer workers. We analyse the relative importance of a range of observable firm and worker attributes that may be associated with the supply and demand for the benefits. We find that firms that provide accommodation appear to attract young, unmarried, uneducated workers who are often migrants, and who, on average, receive lower wages compared to similar workers who do not receive equal in-kind payments. Large firms are more likely to offer the modern benefits and highly educated workers are more likely to demand them. Moreover, workers who receive modern benefits tend to stay longer with the firm and the benefit appears not to have an adverse impact on their wage level. Our findings indicate that both types of benefits contribute to sorting in the labour market. Therefore, both must be considered when labour laws are amended. Moreover, if increased minimum wages are accompanied by reduced provision of traditional in-kind benefits to low-wage workers, then there is a real risk that inequality in consumption will increase even though wage inequality decreases.
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Martin, Lou. Introduction. University of Illinois Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.5406/illinois/9780252039454.003.0001.
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This introductory chapter argues that studies of the industrialization of rural places like Hancock County can help in understanding the nature of industrial capitalism, particularly the relationship between capital mobility and the working class. Industries periodically entered periods of crisis that required a general restructuring for companies to remain profitable, and relocations were a key component in the process. In “undeveloped” rural areas, some manufacturers believed that they could create new environments free of discord and find grateful and compliant pool of rural laborers—often women and other low-wage workers—to surround the core of handpicked skilled workers. Thus, manufacturers' old labor problems and their high hopes for an improved workforce figured prominently in the migration of capital to rural places. Eventually, rural migrants and young people from local farms brought their own ideas, goals, and culture—distinct from those of the skilled craftsmen—and came to constitute a truly rural-industrial workforce.
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Poblete, JoAnna. Conflicting Convictions. University of Illinois Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.5406/illinois/9780252038297.003.0006.
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This chapter examines the multiple roles that Philippine Protestant ethnic ministers such as Flaviano M. Santa Ana filled in Hawaiian plantation communities. Hawaiʻi's sugar plantations cut worker wages up to 20 percent due to the low value of sugar in 1921. Intracolonial Filipino laborers, who were already struggling to save enough of their salary to send monetary remittances to their loved ones in the Philippines, became upset at the change in wage scale and went on strike from 1924 to 1925. This labor stoppage, known as the Filipino Piecemeal Sugar Strike, was one of the largest Filipino labor strikes in Hawaiʻi, as well as one of the most legally aggressive reactions by the Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association during the first half of the twentieth century. This chapter considers how Filipino Protestant pastors at the Olaʻa plantation who were working for the Hawaiian Evangelical Association became middlemen for migrant laborers, sugar plantation management, and the Protestant church in the islands. It shows that these middlemen's positions of power were always tenuous and questioned by Filipinos.
Book chapters on the topic "Low-wage migrant workers"
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Liu, Ran. "Low-Wage Migrants in North-Western Beijing: The Precarious Tenancy and Floating Life." In Spatial Mobility of Migrant Workers in Beijing, China, 167–93. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14738-3_5.
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Neo, Jaclyn L. "Stratified Migration: Differentiation and Disadvantages for Low-Wage Migrant Workers in Singapore." In Ius Comparatum - Global Studies in Comparative Law, 609–47. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2022. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99508-3_14.
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Bunnell, Tim, and Laavanya Kathiravelu. "Urban Liveability and Low-wage Migrants in Pandemic Times." In Migrant Workers in Singapore, 249–51. WORLD SCIENTIFIC, 2022. http://dx.doi.org/10.1142/9789811255038_0016.
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Bunnell, Tim, and Laavanya Kathiravelu. "Extending Urban Liveability: Friendship and Sociality in the Lives of Low-wage Migrants." In Migrant Workers in Singapore, 253–78. WORLD SCIENTIFIC, 2022. http://dx.doi.org/10.1142/9789811255038_0017.
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Harkness, Geoff. "Expats and Workers." In Changing Qatar, 190–224. NYU Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9781479889075.003.0007.
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This chapter examines foreign labor in Qatar from opposing ends of the employment spectrum. On one side are professional-class expatriates with terminal degrees from prestigious Western universities; on the other are low-wage migrants who toil six days per week in Qatar’s service and construction sectors. These groups are physically segregated from each other, and a number of institutional and cultural mechanisms symbolically isolate Qataris from expatriates. This stratification is illustrated through everything from residential zoning laws and hiring practices to homes and clothing. Both sets of workers are part of Qatar’s sponsorship labor system, which gives them limited protections from deportation should trouble arise. Professional-class expatriates develop interactive strategies that attempt physical or symbolic affinity with Qataris, seeking whatever residual benefits such proximity has to offer. Low-wage laborers from non-Western nations have fewer options. On their one day off per week, low-wage laborers are prohibited from entering shopping malls, among the few free public, air-conditioned spaces in a country where temperatures regularly exceed one hundred degrees. The negligent treatment of low-wage migrant workers contributed to a tragic incident at a Doha shopping mall that lays bare the disconnect between Qatari nationals and expatriates.
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Geddes, Andrew, and Sam Scott. "UK Food Businesses' Reliance on Low‐Wage Migrant Labour: A Case of Choice or Constraint?" In Who Needs Migrant Workers?, 193–224. Oxford University Press, 2010. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199580590.003.0007.
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Polanco, Geraldina. "Non-Citizenship at Work: Labour Flexibility Behind the Counter in Western Canada." In Working in the Context of Austerity, 111–30. Policy Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1332/policypress/9781529208672.003.0006.
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This chapter analyses the role of immigration controls in furthering labour flexibility and worker vulnerability in Canada and the way that this flexibility and vulnerability dovetail with austerity. Non-citizenship is an uneven and contingent category, with social locations amplifying or ameliorating a migrant's experience of precariousness. In addition to a normative political discourse that criminalizes migrants and/or sees them as problems to be 'managed', regulations governing work and citizenship increasingly intersect, generating new and compounding insecurities, with the form of labour precarity depending on the specific immigration controls and labour regulation. The chapter explores how features of a new labour regime in Canada in the era of austerity and the increased presence of 'temporary migrant workers' in the quick-service restaurant industry promote increased labour flexibility and exacerbate migrant workers' vulnerability. Migrant workers face unique challenges, distinct from those of their domestic counterparts, and with their growing presence in low-wage Canadian worksites, the need to organize at the intersection of work and citizenship has become an urgent project.
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Chowdhury, Fariah. "Permanently Temporary." In Discourse Analysis as a Tool for Understanding Gender Identity, Representation, and Equality, 175–203. IGI Global, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-0225-8.ch009.
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Canada's immigration policy radically shifted under Stephen Harper's federal Conservative Party government, which ruled from 2006 to 2015. The Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) is one key example of how migrants are increasingly entering Canada through a racially structured hierarchy of citizenship that privileges whiteness, while increasing the precarity of racialized migrants as they live, work, and contribute to the Canadian economy. This chapter offers a detailed policy analysis of Canada's TFWP, focusing on how the program marginalizes migrant workers as “un-Canadian” by placing them in racial, gender, and class hierarchies of belonging. This paper will discuss and outline recent changes and developments in Canada's TFWP, specifically those related to migrants classified as ‘lower-skilled' workers. While some labour needs in Canada can be read as truly temporary (for example, where workers were required to construct venues for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games or other short-term construction projects), the lack of accountability within the TFWP in Canada has led to some occupations being misleadingly framed as ‘temporary', thereby creating a class of migrant workers who are “permanently temporary.” I will argue that the labeling of racialized migrants as “temporary workers” offers employers a structural incentive to keep wages systematically low and maintain poor working conditions, all couched under a guise of “competitiveness.” In this light, “temporary” work becomes synonymous with low-wage exploitation, and continues to strengthen a historic racist nation-state project in Canada. Further, this paper will argue that giving temporary status to migrant workers, rather than permanent residency, serves to limit access to social rights and services, only deepening their levels of exploitation. Finally, I argue that recent increases in TFWs is a symptom of a global trend towards the neoliberalization of citizenship, which has seen the unethical individualization of rights and the privatization of services across many fields.
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Chowdhury, Fariah. "Permanently Temporary." In Immigration and the Current Social, Political, and Economic Climate, 142–63. IGI Global, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-6918-3.ch008.
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Canada's immigration policy radically shifted under Stephen Harper's federal Conservative Party government, which ruled from 2006 to 2015. The Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) is one key example of how migrants are increasingly entering Canada through a racially structured hierarchy of citizenship that privileges whiteness, while increasing the precarity of racialized migrants as they live, work, and contribute to the Canadian economy. This chapter offers a detailed policy analysis of Canada's TFWP, focusing on how the program marginalizes migrant workers as “un-Canadian” by placing them in racial, gender, and class hierarchies of belonging. This paper will discuss and outline recent changes and developments in Canada's TFWP, specifically those related to migrants classified as ‘lower-skilled' workers. While some labour needs in Canada can be read as truly temporary (for example, where workers were required to construct venues for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games or other short-term construction projects), the lack of accountability within the TFWP in Canada has led to some occupations being misleadingly framed as ‘temporary', thereby creating a class of migrant workers who are “permanently temporary.” I will argue that the labeling of racialized migrants as “temporary workers” offers employers a structural incentive to keep wages systematically low and maintain poor working conditions, all couched under a guise of “competitiveness.” In this light, “temporary” work becomes synonymous with low-wage exploitation, and continues to strengthen a historic racist nation-state project in Canada. Further, this paper will argue that giving temporary status to migrant workers, rather than permanent residency, serves to limit access to social rights and services, only deepening their levels of exploitation. Finally, I argue that recent increases in TFWs is a symptom of a global trend towards the neoliberalization of citizenship, which has seen the unethical individualization of rights and the privatization of services across many fields.
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Vosko, Leah F. "Introduction." In Disrupting Deportability, 1–10. Cornell University Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.7591/cornell/9781501742132.003.0001.
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This introductory chapter provides an overview of temporary migrant work. In the age of migration management, temporary migrant work is a significant phenomenon in many countries where relative labor shortages fuel demands for temporary migrant work programs (TMWPs) that provide comparatively low labor standards and wage levels. In this context, workers laboring transnationally in such programs are turning to unions for assistance in attempt to realize and retain access to rights. Yet even those engaged in highly regulated TMWPs permitting circularity—or repeated migration experiences involving one or more instances of emigration and return—confront significant obstacles tied to their deportability. This book tells the story of Mexican nationals participating in a subnational variant of Canada's model of migration management program, the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP). It explores how these workers organized to circumvent deportability, but despite achieving union certification, securing a collective agreement, and sustaining a bargaining unit, ultimately remained vulnerable to threats and acts of removal.
Reports on the topic "Low-wage migrant workers"
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Stride, Josh. Precarity and the Pandemic: A survey of wage issues and Covid-19 impacts amongst migrant seafood workers in Thailand. Oxfam, July 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.21201/2021.7628.
Full textAbstract:
This report presents findings from an extensive survey of migrant workers in the Thai seafood industry conducted by the CSO Coalition. The report focuses on the issue of low wages, the gender pay gap and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on these issues and the workers who experience them. It also aims to develop a national discussion around the issues of a living wage and a decent living for the hardworking migrant workers who generate wealth and produce food for wealthy companies and consumers around the world.