Conceptualizing the Employment Regime of Migrant Reproductive Labor: The Case of (Im)migrant Personal Care Workers

• In Event: 506 - Section on International Migration Paper Session. Immigrant Workers and Professionals in Precarious Jobs

Abstract

In order to understand how (im)migrants are incorporated into a racialized division of reproductive labor, this paper synthesizes key insights from scholarship on migrant reproductive labour with an exciting new framework conceptualizing the intersection of care, migration and employment regimes. A tighter conceptualization of the employment regime for immigrant care workers is a key goal of this paper. The migration and care regimes intersect with the employment regime to shape immigrants’ incorporation into precarious jobs. I build this framework to broaden our understanding of the incorporation of (im)migrant labour into reproductive labour, through an analysis of personal home care (PHC) in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. In Toronto, the majority of personal home care workers are immigrants but they are highly diverse, hailing from countries from nearly every continent and with various class backgrounds and citizenship statuses. This prompts the following questions: how can groups with such varied migration and work histories all end up in para-professional long term care work? More broadly, how does the migration, care and employment regime work together to shape immigrants’ incorporation into the receiving economy? In what ways does entry into PHC represent continuity or change in the division of reproductive labor, and for whom? I begin to answer these questions using data from a qualitative comparative study to analyze how (im)migrants are incorporated into Toronto personal home care. I conclude with a discussion of what an expanded conceptualization of (im)migrants’ racialized incorporation into caring reproductive labour would look like, in light of the empirical analysis.

Author

• Cynthia J. Cranford, University of Toronto