Settler States, Temporary Labour: A Multi-sited Analysis of Social Reproduction, Transnationality, and Migration Management

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

We take as our starting point the persistent extraction of value by capital from internationally mobile, yet highly circumscribed labour, and the extent to which the profitability of that labour (often in the form of exploitability) is ensured by immigration policy. Our panel elaborates the range of guest worker programs of three receiving-states—Canada, Australia, and Brazil—whose respective histories of settler colonialism run adjacent. Attentive to this shared history and the consistencies that follow from it, notably in regard to the structural exclusions, precarity, and dependency engendered by guest worker schemes in both countries, each paper pays critical attention to the unique geography, political economy, and ideologies of work, welfare, and newcomer inclusion that shape the experiences and transnational social reproductive projects of differently situated migrant workers, who by virtue of proximity or hyper-mobility move in and out of these nation’s labour markets. More precisely, we detail the varied experiences of Mexican, Filipino, and Jamaican migrants in Canada; Pacific Islanders and young adults from middle and high-income countries (Europe, North and South America, and Asia) in Australia’s agricultural sector; African and Latin American migrant workers in Brazil; and, those from South and Southeast Asia in Australia, shedding light on the mutually constituted and constitutive qualities and histories of migration pathways often regarded as disparate, while at the same time, considering the historic and contemporary specificities that condition and disciple guest workers.

Sub Track

• Migration, Diaspora, and Transnational Communities

Chair

• Kirstie Petrou, The University of New South Wales

Discussant

• Catherine Bryan, Dalhousie University

Individual Presentations

• Anticipating Future Labour Mobility Motivations in Australia Through Latin American Experiences - Kaya Barry, Griffith University

• Diverging Ideologies and Converging Outcomes: Consistency and Exploitation across Australia's and Canada's Temporary Foreign Labour Programs - Kirstie Petrou, The University of New South Wales; Catherine Bryan, Dalhousie University

• Modern Slavery in the World’s Meat Sector Giants: A Comparison of the Effectiveness of Labour Law and Anti-slavery Initiatives in Australia and Brazil - Ema Moolchand, RMIT

• Reproductive Justice for Temporary Labour Migrants: Can Australia Learn From Canada’s Support for Latin Americans? - Lindy Kanan, University of the Sunshine Coast

• Temporary Labour Migration and Supply Chain Capitalism: The Pacific and Latin America As Sites of Social Reproduction - Victoria Stead, Deakin University

Session Organizers

• Kirstie Petrou, The University of New South Wales

• Catherine Bryan, Dalhousie University