Oct 2025: Migrant Labour

Weaving our Worlds has monthly study in struggle conversations and this month we focused on migrant labour locally and globally. Growing anti-migrant racism, border enforcement kidnappings, and border militarization around the world serves not only to terrorize migrant communities but also to further exploit migrant labour. We discussed migrant labour exploitation, the architecture of this violence shared across geographies by countries and capitalists, and how we can collectively resist.

What is Migrant Labour

While all migrants and displaced people labour, migrant worker programs are a specific dynamic of racial capitalism, empire, and migration.

Often justified as responses to labour shortages, governments and bosses have developed programs where workers – forced to move far away from their communities, lands, and families due to colonialism and desperation – are temporarily employed under highly exploited conditions.

“Designing and enforcing a system of “permanent temporary migration” to meet economic demand has resulted in a racialized discrepancy in wages between migrant groups, high rates of exploitation, and an in-built mechanism to distinguish the rights of citizens from those of migrant workers, especially when it comes to quashing potential labor unrest.” – Paula Chakravartty and Nitasha Dhillon

From “Gulf Dreams for Justice: From Rescue to Solidarity” here

Migrant Worker Exploitation is Global, not Cultural Anomaly

“The segregation of millions of “bachelor builders”—with no formal rights to association or representation—into isolated labor camps has brought international shame upon the GCC countries. But what differentiates the conditions of these migrant workers from the plight of undocumented workers in the United States and Europe? They, too, face insecurity, racialized violence, and scant protection of their labor rights, especially since national governments in the global North have adopted increasingly restrictive migration policies and enforced detention and deportation for “low-skilled” non-white migrants.” – Paula Chakravartty and Nitasha Dhillon

From “Gulf Dreams for Justice: From Rescue to Solidarity” here

Racism & Eugenics

“Racist stereotypes come into play in which workers are employed to pick which crops. Canadian growers and government officials believe Mexicans are better suited for greenhouse labour and, because of their shorter stature, work that involves stooping close to the ground. Caribbean workers, on the other hand, are seen as better at picking tobacco, apples and tender fruit, such as peaches.” – Chris Ramsaroop

From “What I see today in Canada is the exact system of plantation labour that has ravaged the Caribbean” here

Migrant Farm Workers in Canada

Migrant farm workers in Canada are brought in seasonally to toil on farms for anywhere from two to nine months a year. Their work permits are tied to a single employer and contract. If they demand their rights or contest their conditions, their contracts can be terminated, which leads to deportation. Many workers face twelve-“to fourteen-hour workdays seven days a week and are paid minimum wage. ” – Mostafa Henaway

From “Liberals and Tories perfected the exploitation of migrants for big business” here

Spotlight: Seven Jamaican Mothers

The Seven Jamican Mothers were domestic workers who fought back against deportation and the Canadian government’s exploitative West Indian Domestic Scheme in 1979. Lola Anderson, Eliza Cox, Carmen Hyde, Elaine Peart, Gloria Lawrence, Elizabeth Lodge, and Rubina White came to Canada when their labour was needed and worked to support their children in Jamaica. “They are discriminated against for being women, as immigrants, and in the case of West Indians, for being Black as well.” Under the banner of “Good Enough to Work, Good Enough to Stay,” they became a symbol of resistance against racist and sexist Canadian immigration and labor policies.

From “The 1980s Struggle for Domestic Workers’ Rights in Canada” here

Migrant Labour and Capitalism

“Capitalists tend not to be fundamentally anti-migrant but rather seek to control and manage migration for the needs of business. They envision migration to be a kind of kitchen faucet that can be turned on and off according to labour market fluctuations. These include some of the largest corporations on the planet like Uber, Amazon, Walmart, and Canadian giants like Loblaws and Dollarama. Corporations in critical sectors like logistics, warehouses and distribution rely on the same strategies in the Global South as they do in the Global North: when the industries cannot be offshored, they rely on a precarious workforce of migrants.” – Mostafah Henaway

From “Liberals and Tories perfected the exploitation of migrants for big business” here

Migrant Worker Struggles in Korea

“Day and night, without exception on weekends, crackdowns have become routine in areas densely populated by migrants, and anti-foreigner groups are acting as vigilantes, threatening undocumented migrants. Riding on this wave, far right political forces are inciting discrimination and hatred, causing migrant workers to cry out in despair. Businesses that have employed undocumented migrants due to labour shortages are crying out that they will go bankrupt because of the crackdowns.”

From “The Crisis of Democracy is the Crisis of Migrants: Stop the Crackdown Against Undocumented Migrants in Korea” here

Imperialism and Migrant Vulnerability

The aerial bombardment by the Israeli government in 2024 led to a huge wave of internal displacement in south Lebanon, with 1.2 million people – about 20% of the population – forced to leave their homes.

“Amid the chaos of displacement, we are seeing huge numbers of migrant workers, including many women, who are utterly alone and helpless, being turned away from formal shelters because they are not Lebanese and sleeping on the street with no protection. Domestic workers thrown out on the street like used washing machines, left behind inside houses while their Lebanese employers flee danger, or just dumped on the side of the road.”

From “Thrown out like used washing machines’: Lebanon’s migrant workers bear brunt of displacement crisis” here

Israel, Palestinian Labour and Colonialism

Israel employs Palestinian workers to fill its own labour gaps, relegating them primarily to low-wage positions in agriculture, manufacturing, and construction for the very regime ethnically cleansing their historic homeland. In the short term, Israel’s strategy results in an expendable and dehumanized Palestinian workforce, largely dependent on the Israeli market, as well as a dwindling Palestinian economy. In the long term, the Israeli regime’s approach to Palestinian labor rests on the goal of Palestinian erasure.

From “Israel’s Exploitation of Palestinian Labor: A Strategy of Erasure” here

Solidarity with Migrant Workers

Migrants in our communities will continue to resist! From migrant prisons to farms, we build collective action and solidarity with struggles here and around the world, rooted in our care and our defiance. We fight for a world with no borders and the freedom move, the freedom to stay and the freedom to return.

“To challenge neoliberal capitalism we must take up the struggle of migrant workers and their campaigns, whether for the minimum wage or status, or against precarious work, deportations or racism. These are central working-class demands. In this moment, “no borders” and “status for all” are working-class demands, not liberal or humanitarian ones. The broader left must acknowledge migration and its root causes as central to the movements of the working class. We must abandon the temptations of protectionist and nationalist conceptions of class struggle, which pit the global working class against itself. By making the connections between migration and capitalism, we can forge links on the ground, understanding that the forces that dispossess and compel people to migrate are the same ones that have robbed working people of their livelihoods.”

From “Liberals and Tories perfected the exploitation of migrants for big business” here

Our List of Resources on Migrant Labour

Liberals and Tories perfected the exploitation of migrants for big business

https://breachmedia.ca/liberals-and-tories-perfected-the-exploitation-of-migrants-for-big-business/

What I see today in Canada is the exact system of plantation labour that has ravaged the Caribbean

https://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/black-life/migrant-advocate-column-1.7032226

Sentenced for the season: Jamaican migrant farmworkers on Okanagan orchards

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/03063968211054856

The 1980s Struggle for Domestic Workers’ Rights in Canada

https://www.uottawa.ca/library/news-all/blog-series-1980s-struggle-domestic-workers-rights-part-3

Canada sees surge in temporary foreign workers applying to escape abusive employers

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/canada-sees-surge-in-temporary-foreign-workers-applying-to-escape-abusive-employers/article_332aa922-7461-45b8-aa3e-95990dbcc657.html

Understanding Temporary Labour Migration through a Settler Colonial Lens: A Critical Analysis of Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program and International Education Strategy

https://journals.library.brocku.ca/index.php/SSJ/article/view/4983/3533&ved=2ahUKEwiQsefAx82QAxW5JzQIHUgCEh4QFnoECCEQAQ&usg=AOvVaw3waargSWwLybQ2Fw2jcBcT