1. Which themes, ideas, examples resonated with the group and why. 

2. What did you learn from the readings. Do you see overlap with themes from past weeks? Explain

3. Select 1 reading

        3.1 Is there a big vision (from above or below)? How does solidarity or blocking solidarity fit into the vision?

4. Brief explanation of the link/image/ etc. 

• Invisibility: 

  • The invisibility of migrant work– especially rural migrant work 

  • The invisibility of work in the home

  • Inherent precarity in migrant worker’s program - use of cheap labour but denying permanent residence, threatening deportation if migrants dissent

• Policing

  • Creation of a hostile environment

    • Makes it difficult to create networks of solidarity

  • over-policing/under-protection of marginalized groups 

• Borders and process of bordering: 

  • Us vs. them dynamic is shaped by borders

  • Renegotiating borders, how they shift based on the intersectional factors of the migrant

  • The intensification of borders and their impact on people 

  • Everyday bordering as a control of diversity

• Class struggle: 

  • Common theme throughout all the different readings

  • Questions about who make up the working class

    
    

Specific points that overlapped with Past weeks: 

• Wages for Housework and Wages for Immigration both aim to dismantle capitalism as an overall vision for change. Through demanding wages, an attempt to break the system can occur because if all labourers were to be paid fairly for their work and their time, then the system would ultimately collapse. This idea undergirds the ideas from the first and second vantage points. 

• The overlapping concepts from week 9 and 10 focus on the process of immigration and citizenship, and the process of creating the narrative of us versus them through borders and citizenship. Through the use of technology through immigration, diversity within a state can be controlled. The readings from week 9 and 10 also touch on the fact that immigration itself is a process that capitalism is dependent on. The jobs that immigration processes mandate, and the money that it brings in, help to sustain capitalism, however they are not traditionally viewed as so. 

Big Ideas in Wages for Immigration, (Bohrer, 2022) 

• The process of imagining immigration itself as a form of social reproduction, immigration in and of itself is an industry 

  • Immigration as an economic process that requires the use of human capital 

• The broader vision that you do not have to immigrate for a better future, it should not feel like the only solution for a better future 

• Immigration should be considered social reproduction in and of itself 

  • People necessary to keep western economies functioning and the momentum of capitalism going are coming from other countries

    • “future immigrants and their U.S.-born children will account for 88% of the nation’s population growth between 2015 and 2065” (Passel & Cohn, 2017)

  • We shouldn’t conflate the struggles of women in household with the struggles migrant workers

    • Then that diminishes the struggles of women migrant workers

• Immigration is highly gendered: 

  • The breaking up of nuclear families through migration

    • “nearly 90% of deportees are men, although about half of all noncitizens are women”

• Immigration does not necessarily lead to a ‘better life’ 

  • And there is so much labour associated with immigration

  • Although one may believe that the only was to succeed is to move to another state and pursue a life there, this thought process does not take into account the barriers that an individual may face within a new state 

  • Neoliberal concept that if you work hard enough, you will be able to obtain your dreams 

    
    

How does solidarity, or blocking solidarity, fit into the vision? Are people responding? 

• Within the ‘wages for’ concept– there can be solidarity– because various groups who do not receive recognition or payment for their labour have key goals and visions that connect them to one another

• Broad idea of universality - create services that are meant to be accessed by everyone and in turn, this spills over into creating better access for the most vulnerable groups

• The concept of solidarity fits into the vision as it can lead to collective action, 

  • The concept of worker solidarity involves a sense of unity among all migrant workers, regardless of their national origin.

• self-deportation policy blocks solidarity through people internalizing the concept of policing, border control and instilling fear (very effective tactic) in regards to accessing services/support networks    

• Blocking solidarity fits into the vision of the us/them narrative 

  • People do respond, for example, through Geographies of Friendship, acting through radical love to dismantle the us/them narrative 

  • For example, through Transborder Friendship Praxis (TFP), people may seek to build friendships, communities, and dismantle international borders that create the conceptualization of the “other” 

2.  From the readings we learned that due to precarious citizenship status situation, you cannot get access to services.

   • UK discourages immigration, only looking for people who are seen as productive or “high value workers”.

   • There is overlap in many of the readings about how solidarity from the state is often performative. example Toronto as a sanctuary state.

3. Toronto Sanctuary city reading

   3.1 The system that we built around belonging to a place is incompatible with the aim of solidarity.

4. Surrendering by Ocean Vuong.

   • The article is about Ocean's experience as an ESL student in the United States. He, his mother and grandmother immigrated to the United-States when he was 2, lived in an unstable community, and was in a precarious state due to the Vietnam war. mother is illiterate, explains the his life through his work,

1) Themes 

• Mobility 

  • Capital as controlling people's movement. Physical distancing of groups from urban centres renders entire communities, First Nations Reserves, for example, economically inaccessible under neoliberalism. Limited access to reasonably priced groceries, unable to physically attend secondary or post-secondary education. 

• Bodies

  • Which bodies are considered legal vs not? Policies and legislation (i.e. UK teachers reporting on undocumented/precarious individuals) create hostile environments for specific communities and individuals. 

  • Settler colonial borders. Reserves, "Indian Status," policing and legalization/illegalization of Indigenous movement. 

2) What did you learn from the readings? Did you see an overlap?

We have learned that border regimes enforce the control, regulation, and surveillance of marginalized bodies. Border regimes allow for the criminalization of racialized bodies and the separation of racialized bodies from circuits of capital and public infrastructure. The hyper-surveillance of migrants results in hostile environments in which landlords, educators, and employers become border agents to limit the right to mobility.

There is an overlap between these ideas of migration and solidarity with anti-colonial resistance. As Wolfe purports, settler-colonialism is dynamic; it transforms and re-invents itself for the purpose of Indigenous subjugation. The border regime is an apparatus of the settler-colonial state as it criminalizes, controls, and dehumanizes subjects that do not adhere to the Western gaze. Thus, the violence and exclusion of the indigenous population and migrants are mutually constitutive.

3) Wages for Immigration! By Ashley J. Bohrer

The big vision in Bohrer’s piece is that, despite not being recognized as such, immigration is labour. From a Feminist-Marxist lens, Bohrer frames immigration as a function and aspect of neoliberal capitalism as migrants are exploited to fill gaps in global northern workforces. They state how, through this lens, immigration is considered social reproduction, as it is the “renewal of a subordinated class of direct producers committed to the labour process” (Vogel, as quoted by Bohrer, 87). 

Though settler colonialism creates hostile environments for indigenous folks, migrants, and marginalized communities, it also fosters anti-colonial resistance in times and spaces of shared struggle. This happens across marginalized communities, which can be seen in the parallels between the Wages for Housework movement and that of Wages for Immigration, both fighting against neoliberal capitalism and settler colonialism in their own rights. Another example of shared solidarity across different groups under settler colonialism is how ​​Indigenous folks on Turtle Island have been and continue to show solidarity with Palestinians. Patricia Gonzalez and six other folks from the Water Warriors Council of the Puyallup Tribe delayed the arrival of an American ship loaded with munition headed toward Israel by blocking its path in canoes (Beaumont, 2023). Though the aforementioned groups and movements are spatially and temporally distant, their struggles each come at the hands of neoliberal settler colonial regimes and are thus interconnected through both their struggle and their liberation.

4. Our group wanted to reflect on Israel’s control over the Palestinian population through military checkpoints that use colour-coded IDs in the occupied territories. Israel’s colour-coded ID system (i.e. blue and orange ID cards based on rank) controls the population registry and ID system of Palestinians. The Israel military checkpoint restricts where “Palestinian residents can live, their access to services and their participation in the political system.” The intersection between technology and border regimes allows us to frame technology as a means to control and exclude people’s freedom of movement. 

A quote in the Aljazeera article that stood out to our group: “The work inside Israel is forced upon us. In the Palestinian sector, the income is very low. Even when people are educated and have degrees, no one cares about them. There are no job opportunities for them, so they work anywhere they can.” This quote further speaks to how Palestinian people are unable to enter capitalistic economies (i.e. opportunities to study and work) to thrive. Hence, border regimes further exacerbate deplorable living conditions by imposing restrictions on Palestinians.

1. What did you learn from the readings? Do you see overlap with themes from past weeks? Explain. 

   1. Topic of ghettoized neighbourhoods including Scarborough for instance

   2. Dynamic of ethnic minority against ethnic minority, pinning against each other

      1. “We’re better”

   3. Aspirations of wealth, will seek other ways to access the “promised” wealth, even through crime, pitting neighbourhoods, inherent policing “we’re good canadians”, us vs them

   4. interesting/unfortunate tensions b/w Indigenous ppl and Chinese communities (BC/Lower mainland specific) -> govt benefits from this self management of conflicts 

   5. Attachment to land, what does this mean? When groups of people are being pushed around, govt benefits -> this breaks/blocks solidarity!! Migration never stops from the suburbs to the urban centres

   6. Having your ethnic enclave also provides sanity in a constantly shifting society that is isolated further away from the core and is more sparse in its population and illusion of great/equal opportunities.

   7. Who is being used as the model for incentivization/guilt? 

2. Select 1 reading: Bohrer’s (2022) Wages for Immigration! 

   1. Is there a big vision (from above or below)? How does solidarity or blocking solidarity fit into the vision? 

      1. Ashley J. Bohrer is critiquing labour and social reproduction theorists who limit their analyses to a middle-to-upper class female centric perspective without accounting for the multiplicities of racialized people and immigrants, let it be refugees, undocumented workers, or temporary foreign workers. Immigration is central to social reproduction and 'productive' labour under capitalism. Immigration is the source of generational replacement for the Global North's workforce, which is aging and shrinking, but relies on welfare and pensions. So, there is a reshaping of the labour map under capitalism that encompasses transnational boundaries.  

      2. The big vision entails demanding wages for the social reproduction labour underlying immigration in order to visibilize the exploited labour of immigration that is rendered invisible under the global, capitalist system. As a result, Bohrer is envisioning a world where the exploitation of immigration and social hierarchies such as Global North vs. Global South is dismantled. 

      3. Re-theorizes certain functions of capitalism to account for all vulnerable populations, so that resistance movements and envisioning a better future and policies for all is fully possible. 

      4. Solidarity fits into this vision because solidarity must be transnational. For instance, we discussed care activism and how Filipino care workers undertook care as activism in caring for each others, and for the larger community of care workers and their families. Ideas of critical hope and practices of resistance instilled in each other. 

3. Brief explanation of creative link/image/etc. 
   

Creative Link: "Amazon History of a Former Nail Salon Worker" by Ocean Vuong. This poem lists the Amazon purchases of Vuong’s mother, who works in a nail salon. As the poem continues, the reader recognizes the convergence of home and work, as she purchases “Clorox Bleach, industrial size” and ““I Love New York” T-shirt, white, small” in the same breath. The purchase history also further indicates the changing health of Vuong’s mother, who is diagnosed with cancer, and eventually passes away at the end of the poem. We decided to use this poem as our creative link because we think it highlights the social reproductive care that one person takes on, and how the industry Vuong’s mother finds herself in is a type of care work that wears down the body. We thought that the space of the nail salon, and the poem, connects to the concept of ethnic enclave economies and those who seek familiarity through similar ethnicities to build relationships of care and solidarity, which can manifest in where one is employed. 

• Female immigrants across the board are recruited to western countries/global north for care work/reproductive work

• She herself is required to supply the items for her job -> barriers imposed on newcomers, lack of programs, supports, 

• Lack of literacy, ability to speak english, goes to a place of work where she can communicate, find networks

• Heavily surveilled place of work -> everyday bordering

  
  

Learnings:

• Consider things further, pushed further in critical thinking, consciousness raising, own community building

• More inclusive and compassionate

• Reflection to include self and society

Link to poem by Ocean Vuong: https://www.instagram.com/p/CuM914VLKWx/