Abstract: The Canadian government’s stated desire to make Canadian immigration policy more transparent, ‘less fraudulent’, and more consistent with its stated objectives of encouraging ‘high-skilled’ migration inspired drastic changes to the Caregiver and Temporary Foreign Worker programs. This has led to the creation of two-tiered citizenship for domestic workers and temporary foreign workers by drawing sharp distinctions between their statuses as ‘foreign’ guest workers and ‘Canadian’ workers. Specifically, caregivers under the new program face restrictive language and licensing requirements that, if they meet, do not guarantee their acquisition of permanent residency. This reduces caregivers’ security of status in Canada and places them in situations of greater debt bondage. Similarly, changes to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program negatively affect temporary foreign workers, placing them in situations of greater vulnerability and, in the most extreme cases, forcing many to become undocumented. These changes include workplace quotas on the numbers of temporary foreign workers and a 4-year-in, 4-year-out rule that requires all workers to stay in Canada for a maximum of four years, after which they would have to stay outside Canada for another four years before being allowed inside the country again. Using the results of ethnographic research with communities of temporary foreign workers and caregivers and one-on-one interviews with migrant activists, this paper argues that long-standing ideas on race and gender inform recent policy changes and have led temporary foreign workers to experience graduated and uneven forms of belonging in Canada.

Abstract: "In June 2014, Minister of Employment and Social Development Jason Kenney announced plans to reform the Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP) including a proposal to eliminate the opportunity for caregivers to apply for permanent residency and family reunification. According to Kenney, the program requires a complete overhaul, as a lack of control mechanisms have “mutated” the LCP into a “pipeline” for families to reunite rather than reduce Canada’s care deficit. Considering the purpose of the “Good Enough to Work, Not Good Enough To Stay” movement was to advocate for the extension of citizenship to live-in caregivers, it is puzzling that the realization of this goal is now being framed as an impediment to our immigration system. Why then does the execution of the current system warrant reform? What does the government expect of live-in caregivers once eligible for permanent residency? Finally, what perceived threat does the live-in caregiver’s family present to the Canadian state? My paper will examine how the live-in caregiver’s current right to potential citizenship challenges the state’s assumption that “care” is temporary; rather, care is a permanent necessity for both the caregivers’ employer and sponsored families. Moreover, it will address whether this program is currently open to abuse as Minister Kenney suggests, examining how this perceived abuse is defined and assessed. Ultimately, this paper will address the implications these policy changes present for live-in caregivers and explore the perceived threat these women and their families present to our immigration system, the Canadian family, and Canadian society at large."

Abstract: The growing attention to care in feminist ethics and social theory has also focused on the fate of paid care-workers. With the increasing numbers of privileged women in the Global North working outside the home, paid domestic workers, often immigrant women of color, have taken over the performance of house- and care-work. Feminists have observed that care-work is still devalued, as low wages and social exclusion attest. The solution they propose is to increase remuneration for paid care-workers, including granting them more social protection and rights of citizenship. Drawing on Dorothy Roberts’s distinction between menial and spiritual housework, this paper questions if the division between care and other forms of feminized work is justified. In the care-work literature, the difference hinges on the affective element—namely, caring. This elides the historical trajectory Roberts observes: performance of the most mundane, least affective work to lower-status women. I expand on Roberts’s argument to include still-feminized food and clothing production, as it moves from homes into factories, eventually to the Global South. The women who perform this labor are not usually categorized as “care-workers”, but their labor is no less important to human welfare. What is needed is a concept of gendered labor that does not depend on affect, and so can avoid repeating the imposition of the most menial tasks onto the least privileged and most invisible.

Abstract: Through its legislation aimed at eliminating human trafficking worldwide, the U.S. consolidates moral capital as a leader on human rights issues. However, the Victims of Violence and Trafficking Protection Act of 2000 and its subsequent reauthorizations have sometimes been critiqued as counterproductive or wrongheaded, due to the crime prevention framework that dominates their implementation. Through a discursive analysis of congressional transcripts from 2000 to 2013, I explore how lawmakers mobilize support for anti-trafficking bills. This strategy includes the use of formulaic victim narratives, appeals to what Iris Marion Young termed ‘masculinist protection,’ and positioning the anti-trafficking movement as contemporary slave abolitionism. I argue that a concern with the U.S.’s global image, including a desire to be seen as generous, compassionate, and on the right side of history, dominates debates to the near-exclusion of concerns over the effectiveness of the policies. The humanitarian language of fighting the scourge of ‘modern day slavery’ allows lawmakers to frame themselves as part of a laudable anti-slavery tradition, however such identity work belies more instrumental political calculations that are less related to the stated goals of the legislation.