Consent behind the counter: aspiring citizens and labour control under precarious (im)migration schemes

Polanco, Geraldina

doi:10.1080/01436597.2015.1129892

Cited by 25 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…A recent Canadian study has shown how employers in the service sector in Canada recruit immigrant workers into temporary positions on temporary work visas. Their performance at work then influences whether they will be given an opportunity to apply for permanent Canadian citizenship (Polanco, 2016).…”

Section: The End Of the Ser?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Precarious jobs: Where are they, and how do they affect well-being?

Lewchuk

2017

Econ. labour relat. rev.

153

131

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By the end of the 20th century, there was general agreement that most labour markets were in transition and that employment was becoming less secure. However, official labour market data have not shown a dramatic increase in temporary or casual employment. This article takes a new look at the changing characteristics of employment and offers a new method to measure employment security: the Employment Precarity Index. We use the Employment Precarity Index to assess how insecure employment associated with a ‘gig’ economy might affect well-being and social relations, including health outcomes, household well-being and community involvement.

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Section: The End Of the Ser?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Precarious jobs: Where are they, and how do they affect well-being?

Lewchuk

2017

Econ. labour relat. rev.

153

131

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“…Aside from the likelihood that such aspirations condition workers and employers to an exploitative labour process (Polanco, 2016), several vexing features of Canada's immigration system disrupt the unfolding of plans. Obtaining the appropriate credential and being flexible are but aspects of the protracted temporality that marks the rhythms of daily life for migrants‐in‐waiting (see Barber, 2018).…”

Section: Mobile Workers: Mobile Filipino Labour Navigates Tim Horton mentioning

confidence: 99%

Parsing the mobilities of capital and labour: The case of Tim Hortons and internationally mobile Filipino workers

Bryan

Barber

2021

International Migration

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In 2007, Canada expanded the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) to include service and hospitality sectors. By 2010, more migrants entered Canada with temporary visas than as permanent residents. While some found employment in hospitality and tourism, most were concentrated in the fast food sector. Working transnationally, this paper uses Tim Hortons' concurrent global expansion and its arrival in the Philippines as a case study of the global mobilities and intersecting pathways of capital and labour. Drawing on the theoretical contributions of feminist political economy, it illustrates how the aspirations and mobilities of the Filipino workers at the centre of this study are organized in the service of capital; capital, in this example, as represented by the globally ambitious Tim Hortons' parent corporation, Restaurant Brands International (RBI) and, more specifically, the Brazilian American global investment firm that owns and manages RBI, 3G Capital, as well as by the efforts and objectives of franchise holders.

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“…Equally absent from this literature is consideration of effects of the transition or potential transition to permanent residency. While permanent residency status is held out as a solution to the damaging effects of temporary labour programs ( Nakache and Blanchard, 2014 ), with some notable exceptions ( Polanco, 2014 ; Bonifacio, 2015 ; Tungohan et al, 2015; Polanco, 2016 ; Bryan, 2019a ), little has been published on the actual implications of transitioning to permanency for temporary foreign workers and their kin. In addition to redressing this, this paper also illustrates the ways in which the “taken-for-granted” good of permanency can also be harnessed by state and capital to hold migrants in place, and to duplicate hierarchies and structures of accumulation that benefit employers.…”

Section: Migrant Wellbeingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contingent Relations: Migrant Wellbeing and Economic Development in Rural Manitoba

Bryan

2021

Front. Sociol.

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Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in rural Manitoba and the Philippines, this paper uses the example of the small town of Douglas, which since 2009 has been home to a small Filipino community, as a tenuous counter-point to the accounts of exclusion that dominate the scholarship on Temporary Foreign Labour in Canada. This paper draws on ethnographic research conducted in Manitoba with the region’s newest immigrants—those recruited to ensure the viability of the new, diversified rural regional economy, and more specifically, the tourism and hospitality sector, established in the 1970s. In 2009, unable to meet its labour needs regionally, a local hotel began recruiting temporary foreign labour. By 2014, the Hotel had recruited 71 workers from the Philippines, most of whom arrived through Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program; others having arrived through the province’s immigration scheme, the Manitoba Provincial Nominee Program (MPNP). A reflection of the ubiquity of globalized Filipino migration, the well-being of these workers had long been informed by economic development in the Philippines and the centrality of international labour mobility to that state project. What emerges from the data is a simultaneous acceptance and contestation of the conditions of transnational family life, and moreover—reflecting the focus of this special issue—the extent to which migrant well-being shifts in accordance to labour mobility regimes responsive to development. Migrant workers and their families are implicated in these connected, yet differently motivated, state projects. And while particular narratives concerning their contributions come to be valorized and even celebrated, their mental, physical, affective, and relational well-being is often over-looked by those who benefit from their labour and mobility. Of equal importance is the provincial state’s participation in this process through the provision of permanent residency to existing and in-coming migrants. While this benefits individual families, it does not inherently challenge the logics of neoliberalism; rather, drawing on its nuances, it create new possibilities for capital accumulation and exploitation, while offering some protection for select families who are willing and able to abide by the terms established by their employer and the Manitoba state.

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Consent behind the counter: aspiring citizens and labour control under precarious (im)migration schemes

Cited by 25 publications

References 30 publications

Precarious jobs: Where are they, and how do they affect well-being?

Precarious jobs: Where are they, and how do they affect well-being?

Parsing the mobilities of capital and labour: The case of Tim Hortons and internationally mobile Filipino workers

Contingent Relations: Migrant Wellbeing and Economic Development in Rural Manitoba

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