Borrowed Men on Borrowed Time: Globalization, Labour Migration and Local Economies in Alberta (1998)

Josephine Smart Prairie Centre of Excellence for Research on Immigration and Integration (PCERII) www.pcerii.metropolis.globalx.net Department of Anthropology, The University of Calgary Calgary, AB T2N 1N4 NAFTA is part of the evolving entrenchment globalization and the consolidation of the post-Fordist/postmodern era. Globalization is not new phenomenon, but its intensification since the 70s the form of industrial restructuring and trade liberalization has created new set of economic and social conditions that have far reaching impacts for countries around the world. Moody (1995) suggests that the deindustrialization the Canada-US rust belt gave rise to the shanty industrialization Mexico; formerly well-paid, often unionized the north are replaced or displaced by growing body of workers both at home and partner countries. A central feature of globalization the current era is the increased mobility of capital aided by both formal and informal free trade agreements (NAFTA, APEC, EU; ASEAN) and policies of modernization/development. This increased mobility of capital is driven by and turn supports drive towards increased flexibility of production systems (Drache and Gertler 1991) and flexible workforce deployment (Moody 1995) within and across territorial boundaries. In the discussion of the increasing flexibilization of labour Canada, the primary focus is on the changing work conditions and employment patterns for Canadian workers. NAFTA is said to be the cause of the permanent loss of hundreds of thousands well-paying, skilled jobs Canada as the jobs crossed the line in droves into low-wage southern states or to the maquiladoras Mexico (Darcy 1992:x). Canadian come under the pressure to accept lower wages and inferior social programmes, while the Mexican will remain exploited by multinational capital (Darcy 1992). Many workers, especially women, become an on-call, part-time labour (Bourque 1992:160) like the supermarket cashiers Deborah Barndt's study (1998). Bourque (1992) suggests that the existing polarization and segmentation of the Canadian workforce will become even more so the form of a small number of core workers, largely white....[and] large contingent of peripheral workers. Most of these part-time will be women, the majority, immigrant and visible minority women. The core will be multi-skilled, technologically trained workers; the majority of these will be men. Similar to Barndt's findings, recent paper by Preston and Giles (1997) also supports the above suggestion of immigrant women being an important component of the polarized labour force Canadian economy. Overall, the outcome of globalization is seen as strategic transformation that boosts the power of multinational corporations (Sinclair 1992, Brecher et al. 1993). It is less favourable for the who are faced with increasing job insecurity, wage polarization and demand on flexibility skill and working conditions (Dreche and Gertler 1991, Levine 1995, Smith et al. 1997, Smith 1997). Labour Flexibility and Temporary Workers from Abroad Within the Canadian economy, we clearly see rise part-time work and self-employment since 1976 (see tables 1, 2 and 3). At the same time, the flexibilization of labour is expressed the form of temporary and seasonal employment that involves rising number of foreign nationals. There are an estimated 80 million non-nationals abroad 1990 (Mehmet 1997), significant proportion of whom are engaged contractually limited employment ranging from professionals to domestics (Myrah 1997, Grandea 1997). This global mobility of labour is largely driven by economic reasons. Labour tends to move from the poor countries to the rich countries. The majority of temporary take on `the socially least regarded jobs, which were often the worst paid or least secure, that could not be filled with nationals'. …