Abstract: In the political economy of Canadian aboriginal peoples, much of the literature either focuses on market-led development in aboriginal communities or aboriginal decolonization and traditional cultural revitalization. A neglected area concerns theorizing aboriginal-non-aboriginal relations in terms of the organization of labour and the resulting contradictory social relationship that emerges between owners and producers. To theorize aboriginal peoples’ circumstances as being embedded within historically specific modes and relations of production, two theoretical approaches developed outside Canadian political economy – Elizabeth Rata’s model of “neotribal capitalism” and Hossein Mahdavy’s concept of the “rentier state” – will be combined and applied to aboriginal-non-aboriginal interactions in Canada. It will be argued that a history of non-exploitative oppression has meant that aboriginal peoples have not been substantially integrated into the Canadian labour force, largely remaining marginalized from productive processes on unviable reserves and isolated communities. This means that any “economic development” that occurs largely takes the form of rentierism, where royalties, subsidies and various forms of welfare and other government transfers are distributed in traditional kinship networks. The economic surplus used to sustain aboriginal communities is not internally generated. As a result, working class politics is undeveloped and political demands are for ethnic privileges rather than equal participation.

Paper / Communication

Abstract: From 2009 to 2011, Canada's federal government undertook a harmonization of the multiple entryways available for temporary agricultural migrant workers, leading to the creation of the Agricultural Stream. This harmonization process marked an important transition point for the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP), one which involved Human Resources and Social Development Canada (HRSDC) re-exerting regulatory functions over components of the TFWP that since 2003 had been absorbed by growers’ associations in conjunction with the International Organization for Migration. This paper explains this shift on two levels, first by situating the TFWP within a global regulatory regime that constrains options available for federal policymakers, and second by delineating the stakeholder process employed by HRSDC to gather feedback and formulate policy. Using data collected from internal HRSDC documentation as well as interviews with stakeholders, this paper concludes that shortcomings related to the "employer-driven" model of agricultural migration have led to a partial reversal of the trends apparent since the inception of the Low Skill Pilot Project in 2002. The trend has not been completely reversed, however, and following Mahon's (1984) emphasis on the importance of detailing concrete accounts of how bureaucratic actors administer access to ministerial power, this paper also argues that the institutional configuration of HRSDC’s stakeholder process represented a practice of inclusion and exclusion which gave prominence to the concerns of organized employers at the expense of labour representation.

Abstract: With the notable exception of the years immediately following the Great Recession, there has been a long-term tendency for unemployment rates in the U.S. to be noticeably lower unemployment than in Canada. This is often seen as evidence of a relatively more robust economy, a relatively healthier labour market, in the U.S. compared to Canada. This paper will deploy both the contemporary concept “Non-Accelerating Rate of Unemployment” (NAIRU) as well as the older political economy concept of “Reserve Army of Labour” (first made famous by Frederick Engels) to critically assess comparative unemployment rates in the U.S. and Canada. While the Canadian reserve army is to a large extent made visible through official unemployment statistics, the U.S. reserve army is not – hidden through the combined effects of militarism and mass incarceration. The latter removes an extraordinary 2.5 million U.S. citizens from the labour market, significantly and arbitrarily resulting in a lower rate of visible unemployment. Political economy needs to engage with critical race theory to understand this phenomenon. Mass incarceration is extremely racialized, something captured starkly by theorists such as Michelle Alexander. Mass unemployment always poses the need for state action to act as a counter-weight to the failures of the capitalist labour market. In the 1930s, this led to the celebrated “New Deal”. Tragically, in the current era, it is the “New Jim Crow” which defines state response to mass unemployment in the U.S.