Essential Work, Disposable Workers: Migration, Capitalism and Class

by Mostafa Henaway, Mostafa Henaway

In recent years waves of migration from the Middle East, Latin America and Africa to Europe and North America have been met with a corresponding rise in anti-immigrant, far-right populism in host countries, placing the question of migration at the forefront of politics and social movements. In this sweeping account, Henaway seeks to understand these patterns through contextualizing global migration within a history of global capitalism, class formation and the financialization of migration. As globalization intensifies, workers everywhere are forced to compete for wages ― not through foreign investment and outsourcing, but through an increasingly mobile working class. Henaway rejects the dominant responses of restricting or “managing” migration through temporary worker programs, proposing that stopping a race to the bottom for all working people involves building solidarity with migrant worker struggles for decent work and justice. Through examining the organizing strategies of migrant workers at giants like Amazon and Wal-Mart as well as discount retailers like Dollarama and Sports Direct, the immense power and agency of precarious workers in global companies like Uber or Airbnb, the successful resistance of taxi drivers and fast food workers around the world, and the contemporary mass labour movement organized by new unions and workers’ centres, Henaway shows how migrant demands and strategies can help shape radical working class politics.

Genres: Politics, Labor, Nonfiction

320 pages, Paperback

Published July 25, 2023

Reviews

[Jacob Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

An urgent and "essential" read for those in the contemporary labour movement in Canada and the world. Henaway draws lessons from a life lived in struggle for migrants rights and for justice in the workplace, and synthesizes experience and theory expertly. He makes a clear case for the necessity of migrant justice organising, and the abolition of unjust border and immigration regimes-- not just for the workers crossing these borders, but for the working class as a whole. It is and will be crucial in our fight for decent, dignified working conditions, and power over our work and lives.

The book moves quickly, and is well written. Compact, and compelling. Excellent work from Henaway and the team at Fernwood.

[Toby Mustill · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started this book as a stop gap until my next book arrived… I quickly realized that it was more (and better) than that. “Essential Work Disposable Workers” intrinsically links the struggle for migration permanency and the struggle of the working class in Canada and around the globe. A fantastic, if short, read!

[Comrade Zupa Ogórkowa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Learned a lot about the specific exploitation of migrant labour in Canada and the utility of workers centres as an adjunct to union labour organizing.

[KT · Rating 5 out of 5]

An outstanding read rooted in the author's own organising and experiences over the past two decades analysing the dialectic of migrant workers being both essential and disposable under global capitalism and centring their struggles amid this context.

This context is one of a mutually reinforcing cycle of remittances and migration in which countries in the Global South are trapped in a development path of remittance dependency, which necessarily also requires the export of labour with far-reaching implications: as opposed to seeking other forms of state policy to redress inequalities created by capitalist development, countries are locked into a model of labour export that separates families, destroys communities and lacks concern for workers' livelihoods.
Migrant workers have not only been shaped by global capitalism, but have now become central to propping it up: the capitalist drive for profit requires an ever-expanding, disposable, exploitable workforce - essential as labour, disposable as humans.

Highly recommended for anyone interested in migrant labour