This second collection of essays continues the exploration of issues in Migration, Social Reproduction and Capitalism. As in Part I, the issue contains a range of ethnographic studies that capture the diversity of social reproductive labour as migrants contend with the material realities of everyday life, often including transnational commitments. The studies illuminate how the scholarship on social reproduction may be enriched though the lenses of political economy, feminism, and Marxism with a view to advancing the theoretical debates over social reproduction through ethnographically informed considerations that take account of the everyday struggles of subaltern peoples in multiple yet interconnected sites as capitalism continues its relentless quest for devalued and readily exploitable and expendable migrant labour.

Canadian immigration prioritizes skill but at what cost? Drawing on ethnographic research, this article examines the quest for permanent residency by well-educated Filipinos temporarily and precariously employed in Canada, and it situates their Canadian experience within the context of the social reproduction of Philippine migration. In 2010, the Philippines was Canada’s top immigration source country across all visa programs, permanent and temporary. Increasingly, potential migrants have commenced their migration journeys by seeking university credentials adapted to in-demand slots defined by skill. Working back from the present to trace policies enabling the increased presence of skilled Philippine migrants in Canadian labour markets, this article shows how the bifurcation of immigration policy’s reliance upon ideological constructions of skill enables the accumulation of capital along the Philippines-Canada migration corridor. In addition to the social reproduction of households, remittances from relatives facilitate migration goals, including education for migration; hence, migration is socially reproduced over several generations. Regardless of credentials, research confirms that deskilling, reskilling, and upskilling remain a common thread in the migration histories of Filipinos in Canada. In particular, we record how the skill binary, whereby skill is equated with permanent migration and unskilled equals temporary status, relates to feminized work, for example, in service and care. With this observation, we propose that social reproduction as theorized by generations of feminist scholars is crucial to assessing how immigration policy enables capital accumulation and normalizes the devaluation of skills acquired through remittances from previous generations of migrants.

This collection of articles explores the interrelationships between migration, social reproduction, and the reproduction of capitalism. Authors aim to shed light on the dynamics in which contemporary regimes of accumulation generate migration as both a response and solution to crises that confront ordinary people in their mundane efforts to meet the material and non-material needs of kin and community. Contributors in this special issue subscribe to the tradition of political economy and Marxism. So, their efforts are dedicated toward addressing how social reproduction and the reproduction of capital are entwined in a dialectical relationship, specifically in this case, through the lens of migration.

Prevailing scholarship on migration tends to present migrants as the objects of history, subjected to abstract global forces or to concrete forms of regulation imposed by state and supra state organizations. In this volume, by contrast, the focus is on migrants as the subjects of history who not only react but also act to engage with and transform their worlds. Using ethnographic examples from Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and the Middle East, contributors question how and why particular forms of political struggle and collective action may, or indeed may not, be carried forward in the context of geographic and social border crossings. In doing so, they bring the dynamic relationship between class, gender, and culture to the forefront in each distinctive migration setting.

Feminist research on gender relations in fishing communities has established that through a narrowing of focus upon maritime pursuits, the coast is masculinized and men’s lives are privileged over women’s. The invisibility of women’s labour in coastal communities becomes particularly acute in situations where the labour is performed somewhere else, as is the case here. This comparison of gendered work practices and ideologies in some Philippines coastal households reveals that women’s work is crucial to the reproduction of fisheries sectors. But more than this, most coastal households are not sustained primarily through the fishery, nor through the labour of a male breadwinner. Nonetheless, local gender ideologies overstate men’s contributions to livelihood and understate the economic and social significance of women’s work: productive and reproductive; local and extra-local. Increasingly, the exporting of women’s labour "in service" is both a means of household livelihood and ironically, a strategy for servicing the national debt. Gendered class and cultural affinities are now articulated through transnational social fields creating new forms of consciousness and possibilities for political expression.

In 2007, Canada expanded the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) to include service and hospitality sectors. By 2010, more migrants entered Canada with temporary visas than as permanent residents. While some found employment in hospitality and tourism, most were concentrated in the fast food sector. Working transnationally, this paper uses Tim Hortons’ concurrent global expansion and its arrival in the Philippines as a case study of the global mobilities and intersecting pathways of capital and labour. Drawing on the theoretical contributions of feminist political economy, it illustrates how the aspirations and mobilities of the Filipino workers at the centre of this study are organized in the service of capital; capital, in this example, as represented by the globally ambitious Tim Hortons’ parent corporation, Restaurant Brands International (RBI) and, more specifically, the Brazilian American global investment firm that owns and manages RBI, 3G Capital, as well as by the efforts and objectives of franchise holders.

Many healthcare workers are “on the road” traveling to and from fixed sites (eg, patients’/clients’ homes). Qualitative interviews with nine Nova Scotian managers of mobile healthcare workers explored the conditions of workers’ travel. Findings highlight challenges such as changing schedules, as well as positive features including flexibility over the travel schedule. Some managers noted worker mobility-related responsibilities including having to decide if travel is too dangerous due to poor weather. A few managers suggested that workers may not receive adequate economic reimbursement for travel costs (eg, wear and tear on vehicle), and in some instances, workers need to use a benefit (eg, vacation day) or are not paid if they cannot drive due to poor weather. Reported organizational supports for workers’ travel were variable. This research indicates a need for supportive mobility-related policies and practices across all organizations, including policies that cover economic costs related to travel for all workers.

Many healthcare workers are 'on the move' as part of their employment, travelling often great distances to such places as patients'/clients' homes and community clinics. Healthcare workers' experiences of this employment-related geographic mobility have been relatively invisible even though mobility is necessary for home and community care. Interviews with professional (e.g. nurses) and paraprofessional (e.g. personal care assistants) healthcare workers in Nova Scotia (Canada) found that mobility includes safety risks, and health and economic costs, although a few professionals had employment contracts that helped to protect them against such risks and costs. Paraprofessionals appear to be most impacted by the economic costs given their lower incomes. Many healthcare workers also experienced travel positively, as time away from fixed sites, and associated this time with freedom. The risks of mobility were understood by some workers as part of a duty to care, but a few suggested that the health and economic costs are an undue burden, pointing to an opening for challenging these conditions. There is a need for regulations to ensure all healthcare workers are safe as they are mobile to and from fixed sites, and do not have to shoulder the health or economic costs of mobility.

OBJECTIVE:The study examined the relationship of occupational safety with job burnout.DESIGN:The study used a cross-sectional survey design.SETTING:The setting was Nova Scotia, Canada.PARTICIPANTS:Mobile health employees (N = 156) completed surveys on road safety, workload, burnout and supervisor incivility.MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE:The main outcome measure was the Maslach Burnout Inventory.RESULTS:Results found that safety concerns improved the prediction of exhaustion beyond that provided by workload concerns alone. Further, confidence in safety buffered the relationship of exhaustion with cynicism such that the exhaustion/cynicism relationship was stronger for employees who had lower confidence in road safety.CONCLUSIONS:Employees' confidence in occupational safety while addressing work responsibilities on the road has implications for their experience of job burnout.

Mobility and movement is an increasingly important part of work for many, however, Employment-Related Geographical Mobility (ERGM), defined as the extended movement of workers between places of permanent residence and employment, is relatively understudied among healthcare workers. It is critical to understand the policies that affect ERGM, and how they impact mobile healthcare workers. We outline four key intersecting policy contexts related to the ERGM of healthcare workers, focusing on the mobility of Registered Nurses (RNs), Licensed Practical Nurses (LPNs) and Continuing Care Assistants (CCAs) in Nova Scotia: international labour mobility and migration; interprovincial labour mobility; provincial credential recognition; and, workplace and occupational health and safety.

This paper contributes to the growing literature on the political economy of migration management. Based on ethnographic research in Manila in 2016, we explore the contradictory entrepreneurial character of IOM Philippines in its multi-stranded global migration management activities. As a major labour export country with a history of fractious politics over state reliance on migration, partly in response to neoliberalisation, the Philippines represents an ideal field site for examining triple-win migration and development scenarios. By way of example, we analyse howIOM's global mission is represented in pre-departure programming for select visa-ready migrants destined for Canada. Such sessions occur in an increasingly competitive environment and exemplify the rescaling of migration management initiatives concerned to gain maximum advantage from labour export and import (for states and capital), while grooming a disciplined migrant labour force. On Canada's part, neoliberalisation and just-in-time immigration priorities seek greater efficiencies from duly disciplined migrant arrivals. Here, we see the IOM's signature history of protection and aid for vulnerable and displaced persons maintained in tension with its facilitating role in perpetuating the structured inequalities of global capitalism. IOM's entrepreneurial activities in the governance gaps and market places of migration are, we argue, best summed up as labour brokerage by another name.

Drawing from over 50 semi-structured interviews performed in three small cities (Charlottetown, Moncton, and St. John's) and one larger comparator city (Halifax) of the Atlantic Provinces, this chapter addresses social networks from multidisciplinary angles. We see that immigrants hold complex understandings of the meanings of multiculturalism. However, variations emerge relative to perceptions of 'community', its value and purpose. While some participants report having strong and positive relationships with kin and other immigrants from their ethno cultural associations, others spoke positively about broader 'Canadian' social networks. For younger participants, the idea of maintaining 'traditions', for example, through marriage to someone with a common ethno cultural heritage, is a matter of some ambivalence. But variations occur relative to the size of the city and its immigrant populations, as confirmed also by comparisons with a similar sample of respondents from Halifax. However, broadly speaking, universal principles such as honesty and respect are seen as the basis for positive social relations, more so than shared culturally based values. Not surprisingly, the data from this project also reveal notable variation in the types of networks used and, often, how they are deployed based on gender with women's culturally assigned roles in terms of social reproduction having an impact and, for example, tending to produce 'broader' rather than 'denser' networks.