Caught in the Work–Citizenship Matrix: the Lasting Effects of Precarious Legal Status on Work for Toronto Immigrants

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between precarious employment and precarious migrant legal status. Original research on immigrant workers' employment experiences in Toronto examines the effects of several measures including human capital, network, labor market variables, and a change in legal status variable on job precarity as measured by an eight-indicator Index of Precarious Work (IPW). Precarious legal status has a long-lasting, negative effect on job precarity; both respondents who entered and remained in a precarious migratory status and those who shifted to secure status were more likely to remain in precarious work compared to respondents who entered with and remained in a secure status. This leaves no doubt that migrant-worker insecurity and vulnerability stem not only from having 'irregular' status. We introduce the notion of a work-citizenship matrix to capture the ways in which the precariousness of legal status and work intersect in the new economy. People and entire groups transition through intersecting work -citizenship insecurities, where prior locations have the potential to exert long-term effects, transitions continue to occur indefinitely over the life-course, and gains on one front are not always matched on others.

Introduction to a Special Issue on the Impact of Immigrant Legalization Initiatives: International Perspectives on Immigration and the World of Work

“…Even though 60% of Filipina caregivers have university degrees or higher, they did not move out of caregiving work after receiving permanent status. The finding supports Goldring and Landolt's (2011) conclusion that workers who entered the labor market with permanent legal status fared better than those who entered with temporary status. This outcome suggests that unauthorized status may have an entrenched impact, caused by such factors as financial instability, stigmatization, and other long-term effects of illegality.…”

Differential inclusion of non-citizens in a universalistic welfare state

“…In addition to ethnicity, class and gender, legal status has recently been recognized as a factor shaping 'the new migrant division of labour' (Wills et al 2010). Immigration controls reproduce social divisions, but they also create new juridical hierarchies, which can have long-term effects on migrants' labour market position (see Goldring and Landolt 2011). Also in Finland, migrants with a temporary legal status often work in precarious conditions, which affect their possibilities to apply for a residence permit on the basis of employment (Könönen 2014) -indicating a reciprocal relationship between employment precariousness and legal precariousness (Chauvin, Garcés-Mascareñas, and Kraler 2013, 127).…”

“…Empirically grounded analyses of immigration controls, carried out mainly in Anglo-Saxon countries (e.g. Anderson 2010;Goldring and Landolt 2011;Walsh 2011;Robertson 2014), demonstrate how immigration controls stratify the labour markets and generate insecurity and conditionality for non-citizens. However, also the type of welfare regime affects economic and social well-being of non-citizens and their position in the society (Sainsbury 2012; see also Carmel, Cerami, and Papadopoulos 2011).…”

Introduction: Place, Politics and the Social: Understanding Temporariness in Contemporary Australian Migration

“…Most of the research on temporary migration to date has focused on its economic, legal and political implications, such as the consequences of temporary migrant labour on host country labour markets (Birrell and Healey 2014;Hugo 2006), the regulation of social entitlements of temporary migrants (Ottonelli and Torresi 2012;Ruhs 2013) and the creation of second-class citizens (Carens 2008). Recently, Canadian and British sociologists and socio-legal scholars have drawn attention to the broader impacts of visa regulations on the experiences of temporary migrants within and beyond the labour market through the lens of precarious migrant status (Anderson 2010;Goldring et al 2009;Goldring and Landolt 2011;Fudge 2012). Such research has been critical in highlighting the insecurity migration regulations create for temporary visa holders as workers and also as residents.…”