Family Matters: Navigating the intentional precarity of racialized migrant and refugee workers in Canadian meatpacking

Keywords: refugees, meatpacking, feminist geography
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

The North American meatpacking industry relies heavily on a workforce comprised of racialized migrants and immigrants, many of whom are former refugees. In the spring of 2020, the industry saw devastating COVID-19 outbreaks leading to hundreds of infections, numerous fatalities and plant closures in the Canadian province of Alberta, where 70 percent of the beef sold in Canada is produced. This paper explores the intersections of immigration status and the conditions of work faced by im/migrant-refugee workers in the Alberta meatpacking industry. Drawing on 225 survey responses and 17 qualitative interviews with im/migrant and refugee workers, the concept of ‘intentional precarity’ is advanced to describe the strategies that the industry uses to maintain a docile workforce. The paper draws on a decolonial (Vergès 2021) and intersectional (Duffy 2005) feminist analysis to examine the gendered and racialized dimensions of social reproduction among migrants and refugees who work in meatpacking. We argue specifically that the family relationships of racialized, newcomer workers are constitutive of the vulnerability that workers face in meatpacking: families act as a buffer against the dirty, dangerous, and difficult work by offering protection and assistance in times of crisis, such as the COVID-19 outbreaks. Yet, obligations to support family are often the primary reason for workers to take jobs in meatpacking in the first place. We link this dual role of families to the production of employee precarity, noting that intentional precarity is rooted in the deliberate recruitment of an im/migrant workforce and the rural/remote geography of meatpacking plants.