Legislated Inequality: Temporary Labour Migration in Canada ed. by Patti Tamara Lenard and Christine Straehle (review)

In recent years the number of migrants to Canada who are employed on temporary labour contracts has increased substantially. Most of these workers have been low-skilled and employed in agricultural labour or domestic caregiving. This book brings together a collection of papers about the programmes which recruit temporary workers, considering their implications for the permanent workforce and reporting on the experiences of temporary workers. The editors, with a background in applied moral philosophy, identify the main question at the centre of this volume as ‘whether the expansion of low-skilled temporary labour migration poses urgent moral challenges that must be addressed’ (p. 2; emphasis in original). The contributors write from perspectives which include geography, political studies, social work, sociology and community activism, with viewpoints which are critical of the temporary foreign workers’ programmes. An introductory chapter summarises the main schemes for temporary foreign workers, provides an overview of the book and raises issues about temporary workers’ rights and their long-term integration in Canadian society. Whereas some chapters are primarily conceptual in orientation, others include the results of empirical studies of the lives and working conditions of temporary migrants. The theoretically orientated chapters locate discussion of temporary workers within global and political economy perspectives. Nandita Sharma analyses the status of temporary workers and considers the implications of ‘no borders’ movements and the rights of commoners. Kerry Preibisch and Jenna Hennebry place the use of temporary agricultural workers in a global context. Abigail Bakan and Daiva Stasiulis take a political economy approach to consideration of migrant live-in caregivers. The chapters based upon empirical studies include Jenna Hennebry and Janet McLaughlin, writing about vulnerability to illness and injury among agricultural workers, drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Ontario. Sara Torres and others use evidence from interviews and focus groups with women in the Live in Caregivers Program, revealing profiles of disadvantage, social isolation and poverty. Overall, the collection clarifies the extent to which Canada is dependent upon workers in essential areas such as agriculture and caregiving who come from developing societies such as Guatemala, Mexico and the Philippines. A concluding chapter by Patti Tamara Lenard locates Canadian temporary labour migration programmes in comparative perspective, commenting that ‘temporary migrants operate at the margins of Canadian society, the victims of multiple forms of discrimination’ (p. 296). Since the contributions to this book were written, the trend of Canadian employers’ use of temporary migrant workers has increased and extended to include high-skilled workers. Legal cases, and reforms in the 2013 federal budget, have raised issues of the employment rights and working conditions of temporary workers while also indicating consequences for employment and wage levels within the permanent labour force. This volume is a timely collection, with substantial contributions. It is an example of work from a critical social science perspective which contributes to theoretical analysis while possessing sufficient coherence to inform social policy.