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Introduction

Leah F. Vosko

in Disrupting Deportability: Transnational Workers Organize

This introductory chapter provides an overview of temporary migrant work. In the age of migration management, temporary migrant work is a significant phenomenon in many countries where relative labor ... More

This introductory chapter provides an overview of temporary migrant work. In the age of migration management, temporary migrant work is a significant phenomenon in many countries where relative labor shortages fuel demands for temporary migrant work programs (TMWPs) that provide comparatively low labor standards and wage levels. In this context, workers laboring transnationally in such programs are turning to unions for assistance in attempt to realize and retain access to rights. Yet even those engaged in highly regulated TMWPs permitting circularity—or repeated migration experiences involving one or more instances of emigration and return—confront significant obstacles tied to their deportability. This book tells the story of Mexican nationals participating in a subnational variant of Canada's model of migration management program, the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP). It explores how these workers organized to circumvent deportability, but despite achieving union certification, securing a collective agreement, and sustaining a bargaining unit, ultimately remained vulnerable to threats and acts of removal.Less

Deportability among Temporary Migrant Workers: An Essential Condition of Possibility for Migration Management

Leah F. Vosko

in Disrupting Deportability: Transnational Workers Organize

This chapter develops the argument that deportability, as it applies to participants in a temporary migrant work program (TMWP) permitting circularity, is an essential condition of possibility for ... More

This chapter develops the argument that deportability, as it applies to participants in a temporary migrant work program (TMWP) permitting circularity, is an essential condition of possibility for migration management. Under this paradigm, TMWPs—such as the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP)—which are perceived to represent “best practices” by, for example, offering participants the prospect of return, simultaneously sustain this approach to governing migration and represent its limit, including in contexts in which unionization is permissible. The legal struggle of SAWP employees of Sidhu & Sons to unionize, secure a first collective agreement, and maintain bargaining unit strength gives substance to these claims. It reveals how deportability is lived among temporary migrant workers and the central modalities through which it functions. As such, these SAWP employees' experience provides rich empirical evidence for a grounded critique of migration management revealing that, despite its call for “regulated openness,” this global policy paradigm introduces new modes of control.Less

Sustaining Bargaining Unit Strength: The Specter of Attrition

Leah F. Vosko

in Disrupting Deportability: Transnational Workers Organize

This chapter explores challenges to maintaining strong bargaining units posed by threats of attrition, either through formal decertification or by other means producing similar outcomes. It first ... More

This chapter explores challenges to maintaining strong bargaining units posed by threats of attrition, either through formal decertification or by other means producing similar outcomes. It first documents trends in numerical attrition at Sidhu & Sons, in the context of Canada's introduction of other more highly deregulated temporary migrant work programs (TMWPs) operating in agriculture and those programs' subsequent growth. The size of the bargaining unit at Sidhu, comprised of SAWP employees exclusively, shrank after certain employees' attempt to decertify it, despite the fact that the Labour Relations Board (LRB) had refused to cancel its certification. Given the absence of an active attempt to decertify the bargaining unit, it is nevertheless difficult to determine how attrition continued at Sidhu. To demonstrate the how of this often subtle modality of deportability, the chapter then chronicles strategies fostering attrition in the bargaining unit encompassing SAWP employees at Floralia Plant Growers Ltd., which the union originally tried to draw into the foregoing complaint of unfair labor practices and coercion and intimidation directed at Sidhu.Less

Conclusion

Leah F. Vosko

in Disrupting Deportability: Transnational Workers Organize

This concluding chapter reflects on the significance of the legal case of the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) employeess at Sidhu & Sons for expanding understandings of the meaning of ... More

This concluding chapter reflects on the significance of the legal case of the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) employeess at Sidhu & Sons for expanding understandings of the meaning of deportability and its applicability to temporary migrant work program (TMWP) participants laboring not only in Canada but also in other relatively high-income host states embracing migration management and the measures it prescribes. Obstacles to limiting deportability writ large will persist so long as migration management dominates paradigmatically. Nevertheless, in combination with the forward-looking organizing efforts already being undertaken by unions and worker centers, in areas where unionization is difficult to achieve partly because of the still-dominant Wagnerian-styled model of unionization, certain modest interventions in policy and practice hold promise in forging change and curbing deportability among temporary migrant workers. Because the foregoing case study focused on the SAWP, the alternatives outlined in this chapter primarily address this TMWP. Given, however, that the SAWP is often touted as a model of migration management, they seek to provide meaningful avenues toward incremental change in other TMWPs in Canada and elsewhere.Less

Uncivilized Others: Enforcement and Forced Exit

Bridget Anderson

in Us and Them?: The Dangerous Politics of Immigration Control

This chapter begins by examining terminology of deportation and illegality with reference to the relation between the legal and the political. It then considers the increase in deportation from the ... More

This chapter begins by examining terminology of deportation and illegality with reference to the relation between the legal and the political. It then considers the increase in deportation from the UK, and the shift from border enforcement to in-country removals. This raises the question of how people become illegal, and how they move in and out of legal status. There is not a straightforward legal/illegal division, and migrants often become ‘semi-compliant’ residing legally but in breach of conditions. These processes and the impact of deportation and deportability on migrants’ lives will be examined. The chapter then turns to the impact of enforcement and deportation on citizens, not only as a result of the relationships they have with non-citizens who are deportable, but also through the increased visibility of enforcement and the application of checks to all residents and not just migrants, and through the engagement of citizens with anti-deportation campaigns.Less

Beyond Detention: Undocumented Dangers and Deportability

Shannon Speed

in Incarcerated Stories: Indigenous Women Migrants and Violence in the Settler-Capitalist State

This chapter explores women’s experience after and beyond detention, considering the multiple ways they continue to be rendered vulnerable to violence.

Introduction: Inside immigration detention

Mary Bosworth

in Inside Immigration Detention

The introduction sketches the shape of the contemporary immigration detention system in the UK and introduces the main themes of the book. It describes the primary demographic and legal ... More

The introduction sketches the shape of the contemporary immigration detention system in the UK and introduces the main themes of the book. It describes the primary demographic and legal characteristics of the detained population while outlining the nature of the academic and policy debate about this form of border control. So far, most literature on detention is purely theoretical or based on secondary source accounts. This chapter introduces one of the key arguments of the book, that we need greater academic engagement with these sites and with those within them. It then summarizes each chapter, providing a road map for the reader.Less

Thickening Borderlands

Paul Mutsaers

in Police Unlimited: Policing, Migrants, and the Values of Bureaucracy

While Chapter 2 mainly refers to the lack of separation between roles and personalities, this chapter draws attention to the fading division between the Dutch police and its organizational ... More

While Chapter 2 mainly refers to the lack of separation between roles and personalities, this chapter draws attention to the fading division between the Dutch police and its organizational environment. It argues that police power is now often divided across a multiplicity of organizations. This expanded notion of the police prompts us to look beyond the police organization, particularly when we want to understand an urgent matter such as police discrimination. The chapter engages with the literature on the ‘policing of migration’, as it is mainly in this field that diffuse, or networked policing has quickly advanced. Second, it provides detailed empirical data on how migrants experience borders within the nation-state due to a thickening of borderlands.Less