The Shift towards Temporary Labour Migration: Comparing Insights from Canada, Australia and the EU

CERC Migration organizes an online panel for ILERA2020.

The historical Canadian emphasis on welcoming immigrants as permanent residents who will contribute to nation-building has recently shifted to include growing numbers of temporary residents. The number of temporary foreign workers in Canada has tripled since the early 2010s to more than 500,000 who comprise a diverse group of highly skilled managers and technicians, and semi-skilled agricultural and domestic workers. This trend is not special to Canada. Australia has adopted similar policies, while the EU has long been trying to build a circular migration policy where skilled people come for a short period of time, for repeated stays, linked to specific job offers. The policy wisdom behind such decisions is that these migrant workers (and their families, when they are allowed to follow them) do not need full integration measures as they will go back.

This session seeks to bring together insights from the Canadian context looking at how limited access to settlement services affects the employment outcomes of temporary migrant workers; with insights from Australia on temporary migrant workers’ transitions from temporary to long-term employment; and with findings from Germany and the larger EU on the policies for managing temporary, skilled migration and their outcomes and implications for migrants and their employment.

Participants:

Marshia Akbar, Senior Research Associate. CERC in Migration & Integration, Ryerson University -- Presenting on Canada

Dimitria Groutsis, Work and Organizational Studies, The University of Sydney -- Presenting on Australia

Anna Triandafyllidou, Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration & Integration -- Towards a typology of temporary migration

Rupa Banerjee, Associate Professor, School of Business Management --  Discussant