Pathways to Prosperity: Canada

Most migrant workers confront conditions of non-citizenship, discriminatory policies and exclusionary contexts of reception. This joint keynote will compare the experiences of Filipino and Indonesian domestic workers in the Middle East as they negotiate the conditions of their labour and migration. Dr. Parreñas and Dr. Silvey will discuss their ongoing collaboration that considers patterns of serial labour migration and migrant exclusion – including ineligibility for permanent residency, absence of labour market flexibility and denial of the right to family reunification – mediating the lives of temporary labour migrants in the region.

Speakers:

Rhacel Salazar Parreñas (Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies, University of Southern California and Fulbright Scholar, Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition (IGHC), McMaster University) has conducted extensive research on labour, gender, migration, and economic sociology. Her current work examines the intersections of human trafficking and labour migration. She has written five monographs, co-edited three anthologies, and published numerous peer reviewed articles. Her latest book is a revised edition of Servants of Globalization (Stanford University Press, 2015). At McMaster she is working on her next book which compares migrant domestic workers in Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, highlighting the vulnerable status of domestic workers in unregulated workspaces.

Rachel Silvey (Associate Professor, Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto and Interim Richard Charles Lee Director of the Asian Institute, Munk School of Global Affairs) is perhaps best known for her research on women’s labour and geographies of gender, inequality and migration in Indonesia. She has published widely on critical development studies, migration and immigration politics, feminist geography and diaspora/transnational studies. Her current work examines Indonesian and Filipino domestic workers’ employment in Singapore and the UAE (US National Science Foundation), and she leads the project on migrant workers’ labour conditions for the SSHRC Partnership Project, “Gender, Migration and the Work of Care: Comparative Perspectives,” led by Professor Ito Peng.

Presented by the York Centre for Asian Research and the Centre for Feminist Research, York University.

For more information: http://ycar.apps01.yorku.ca/event/migrant-exclusion-domestic-workers-in-the-middle-east/?instance_id=514