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Abstract
‘Managed migration’ schemes promote mobility of labour across international borders, diversifying worksites and introducing new systems of enacting labour consent. This article examines how Canadian franchisees are recruiting Filipino migrants to staff their restaurants, facilitating employers’ access to new, flexible subjects. These workers covet their employment as pathways to Canadian citizenship. Some are unaware, however, that they are recruited under a precarious immigration scheme, one that neither directly denies nor facilitates access to legal incorporation. Instead, migrants are (transnationally) encouraged to compete in the worksite for employer-nominated citizenship, a highly productive system for engendering consent. This draws attention to new challenges ‘managed migration’ schemes pose for resisting downward pressures on work and employment conditions.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the University of British Columbia and the Liu Institute for Global Issues at the University of British Columbia for the financial and institutional support to carry out this project. Also, many thanks to Drs. Jennifer Chun, Gillian Creese, Sylvia Fuller and Geraldine Pratt for the support and guidance with my dissertation project, from which this article emerges.
Notes
1. Arndt, “Globalization.”
2. Wickramasekara, “Globalisation,” 1249.
3. Boucher, “A Critique.”
4. Sharma, Home Economics.
5. Munck, “Globalisation, Governance and Migration.”
6. ESDC, “Temporary Foreign Worker Program.”
7. Preibisch, “Pick your own Labor.”
8. Burawoy, Manufacturing Consent; Lee, Gender and the South; Rosenthal, “Management Control”; and Sewell and Wilkinson, “‘Someone to Watch over Me’.”
9. Anderson, “Migration”; Preibisch, “Pick your own Labor”; and Rogaly, “Intensification of Workplace Regimes.”
10. MacKenzie and Forde, “The Rhetoric of the ‘Good Worker’,” 156.
11. Royle and Towers, Labour Relations, 192.
12. Penfold, The Donut, 113.
13. Tannock, Youth at Work, 5.
14. Leidner, Fast Food, Fast Talk.
15. Royle and Towers, Labour Relations.
16. Reiter, Making Fast Food; Reiter, “Fast Food in Canada”; and Talwar, Fast Food, Fast Track.
17. Leidner, Fast Food, Fast Talk, 51.
18. Schlosser, Fast Food Nation, 73.
19. Ritzer, The McDonaldization of Society, 84.
20. Leidner, Fast Food, Fast Talk; and Schlosser, Fast Food Nation.
21. Tannock, Youth at Work, 52.
22. Sherman, Class Acts, 77.
23. Love and Hoey, “Management Science”; and Qin and Prybutok, “Service Quality.”
24. Macdonald and Sirianni, Working in the Service Society, 12.
25. Constani and Gibbs, “Emotional Labour and Surplus Value.”
26. Seymour, “Emotional Labour.”
27. Hochschild, “Emotion Work.”
28. Government of Alberta, “Alberta Immigration Nominee Program.”
29. ‘Food counter attendant’ is the official title for entry-level positions in fast food restaurants in Canada. During the time of my study both British Columbia and Alberta had PNPs under which food counter attendants could be nominated for permanent residency, and Alberta continues to retain this practice. However, British Columbia removed food counter attendants from its PNP recently, while other provinces (like Saskatchewan) continue to include them in their list of nominable occupations. Moreover, the list of potential occupations is constantly evolving. While this practice for fast food in British Columbia is currently on hold, it is likely to be temporary (given heavy industry lobbying), and continues to affect workplace regimes in fast food worksites across other provinces and occupations.
30. Guevarra, Marketing Dreams, Manufacturing Heroes; and Rodriguez, Migrants for Export.
31. All names of participants in or of people approached for this study have been changed.
32. The agency’s full name is ‘Mercan Canada Employment Philippines Incorporation’.
33. A ‘double-double’ is the term used in Tim Hortons restaurants to describe coffees with two milks and two sugars.
34. Rogaly, “Intensification of Workplace Regimes.”
35. Schlosser, Fast Food Nation, 75.
36. Faier, Intimate Encounters; Parreñas, Servants of Globalization; and Paul, “Stepwise International Migration.”
37. Polanco "Culturally Tailored Workers for Specialised Destinations" ; Guevarra, Marketing Dreams, Manufacturing Heroes; and Rodriguez, “Migrants for Export.”
38. When employers recruit workers transnationally, they can be significantly more choosy and require qualifications that they could never demand locally because of low wages and lack of availability. See Preibisch, “Pick your own Labor.” The increased specialisation associated with global recruitment, moreover, is an important feature of managed migration schemes.
39. Polanco, "Behind the Counter: Migration, Labour Policy and Temporary Work in a Global Fast Food Place".
40. Paul, “Stepwise International Migration,” 1842.
41. Binford, “From Fields of Power”, 514.
42. Barber, “The Ideal Immigrant?”; and Rodriguez and Schwenken, “Becoming a Migrant,” 378.
43. Anderson, “‘Migration,” 300.
44. Preibisch, “Pick your own Labor,” 414.
45. Faraday, Made in Canada; and Sharma, Home Economics.
46. Anderson, “Migration”; and Rogaly, “Intensification of Workplace Regimes.”
47. Preibisch and Binford, “Interrogating Racialized Global Labour Supply.”
48. Oxman-Martinez et al., “‘Another Look.”
49. Peck, Work-place; and Vosko et al., Liberating Temporariness?
50. Sharma, Home Economics.
51. Goldring and Landolt, Producing and Negotiating Non-citizenship.
52. Rogaly, “Intensification of Workplace Regimes.”
53. Preibisch, “Pick your own Labor,” 406.
54. Bakan and Stasiulis, Not One of the Family.
55. CIC, “Facts and Figures 2012.”
56. Polanco, "Globalizing ‘Immobile’ Occupations."
57. See Polanco 2013.
58. See Polanco Forthcoming.
59. The changes to the S-LSO have been partly orchestrated to curb employer reliance on TMWs. They include (but are not limited to) an increase in employer fees for a Labour Market Impact Assessment from Can$275 to $1000, caps on the total percentage of migrant workers per worksite at 10% and a ‘four-four rule’ whereby low-waged TMWs can work in Canada for a maximum of four years, at which point they must leave the country and may only return as guest workers after a four-year period (with the exception of the SAWP). While these amendments may arguably dissuade some employers from looking for workers overseas, they also have the potential to make migrants even more vulnerable to employers and unscrupulous labour consultants (with promises of pathways to citizenship). In pragmatic (though not explicit) terms they also orient TMWs to the stress instituted by the threat of deportation from the outset.
60. Hennebry, “Who has their Eye on the Ball?”
61. The literature has shown that not all workers manage to obtain permanent residency through the LCP. See, for example, Oxman-Martinez et al., “Another Look.” However, while some are denied transition on questionable grounds, there is nevertheless an institutionalised pathway. Workers may also initiate the process after meeting a set of criteria.
62. Leidner, Fast Food, Fast Talk.
63. Ibid; and Reiter, “Fast Food in Canada.”
64. Tannock, Youth at Work.
65. See Polanco Forthcoming.
66. Preibisch, “Pick your own Labor.”
67. Ibid., 413.
68. Binford, “From Fields of Power.”
69. Salzinger, Genders in Production.
70. Rodriguez and Schwenken, “Becoming a Migrant,” 385.
71. See also Lee, Gender and the South.
72. For example, Hochschild, Facing up to the American Dream; and Thai, Sufficient Funds.
73. Munck, “Globalisation, Governance and Migration,” 1239.
74. Ibid., 1227.
75. Wickramasekara, “Globalisation,” 1261.