Precarious Status Migrants Research Articles

Precarious reproductive citizenship: gaps in employment protections for pregnant precarious status migrants in Canada

ABSTRACT Understandings of citizenship have increasingly come to include the recognition of family care and reproduction as practices of citizenship and a recognition that migrants who are not citizens nonetheless engage in many practices of citizenship within their host state and rely on their host state for the fulfilment of basic human rights. This paper conceptualizes this intersection of immigration and reproduction as precarious reproductive citizenship, arguing that gaps in entitlements for pregnant precarious status migrants constitute reproductive injustice and present an important challenge for how we understand citizenship and human rights. This conceptualization is illustrated through interviews with women concerning their experiences of pregnancy and new motherhood while having precarious immigration status living in Montreal, Canada. It highlights three employment-related policies: employment discrimination protections, maternity and parental leave, and childcare. In each case, immigration status (directly or indirectly) acts as a barrier to accessing protections and programs meant to support gender equity and overall family thriving.

Canadian Health Personnel Attitudes Toward Refugee Claimants’ Entitlement to Health Care

Health care personnel attitudes toward refugee claimant entitlement to health care are influenced by multilevel factors including institutional and societal culture. Although individual attitudes may be modified through training, macro- and meso-issues require system-level interventions. This paper analyzes the role of individual-, institutional-, and city-level factors in shaping attitudes toward refugee claimants’ access to health care among Canadian health care personnel. A total of 4207 health care personnel in 16 institutions located in Montreal and Toronto completed an online survey on attitudes regarding health care access for refugee claimants. We used multilevel logistic regression analysis to identify individual-, institutional-, and city-level predictors of endorsing access to care. Participants who had prior contact with refugee claimants had greater odds of endorsing access to care than those who did not (OR 1.13; 95% CI 1.05, 1.21). Attitudes varied with occupation: social workers had the highest probability of endorsing equal access to health care (.83; 95% CI .77, .89) followed by physicians (.77; 95% CI .71, .82). An estimated 7.97% of the individual variation in endorsement of equal access to health care was attributable to differences between institutions, but this association was no longer statistically significant after adjusting for city residence. Results indicate that the contexts in which health care professionals live and work are important when understanding opinions on access to health care for vulnerable populations. They suggest that institutional interventions promoting a collective mission to care for vulnerable populations may improve access to health care for precarious status migrants.

‘Our aim is to assist migrants in making a well-informed decision’: how return counsellors in Austria and the Netherlands manage the aspirations of unwanted non-citizens

ABSTRACT European governments widely celebrate and extensively fund ‘assisted voluntary return’ (AVR) programmes and assume that return counsellors play an important role for their implementation. At the same time, relevant legislation only vaguely defines this role and reduces it to a passive and neutral provision of ‘objective information’. In this article, we therefore ask how much and what kind of agency individual counsellors exercise and how this affects the aim and nature of AVR. We argue that counsellors fulfil a highly ambiguous function within a system that overall aims to bring unwanted migrants’ decision-making in line with restrictive immigration law. This function requires considerable autonomy to choose and use the various kinds of information they provide. We conceptualise their work as ‘aspirations management’ that mediates the ‘asymmetrical negotiation’ between precarious status migrants and the governments seeking to deport them. Based on original qualitative data from Austria and the Netherlands, we analytically distinguish three fundamentally different counselling strategies: facilitating migrants’ existing return aspirations, obtaining their compliance without aspirations, and/or inducing aspirations for return. This framework not only helps us to conceptualise AVR counsellors’ specific agency, but will also be useful for analysing how other actors manage the aspirations of unwanted non-citizens.

Temporalising barriers: Postsecondary schooling access among precarious status students in Toronto

AbstractThis paper examines the landscape of access to postsecondary education (PSE) for precarious status migrants in Toronto, Canada. Drawing on interview data, the paper focuses on the barriers migrant students experience when attempting to enrol in PSE due to their immigration status and how that process changed after participating in a bridging course designed to facilitate their entry to a local PSE institution. The data reveals that participants experience temporal displacements (limbo, delay, and deficit) and engage in temporal negotiations given immigration and educational policy, institutional timelines, life course expectations, and day‐to‐day schedules. Although the bridging course is an important intervention towards the social inclusion of migrant students, these gains are curtailed by persisting financial and institutional barriers that perpetuate temporal displacements. The paper contributes to debates about the inclusion of precarious status migrants to membership rights and social goods by complicating understandings of access to PSE for precarious status migrants. It also widens our understanding of access to PSE for precarious status migrants beyond the U.S. context.

Human rights-based conceptions of deservingness: health and precarity

PurposeIdeas of health-related deservingness in theory and practise have largely been attached to humanitarian notions of compassion and care for vulnerable persons, in contrast to rights-based approaches involving a moral-legal obligation to care based on universal citizenship principles. This paper aims to provide an alternative to these frames, seeking to explore ideas of a human rights-based deservingness framework to understand health care access and entitlement amongst precarious status persons in Canada.Design/methodology/approachDrawing from theoretical conceptualizations of deservingness, this paper aims to bring deservingness frameworks into the language of human rights discourses as these ideas relate to inequalities based on noncitizenship.FindingsDeservingness frameworks have been used in public discourses to both perpetuate and diminish health-related inequalities around access and entitlement. Although, movements based on human rights have the potential to be co-opted and used to re-frame precarious status migrants as “undeserving”, movements driven by frames of human rights-based deservingness can subvert these dominant, negative discourses.Originality/valueTo date, deservingness theory has primarily been used to speak to issues relating to deservingness to welfare services. In relation to deservingness and precarious status migrants, much of the literature focuses on humanitarian notions of the “deserving” migrant. Health-related deservingness based on human rights has been under-theorized in the literature and the authors can learn from activist movements, precarious status migrants and health care providers that have taken on this approach to mobilize for rights based on being “human”.

Integration, Settler Colonialism, and Precarious Legal Status Migrants in Canada

Drawing on research with postsecondary migrant students with precarious legal status (those without permanent residence or citizenship), this paper examines the information participants learn about the settler colonialism and the histories of Indigenous peoples in Canada. Our findings suggest that like other residents of Canada, participants often access varied, limited, and often incorrect information. We propose that such variation in the accuracy and depth of information is not accidental, as accurate histories and contexts disrupt the narrative of a welcoming Canadian state. However, we also found that despite their immigration status, and experiences of precarity and deportability, a large proportion of participants made concerted efforts to learn about Indigenous peoples, histories, and contexts. Given our findings, we recommend that scholarship on immigrant integration in white settler societies like Canada account for settler colonialism for two reasons. First, to avoid engaging in methodological nationalism, or the focusing on nation-states as discrete or bounded units of analysis through which social relations operate. We focus on a specific and less examined aspect of methodological nationalism: a disregard for Indigenous sovereignty and nations. Second, to understand how differently situated im/migrants, including precarious legal status migrants participate, uphold, and resist the structures that produce and maintain settler colonialism.

Barriers and recruitment strategies for precarious status migrants in Montreal, Canada

BackgroundPrecarious status migrants are a group of persons who are vulnerable, heterogeneous, and often suspicious of research teams. They are underrepresented in population-based research projects, and strategies to recruit them are described exclusively in terms of a single cultural group. We analyzed the recruitment strategies implemented during a research project aimed at understanding precarious status migrants’ health status and healthcare access in Montreal, Canada. The research sample consisted of 854 persons recruited from a variety of ethnocultural communities between June 2016 and September 2017. This article analyzes the strategies implemented by the research team to respond to the challenges of that recruitment, and assess the effectiveness of those strategies. Based on the results, we share the lessons learned with a view to increasing precarious status migrants’ representation in research.MethodA mixed sequential design was used to combine qualitative data gathered from members of the research team at a reflexive workshop (n = 16) and in individual interviews (n = 15) with qualitative and quantitative data collected using the conceptual mapping method (n = 10).ResultsThe research team encountered challenges in implementing the strategies, related to the identification of the target population, the establishment of community partnerships, and suspicion on the part of the individuals approached. The combination of a venue-based sampling method, a communications strategy, and the snowball sampling method was key to the recruitment. Linking people with resources that could help them was useful in obtaining their effective and non-instrumental participation in the study. Creating a diverse and multicultural team helped build trust with participants. However, the strategy of matching the ethnocultural identity of the interviewer with that of the respondent was not systematically effective.ConclusionThe interviewers’ experience and their understanding of the issue are important factors to take into consideration in future research. More over, the development of a community resource guide tailored to the needs of participants should be major components of any research project targeting migrants. Finally, strategies should be implemented as the result of a continuous reflexive process among all members of the research team.

Ethnographic case study of a community day center for asylum seekers as early stage mental health intervention.

Clinical guidelines in refugee mental health increasingly advocate phased approaches to intervention that foreground the provision of pragmatic and social support in contexts of ongoing instability. However, the impact of such interventions has rarely been explored from the perspective of refugees themselves. We conducted ethnographic research on the experiences and perceptions of users of an intervention embodying this approach: a community Day Center for asylum seekers in Montreal. Data comprising 15 interviews and field notes from 50 participant observation visits were analyzed using an established theoretical framework to identify mechanisms supporting self-perceived wellbeing among users in the domains of safety, social networks, justice, identity/roles, and existential meaning. Results shed light on how this nonspecific buffering intervention responds to the threats and pressures asylum seekers themselves identify as most salient in the immediate postflight context. These findings are discussed in relation to emerging theoretical frameworks in refugee mental health that emphasize agency, justice, and the role of local ecologies. We conclude that the Day Center shows significant promise as an innovative early stage mental health intervention for precarious status migrants and merits further research and evaluation. (PsycINFO Database Record

The Future of Precarious Status Migrants' Right to Health Care in Canada

This article examines how health care services in Canada are denied to precarious status migrants, either through outright exclusion based on immigration status, or due to the realities in migrants’ lives that make it difficult for them to access health care services. The author argues that this situation is unfair, given the contribution made by precarious status migrants to Canada’s sociocultural and economic fabric, and exhorts the courts and policymakers to do more to make health care services available to these migrants.

The gap between entitlement and access to healthcare: An analysis of “candidacy” in the help-seeking trajectories of asylum seekers in Montreal

In 2012 the Canadian government made significant cuts to its historically strong federal refugee health coverage plan. While this policy had negligible effects on the level of coverage provided to asylum seekers in Quebec, there is evidence that this group nonetheless experienced reduced healthcare access during the period of polarized national debate that ensued. This study engaged the “candidacy” model of healthcare access to illuminate factors contributing to the observed gap between entitlement and access. Twenty-five semi-structured interviews were conducted with asylum seekers in Montreal to elicit narrative accounts of difficulties encountered in the pursuit of healthcare. Thematic content analysis in conjunction with a holistic examination of help-seeking trajectories revealed several important barriers to obtaining care, including widespread confusion and misinformation about refugee health coverage, cumbersome administrative procedures specific to asylum seekers, and long wait times. Feelings of marginalization and insecurity associated with precarious migratory status appeared to amplify the effects of these barriers to care such that even a minor access difficulty could have dramatic effects on future help-seeking and access outcomes. Demonstrating awareness of public discourses interrogating their deservingness of health coverage, participants often interpreted access difficulties as evidence of health professionals' unwillingness to serve them. Such interpretations conspired with fears associated with the asylum claim process to suppress self-advocacy, further help-seeking, and at times even information-seeking. This finding is particularly significant in that it suggests a mechanism through which hostile public representations of forced migrants–increasingly prevalent in Western host countries–can themselves endanger the physical, psychological, and social health of highly disadvantaged populations, even in the presence of strong entitlement policies. We close with reflections on how theoretical models of healthcare access might be adjusted to better accommodate the unique experiences of precarious status migrants.

Fishing for Precarious Status Migrants: Surveillant Assemblages of Migrant Illegalization in Toronto, Canada

Migrants with precarious immigration status in Canada encounter surveillant assemblages of illegalization that threaten their safety and ability to access social goods. Drawing on qualitative interviews, media stories, and government documents, this article analyses how surveillance is produced through various ways of knowing, by various actors, and in different institutions in Canada. My case study demonstrates that the sites of operation for surveillant assemblages of illegalization extend beyond immigration authorities and into more diffuse sources including the police, the health‐care sector, banks, employment agencies, and acquaintances. I also suggest that there is a level of overlap and integration among such sites, including the use of shared databases and the possibility that any interaction with precarious status migrants can be reported to immigration authorities.

Interlocking migrant illegalization with other markers of social location: The experiences of Mexican migrants moving and working in Toronto

Synopsis This paper is interested in placing the literature on social reproduction in conversation with that of migrant illegalization—the identification of certain migrants as not welcome in a nation-state both through discursive and material processes. More specifically, I am interested in how migrant illegalization interlocks with other forms of social location to designate certain bodies as open to exploitation and exclusion. The paper focuses on a case study of Mexican migrants with precarious immigration status and their experiences in navigating the embodied process of moving through and working in the city of Toronto. I propose that the interlocking of migrant illegalization and the profiling of bodies as exploitable and suspicious limits precarious status migrants’ – those that do not have permanent residence or citizenship – ability to access social goods, decent work and the networks required to improve their social context.

‘I can't even buy a bed because I don't know if I'll have to leave tomorrow’: temporal orientations among Mexican precarious status migrants in Toronto

This paper analyzes the links between migrant illegalization and precarious status migrants' temporal orientations. I begin by evaluating research on three research orientations in this area: (1) research that focuses on temporal contingency versus temporal teleology; (2) research about immigration status, illegalization, and time; and (3) research on the link between precarious immigration status and precarious work. I then draw on interviews with 13 Mexican migrants with precarious immigration status to discuss how immigration status affects migrants' ability to make plans, secure decent work, and experience a sense of belonging in the context of reception (Toronto, Canada). I conclude by arguing for a framework of temporal contingency when analyzing precarious status migrants' narratives of temporal orientations.

Pathways to Healthcare for Migrant Workers : How Can Health Entitlement Influence Occupational Health Trajectories ?

This article draws on an exploratory study of the experiences of precarious status migrants in their attempts to access healthcare. We surveyed 211 men and women migrants and did 31 semi-structured follow-up interviews. For the purposes of this article, we report on the 78 respondents who were either recruited to Canada specifically as workers (temporary foreign workers) or who had no access to income support and were therefore likely to be working (undocumented workers). We begin the article with an overview of the literature linking migration status to difficult healthcare access and higher risk of OHS problems. After presenting our methods, we turn to the results, outlining how migrant workers are using a combination of social networks, Quebec professionals and transnational healthcare connections to address their health concerns. Our findings offer insight to OHS professionals seeking to understand the differential outcomes for immigrants faced with workplace accidents or illnesses. Can difficult access to healthcare become a barrier to full recourse in cases of workplace injury or illness among migrant workers ?