(SPE5) Precarious legal status dynamics and social inequities and inequalities in Canada
Friday Jun 21 11:00 am to 12:30 pm (Eastern Daylight Time)
Trottier Building - ENGTR 0060
Session Code: SPE5
Session Format: Paper Presentations
Session Language: English, French
Research Cluster Affiliation: Social Policy and Social Equality, Sociology of Migration
Session Categories: Bilingual, In-person Session
Legal status has become a significant fault line of social inequality in Canada. The share of newcomers who arrive without permanent residence is growing. Some of those arriving with a temporary permit to work or study, apply for asylum in Canada, or visitor visa will remain in the country. Their work or study permit may or may not offer a clear path to PR; their humanitarian application may be refused. In the process of place-making, they (1) may try to obtain secure status, generating diverse and multi-directional legal status trajectories, and (2) may find ways to negotiate access to services in ways that are not necessarily durable. These two broad types of processes may entail multi-actor negotiations of boundaries, and the dynamics intersect with various arenas including employment, health, housing, etc. They also dynamically contribute to shaping the short- and longer-term well-being of newcomers who spend time in situations of precarious legal status (PR). This panel will examine the relationship between legal status precarity and various arenas (work, health, housing, education, organizing, etc.) as part of an effort to make visible the implications of precarious legal status dynamics and temporalities for patterns of social inequality and differential inclusion. Tags: Equality and Inequality, Migration and Immigration, Policy
Organizers: Marie-Pier Joly, Concordia University, Luin Goldring, York University; Discussant: Eugénie Depatie-Pelletier, Association for the Rights of Household and Farm Workers
Presentations
Charles Fleury, Université Laval
Au cours des années 2000, la politique migratoire canadienne a donné lieu à des développements visant l’accroissement du recours aux travailleurs étrangers temporaires afin de parfaire l’arrimage entre la sélection des immigrants et les besoins du marché du travail et pallier les pénuries de main-d’œuvre dans certains secteurs (Piché, 2012). Ainsi, le nombre de travailleurs temporaires admis au Canada dépasse maintenant celui des résidents permanents admis la même année et ne cesse de croître d’année en année. Si les employeurs et les gouvernements voient d’un bon œil la capacité d’avoir recours à une main-d’œuvre étrangère flexible répondant à des besoins ciblés et à court terme, nombre de chercheurs et plusieurs organismes de protection des droits des travailleurs conçoivent les programmes de travail temporaire comme une source de précarité et de vulnérabilité (Noiseux, 2012; Faraday, 2014; Goldring et Landolt, 2013 ; Fleury et al., 2019). Il demeure qu’une part croissante de travailleurs étrangers temporaires obtiennent la résidence permanente au bout de quelques années (Lu et Hou, 2017). Selon les estimations de Picot et al. (2022), le taux de transition sur cinq ans vers la résidence permanente parmi les travailleurs étrangers temporaires est passé de 18% de ceux admis entre 2000 et 2004 à 25% pour ceux admis entre 2005 et 2009 et ceux admis entre 2010 et 2014. Pour ces trois cohortes, le taux de transition se situe autour de 30% chez les travailleurs peu qualifiés, alors qu’il s’est accru chez les travailleurs qualifiés, étant passé de 11% pour la cohorte arrivée entre 2000 et 2004 à 27% pour celle arrivée entre 2010 et 2014. On connait néanmoins très peu de choses sur les trajectoires menant à l’obtention de la résidence permanente parmi ces travailleurs étrangers temporaires. Quels sont les différentes trajectoires de statut menant à la résidence permanente parmi les résidents temporaires ? Outre les restrictions relatives aux programmes de résidents temporaires, quels facteurs favorisent l’obtention rapide de la résidence permanente et quels sont ceux qui semblent la retarder, voire l’empêcher ? Quelles formes d’inégalités ces facteurs révèlent-ils ? Cette communication entend répondre à ces interrogations et examine, pour ce faire, les trajectoires de statuts des travailleurs étrangers temporaires admis au Canada depuis 2006. Elle vise plus spécifiquement à repérer les différentes trajectoires menant à la résidence permanente et celles n’y menant pas, et à identifier les caractéristiques et déterminants de chacune d’elles. L’analyse s’appuie sur les données administratives longitudinales de la Base de données canadienne sur la dynamique employeurs-employés . Cette base de données de Statistique Canada combine des informations sur les résidents temporaires et les résidents permanents ainsi que sur leur activité sur le marché du travail. Nous recourrons à la méthode de l’analyse des séquences pour repérer les différentes trajectoires et aux méthodes de régression pour identifier les caractéristiques et déterminants de ces trajectoires.
Luin Goldring, York University; Marie-Pier Joly, Concordia University
The paper addresses literature on the role of legal status dynamics as a fault line of social inequality, focusing on Canada. We use a unique survey data set consisting of responses from people who arrived in Canada without permanent residence (n=1,266). The survey includes information on complex legal status trajectories that may include trajectories outside those expected in the prevailing two-step policy model, and on job quality at two points in time. This allows us to analyze the factors associated with employment precarity or job quality upon arrival, and at time of survey. Our analysis considers whether job quality improves with time and the acquisition of permanent residence, and identifies and discusses factors that contribute to long-term job precarity.
Non-presenting author: Patricia Landolt, University of Toronto
Capucine Coustere, Université Laval
Two-step migration has dramatically increased in Canada, following a significant rise in temporary migration. Authors argue that it turns the temporary period into a “test of desirability” (Bélanger et al., 2023), where holding a precarious legal status contributes to the selection process of future permanent residents. However, few studies have explored how the process of meeting the requirements of programs of transition to permanent residency (PR) is experienced by aspiring candidates. Based on the case of aspiring applicants to PR in Quebec (Canada), a province with a distinct pathway to PR, this presentation will aim at examining how the process of trying to become eligible to shifting criteria of permanent residency affects aspiring applicants’ life course. It draws on a qualitative longitudinal study consisting in repeated interviews in 2019, 2020 and 2022 with 19 migrants in Quebec at different stages of transition to PR, analyzed with the life course approach. In this presentation, we will argue that since selection criteria of inland transition to PR determine eligible life courses, they may deeply influence aspiring candidates’ decision making and life courses while they try to adapt to shifting regulations. Indeed, to match their actual trajectories to frequently shifting prescribed trajectories, they might need to alter their life course, though what we called a compliance process . The compliance process is thus a result of their use of agency in the constrained system of precarious temporary permits to earn the right to get a secure residence status. First, we will analyze the time sensitiveness of the compliance process’s temporal aspects, which requires to pursue two “races” (Nourpanah, 2021) at the same time: becoming eligible and maintaining a valid residence status, all the while holding a precarious status. To conform their life course to the eligibility criteria, aspiring applicants might make strategic choices within the constraints of their temporary permits, while trying to maintain a valid residence status. Failing at managing those temporalities entails risks of increased precariousness. This temporalities’ management contributes to the selection process of aspiring applicants faced with different probabilities of success, while increasing the precariousness of those whose visa restrictions and migration project’s timing limit the ability to run both races. Second, we examine how they negotiate frequent policy changes shifting the expected characteristics of the desirable permanent resident, that may render strategies to conform to the selection criteria useless. To comply – again –, aspiring candidates are expected to further bend their life course to become eligible, without any insurance of being protected from a future reform. Policy shifts in programs of transition to PR appear as critical moments of migration projects and strategies’ reassessment with a reopening of mobility options. When it happens, aspiring applicants are more susceptible to comparing Quebec and the rest of Canada’s transitioning programs to PR. However, their ability to quickly adapt to such shifts is limited and depends partly on their timing their life course. In sum, with no guarantee of success, risks of status loss and unintended changes in life trajectories, complying to shifting pathways to PR might increase temporary migrants’ precariousness. In practice, shifting characteristics of desired migrants do not always translate into the selection of different people. Previously eligible temporary migrants may actively try to conform to the new selection criteria, adapting to those changes becoming part of the process of selection. However, this compliance process leads to longer, more tortuous, and precarious trajectories to become eligible again, with long potential effects on aspiring applicants’ life course even after obtaining PR.
Non-presenting author: Danièle Bélanger, Université Laval
Daniele Belanger, Université Laval
Leaving abuse, entering uncertainty: temporary migrant workers in Canada
In recent years, there has been a significant increase in the admission of temporary residents in Canada, with a majority of them entitled to a work permit. Among them, temporary residents admitted under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) receive employer-specific and job category-specific work permits, limiting their labor market mobility and fostering a power imbalance that favors employers, thus compelling workers to tolerate abusive conditions. Approximately a third of those entering Canadian borders under the International mobility stream also have an employer specific work permit and face the same issues. The precarious situation associated with these conditions of stay has been extensively researched by academics and acknowledged by federal authorities. Consequently, in June 2019, the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) implemented the Open Work Permit for Vulnerable Workers (VWOWP) program, which recognizes the challenging conditions often encountered within the TFWP, leading to instances of abuse. The VWOWP program authorizes immigration officers to grant open work permits to migrant workers demonstrating sufficient evidence suggesting that they are either undergoing abuse or are vulnerable to abuse in their workplace. Since its inception, approximately 4000 applicants have been granted an open work permit under the program. Scant research on this program has underscored inconsistencies in the assessment of applications, procedural fairness issues, difficulties in accessing the program and the small number of open work permits granted in relation to the high volumes of temporary foreign workers. This research builds on these previous studies to further our understanding of the program’s effects on migrant workers who attempt to leave an abusive workplace through it. Drawing on semi-structured interviews (n=45) conducted with migrants working in the provinces of Quebec, Ontario, and British Columbia conducted in collaboration with community organizations, our research analyzes workers trajectories who experienced abuse and apply for an open work permit through the VWOWP program. The presentation aims to shed light on the following questions: Does the VWOWP program contribute in reducing workers legal precarious status in Canada? What happens to workers who apply to the program with respect to their trajectory of employment, migration status, housing and social network once they leave their abusive employer? Inspired by Goldring’s theorization of trajectory as method and the work of status, we analyse these questions. The presentation will underscore significant inequalities when it comes to gaining access to the program in the first place, and the novel forms of precariousness encountered by migrant workers to whom VWOWP has been issued. Our contribution is to document how migrants strategize to gain access to the program and how they maneuver once they have an open work permit to mitigate risks and uncertainties. Migrants mobilize all their resources to leave their abusive employer despite the high risk of such decision; many undergo various administrative procedures simultaneously to maintain their status and resort to various actors to assist them. They navigate a fine line between one precarious legal status to another, to often find themselves in a cycle of abuse and precarity. Migrants’ experiences and viewpoints on the program unravels critical negative repercussions of the program.
Non-presenting author: Myriam Ouellet, Université Laval
Aurélie Etienne, University of Toronto
Crossing Borders: The Political Subjectivation of Migrant Workers with Temporary Status in Canada
Canada’s migration policy has undergone a major shift in recent decades, from an approach centered on permanent immigration to a system increasingly focused on temporary migration (Goldring 2014). As a result, the proportion of migrants with precarious legal status in Canada has grown significantly. These statuses, which only allow temporary presence on the territory, produce conditions of social and political exclusion as well as economic subordination for these migrants (Dauvergne and Marsden 2014; Goldring 2014; Vosko et al. 2014). Bound to a subordinate social position with limited rights, temporary migrants are particularly vulnerable to abuse, violence, and exploitation in their workplaces (Binford 2019; Fraser 2016). Despite an adverse context for collective organizing and advocacy, there are many examples of resistance where these workers have sought to defend their rights and transform their conditions in Canada. My presentation will shed light on such resistances, by exploring how migrant workers come to act politically in Canada, and how these political actions are experienced. To do so, I will examine the specific case of a migrant workers’ center operating in several municipalities across the province of Québec. My analysis is informed by theoretical perspectives on political subjectivation drawn from political philosophy (Badiou 2003; Rancière 1995) and the sociology of social movements (Isin 2002, 2012; Tarragoni 2016). Political subjectivation is defined as a process by which individuals or groups contest the subordinate social position assigned to them by a dominant political order and seek to redefine that position in a more egalitarian way. Political subjectivation is inextricably individual and collective, as this subjective transformation always emerges from a given social milieu and necessarily involves the creation or transformation of a political collective (Tarragoni 2016). Thus, based on a fieldwork within a migrant workers’ center, my research aims to shed light on the emergence and development of political subjectivation among workers involved in this collective. I pay particular attention to the dialectic between the individual and collective poles of this phenomenon. The case study selected for this research, the Immigrant Workers Centre (IWC), is a workers’ center originally based in Montréal but also active in several other municipalities across Québec (e.g., Rivière-du-Loup, Québec City, Saguenay). For more than twenty years, the IWC has defended the rights of migrant workers in Québec by providing individual support, sharing knowledge through popular education, and facilitating the collective organizing of migrant workers. During my fieldwork at the IWC, I conducted semi-structured interviews (n=13) with migrant workers and community organizers involved in the center, as well as participant observation of daily activities. My goal was to better understand the trajectories and experiences of the migrant workers involved. My presentation will highlight various everyday practices and social relations that promote the political subjectivation of migrant workers in IWC, including the central practice of “casework.” At IWC, this term refers to the practice of providing individualized support to migrant workers who are experiencing problems at work or in their migration process. Casework is the main entry point for migrant workers at IWC. More than a service, workers experience casework as a process of learning about their rights, recognizing the injustice of their situation, and taking action to change the parameters of that situation. This dynamic is made possible by IWC’s distinctive approach to casework, based on active worker participation and popular education. However, this distinctive approach is sometimes compromised by the time and material constraints faced by organizers. These transformative experiences, as well as the culture of mutual aid and conviviality that characterizes the Center, ultimately result in the institution of a political community of migrant workers. This community is constantly evolving in response to the contributions of individual members, especially those with strong activist backgrounds rooted in their home countries.