Description
Book SynopsisIn Canada's liberal dream, the law extends its benefits to everyone. But the law also determines who is included in that everyone. Migrant workers, long welcomed in Canada for their labour, are often excluded from both workplace protections and basic social benefits such as health care, income assistance, and education due to their lack of permanent status.
Enforcing Exclusion recasts what migration status means to both the state and to non-citizens. Through interviews with migrants and their advocates, Sarah Marsden shows that migrants face barriers in law, policy, and practice, affecting their ability to address adverse working conditions and their interactions with institutions such as hospitals, schools, and employment standards boards. In documenting the impact of precarious migration status on people's lives, Marsden questions the adequacy of human-rights-based responses in addressing its exclusionary effects.
Trade ReviewAlthough this book takes an anthropological approach and focuses on precarious migrants in Canada, its interdisciplinarity makes it relevant to a broader audience. Through testimonies and life stories, it provides a much-needed account of how immigration laws and policies foster the exclusion of migrants in their daily lives. It will be enriching for anyone researching immigration law and policy from a legal or political perspective, as well as for anyone studying the anthropology and sociology of migration. -- Celine Hocquet * Oxford Law Review *
Enforcing Exclusion should be on every immigration lawyer’s bookshelf.
-- Andrea Black * Canadian Law Library Review *
Table of ContentsIntroduction
1 The Creation and Growth of Precarious Migration in Canada: “Illegal” Migration and the Liberal State
2 Status, Deportability, and Illegality in Daily Life
3 Working Conditions and Barriers to Substantive Remedies
4 Exclusion from the Social State: Health, Education, and Income Security
5 Multi-Sited Enforcement: Maintaining Subordinate Membership
6 Rights and Membership: Toward Inclusion?
Postscript
Appendix A: Migrant Participant Profiles
Appendix B: Sample Interview Script
Notes; Index
