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This paper examines precarious work, its historical origins and certain social consequences. I use the 2015 Canadian Election Study to analyze the relationship between work-related insecurity and economic anxiety with voting, non-voting political behaviour and attitudes toward equity-seeking groups. I propose a theory of "harmonizing down", in which workers who were once able to access the benefits and status of the standard employment relationship have generally seen their opportunities for stable and secure work decline. This has resulted in economic anxiety for most workers. Results were mixed, suggesting that broad generalizations around economic anxiety are problematic. Insecurity and anxiety may reduce the likelihood of voting but may increase non-voting participation. Some aspects of insecurity and anxiety were related to negative attitudes toward equity-seeking groups, but the relationship is not clear. Gender and political party identity influence these attitudes.

This thesis discusses the Canadian outing system, a direct feature of industrial schools in the prairie west prominent in the late nineteenth century. Seen as an extension of the school’s vocational training, the outing system became an outlet with which the Canadian federal government’s Department of Indian Affairs (DIA) could integrate into the lower ranks of Euro-Canadian society young Indigenous girls in a hierarchical system of labour. By examining the roles and education of Indigenous female youth in the industrial school system in the Canadian prairies, this study illuminates how, in the name of assimilation, the DIA implemented the outing system. This thesis highlights how young Indigenous women were compelled to work in homes that exemplified settler values, taking on strenuous labour in environments where attitudes of race and class dimensions were prominent. By drawing from 1901 census data and looking at the settler homes, farms, and establishments in which they worked, this thesis provides an important glimpse into the early history of domestic work for Indigenous women and girls in western Canada and offers insights into the very nature of settler colonialism in early Canadian national history.

Previous research has indicated the prevalence of customer violence towards workers in the service sector, but few studies have looked at the impacts of this violence for LGBTQ2S+ workers. Drawing from survey results (n=208) and interviews (n=11) with LGBTQ2S+ service sector workers in Windsor and Sudbury, Ontario, this thesis explores the rates and experiences of customer violence for these workers, using chi-square analyses to identify relationships between customer violence and independent variables related to workers’ identity and workplace. Further analysis was conducted on qualitative interview data to understand how this violence was experienced, as well as how workers resisted and perceived management’s response. Customer violence was found to be widespread among survey and interview participants, with participants who were racialized as non-white, union members, and in precarious work situations reporting higher levels of violence. Interviews also showed how participants often resisted customer violence through individual means, and perceived support from management to be lacking and contingent upon economic motivations.

This study concerns the social and emotional dimensions of Mexican migrant workers’ temporary labour migration experience as they relate to precarity and unfreedom within the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP). My principle inquiry centers around understanding migrant workers’ subjective and emotional experiences of being away from home and family. This study makes the case that migration and family separation, as requirements of SAWP employment, are precarious labour conditions that result overwhelmingly in distressing emotional experiences that go unseen in workers’ daily lives. I draw on a deeply qualitative methodological approach and theories of precarity, emotion and practice to explore the ways that SAWP workers navigate their labour migration experience through a series of practices in their daily lives. I conclude by sharing my participants’ recommendations for a more dignified and humanized labour experience and with their insistence that they are not maquinas (machines).

International teaching assistants (ITAs) in North American English-medium universities often work with an accent. In one sense, to work with an accent entails doing one’s work while having an aural stigma. This is due to the increased likelihood that students and other university stakeholders perceive ITAs’ foreign-accented English as difficult to understand. The purported problem of their foreign accents can thus create additional facets in working with an accent such as working with the idea of how to change an accent and performing (around) it in order to be viewed as effective workers. All of this work can be considered a type of aesthetic labour in that ITAs need to develop the right sound for their professional duties. Based on a narrative inquiry of the experiences of 14 ITAs working in various universities in Ontario, Canada, this thesis explores how they conceptualize and execute aesthetic labour. Specifically, it details their perceptions of a satisfactory aural aesthetic for work as well as the extent to which they incorporate this aesthetic in discussions about their professional practices. Regarding the first research objective, the ITAs understood a satisfactory accent in linguistic, racial, and professional terms. Indeed, an accent could sound “native” or “nonnative,” become “whitened” or remain racialized, and match or not match one’s work (environment). In terms of taking up these perceptions in their professional practices, which took the general form of working on or around an accent, the ITAs’ prior views on aural aesthetics were upheld and/or tempered by contextual factors in their universities. On the immediate level, the above findings provide suggestions for changes to existing forms of ITA training, which tend to ignore the knowledge of ITAs and fail to prepare them to effectively communicate according to the specificities of their work environments. More broadly, the findings are useful in highlighting how accents are not stable individual traits, but rather, malleable tools that help workers negotiate intercultural encounters in a range of professional settings. Therefore, this study counters research that frames the ITA accent as an inherent problem needing to be rectified for a homogeneous audience.

This dissertation explores the political economy of the physical and mental illnesses that the migrant workers experience while living and working under conditions of illegality in Canada's late capitalism. The dissertation is divided into three parts. The first part locates four social determinants of health underpinning the structural vulnerability to which the Latin American undocumented workers are subjected in this particular context. The second part describes the mental and physical health illnesses that the undocumented workers develop while living and working in Canada without authorization, according to the type of industry they work in (1.—Multinational Corporations, 2.—Medium-size local industries and 3.—Underground workers' cooperatives) and to the type of work they do. The empirical evidence illustrates that the undocumented immigrants who work for medium-size local enterprises, those who have been affected by deportability and deportation, as well as those who lost their legal status after being engaged in refugee claimant applications, are more likely to develop the most dramatic forms of physical and mental health diseases, all linked to what is called here "short- term historical trauma." In contrast, undocumented workers who work for underground workers' cooperatives are more likely to report better physical and mental health outcomes. Cooperative labour, free time and social solidarity make this possible. Overall, this thesis indicates that --as explored in part three-- under the social conditions organized by late capitalism, social solidarity and engagement in non-waged cooperative labour constitute social mechanisms by which undocumented migrants can access to forms of refuge, care, solidarity and social recognition that partially emancipate them from illnesses, suffering and social death. This thesis is based on an ethnographic work that I carried out over 24 months in Montreal. During that period of time, I worked side by side with Latin American undocumented workers in slaughterhouses and meatpacking factories, construction and home renovation companies, employment agencies, and as industrial cleaner for multinational corporations, spaces where I carried out direct empirical observation in the points of production and conducted 47 in-depth interviews on illegality, labor and health. I also conducted ethnographic work in hospitals and deportation centers.

This thesis examines two intimately related topics. First, it analyzes the practices of temporary employment agencies and employers in using the vulnerabilities of migrant and immigrant workers across different precarious labour sectors in Montreal. Second, it aims to understand the knowledge production, learning and non-formal education linked to action that occur in the course of organizing im/migrant agency workers by the Immigrant Workers Centre (IWC) and the Temporary Agency Workers Association (TAWA). The discussion of agencies is located in a broader context of the global and Canadian neoliberal model which includes attending to racism and racialization, flexible labour and labour deregulation, labour precarity, the defensive position of trade unions, austerity and immigration policies. The study uses longitudinal research and interviews with 42 im/migrant agency workers in precarious jobs, as well as interviews with IWC and TAWA activists and members. It employs an ethnographic and activist approach informed by Global Ethnography and the Extended Case Method. The analysis entailed the description of local experiences of im/migrant agency workers and the ways that agencies manage their vulnerabilities to optimize labour exploitation. It relates IWC and TAWA organizing processes to the growing activity and importance of workers' centres as alternative organizations to traditional trade unionism. The study found that systematic violations of im/migrants' labour rights through agencies also impact their private lives. It argues that the Canadian and Quebec states are complicit in structuring this super-exploitation through their immigration policies and their disengagement from the conditions of im/migrants in the labour market. In response, the IWC and the TAWA have developed an organizing model for agency workers based on five pillars: community organizing, knowledge production, popular education, and leadership development. This includes provision of services infused with education for collective action, arts-based activism, and diverse ways of spreading information and knowledge. Participation in bigger campaigns and partnership with engaged academics has also resulted in important strategies leading to the IWC and the TAWA organizing workers and making visible the problems associated with agencies.

Most extant studies on the relationship between workforce diversity and employment inequalities focus on the impact of a single disadvantaged identity on a single employment outcome such as pay or promotion at the organizational level. Thus, the relation between workers’ multiple identities and different dimensions of employment inequalities within the broader social context remains unclear. The goal of this thesis is to start filling this gap. I start with developing a multilevel model of employment inequalities for workers with multiple identities by integrating the social identity theory, double jeopardy hypothesis, intergroup contact theory, and theory of minority group threat. I test this model with two empirical studies using Statistics Canada’s nationally representative Canadian Survey on Disability (2012) linked with the National Household Survey (2011). Labour force participation, employment, and employment income are the dependent variables of this thesis. I examine the intersection of immigrant and disability identity dimensions by focusing on immigrants with disabilities (IwD) as compared to immigrants with no disabilities, Canadian-born with disabilities, and Canadian-born with no disabilities. Study 1 demonstrates that while immigrant and disability identities are independently negatively associated with employment and employment income, having both identities simultaneously has a positive effect on employment and employment income. Furthermore, with the increase of the residential area diversity (RAD), which is determined by the number of immigrants and people with disabilities in a community, IwD’s likelihood of employment increases but employment income decreases. Study 2 shows that the proportion of immigrants in a residential area (RA) is negatively associated with the likelihood of being in the labour force for IwD. Furthermore, perceived work discrimination is negatively associated with labour force participation for IwD. Moreover, perceived work discrimination mediates the relationship between the proportion of immigrants in an RA and labour force participation for IwD. This thesis contributes to theory by (i) developing a multi-level theoretical framework that demonstrate the complex relationship between individuals with multiple identities, organizations, and society, (ii) extending the intergroup contact theory and the theory of minority threat using empirical evidence from individuals with multiple identities rather than focusing on a single identity, (iii) examining multiple employment outcomes at once and demonstrating how employment outcomes might differ based on intersecting identities, and (iv) demonstrating the impact of societal context by incorporating RAD into analysis and showing how the employment outcomes of individuals with multiple identities differ by where they reside. I discuss practical implications of the findings for workers, employers, policymakers, and society.