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How have neoliberal discourses of the gig economy shaped the terrain of gig worker organizing in Ontario? This thesis interrogates and contextualizes Uber’s efforts to legitimize and further expand its operations in Ontario during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on the centrality of its appeals to (and reproduction of) workers’ entrepreneurial common sense in these endeavors. Drawing on ten-semi structured interviews with current and former Uber drivers and delivery workers, it explores the contradictory form of independence experienced by platform-mediated gig workers, reflecting on the significance of gig work being perceived as the “least worst option” within the contemporary labour landscape.

This thesis explores the concept of culinary placemaking through the lens of Global Political Economy (GPE), focusing on how foodwork functions as a relational practice that shapes social, cultural, and economic spaces. It examines the relationships among food, labour, and place, emphasizing the ways in which workers transform culinary environments into meaningful places through their physical, emotional, and creative contributions. Drawing on existing literature, the research highlights how neoliberal policies have commodified food and labour, leading to increased precarity and alienation for food workers. Despite these challenges, culinary workers actively resist the pressures of globalization by fostering localized food systems, emphasizing cultural and social engagement, and envisioning alternative economic models such as cooperatives and farm-to-table initiatives. This thesis finds that culinary placemaking not only resists commodification but also offers opportunities for social cohesion, cultural expression, and economic resilience. Furthermore, the research touches upon the gendered dimensions of culinary labour, demonstrating how workers navigate power dynamics within professional kitchens and community food spaces. Future research directions include exploring the evolving role of consumers in culinary placemaking, addressing labour precarity through policy interventions, and investigating how Indigenous economies contribute to decolonial approaches to food sovereignty. By situating foodwork within the broader political and economic context, this thesis contributes to a deeper understanding of the transformative potential of culinary labour in fostering inclusive, sustainable, and culturally resonant food spaces.

This thesis undertook an interpretivist historical analysis of the publicly available Canadian Amateur Hockey Association (CAHA) meeting minutes from 1936 to 1952. A Foucauldian lens of disciplinary power was used to answer the research question: how was the National Hockey League (NHL) able to develop a professional sponsorship system within the CAHA following World War II, and what effects did this have on Canadian minor hockey. The results found that following the signing of the CAHA/NHL agreement, the NHL exercised its disciplinary power over the CAHA members to instill in them what Foucault termed ‘docility.’ The birth of the professional sponsorship system following WWII was a result of this disciplining and docility. Through this system, the NHL brought its disciplinary technologies directly to bear on Canadian minor hockey and gained the ability to control players' rights from ages as young as twelve years old.

This dissertation examines the lives and work of American and Canadian telegraph operators from 1870 to 1929. While historians have studied the telegraph as a technology and a business, few have integrated telegraphy with histories of class, gender, or the human body. Integrating the bodily turn means recognizing the physicality of telegraph work. This dissertation centres the bodies of telegraph operators and seeks to contextualize those bodies within the larger technological and corporate systems in which they were embedded. Operators’ class identities have often been ambiguous or misunderstood. I argue that telegraph work was real, physical work, in a way that has too often been elided, and that it is important to see operators as part of the working class. Ultimately, this dissertation demonstrates the ways in which human bodies and human labour can be erased within large technological networks. I explore the historical significance of that erasure and its relevance for understanding the precarity of labour in high-tech industries today.

Climate change has reached crisis mode, and confronting it requires confronting corporations, economic planning, policies that exacerbate this process, and social relations that enable such policies and economic paths. This dissertation shows how settler colonialism in Canada revolves today around extractivism. This fact makes the struggle for land critical and highlights how Canadian nationalism is an obstacle to Indigenous solidarity and environmentalism. In 2020, the Shut Down Canada movement that started from Wet'suwet'en territories against building the CGL pipeline on their land, which was a scale-up from the Idle No More movement, underscored the importance of the Land Back movement for environmental justice. Its tactic of shutting down critical infrastructures was the largest scale in Canada's recent history of Indigenous resistance at the time. The well-documented militarized attacks on Wet'suwet'en unceded territories creates a dilemma that should concern every activist. At the same time, the impressive organizing efforts that started from Unist'ot'en as a space of resistance provide lessons for every movement. The case of the CGL pipeline and Wet'suwet'en resistance puts us at the conjuncture of three movements: the issue of solidarity between labour, anti-capitalist Environmentalists and the Indigenous movement. In this dissertation, I strategically explore possibilities for building strong Indigenous-environmentalist-labour solidarity. Through extensive policy analysis of the critical infrastructure risk management approach and media analysis of the CIRG task force, I explore a hidden link between the security arm of one of the largest global investment corporations, KKR, RCMP, and TC Energy executives. The government's risk management approach has enabled such a link, which facilitates and encourages conversations between the involved actors. The state's claim to the so-called public/Canadian interest in pipelines is of utmost importance to this dissertation. The concept of Canadian interest works as a settler colonial and national ideology of governing; historically and presently, the concept creates an umbrella that includes the Canadian working class as it excludes Indigenous communities, along with the processes of reproducing nature and non-capitalist forms of economy that many radical environmentalists try to create through commons. A lack of land-based analysis of the situation of working-class people in Canadian labour has turned the labour movement into a more economistic version of trade unionism, one that does not actively oppose Canadian nationalism.

This studio-based dissertation project emerges from my engagement with the politics of representation of labour and visual culture. Rooted in my experience as a Mexican artist living in Canada, the project examines how Mexican labour is framed through photography, performance, and installation. These themes form the central focus of my research, which moves across Lands and disciplinary forms to investigate how systems of power shape the representation of Mexican workers and how irony can be used as a tool to question dominant narratives. The written component of this dissertation forms part of an interdisciplinary thesis that includes a series of exhibitions and performances carried out between 2021 and 2025 in today’s Mexico and Canada. The artworks, presented across artist-run centres in Ontario and as outdoor installations, use staged photographs, installations, participatory works, to examine labour, value, and exchange. These pieces were shown in the province of Ontario, Canada and the state of Coahuila, Mexico. My thesis engages with a range of theoretical frameworks to support and extend my artistic practice. Drawing from visual culture theory, performance studies, and participatory art discourse, I incorporate the work of theorists such as Stuart Hall, Jacques Derrida, and Claire Bishop, among others. As a whole, this dissertation considers how visual and performance-based practices can challenge representations of Mexican labour across Lands and reflect on the systems that shape the movement of people, goods, and images. The written component includes five chapters, followed by photographic documentation of the works and exhibitions produced during my doctoral studies. Together, the writing and the artworks propose a critical reflection on contemporary labour and visual politics.

Background: In western Canada, Manitoba is a critical hub for a large population of migrant workers. Usually with limited English or French language ability and possessing limited rights and protections under the current TFWP, Temporary foreign workers (TFWs) are often tied to a single employer, leaving them vulnerable to employer abuse and the under-reporting of workplace injuries and illnesses due to the threat of deportation. Within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, when my dissertation research began, the many cases seen among TFWs in Manitoba raises additional important public health questions on the health and wellbeing of migrant workers in Manitoba that I discuss in this dissertation. Methodology: In close collaboration with Migrante Manitoba (MB), I conducted a qualitative study to explore the precarious lives of migrant workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. I virtually interviewed 20 migrant workers who entered Canada through the TFWP, employed either as seasonal agricultural workers (n=7) or TFWs (n=13). Thirteen TFWs came from Philippines and seven farmworkers from Mexico (n=6) and Jamaica (n=1). Theoretical contribution: I developed the notion of transnational circuits of precarity to understand the multiple temporal-spatial layers of precarity that migrant workers encounter along their journeys to Manitoba. This multivalent concept is comprised of the following interconnected pieces: 1) a broader political economic “force-field” that compels the movement of human labour resources from the global South to the global North; 2) the rigid and regulated pathway put in place to ensure workers arrival at their work destinations; 3) the process of making “model minorities” through training programs that ensure the “smooth” transition of workers in their host country; and 4) the affective economy that is fueled by workers’ hopes, dreams, and desires. Altogether, these seemingly disparate processes articulate to produce complex temporal and spatial realities that shape the precarious trajectories of migrant workers. Such a paradigm shift away from the narrow temporal and spatial limits of a focus on “occupational health hazards” will be critical if workers are to realize any meaningful and substantive changes to their overall physical and mental well-being.

The contemporary movement for sex workers' rights emerges from a lengthy and complex legal history of sex workers challenging dominant discourses that frame prostitution as a public nuisance, moral offence, and violence against women. The existing literature demonstrates that sex workers and sex work activists resist oppressive and reductive discourse via community-based initiatives, lobbying efforts, and strategic litigation such as the successful constitutional challenge against Canada's prostitution laws in 2013 (Canada (Attorney General) v. Bedford, 2013). However, there is a significant gap in understanding how sex workers and sex work activists enact resistance through embodied performance. As such, this thesis explores the ways in which sex worker rights activists resist dominant discourse and troubling public perceptions through symbolic communication and attire during protests. To this end, this research builds a conceptual framework that puts resistance literature in conversation with key theoretical insights from Michel Foucault and Judith Butler. Based on 143 publicly accessible images of sex worker rights protests in Canada between 2013-2023, a qualitative visual content analysis is deployed to examine how sex workers and sex work activists enact resistance through what the author calls the performance of the subject-self. The findings reveal how the subtle, creative, and symbolic aspects of sex work activism are serious and significant forms of political expression.

The following thesis examines the complex reality of temporary migration within Canada's agricultural sector by investigating the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP). The relevance of this inquiry hosts far-reaching implications for not only the wellbeing of migrant workers, but for the Canadian food-system, as well as migrant sending states. Furthermore, this research contributes additional knowledge and insights regarding the evolving interconnections between the climate and migration crisis that host critical impacts for Canada and the world moreover. In analyzing the impact of the SAWP on migrant workers' lives through two case studies, the project explores the interplay between climate change, globalization, neoliberalism, and liberalization in shaping the precarity faced by migrant workers in Canada. Despite the commonly advertised benefits of the SAWP, the study finds that structural barriers and power imbalances limit the realization of these benefits for migrant workers. The study ultimately explores the divided calls for reform across the sector, revealing the influence of widespread industry malpractice, and the presence of entrenched power hierarchies that have served to dominate the scope and direction of change. The research finds that the SAWP's structure and the broader context of inequalities related to globalization and neoliberalism hinder migrant workers' ability to leverage their assets and improve their livelihoods in Canada.

This dissertation, Bridging Education and Career: Post-Secondary Music Performance Curriculum and the Portfolio Practices of Classical Musicians, explores the intersections of music curriculum, identity, and career components to provide a deeper understanding of musicians’ livelihoods in Canada. To assess the alignment of post-secondary training with the practices of professional musicians today, the author studies undergraduate music performance curricula and nontraditional performance work, examines rhetoric surrounding musicians’ identities, and delineates portfolio careers. Drawing on first-hand Canadian data through a national survey and interviews with graduates of post-secondary music performance programs, a survey of adaptive concert performers, and a curriculum analysis based on web-scraped data from five prominent institutions, the dissertation applies social constructionist theory and the transformative lens to emphasize musicians’ perspectives in a practical dissemination of findings. Three core articles address three critical aspects of musicians’ careers: (1) Canadian undergraduate music performance curricula, focusing on coursework beyond core musicianship; (2) the portfolio careers of Canadian-trained classical musicians, assessing employment patterns, career sustainability, training relevancy, and identity formation; and (3) nontraditional performance work, with specific focus on adaptive concerts as an emerging performance avenue. The synthesis and conclusion distill key takeaways and present actionable recommendations for curriculum reform, identity affirmation, and professional preparation. The careers of classical musicians are increasingly precarious and multifaceted, challenging the legitimacy of traditional conservatory models that frame success primarily in terms of full-time performance careers. This research contributes to discourse on music careers by identifying gaps in institutional training and exposing the realities of professional life for performance graduates. By integrating concepts from the performing arts, curriculum, and entrepreneurship, this dissertation offers interdisciplinary insights into how institutions and society might better support musicians in building sustainable careers.

The following thesis paper examines the continued presence of antisemitism in the ruling Alberta Social Credit Party (SCP) between 1943 and 1968, and Canadian Jewish organizational efforts to obtain anti-discrimination legislation. The Alberta Social Credit grassroots movement involved radical monetary policies, religious fundamentalism, conspiracy theories and antisemitic rhetoric. How did such an unorthodox party retain provincial control for thirty-six years despite the organization's persistent antisemitism? The question is significant to the ongoing narrative of Alberta politics amid a sharp rise in antisemitism within Canada today. The principal methodology includes qualitative research of primary sources from the SCP and Canadian Jewish archives and academic literature. Within this study period, the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) transitioned from an organization with little infrastructure to a leading institution with strong ties to other Canadian Jewish bodies, and labour and civil groups, struggling to enshrine protections for Canadian Jews. The results demonstrate that in the 1950s and early 1960s, as many Canadian provincial governments enacted equal rights legislation, Premier Ernest Manning's Social Credit government resisted such laws in Alberta. As a result, Jewish leaders escalated initiatives in Alberta. Throughout his leadership, Manning routinely denied accusations of antisemitism leveled against his party. Eventually, Manning and the Alberta SCP government were forced to establish human rights legislation in 1966, although the provisions were limited in scope. Manning curtailed Social Credit antisemitism when it became a political liability, but he did not comprehensively eliminate it. Through collaborative efforts, the CJC and other Canadian Jewish groups finally achieved legalized protections for the Jewish community in Alberta.

Le contexte de pénurie de main-d'œuvre au Québec lors des dernières années a entraîné une augmentation du recrutement de travailleurs migrants temporaires dans différents secteurs d'emploi. Ces travailleurs sont souvent engagés par des agences de recrutement à l'international ou des agences de placement, particulièrement dans des secteurs considérés précaires et « essentiels ». Hors du secteur de l'entretien ménager, la littérature a montré que les agences façonnent le lien d'emploi des travailleurs avec leur employeur, créant ainsi une main-d'œuvre « flexible », conçue pour répondre aux besoins ponctuels et temporaires des entreprises (Belzile, 2018; Mercure, 2014). Ce mémoire s'intéresse aux travailleurs migrants temporaires du secteur de l'entretien ménager, recrutés par une agence de recrutement à l'international, principalement en hôtellerie, dans la région de Québec. Ce secteur présente une forte variabilité saisonnière des conditions de travail et, par le fait même, est fortement touché par la pénurie de main-d'œuvre puisque de nombreux employés revendiquent précisément cela; de meilleures conditions de travail (Guilbault, 2024). Cette dynamique est particulièrement marquée dans la région de Québec où la nécessité d'embaucher de la main-d'œuvre à l'international est devenue de plus en plus cruciale pour le secteur de l'entretien ménager. Cette étude s'inscrit dans un projet plus large financé par le Conseil de recherches en sciences humaines (CRSH); le projet PARtenariat sur les migrants Temporaires en EMPloi (PARTEMP), qui vise à produire des connaissances sur les travailleurs migrants temporaires dans la région de Québec (Chaire de recherche du Canada sur les dynamiques migratoires mondiales, 2021). L'objectif principal de ce mémoire est de comprendre les expériences et les conditions de travail de ces travailleurs au sein d'un secteur peu exploré dans la littérature en contexte québécois. Les concepts de précarité, de mobilité et d'agentivité sont mobilisés pour appréhender l'expérience des travailleurs migrants temporaires. 14 entretiens semi-dirigés avec des travailleurs de nationalités différentes, majoritairement des latinoaméricains et des femmes, ont été réalisés entre mai et août 2023. L'analyse révèle plusieurs formes de précarité par le croisement de la relation d'emploi, le statut migratoire, le manque d'accès à l'information et la barrière de la langue. La flexibilité, une exigence structurelle du secteur d'emploi, et la mobilité sont des facteurs de précarisation. Le secteur exige des déplacements fréquents verticaux sur le lieu de travail, d'un étage à l'autre, et horizontaux sur le territoire. Cependant, ces travailleurs se montrent créatifs et « résilients », faisant preuve d'agentivité individuelle et collective dans le but d'améliorer leurs conditions de travail et de vie dans la région de Québec.

This dissertation explores the evolution and politics behind the concept of the ‘dependent contractor’ in Ontario, from its earliest incarnations in the late 1970s to its current usage in the gig economy, as interpreted and applied by the Ontario Labour Relations Board (OLRB). It examines how the Board’s interpretation and application of dependent contractor provisions has impacted workers whose employment status falls somewhere between traditional notions of independent contractor and employee, i.e. the ‘grey area’ as the Board has referred to it, over a period of changing employment relationships and of increasingly precarious work. The research tracks these changes over time, examining how previous OLRB jurisprudence on dependent contractors can be seen to impact its decisions in more contemporary contexts (e.g Foodora, 2020) and what this might tell us about the Board’s understanding of employment relations in a changing capitalist economy. The analysis seeks to place the actions of the OLRB into a broader social context to assess what factors have influenced the Board’s decisions and gauge how it understands both its potential to address employment inequities and the limits it faces in doing so within a capitalist economy. This dissertation argues that the OLRB operated with an implicit industrial pluralist understanding of labour-capital relations and made decisions informed by that approach and, in doing so, lacked an appreciation of how capitalist workplaces were changing over time in a way that evaded control via that understanding. It further argues that while bodies such as the OLRB have some autonomy from capitalists and the capitalist state, they are unable to, nor are they designed to, overcome or dramatically alter the power imbalances that exist in capitalist civil society.

The anti-sweatshop movement has long committed to abolishing sweatshop labour and ensuring workers’ rights for all. There is an established body of literature on sport and the anti-sweatshop movement on the roles played by a range of actors concerning the mega-sporting events, which have been plagued with abuses of workers’ lives in the name of the sport spectacle. In effort to move past this troubled history, FIFA has embedded internationally recognized human and labour rights into their 2026 bid process. This study evaluates how the City of Toronto, Canada Soccer Association, and FIFA have considered ethical procurement and sweatshop labour as part of their bid for co-hosting the 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup. Employing a critical theoretical approach, this study finds that despite the varying levels of considerations given to ethical (anti-sweatshop) procurement, the efforts remain insufficient. This is attributed to the unequal power dynamics that prioritize a discourse of (neoliberal capitalist) development for soft power.

In recent years, labour unrest in Canada and elsewhere has led to a resurgence in union organizing, job action and contract gains. This thesis sets out to understand how greater attentiveness to working-class affects or emotions might support this potentially revitalizing moment. Given the limited scholarship in this area, this study connects a literature review of affect theory with radical labour history to develop a framework for thinking about the affective dimensions of collective action within unions. Using that framework, the study then investigates the affective life of two Western Canadian unions through surveys and interviews. The thesis concludes that acknowledging and becoming more intentional in efforts to mediate the affective intensities that circulate, move people and organize life at the level of union membership represents an important focal point as a new cycle of class recomposition potentially takes shape.

This paper delves into the implications of Canada's Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) through the lens of international human rights law (IHRL), spotlighting the nuanced effects on migrant agricultural workers' rights. Originating in 1966, the SAWP has been pivotal in recruiting labour from Mexico and the Caribbean to bolster Canada's agricultural sector. The paper critiques the program's core policies, notably the restrictive employment system that ties workers to specific employers and the significant barriers to obtaining permanent residency (PR) and citizenship. These policies are scrutinized for their potential violation of fundamental human rights, including the rights to equality, liberty and security, and access to justice, under both Canadian and international legal frameworks. A comprehensive analysis is presented, underpinning Canada's obligations under IHRL and the apparent discrepancies within its treatment of SAWP participants. The study proposes substantial policy reforms aimed at rectifying these discrepancies, advocating for a transition towards open work permits, and establishing clear pathways to PR and citizenship for SAWP workers. The research underscores the necessity for Canada to reconcile its labour demands within the agricultural sector with its human rights obligations, ensuring a fair and humane treatment of migrant workers who play a crucial role in the country's economy.

In this dissertation, I draw on Frantz Fanon’s concepts of cultural imposition and collective catharsis to examine how the colonized subject, like the incarcerated Black worker, undergoes a double process of dehumanization wherein they are perceived as both an invisible and hypervisible subject. I argue that the colonized subject is invisible insofar as they are subjected to various forms of dehumanization such as physiological and psychological abuse, lack of access to resources, and neglect. However, they are also perceived as hypervisible because they are viewed as existing in excess as hypersexual, hyper deviant, and hyper criminal creatures and therefore deserving of the treatment they endure. Similarly, the incarcerated worker is viewed as invisible and hypervisible because they are viewed as unskilled and subhuman beings undeserving of adequate pay and protections but are also perceived as best suited to work in poor conditions doing less skilled, undervalued, low-paying work. By tracing how this relationship between race, racialization and labour is underpinned by whiteness both historically and in a contemporary sense, I demonstrate how the use of prison labour within a Canadian multicultural context must necessarily be read through a normalizing white gaze, under the guise of public safety and rehabilitation; here the prison functions as a disciplinary site wherein Black and racialized prisoners are constructed as inferior beings in need of heightened control through labour. In doing so, I argue that the use of prison labour in Canadian prisons is a form of colonial violence that reproduces inferior and superior colonial identities.

This thesis explored the potential use of artificial intelligence (AI)-based policing models in law enforcement anti-trafficking initiatives and examined potential impacts of expanding state surveillance through police use of AI-based policing models. Computer scientists aspire to develop AI to identify victims of trafficking through websites that host ads for sexual services. Little research has explored sex workers’ views on the proposed AI-based policing models and their likely impacts. To fill this gap, I conducted 21 semistructured interviews with sex workers, academics, and members of sex worker rights organizations to discuss the effects of AI-based policing models. Participants expressed concern that these models will continue a long history of anti-trafficking initiatives causing harm, particularly against racialized, migrant, and transgender sex workers. Findings also suggest developers should be cautious about creating AI-based policing models without input of sex workers and without a firm knowledge base of the sex industry.

This thesis examines shifting masculinities and platform labour, following eleven semi-structured interviews conducted with male Toronto-based Uber and Lyft rideshare workers with dependents (children). Women have commonly done non-standard work, hence the proliferation of non-standard work being contextualized as the ‘feminization of work’ (Zahn, 2019). In contrast, rideshare work is a non-standard form of gig work done predominantly by men, rendering it a relevant form of platform work to examine with its complicated relationship to the historical context of gender and nonstandard work. This thesis argues for a need to organize the worker as a whole, examining how workers’ unpaid social reproductive labour and balancing of rideshare work, and often another form of paid work, impacts the viability of classic organizing methods. I argue that these issues of convoluted boundaries between paid and unpaid work must be incorporated into the potential organizing demands of a rideshare workers’ union and identify areas for further research on organizing rideshare workers accounting for shifting masculinities.

This qualitative research study examines how the Labour Market Integration (LMI) site constitutes a site of ongoing colonial violence and spirit injury, where race plays a central role in legitimizing the politics of credential recognition, in which Foreign Educated Racialized Immigrant Women (FERIW) are evicted from the category “qualified” in Canada. My analysis draws upon concepts of racial capitalism and structural violence to locate the acts of eviction that FERIW are subjected to within the LMI space in Canada and the consequences and impacts of this eviction. I argue that racialized immigration on the move to Canada represents the human face of Canada’s ongoing nation-building and economic policy agenda. The LMI space reinforces and reproduces the colonial racial hierarchical order in Canada. Based on qualitative interviews with 12 FERIW, I explore how within the LMI space, racialized immigrant women are stripped of their foreign credentials, discursively framed as unqualified and deficient, and repurposed as a source of cheap labour within the political economy. Delegitimization carries severe material and socio-economic consequences. The intersectionality of race, ethnicity, gender, class, and immigrant status results in FERIW becoming “ghettoized” into low-paying, precarious, low-end jobs, and, for many of these women, low income and poverty. This work represents a decolonial work articulated through anti-colonial and feminist anti-racist theory, to present a nuanced historical account of the experiences of gendered racialized immigrant labour within global and local structures that look very similar to the old structures of colonialism.