Home Economics: Nationalism and the Making of 'Migrant Workers' in Canada

Resource type
Author/contributor
Title
Home Economics: Nationalism and the Making of 'Migrant Workers' in Canada
Abstract
Home Economics is an urgent and much-needed reminder that society must pay careful attention to how nationalist ideologies construct ‘homelands’ that essentially leave the vast majority of the world's migrant peoples homeless. A massive shift has taken place in Canadian immigration policy since the 1970s: the majority of migrants no longer enter as permanent residents but as temporary migrant workers. In Home Economics, Nandita Sharma shows how Canadian policies on citizenship and immigration contribute to the entrenchment of a system of apartheid where those categorized as migrant workers live, work, pay taxes and sometimes die in Canada but are subordinated to a legal regime that renders them as perennial outsiders to nationalized Canadian society. In calling for a no borders policy in Canada, Sharma argues that it is the acceptance of nationalist formulations of home informed by racialized and gendered relations that contribute to the neo-liberal restructuring of the labour market in Canada. She exposes the ideological character of Canadian border control policies which, rather than preventing people from getting in, actually work to restrict their rights once within Canada. Home Economics is an urgent and much-needed reminder that in today's world of growing displacement and unprecedented levels of international migration, society must pay careful attention to how nationalist ideologies construct homelands that essentially leave the vast majority of the world's migrant peoples homeless. --Publisher's description
Place
Toronto
Publisher
University of Toronto Press
Date
2006
# of Pages
xv, 216 pages
Language
English
ISBN
978-0-8020-4883-7
URL
https://utppublishing-com/doi/book/10.3138/9780802048837
Accessed
7/25/25, 8:42 PM
Extra
Available at Internet Archive to readers with print disabilities: https://archive.org/details/homeeconomicsnat0000shar OCLC: 61427334
Notes

Contents: Home(lessness) and the naturalization of 'difference' -- Globalization and the story of national sovereignty -- Imagined states: The ideology of 'national society' -- Canadian parliamentary discours and the making of 'migrant workers' -- Canada's non-immigrant employment authorization program (NIEAP): The social organization of unfreedom of 'migrant workers' -- Rejecting global apartheid: An essay on the refusal of 'difference.'

Citation
Sharma, N. R. (2006). Home Economics: Nationalism and the Making of “Migrant Workers” in Canada. University of Toronto Press. https://utppublishing-com/doi/book/10.3138/9780802048837