Tracking and boundary work: Trajectories of precarious legal status and precarious work among Latin American and Caribbean newcomers in Toronto

• In Event: Migrations, Precarities and Illegalizations in the Americas, Panel II

Abstract

This paper argues that non-citizen social incorporation is best understood with a conceptual framework that theorizes non-citizen precarious legal status and employment trajectories using concepts related to boundary work. Existing models of non-citizen social incorporation take into account contexts of departure, contexts of settlement, individual and group resources, and labour market segmentation. In doing so, they capture aspects of what we have referred to as the matrix of citizenship and work, which plays an important role in shaping entitlements, access to services, life chances, etc. We argue that they do not sufficiently account for non-citizen precarious legal status trajectories and the role of various institutional actors in boundary work, including the work of tracking non-citizens into particular employment patterns and legal status trajectories. We build on existing approaches by fleshing out our “chutes and ladders” model of multi-level, multi- institution and multi-actor legal status and employment tracking and boundary work, and the concept of conditionality. Original data on Latin American and Caribbean immigrants and precarious work in the Greater Toronto Area illustrate the approach.

Author

• Luin Goldring, York University