Non-Citizenship at Work: Labour Flexibility Behind the Counter in Western Canada

Abstract

This chapter analyses the role of immigration controls in furthering labour flexibility and worker vulnerability in Canada and the way that this flexibility and vulnerability dovetail with austerity. Non-citizenship is an uneven and contingent category, with social locations amplifying or ameliorating a migrant's experience of precariousness. In addition to a normative political discourse that criminalizes migrants and/or sees them as problems to be 'managed', regulations governing work and citizenship increasingly intersect, generating new and compounding insecurities, with the form of labour precarity depending on the specific immigration controls and labour regulation. The chapter explores how features of a new labour regime in Canada in the era of austerity and the increased presence of 'temporary migrant workers' in the quick-service restaurant industry promote increased labour flexibility and exacerbate migrant workers' vulnerability. Migrant workers face unique challenges, distinct from those of their domestic counterparts, and with their growing presence in low-wage Canadian worksites, the need to organize at the intersection of work and citizenship has become an urgent project.