Family Matters: Navigating the Intentional Precarity of Racialized Migrant and Refugee Workers in Canadian Meatpacking

Abstract

In Canada, the meatpacking industry relies heavily on a workforce comprised of racialized migrants and immigrants, many of whom are former refugees. In the spring of 2020, the industry saw devastating COVID-19 outbreaks leading to hundreds of infections, numerous fatalities and plant closures in Southern Alberta. Based on findings from a community-university research partnership, the intersections of immigration status and the conditions of work faced by im/migrant-refugee workers are analyzed in the Alberta meatpacking industry. Drawing on 225 survey responses and 17 qualitative interviews with im/migrant and refugee workers, the concept of ‘intentional precarity’ is advanced to explore the strategies that the industry uses to maintain a docile workforce. This paper makes three contributions. First, we present original accounts of the 2020 COVID-19 outbreaks in Canadian meatpacking from the perspective of im/migrant workers; second, we demonstrate that im/migrant workers are not just autonomous labourers, but rather people embedded in caring and kin networks that are both local and transnational; and third, we unpack the fraught relationship between im/migrant workers, their families and the dirty, difficult, dangerous (3D) – and, during COVID-19, deadly – work environments. We argue that families act as a buffer against 3D work by offering protection and assistance in times of crisis, such as the COVID-19 outbreaks in slaughterhouses. Yet, obligations to support family are also often the primary reason for workers to take jobs in meatpacking in the first place.