Conference Program
Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).
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2.1.3: Migration & Diaspora
Session Topics: Migration & Diaspora
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Temporary Foreign Workers in Canada: Practitioner & Research Perspectives Temporary Foreign Workers (TFWs) are essential to Canada’s economy, yet their contributions and working conditions are often underexamined in development studies. Their experiences illuminate critical development challenges, including labour precarity, limited access to social protections, and structural vulnerabilities that affect health, well-being, and social inclusion. This roundtable features a facilitated dialogue between Gabriel Allahdua (Association for the Rights of Household and Farm Workers, DTMF), Stacey Gomez (Centre for Migrant Worker Rights Nova Scotia, CMWR NS), as well as Chris Little (PhD Candidate, Department of Politics, York University). Drawing on their frontline, advocacy and research perspectives, they will explore systemic factors shaping TFW experiences, highlighting how temporary labour regimes intersect with development concerns such as human capital, community resilience, and fair participation in economic and social systems. The discussion will situate TFWs as a population whose experiences illuminate critical development challenges, showing how temporary labour policies shape economic, social, and policy outcomes in Canada. Presentations of the Symposium Listening to Women Migrant Workers: Policy Gaps and Gendered Challenges in Canada’s Temporary Labour System Stacey Gomez (Centre for Migrant Worker Rights Nova Scotia) brings over 15 years of experience advancing migrant rights, gender justice, and international solidarity in Canada. She will focus on policy gaps and gender-specific challenges, based on the recently published report Listening to Women Migrant Workers: A Needs Assessment on the North Shore of Nova Scotia. Harvesting Freedom: Systemic Challenges and Lived Experiences of Temporary Foreign Workers in Canada Gabriel Allahdua (Association for the Rights of Household and Farm Workers, DTMF) is a former migrant farm worker from St. Lucia, author of Harvesting Freedom: The Life of a Migrant Worker in Canada and was the inaugural Activist in Residence at the University of Guelph. He will share insights on the systemic challenges of TFWs in Canada, drawing on his lived experience, grassroots organizing, and work bridging research and practice. Transnational structural disempowerment and spaces for worker agency among Guatemalan migrant farmworkers in Canada Chris Little (PhD Candidate, Department of Politics, York University) will draw from research interviews with Guatemalan migrant farmworkers and social movement actors in Guatemala to look at factors that disempower migrant farmworkers. These factors operate in communities of origin, sites of migrant labour and across borders. Socioeconomic deprivation in communities of origin is interwoven with processes of disempowerment and depoliticization, where worker and community agency is shaped and constrained by transnational forces of uneven development alongside local histories of struggle and repression, particularly over land. In sites of migrant labour, vulnerability and disempowerment are imposed through restrictive migration policies and labour regimes. These forces are not distinct, however, and through migrant labour regimes operate transnationally. By foregrounding workers' own perspectives on their position within the world economy, their struggles and what options are available to them, lessons can be learned for those in solidarity with migrant workers and for those engaged in the discipline of international development more broadly. | ||