Unfree Labour?

Description

With so many political establishments and economic institutions undergoing enormous changes, many economic theories are being called into question. The legitimacy of capitalism is being considered by socialist economists the world over, and critiques of Marxism are attempting to put the school of thought into a more modern context. Labor Regime Change in the Twenty-First Century calls into question the validity of various historical interpretations of capitalism, unfreedom and primitive accumulation based on current economic developments.

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique
• Canadá
• Labour economics
• Canada
• Migration

Informations

• Publié par: PM Press
• Date de parution: 28 juillet 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781629632582
• Langue: English

Extrait

Praise for Unfree Labour?
The authors of Unfree Labour? have done us a great service, reporting and theorizing from the front lines of migrant and immigrant worker organizing in Canada. They ve produced an internationally important book. The specific stories resonate with a global narrative, in which workers in poorer countries are freed to bring their labour to serve the rich, and are then rendered permanently vulnerable through the collusion of employers, police and government agencies. This bitter liberty is, however, being fought: look for inspiration in the reflections by organizers on resisting racialized capitalism, and the victories they ve achieved, far from the media s gaze, in fields, factories, the fast food sector, and homes.
-Raj Patel, author of The Value of Nothing and Stuffed and Starved
Analyzing the contemporary production of unfree labour in Canada s immigration and neoliberal economic policies, this book makes an excellent contribution to the fields of labour and migration studies. Grounded in the struggles of migrant workers against racialized bondage, the studies presented by Choudry and Smith draw much needed attention to one of the most important movements of our times. A must read for all concerned with labour rights and economic justice in an increasingly polarized world.
-Sunera Thobani, author of Exalted Subjects: Studies in the Making of Race and Nation in Canada
Choudry and Smith have put together an impressive collection of authors who reveal the ugly truth about Canadian so-called values: that Canada is a willing participant and leader in the exploitation, racialization, and commodification of human labour on stolen land. They reveal much about a human dignity that shines a light on the Canadian hubris and myth of being a champion of human rights as families and people are torn asunder in the name of profit and privilege.
-David Bleakney, second national vice president, Canadian Union of Postal Workers
Unfree Labour? systematically shows how rapacious capitalists and the state thrive and secure profits through the systematic subordination of women, nonwhite, and migrant labourers. The chapters document that exploitation, so reminiscent of feudalism and early capitalism are ever-present in our modern capitalist system in the West. The chapters in this book provide chilling accounts of the constrained lives of domestics, agricultural labourers, and the growth of temporary foreign workers, so dependent on removing and denying rights that were achieved over the past two centuries. Choudry and Smith have assembled a comprehensive and outstanding book that is essential for all scholars of the labour movement.
-Immanuel Ness, editor of New Forms of Worker Organization: The Syndicalist and Autonomist Restoration of Class-Struggle Unionism

Unfree Labour? Struggles of Migrant and Immigrant Workers in Canada
Edited by Aziz Choudry and Adrian A. Smith
2016 by Aziz Choudry and Adrian A. Smith
This edition 2016 by PM Press
ISBN: 978-1-62963-1-493
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016930961
Cover by John Yates/Stealworks.com
Interior by Jonathan Rowland
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
PM Press
PO Box 23912
Oakland, CA 94623
www.pmpress.org
Printed in the USA on recycled paper, by the Employee Owners of Thomson-Shore in Dexter, Michigan.
www.thomsonshore.com
Contents
List of Tables and Figures
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Struggling against Unfree Labour
Aziz Choudry and Adrian A. Smith
Producing and Contesting Unfree Labour through the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program
Mark Thomas
Migrant Live-In Caregivers: Control, Consensus, and Resistance in the Workplace and the Community
Jah-Hon Koo and Jill Hanley
Systemic Discrimination in the Canadian Context: Live-in Domestic Care, Employment Equity, and the Challenge of Unfree Labour Markets
Abigail B. Bakan
Globalizing Immobile Worksites: Fast Food under Canada s Temporary Foreign Worker Program
Geraldina Polanco
Struggling against History: Migrant Farmworker Organizing in British Columbia
Adriana Paz Ramirez and Jennifer Jihye Chun
The Case for Unemployment Insurance Benefits for Migrant Agricultural Workers in Canada
Chris Ramsaroop
Critical Questions: Building Worker Power and a Vision of Organizing in Ontario
Deena Ladd and Sonia Singh
A Jeepney Ride to Tunisia-From There to Here, Organizing Temporary Foreign Workers
Joey Calugay, Lo c Malhaire, and Eric Shragge
Organizers in Dialogue
Joey Calugay, Jill Hanley, Mostafa Henaway, Deena Ladd, Marco Luciano, Adriana Paz Ramirez, Chris Ramsaroop, Eric Shragge, Sonia Singh, and Christopher Sorio
Unfree Labour, Social Reproduction, and Political Community in Contemporary Capitalism
Sedef Arat-Ko
About the Contributors
Index
L IST OF T ABLES AND F IGURES
Table 1. Legal Developments in Farmworker Unionization, Ontario
Table 2. Organizations Focused on Addressing Labour and Immigration Issues of LCP Workers in Canada
Acknowledgments
T HIS BOOK WAS BORN OUT OF OUR SCHOLARLY AND ACTIVIST ENGAGEMENT with migrant and immigrant workers struggles and is very much a collaborative endeavour. First we would like to thank all of the contributors to this collection. This builds on many years of conversations, debates, and discussions in both academic and organizing contexts. Many thanks to the Immigrant Workers Centre, Montreal, for hosting the May 2013 workshop that brought together most of the participants in this book. We are also deeply grateful to Sarah Mostafa-Kemal, Lily Han, and D sir e Rochat for their hard work in different aspects of the life of this project. We gratefully acknowledge the support of a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Connection Grant for this project. Thanks to those readers who offered constructive reviews of earlier drafts of this book and to the PM Press team. Perhaps most importantly, we are inspired by both the historical and present struggles of migrant and immigrant workers, organizers, and movements, who have carved a path in local and global struggles against unfree labour, and for labour and immigration justice in Canada and around the world.
All royalties from this book will be donated to the Immigrant Workers Centre, Montreal.
Introduction
Struggling against Unfree Labour
Aziz Choudry and Adrian A. Smith
A T THE START OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, C ANADA HAS EXPERIENCED considerable growth and change in labour migration. Temporary labour migration has replaced permanent immigration as the primary means by which people enter Canada. Using the rhetoric of maintaining competitiveness, Canadian employers and the state have ushered in an era of neoliberal migration (Arat-Ko 1999) alongside an agenda of austerity flowing from capitalist crisis. Labour market restructuring renders labour more flexible and precarious, and in Canada as in other high-income capitalist labour markets-where guest or temporary labour programs proliferate-employers are relying on migrant and immigrant workers as unfree labour. We use the term unfree labour deliberately, provocatively, and analytically to contend that the formal lines of distinction between free and unfree labour, long since questioned within capitalist societies (Pentland 1981; Miles 1987; Satzewich 1991; Brass 1999), remain blurred in the period of neoliberal migration. The tendency of some to relegate the term to the past (referring, for instance, to historical forms of slavery and indentured labour) or to reject its ongoing explanatory utility sits in stark contrast to the contemporary claims and struggles of migrant and immigrant workers and organizers.
The current relevance of this book is indisputable. The years 2013, 2014, and 2015 saw renewed and sustained media attention on Canada s Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP), changes to several foreign worker programs, and official announcements of reforms and promises of further changes. Yet while some of this debate reflected concerns about the actual and potential exploitation of foreign workers, most demands hinged on the preservation of Canadian jobs. Very few acknowledged the broader historical and contemporary feature of Canada s capitalist economy-its systemic reliance upon exploitation through race, immigration status, and shifting forms of unfree labour (for exceptions, see Ramsaroop and Smith 2014). Public pressure led the federal government at the time (Stephen Harper s Conservatives) to ban the restaurant industry from using the TFWP (e.g., Harper 2014). Opposition parties and labour unions called for the moratorium to be extended to the entire program. But the moratorium placed on the use of migrant workers in this sector forms a knee-jerk reaction that fails to address the racist foundations of Canada s temporary labour migration regime, and the role of capitalist restructuring and broader transformations of work in contributing to the pronounced use of temporary foreign workers across many sectors. Although a change of government followed Justin Trudeau s Liberal Party victory in the October 2015 federal election, there is little sign of any substantive departure from this model. 1
The uniqueness of this collection derives from its grounding in activist and organizing experiences, its cross-Canada scope, and the interdisciplinary scholarly perspectives that it assembles. Contributors are directly engaged with the issues emerging from the influx of temporary foreign workers and what Galabuzi (2006) describes as Canada s creeping economic apartheid -the ongoing racialization of economic inequality for many workers of colour, including permanent residents and citizens. With the erosion of trade union power, the rolling back of many employment standards and the re-regulation of the labour market to render all workers more readily exploitable (Camfield 2011), increasing numbers of workers-especially immigrant and temporary migrant workers-have suffered disproportio