Migration Regimes and the Production of (Labor) Unfreedom

They [Canadians] feel like we're [Filipinos are] taking their jobs. But they don't like the job! That's why we're here. But temporary foreign workers can also not defend themselves [ourselves]. So the employer just do whatever they want. Because we can't talk, we can't protest, we can't quit. You feel bad, you feel angry. But you can't quit

Temporary migrant worker programs (TMWPs) are widely touted as promising pathways for Southern countries looking to stimulate development. A large body of literature, however, has documented the widespread vulnerabilities associated with temporary labor schemes, including the institutionalization of labor unfreedom.¹ This tension raises important questions regarding the limits of managed migration, including the changing nature of citizenship invoked under these arrangements.

In this article, I consider the plight of Filipino migrants recruited to work for Canada's leading fast-food corporation, Tim Hortons. Drawing from field research conducted in the Philippines and western Canada, I outline some ways in which labor migrants in Canada are inherently "unfree," and then turn to an analysis of a Canadian-Filipino fast-food labor chain to delineate how Filipino labor migrants are specifically unfree. The concept of unfree labor operates as a useful analytical tool that highlights a continuum of exploitation along which certain groups and individuals have particular vulnerabilities.² Through specifying the nature of unfreedom in the Canadian context and the role of immigration policies in inciting these conditions, I show how unfreedom refers to both the employment relationship and exclusions from citizenship, the latter mediated by dimensions of migrant social location. Moreover, while literature on unfreedom may generally focus on the employment contract, it is not only a question of labor rights and vulnerabilities, but also centrally about (racialized) social exclusion and belonging from the nation. My central contention is that Filipino nationals are both inherently and distinctly unfree, and that a primary element organizing the latter occurs in the sending context through the workings of the Filipino migration apparatus. To illustrate this, I employ an analysis of migration and citizenship policy alongside the employment contract to trace the contours of unfreedom in the law and in employment relations. A corollary argument I advance is that while much has been written about unfree labor and the various factors that entrap workers in coerced employment relations, a route to "freedom" in the employment relationship may actually further entrap migrants, and be an increasingly important factor involved in organizing experiences of contemporary, bonded mobility.

Methodology

This study draws from multisited research conducted between 2009 and 2011 in western Canada and the Philippines. Taking Tim Hortons as my case study for analysis, I sought to understand the relatively new waves of hospitality workers recruited under a newly minted managed migration program. Through filing multiple Data and Freedom of Information requests with the immigration and labor arms of the Canadian federal government, I learned that more than two-thirds of workers sought for recruitment by Tim Hortons' western Canadian franchisees were from the Philippines. Accordingly, Filipino migrants and the Filipino migration apparatus became the focus of my study.

Ethnographic field research was conducted in the western Canadian provinces of Alberta and British Columbia as well as in the Philippines (primarily in Manila) in spaces relevant to the organization of these flows. The study was largely inductive and involved participant observation at job fairs, industry conferences, grassroots organizing spaces, migrant communities, and Filipino government-required predeparture orientation seminars (PDOS) in the Philippines. I also conducted sixty-two semistructured interviews in western Canada and the Philippines with those involved in the organization of these flows. This includes Canadian and Filipino government bureaucrats, labor recruiters and consultants, Tim Hortons franchise owners, fast-food workers (domestic and guest), and NGO and grassroots activists who interface regularly with migrant workers in both Canada and the Philippines. More recently, I bolstered these data with new Data and Freedom of Information requests as well as consulted government reports and media sources detailing recent changes to Canada's TMWP.

Temporary Migrant Worker Programs: A Case of Unfreedom

Many states...