Continuum of Exploitation for Immigrant Workers: Disparity in Accessibility and Implications for Human Behavior

Overview: Im/migrant workers in the US experience various challenges related to migration, precarious employment conditions, limited knowledge of workers rights, immigration status, and English proficiency. In this interactive workshop, participants will engage in a classroom activity that presents the experiences of im/migrant workers and discusses clinical implications on human development.Proposal text: With an ever-changing supply and demand chain and widespread inclination of the labor market towards neoliberalism, the mobility of workers across borders is a known component of this globalized process. Im/migrant workers made up 17.4% of the US labor force in 2019 and continue to be more likely employed in service occupations than native-born workers (U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2020). A significant body of literature has recognized severe forms of exploitation that are tied to the emergent concept of ‘modern slavery’ implicit in the network of structural exploitation in the labor market, including for im/migrant workers (Davies, 2019; Kumar & Jamil, 2020).

By adopting a framework of structuration theory (Giddens, 1979), which underscores that human action is constrained by social structures (Hutchison & Charlesworth, 2021), this workshop will discuss experiences of precarity for im/migrant workers related to their employment situation as well as their transnational identities and state-imposed limitations on their social rights (e.g., living wage, access to health care, education, housing assistance, employment insurance, and immigration surveillance, etc.) (Baey & Yeoh, 2018; Strauss & McGrath, 2017).

In this workshop, we will begin with a brief overview of the high numbers of im/migrant workers and their experiences in the US labor market; the importance of infusing this content into required BSW and MSW courses such as HBSE; and the concept of modern slavery including in the informal and formal labor markets in the US. Participants will then 1) read and discuss three different case studies of undocumented im/migrant workers employed in the informal labor market, workers in the US on temprorary employment visas, and workers recruited by into formal labor markets, that highlight economic and social injustice and discrimination experienced by diverse groups of im/migrant workers in the US; 2) examine the ways in which social institutions/structures condition discriminatory practices and workers rights abuses towards marginalized im/migrant populations; 3) discuss our roles as social workers and educators in dismanteling power structures that perpetuate social injustice; and 4) discuss the implementation of similar case studies in HBSE courses at the BSW and MSW level.

Through the medium of case studies, the workshop will utilize the discussion to bridge the domains of theory and practice. As a large group, we will discuss the workers rights abuses faced by im/migrants in this contemporary era, especially underscoring their constrained agency due to their positionality as im/migrants. We will engage in critical thinking about the ways social workers can engage at the individual and policy level to protect the rights of im/migrant workers in the US. Participants will walk away with tools for incorporating this relevant topic in the classroom.