Activist Learning and Temporary Agency Workers in Quebec

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter addresses learning and nonformal education in the course of organizing migrant and immigrant (im/migrant) temporary agency workers through the Immigrant Workers Centre (IWC) and the Temporary Agency Workers Association (TAWA) in Montreal. The IWC/TAWA organizing approach with agency workers is based on community organizing, activist knowledge production, popular education, and leadership development. Activist education work has helped to foster sustained organizing and campaigns against exploitation by temp agencies in Quebec. This has led to important gains like a recently adopted law that includes several provisions to regulate agencies. We build on critical ethnographic activist research, radical adult education literature concerning social movements, and apply Freire's concepts of limit situations and untested feasibility to TAWA/IWC organizing approaches. We argue that precarious work entails both vulnerability and resistance, and suggest that researchers should attend to the role of activist education, learning, and knowledge production to better understand social and economic justice struggles.