The Social Construction of Citizenship and Legal Production of Low-Skilled Temporary Foreign Workers Precarious Status in Canada

Over the past few decades, the number of low-skilled temporary foreign workers entering Canada has multiplied. This research aims to examine the social construction of citizenship in the regulation governing the low-skilled pilot project. Drawing upon critical race theory, the work of Oren Yiftachel and David Harvey's concept of the interplay between the logic of capital and the logic of territory, the research will argue that regulation governing low-skilled pilot project has produced workers with particular types of relations to employers and to labour market which render them precarious. In addition, it has served to further institutionalize segregation, exclusion, and temporariness of workers by entrenching a distinct category of flexible and profitable labour. The research will indicate that Canada’s current low-skilled pilot regime has maintained the nation’s historical stance as a settler colonial state. Specifically, the research will demonstrate that the low-skilled temporary foreign worker regulation has established intrinsic boundaries that has contributed to the demarcation of racially identified spaces based on economic and political rationales underlying temporary migration. Keywords: Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP), Low Skilled Pilot Project (LSPP), precariousness, work permit, permanent residency, mobility right, and exploitation.