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Frenzied synchronicities: reworking the rhythms of temporary labour migration

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Abstract

This article examines low-wage migrant workers’ experiences of secondary internal mobility within Canada during the period between 2011–2016 during which the federal government imposed an immigration rule whereby migrant workers were forced to leave the country after four years of continuous residence. Introducing the concept of reworking rhythms, the article examines how a landscape of uneven and complicated immigration policies produced an environment in which low-wage temporary migrant workers in Canada had to move between subnational borders in order to find a potential pathway to permanent residence status or face compulsory repatriation within four years. The politics of a forced scheduled departure in tandem with narrow pathways to permanent residence intensified the speed with which workers had to strategize their attempts to formally convert their residence status. Drawing from interviews with workers themselves, this article examines workers’ first-hand experiences of engaging in secondary internal migration to demonstrate how these frenzied attempts to synchronize the discordant rhythms of domestic life with those of international temporary labour migration were a crucial element contributing to the politics of mobility in the Canadian context.

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... Obtaining Canadian Experience, then, may be seen as a way for the 'other' to actively pursue their path toward recognition and participation, which may never be fully realized. For the 'other others' beyond the marginsgroups excluded from permanent residency such as people with a disability (Hanes, 2010) or migrant workers (Perry, 2021) -this path does not even exist. ...
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This paper explores the structures and practices of temporary migrant worker programs (TMWP) as they operate in Canadian agriculture. Acting within highly competitive, globalized markets, agri-food employers rely on the availability of migrant workers to achieve greater flexibility in their labor arrangements, drawing on employment practices beyond those possible with a domestic workforce. Most recently, changes to Canada’s two TMWP schemes have provided employers with greater scope to shape the social composition of their workforce. The paper analyzes these changes while exploring their implications for workplace regimes in agriculture.
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Complex factors associated with migration and immigration policies contribute to the dispersion of families across space. We draw on interviews with 40 Latin American women in Toronto who experienced separation from children as a result of migration and argue that Canadian immigration policy and elements of the women’s context of departure lead to the systemic production of transnational family arrangements. Once in Canada, the women dealt with unexpected lengths of separation, the spatial dispersal of social reproduction, and post-reunification problems. The absence of a normative framework that could help the mothers make sense of family dispersal meant that their experiences of migration, family separation, reunification and settlement were marked by tension, guilt, isolation and shame.
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Immigration controls are often presented by government as a means of ensuring 'British jobs for British workers' and protecting migrants from exploitation. However; in practice they can undermine labour protections. As well as a tap regulating the flow of labour; immigration controls function as a mould, helping to form types of labour with particular relations to employers and the labour market. In particular; the construction of institutionalised uncertainty together with less formalised migratory processes, help produce 'precarious workers' over whom employers and labour users have particular mechanisms of control.
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In this study, I focus on the agency of unorganised temporary migrant workers – people who travel away to work for just a few weeks or months. Such workers have been relatively neglected in labour geography. Perhaps surprisingly, given the focus on the agency of capital in much of his writing, I build on two arguments made by David Harvey. First, workers’ spatial mobility is complex and may involve short as well as longer term migrations, and secondly that this can have significance both materially and in relation to the subjective experience of employment. The spatial embeddedness of temporary migrant workers’ everyday lives can be a resource for shaping landscapes (and ordinary histories) of capitalism, even though any changes may be short-lived and take place at the micro-scale. The article is illustrated with case study material from research with workers in the agriculture sector in India and the UK, and concludes with more general implications for labour geographers engaged with other sectors and places.
Shaping the Future: Canada's Rapidly Changing Immigration Policies. Ottawa: Maytree Foundation
  • N Alboim
  • K Cohl
Alboim, N., and K. Cohl. 2012. Shaping the Future: Canada's Rapidly Changing Immigration Policies. Ottawa: Maytree Foundation.