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  • A growing number of workers in the Canadian labour force have precarious migration status as participants in authorized temporary work programs, or have no status at all. This article reports the findings of a study that interviewed precarious migrants in British Columbia, and employees of agencies which provided services to them, with a view to assessing the impact of migration status on their conditions of work and on the practical availability to them of legal protections set out in provincial legislation on employment standards, occupational health and safety, and workers' compensation. Data gathered from the interviews indicate that precarious migration status was associated with deskilling, decreased job security and mobility, illegally low pay and long hours, and various health and safety risks. Provincial laws and policies regulating the workplace do not exclude anyone from protection on the basis of migration status. However, federal law gives employers a great deal of employer discretion over the status of temporary foreign workers, aggravating the employer-employee power imbalance and making those workers fearful of seeking redress for violations of their rights under provincial law. The author suggests that local initiatives emphasizing the provision of access to services "without fear" for workers with precarious migration status, or with no status, can help to overcome their marginalization and recognize their place in Canadian society.

  • There has been an increase in the number of incoming temporary migrant workers to Canada over the past decade. In this article, I critically assess recent changes in the law governing temporary migration to Canada by using theoretical tools from the fields of sociology, geography, and legal geography. A multidisciplinary framework to understand Canada's labour migration policies is provided. Within the socio-historical context of migrant labour regulation in Canada, I argue that political and regulatory developments function to further entrench segregation and exclusion of foreign workers by maintaining a subclass of flexible labour. Specifically, I show that Canada's current temporary migration regime retains the country's historical role as an ethnocratic settler state in which the regulation of migrant workers creates inherent boundaries. These boundaries demarcate racially identified space(s) on the basis of the economic and political logic underlying temporary migration.

Last update from database: 4/19/25, 4:10 AM (UTC)

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