Migrant workers don’t suppress wages; employers and the state do. Yet rhetoric such as ‘Canadians for Canadians jobs’ alienates migrant workers and inhibits discussions about organizing to lift up the wage floor for all workers. Racism operates as a convenient buy-in for many citizen workers who pledge loyalty to nationalist protectionism rather than transnational solidarity. It also, not coincidentally, circumvents reflection on the causes of displacement and unemployment in the global South that compels the migration of workers. Finally, Canadian complicity in local and global resource extraction from Indigenous lands and exploitation of racialized labour is what even makes possible the material conditions of the Canadian welfare state that dominant elements of the working class are clamouring to defend.
Posted on: Fri, 03 Oct 2014 06:42:16 +0000
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