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Temporary foreign worker programs have been both passionately criticized and applauded. They have been analyzed from multiple stakeholder perspectives - employers, workers, governments and unions - and in relation to various thematic arenas, including labour markets, employment standards, communities, health, and so on (see other authors in this issue). The implications of temporary workers and these programs for rights and citizenship have also been taken up (Basok 1999 and 2002, Preibisch 2004, Sharma 2006, Bauder 2007), although such discussions circulate less widely than those focused on employment. My purpose here is to situate temporary worker programs in relation to the concept of precarious status in order to contribute to discussions regarding citizenship and nation building - where the latter invokes questions about political community, rights, bases for membership, and belonging. I make a two-fold argument: 1 ) that temporary worker programs should be understood as one of several elements of policy practice that contribute to precarious status in Canada; and 2) that the connection between precarious status and citizenship needs to be analyzed and debated because it has important implications for citizenship and nation building in Canada. Since the 1970s, Canadian immigration and citizenship policy has selected immigrants and focused on supporting their transition to settled citizens, creating a nation where membership is framed in civic and multicultural terms. Recent policy shifts establish a two-tier system, with settled residents and citizens and an array of presumably temporary "others ."At the heart of the matter is whether Canada wants to pursue immigration and citizenship policies that entrench legal exclusion and cUscrimination based on migratory status, and potentially erode rights for all by virtue of reducing or eliminating them for some, or whether Canadians want to develop policies and strategies that provide alternatives, such as expanding social, civil and perhaps political rights for non-citizens, as well as earlier and more effective pathways to citizenship. Debating these issues can contribute to the ongoing process of defining and negotiating Canadian identities, values and norms as well as policies designed to expand social inclusion - for citizens as well as non -citizens in Canada. The discussion is organized into three sections. The first defines precarious status. The second situates temporary worker programs as contributing to a form of precarious status. The third section outlines and discusses implications of precarious status for citizenship, inclusion and nation building. Temporary entrance categories and the growth of precarious status. Forms of precarious status associated with temporary entrance categories are likely to persist and increase through two mechanisms: 1) as a continuation of the increase in temporary entries as well as the number of temporary residents present in Canada. The current economic crisis may put a dent in the admission of temporary workers (Galloway 2009), but this is unlikely to alter their long-term increase;7 and 2) through movement from authorized to unauthorized precarious statuses. It is possible to transition from temporary status to permanent resident status, as when foreign students or refugee claimants become permanent residents. This possibility is, however, extremely limited for most temporary workers; exceptions include those in the Live- in Caregiver Program and the recently created Canadian Experience Class, as well as through the Provincial Nominee Program, which has been used as a pathway to permanent residence for small numbers of workers in some provinces ([Elgersma] 2007, Byel 2007). What is also possible is movement from authorized to unauthorized precarious status. However, there are no systematic data relative to overstaying for the temporary resident category.

Most examinations of non-citizens in Canada focus on immigrants, people who are citizens-in-waiting, or specific categories of temporary, vulnerable workers. In contrast, Producing and Negotiating Non-Citizenship considers a range of people whose pathway to citizenship is uncertain or non-existent. This includes migrant workers, students, refugee claimants, and people with expired permits, all of whom have limited formal rights to employment, housing, education, and health services. -- Publisher's description.  Contents: The conditionality of legal status and rights: conceptualizing precarious non-citizenship in Canada / Luin Goldring and Patricia Landolt -- The museum of illegal immigration: historical perspectives on the production of non-citizens and challenges to immigration controls / Cynthia Wright -- The shifting landscape of contemporary Canadian immigration policy: the rise of temporary migration and employer-driven immigration / Salimah Valiani -- The Canadian Temporary Foreign Worker Program: regulations, practices, and protection gaps / Delphine Nakache -- "This is my life": youth negotiating legality and belonging in Toronto / Julie Young -- Constructing coping strategies: migrants seeking stability in social networks / Katherine Brasch -- The cost of invisibility: the psychosocial impact of falling out of status / Samia Saad -- The social production of non-citizenship: the consequences of intersecting trajectories of precarious legal status and precarious work / Patricia Landolt and Luin Goldring -- Pathways to precarity: structural vulnerabilities and lived consequences for migrant farmworkers in Canada / Janet McLaughlin and Jenna Hennebry -- Precarious immigration status and precarious housing pathways: refugee claimant homelessness in Toronto and Vancouver / Priya Kisoon -- Negotiating the boundaries of membership: health care providers, access to social goods, and immigration status / Paloma E. Villegas -- "People's priorities change when their status changes": negotiating the conditionality of social rights in service delivery to migrant women / Rupaleem Bhuyan -- Getting to "don't ask don't tell" at the Toronto District School Board: mapping the competing discourses of rights and membership / Francisco Villegas -- No one is illegal movements in Canada and the negotiation of counter-national and anti-colonial struggles from within the nation-state / Craig Fortier -- From access to empowerment: the Committee for Accessible AIDS Treatment and its work with people living with HIV-AIDS and precarious status / Alan Li -- Confidentiality and "risky" research: negotiating competing notions of risk in a Canadian university context / Julie Young and Judith K. Bernhard.

This paper examines the relationship between precarious employment, legal status, and racialization. We conceptualize legal status to include the intersections of immigration and citizenship. Using the PEPSO survey data we operationalize three categories of legal status: Canadian born, foreign-born citizens, and foreign-born non-citizens. First we examine whether the character of precarious work varies depending on legal status, and find that it does: Citizenship by birth or naturalization reduces employment precarity across most dimensions and indicators. Next, we ask how legal status intersects with racialization to shape precarious employment. We find that employment precarity is disproportionately high for racialized non-citizens. Becoming a citizen mitigates employment precarity. Time in Canada also reduces precarity, but not for non-citizens. Foreign birth and citizenship acquisition intersect with racialization unevenly: Canadian born racialized groups exhibit higher employment precarity than racialized foreign-born citizens. Our analysis underscores the importance of including legal status in intersectional analyses of social inequality.

This article explores the relationship between precarious employment and precarious migrant legal status. Original research on immigrant workers' employment experiences in Toronto examines the effects of several measures including human capital, network, labor market variables, and a change in legal status variable on job precarity as measured by an eight-indicator Index of Precarious Work (IPW). Precarious legal status has a long-lasting, negative effect on job precarity; both respondents who entered and remained in a precarious migratory status and those who shifted to secure status were more likely to remain in precarious work compared to respondents who entered with and remained in a secure status. This leaves no doubt that migrant-worker insecurity and vulnerability stem not only from having ‘irregular’ status. We introduce the notion of a work–citizenship matrix to capture the ways in which the precariousness of legal status and work intersect in the new economy. People and entire groups transition through intersecting work–citizenship insecurities, where prior locations have the potential to exert long-term effects, transitions continue to occur indefinitely over the life-course, and gains on one front are not always matched on others.

In times of economic growth, it is fair to expect that wages and job quality will improve with positive benefits being experienced throughout society. But between 2011 and 2017—a period when Ontario’s economy experienced significant gains—our research found that these expectations did not come true: the adage that a rising tide will lift all boats proved to be false in Ontario.

This paper examines the association between income and precarious employment, how this association is changing and how it is shaped by gender and race. It explores how precarious employment has spread to even middle income occupations and what this implies for our understanding of contemporary labour markets and employment relationship norms. The findings indicate a need to refine our views of who is in precarious employment and a need to re-evaluate the nature of the Standard Employment Relationship, which we would argue is not only becoming less prevalent, but also transitioning into something that is less secure.

In 2013, the Poverty and Employment Precarity in Southern Ontario (PEPSO) research group released the report, "It's More than Poverty: Employment Precarity and Household Wellbeing." Based on 4,165 surveys collected in late 2011 and early 2012, and 83 interviews conducted in 2011 with workers in different forms of precarious employment, It's More than Poverty examined the characteristics of employment in the Greater Toronto-Hamilton Area (GTHA). It documented the range of employment experiences and it revealed the extent of insecurity associated with insecure employment relationships. Equally important, it showed the impact of insecure employment relationships on individual and household well-being and community participation.... --From Executive Summary.