Disrupting Deportability

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leah F Vosko
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Labor Rights ◽  
Political Struggle ◽  
Agricultural Worker ◽  
Work Program ◽  
Collective Representation ◽  
Temporary Migrant ◽  
Migrant Work

This book highlights obstacles confronting temporary migrant workers in Canada seeking to exercise their labor rights. It explores the effects of deportability on Mexican nationals participating in Canada's Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP). The book follows the decade-long legal and political struggle of a group of Mexican SAWP migrants in British Columbia to establish and maintain meaningful collective representation. The case study reveals how modalities of deportability—such as termination without cause, blacklisting, and attrition—destabilize legally authorized temporary migrant agricultural workers. Through this detailed exposé, the book concludes that despite the formal commitments to human, social, and civil rights to which migration management ostensibly aspires, the design and administration of this “model” temporary migrant work program produces conditions of deportability, making the threat possibility of removal ever-present.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 110-120
Author(s):  
Leah F. Vosko
Keyword(s):  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Agricultural Worker ◽  
Work Program ◽  
Incremental Change ◽  
Migration Management ◽  
Legal Case ◽  
Temporary Migrant ◽  
Migrant Work

This concluding chapter reflects on the significance of the legal case of the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) employeess at Sidhu & Sons for expanding understandings of the meaning of deportability and its applicability to temporary migrant work program (TMWP) participants laboring not only in Canada but also in other relatively high-income host states embracing migration management and the measures it prescribes. Obstacles to limiting deportability writ large will persist so long as migration management dominates paradigmatically. Nevertheless, in combination with the forward-looking organizing efforts already being undertaken by unions and worker centers, in areas where unionization is difficult to achieve partly because of the still-dominant Wagnerian-styled model of unionization, certain modest interventions in policy and practice hold promise in forging change and curbing deportability among temporary migrant workers. Because the foregoing case study focused on the SAWP, the alternatives outlined in this chapter primarily address this TMWP. Given, however, that the SAWP is often touted as a model of migration management, they seek to provide meaningful avenues toward incremental change in other TMWPs in Canada and elsewhere.

Maintaining a Bargaining Unit of Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (Sawp) Employees

2019 ◽  
pp. 65-83
Author(s):  
Leah F. Vosko
Keyword(s):  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Bargaining Unit ◽  
Labor Rights ◽  
Collective Agreement ◽  
Labor Laws ◽  
Work Program ◽  
Temporary Migrant ◽  
Migrant Work ◽  
Conditions Of Work ◽  
Work And Employment

This chapter analyzes how threats and acts of blacklisting impeded the fair application of the collective agreement between UFCW Local 1518 and Sidhu & Sons. The detection and analysis of the blacklisting of bargaining unit members at Sidhu uncover important “truths” about the management of migration among temporary migrant workers with the prospect of return. Broadly, it demonstrates that institutionalized programs' mechanisms, promoted in the global policy discourse embracing migration management as a means of stemming the flow of “irregular migration,” can impede access to and the exercise of labor rights. More narrowly, it shows that SAWP's “best practices” are by no means neutral, but are instead consistent with the dynamics of global capitalism, producing a race to the bottom in conditions of work and employment. This model temporary migrant work program (TMWP) permits state officials to behave in unprincipled ways that can involve, among other things, defying collective agreement provisions by delegating key responsibilities related to readmission—such as recruitment, selection, and aspects of documentation—to those in the interior and posted abroad. It also illustrates vividly how a labor relations tribunal compelled to prioritize national, and thereby sending-state, sovereignty, can be inhibited in—and even prevented from—implementing and enforcing host-state labor laws under its oversight.

Deportability among Temporary Migrant Workers

2019 ◽  
pp. 11-41
Author(s):  
Leah F. Vosko
Keyword(s):  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Bargaining Unit ◽  
Collective Agreement ◽  
Agricultural Worker ◽  
Essential Condition ◽  
Work Program ◽  
Policy Paradigm ◽  
Migration Management ◽  
Temporary Migrant ◽  
Migrant Work

This chapter develops the argument that deportability, as it applies to participants in a temporary migrant work program (TMWP) permitting circularity, is an essential condition of possibility for migration management. Under this paradigm, TMWPs—such as the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP)—which are perceived to represent “best practices” by, for example, offering participants the prospect of return, simultaneously sustain this approach to governing migration and represent its limit, including in contexts in which unionization is permissible. The legal struggle of SAWP employees of Sidhu & Sons to unionize, secure a first collective agreement, and maintain bargaining unit strength gives substance to these claims. It reveals how deportability is lived among temporary migrant workers and the central modalities through which it functions. As such, these SAWP employees' experience provides rich empirical evidence for a grounded critique of migration management revealing that, despite its call for “regulated openness,” this global policy paradigm introduces new modes of control.

Getting Organized

2019 ◽  
pp. 42-64
Author(s):  
Leah F. Vosko
Keyword(s):  
Bargaining Unit ◽  
Collective Agreement ◽  
Agricultural Worker ◽  
Just Cause ◽  
Labour Relations ◽  
Legal Proceedings ◽  
Work Program ◽  
Temporary Migrant ◽  
Migrant Work

This chapter details the attempts of the union representing Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) employees at Sidhu & Sons to organize, gain certification, and secure a first collective agreement for a bargaining unit encompassing participants in a temporary migrant work program (TMWP) permitting circularity. Through an analysis of the legal proceedings surrounding United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) Local 1518's bid for certification, it explores SAWP employees' two important motivations for organizing: namely, to preempt termination without just cause prompting premature repatriation and to secure mechanisms for recall suitable to workers laboring transnationally. Local 1518, in seeking to represent SAWP employees, came up against tensions arising both from the Labour Relations Board's (LRB) understanding of its role of facilitating access to collective bargaining under the Labour Relations Code (LRC) and from limits posed by the parameters of the TMWP in play. Consequently, the unit obtained certification, but only on a restricted basis. At the same time, it introduced mechanisms aiming to limit termination without just cause prompting premature repatriation and offered novel provisions on recall and seniority.

Philippine Migrant Workers' Transnationalism in the Middle East

2011 ◽  
Vol 79 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-61
Author(s):  
Robyn Magalit Rodriguez
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Saudi Arabia ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Labor Rights ◽  
Neoliberal Globalization ◽  
Labor Activism ◽  
Labor Activists ◽  
International Conventions

AbstractHow do migrants assert their rights as workers when they do not enjoy the rights of citizenship in their countries of employment and are unable to assert their human rights through international conventions? This article focuses on the work of Migrante-International's Middle East chapter in Saudi Arabia. Specifically, it examines the ways Philippine migrants strategically assert their rights as Philippine citizens transnationally in local labor struggles. This case study of transnational labor activism in a region where migrant workers enjoy limited rights not only highlights how migrants exercise their agency in spite of major obstacles, but it also offers up novel ways to think about worker organizing within the context of contemporary neoliberal globalization for labor activists and scholars concerned with the labor rights of migrants.

scholarly journals Understanding the Role of the State in Promoting Capitalist Accumulation: A Case Study of the Canadian Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program

2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-133
Author(s):  
Joseph Yaw Asomah
Keyword(s):  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Agricultural Sector ◽  
The State ◽  
Neoliberal Globalization ◽  
Agricultural Worker ◽  
Immigration Laws ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
Policies And Practices

There is limited in-depth research focusing on how the state exerts power and its influence through immigration laws, policies and practices in structuring the relations of labour and capital in a manner that reflects capitalist interests. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to explore the role of the state in fostering capitalist accumulation, using the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) as a case study, and to consider the implications for policy. This paper addresses these questions: What shapes and reproduces labour-capital relations with reference to SAWP? What are the repercussions of these relations, particularly on the international migrant workers? What should be the role of the state and law in transforming these relations? The paper draws on a constellation of insights from neoliberal globalization, segmentation of labour theory, and a conceptual overview of the role of the state in regulating labour-capital relations to illuminate the discussions. This paper helps broaden our current understanding of how the state faciliates capitalist accumulation in the agricultural sector in Canada through immigration policies and practices with reference to the SAWP. The paper therefore makes a contribution to the theoretical debates on the role of the state in the facilitation of capitalist accumulation in agriculture.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Leah F. Vosko
Keyword(s):  
Bargaining Unit ◽  
Management Program ◽  
Collective Agreement ◽  
Agricultural Worker ◽  
Migration Management ◽  
Temporary Migrant ◽  
Migrant Work ◽  
Significant Phenomenon ◽  
Migration Experiences

This introductory chapter provides an overview of temporary migrant work. In the age of migration management, temporary migrant work is a significant phenomenon in many countries where relative labor shortages fuel demands for temporary migrant work programs (TMWPs) that provide comparatively low labor standards and wage levels. In this context, workers laboring transnationally in such programs are turning to unions for assistance in attempt to realize and retain access to rights. Yet even those engaged in highly regulated TMWPs permitting circularity—or repeated migration experiences involving one or more instances of emigration and return—confront significant obstacles tied to their deportability. This book tells the story of Mexican nationals participating in a subnational variant of Canada's model of migration management program, the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP). It explores how these workers organized to circumvent deportability, but despite achieving union certification, securing a collective agreement, and sustaining a bargaining unit, ultimately remained vulnerable to threats and acts of removal.

scholarly journals New Vulnerabilities for Migrants and Refugees in State Responses to the Global Pandemic, COVID-19

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 342
Author(s):  
Claudia Tazreiter ◽  
Simon Metcalfe
Keyword(s):  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Racial Capitalism ◽  
Neoliberal Capitalism ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
Humanitarian Interventions ◽  
Australian State ◽  
Temporary Migrant ◽  
The Social ◽  
State Responses

This article examines the global pandemic, COVID-19, through the lens of responses to vulnerable migrants, asking what state responses mean for the future of human rights values and for humanitarian interventions. The responses of the Australian state are developed as a case study of actions and policies directed at refugees and temporary migrant workers through the COVID-19 pandemic. The theoretical framing of the article draws on racial capitalism to argue that the developments manifest during the ‘crisis times’ of COVID-19 are in large part a continuity of the exclusionary politics of bordering practices at the heart of neoliberal capitalism. The article proposes that a rethinking of foundational theoretical and methodological approaches in the social sciences are needed to reflect contemporary changes in justice claims, claims that increasingly recognize the multi-species nature of existential threats to all life.

scholarly journals Dealing with Deportability: Deportation Laws and the Political Personhood of Temporary Migrant Workers in Singapore

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 267-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charanpal S. BAL
Keyword(s):  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Construction Workers ◽  
The Political ◽  
Governmental Organization ◽  
Workplace Conditions ◽  
Temporary Migrant ◽  
Construction Firm ◽  
Multi Level

AbstractBy severely constraining the political personhood of temporary migrant workers, states’ use of deportation laws seeks to curb agitation among these workers. Despite this, various episodes of unrest have been witnessed in both liberal and illiberal regimes across Asia. Drawing on a case study of Bangladeshi migrant construction workers in Singapore, this paper examines the development of migrant labour politics as deportation laws, and their enforcement, construct these workers as “use-and-discard” economic subjects. Data for the paper are drawn from multi-level sources—government, industry, media, and non-governmental organization (NGO) reports; interviews with key actors; and a participant observation stint in a construction firm—collected between 2010 and 2014. The paper argues that, rather than solely constraining, deportability serves as a constituent of certain forms of tactical worker contestations in the workplace. Specifically, under different workplace conditions, deportability can translate into differing forms of worker tactics, ranging from accommodation to confrontation and desertion. The outcomes of these strategies, in turn, have significant repercussions for the ways in which civil society groups and state-actors, respectively, challenge and reconfigure the political personhood of temporary migrant workers.

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