A recent article in University of Toronto Magazine, entitled entitled, "The Hard Labour of Finding Good Work," highlighted Professor Patricia Landolt'sand Professor Ito Peng's research. Professor Landolt, Chair of the University of Toronto Scarborough's sociology department has research expertise in the production and reproduction of systems of social exclusion, as well as the inequality associated with global migrations. Professor Ito Peng, who is the Canada Research Chair in Global Social Policy and Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at the Department of Sociology, and the School of Public Policy and Governance, has expertise in political sociology and social contexts of public policy, specializing in family, gender, and demographic issues, migration, and comparative social policy.
The article, written by author John Lornic, discusses the ways in which migrants face systemic barriers when seeking employment. The full article is available on the University of Toronto Magazine's website.
I have posted an excerpt below.
The Hard Labour of Finding Good Work: Migrants are determined to find jobs, but face systemic barriers
By John Lorinc
Oct. 2, 2019
...The sprawling health-care and long term–care sectors depend on thousands of caregivers – and “the vast majority are women, and a large proportion are immigrant women and women of colour,” observes Prof. Ito Peng of sociology, who oversees the Gender, Migration and the Work of Care project at U of T’s Centre for Global Social Policy.
Many are here on temporary work visas, but she says it’s not uncommon for these “documented migrants to become undocumented when they overstay their visas.” Some have good reason to want to stay on: careworkers and live-in domestics in other countries, including much of the Asia Pacific region, aren’t covered by employment standards laws, says Peng, who is also director of U of T’s Centre for Global Policy.
Landolt’s research also shows that the number of migrants entering Canada on temporary work visas as a proportion of overall immigration has increased dramatically in recent years. Some of these migrants go on to establish lives here and seek permanent resident status – but this drawn-out bureaucratic process can take years, creating uncertainty and a period of “precarious non-citizenship.”
In 2006, Landolt and her team interviewed 300 migrants who had come to Canada from Latin America and the Caribbean. The researchers found that people who had spent any time in precarious status were more likely to find poor quality work and maintain poor quality work instead of advancing through higher-skilled and better-paying positions, as is the more typical trajectory with permanent residents. As she says, “The system is creating a probationary pool of people with one hand tied behind their backs in terms of rights.”...