Enforcement Against Exploitation, Working Hard or Hardly Working? : Exploring How Canadian Policy Discourse Problematizes the Labour Exploitation of Migrant Workers

Abstract: This thesis aims to outline how the labour exploitation of migrant workers is problematized in contemporary Canadian labour migration policy discourse; the consequences of this problematization(s), and possibilities for creating an alternative critical space for discourse. Using concepts of (social) harm, (un)freedom, and (hyper)precarity as departure points for analysis, this project endeavours to untangle problematizations of migrant worker exploitation from their representations in Canadian policy discourse through a post-structural policy analysis. From this theoretical perspective, policy discourse will be analyzed employing Carol Bacchi’s (2009) ‘What is the Problem Represented to Be?’ (WPR) methodology. With this theoretical and methodological basis, the goal of this thesis is to make space to open a critical dialogue between the consequences of the global neoliberal capitalist order, Canadian policy discourse, the Canadian border/migration regime, and the conditions of migrant labourers caught in the middle of this complex nexus.