Precarious Migrants, Citizenship, and Belonging

Summary of Research Topic

This research traces the effects of policies on different groups of migrants in order to better understand whether the federal government’s policies on ‘citizenship’ and ‘belonging’ in Canada have their desired effect empirically. Until recently, when controversies concerning purported Canadian ‘job loss’ because of employers’ increasing reliance on the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) and the Caregiver Program (CP) led the Canadian government to reverse its policies, the Canadian government had depicted the TFWP and the LCP as creating ‘win-win’ situations for employers and workers and as evidence of the positive effects of liberal inclusion and multiculturalism. Rather than taking as given federal government rhetoric on the positive effects of these policies, Dr. Tungohan critically assesses the diverse effects of migrant care work and temporary foreign worker policies on migrant care workers, temporary foreign workers, immigrant communities, and other stakeholders such as Canadian employers and Canadian families. She argues that ‘citizenship’ and ‘belonging’ are experienced differently on the basis of country of origin, type of migrant (e.g., permanent or temporary), race, class, gender, and age.

Current Initiatives/Studies

  • Gabriela Transitions Experiences Survey: SSHRC funded research collaboration with Gabriela-Ontario, Dr. Rupa Banerjee (Ryerson University), and Dr. Philip Kelly (York University)
  • Grant Notley Postdoctoral Research Fellowship: Focus on Temporary Foreign Worker Program in Alberta.

Related Publications

  • Abu-Laban, Y., Paquet, M. and Tungohan, E. (Under Contract). Migration and Citizenship: Political Science, Policies and Research from a Comparative Perspective. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press. (Permalink)
  • Abu-Laben, Y., Gabriel, C. and Tungohan, E. (Under Contract). Containing Diversity: Canada and the Politics of Immigration in the 21st Century. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. (Permalink)
  • Tungohan, E. (Article Accepted). Duterte, Philippine Overseas Workers, and the Ethics of Representation. Verge: Studies in Global Asia. (Permalink)
  • Francisco-Menchavez, V. and Tungohan, E. (2020). Mula Sa Masa, Tungo Sa Masa, From the People, For the People: Building Migrant Worker Power through Participatory Action Research. Migration Letters, 17(2), 257-264. (Permalink)
  • Tungohan, E., Levac, L. and Price, K. (2020). Socially Engaged Research and Teaching. Politics, Groups, and Identities , 17(2), 160-163. (Permalink)
  • Tungohan, E. (2020). Reflections on Different Approaches to Socially-Engaged Research in the Social Sciences. Politics, Groups, and Identities, 8(1), 172-180. (Permalink)
  • Tungohan, E. (2020). Settlement, Separation and Forming New Families: A Multi-Scalar Intersectional Analysis of Filipino Family Immigration in Saskatchewan, Canada. Women’s Studies International Forum, 83. Available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2020.102403. (Permalink)
  • Tungohan, E. (2019). Global Care Chains and the Spectral Histories of Care Migration. International Journal of Care and Caring, 3(2), 229-245. (Permalink)
  • Banerjee, R., Kelly, P., Tungohan, E., Cleto, P., de Leon, C., Garcia, M., Luciano, M., Palmaria, C. and Sorio, C. (2018). From Migrant to Citizen: The Labour Market Integration of Former Live-in Caregivers in Canada. ILR Review, 71(4), 908-936. (Permalink)
  • Nath, N., Tungohan, E. and Gaucher, M. (2018). The Future of Canadian Political Science: Boundary Transgressions, Gender, and Anti-Oppression Frameworks. Canadian Journal of Political Science, 51(3), 619-642. (Permalink)
  • Tungohan, E. (2018). Temporary foreign workers in Canada: Reconstructing ‘belonging’, remaking ‘citizenship’. Social and Legal Studies, 28(2), 236-252. (Permalink)
  • Tungohan, E. (2018). Living with Compromised Legal Status: Irregular Temporary Foreign Workers in Alberta and the Importance of Imagining, Strategizing and Inter-Provincial Legal Consciousness. International Migration, 56(6), 207-220. (Permalink)
  • Tungohan, E. (2017). The Transformative and Radical Feminism of Grassroots Migrant Women’s Movement(s) in Canada. Canadian Journal of Political Science, 50(2), 479-494. doi:10.1017/S0008423917000622. (Permalink)
  • Tungohan, E. (2017). From Encountering Confederate Flags to Finding Refuge in Spaces of Solidarity. Space and Polity, 21(1), 11-26. doi:10.1080/13562576.2017.1270637 . (Permalink)
  • Tungohan, E. (2017). Review of the book Citizenship and Its Others, edited by Vanessa Hughes and Bridget Anderson. Population, Space, and Place. (Permalink)
  • Tungohan, E. (2012). Protecting Temporary Labour Migrants: An Emerging Role for Global Cities. In H. Bauder (Ed.), Immigration and Settlement: Challenges, Experiences, and Opportunities in Global and Local Contexts (pp. 75-93). Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press. (Permalink)