Temporary Foreign Workers: A Global Phenomenon

There are now huge, unprecedented pools of foreign workers “floating” around the globe. One left a poem on a dorm door in China, writes Guy Standing in The Precariat: “We are all people floating around in the world. We get to meet each other but we never really get to know each other.” Think about that. These foreign workers don’t go home when they leave Canada. They float somewhere else. The social and political effects are dire. Among ordinary people: a surge of what looks like racism but is a highly understandable response to policies meant to make them insecure and willing to lower expectations. In politics: success of quasi-racist parties like UKIP in Britain and the National Front in France. We see symptoms here in the anti-Sikh flyers last week in Brampton. They didn’t come from isolated individuals; there are organizations rallying around this stuff.