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Join Migrante Alberta in a conference on global migration on March 20 and 21

Amidst the US$372 billion-worth of remittance in 2011, migrants, refugees and displaced peoples continue to languish in horrible conditions. Racism, discrimination and social exclusion of migrants have not been squarely addressed but rather reinforced and embedded. Most receiving governments are even guilty of fanning this anti-migrant environment by stating that migrants are a burden to social services and pitting local workers with migrant workers.

As more than 100 million people in the world are estimated to be migrants, the situation back in their home countries has not changed at all. The continued and faithful implementation by sending countries of the neoliberal policies of deregulation, privatization and liberalization only intensify the already abject poverty, severe unemployment and underdevelopment of many economies that force people to migrate for the survival of their families and loved ones.

Such a reality presents that this billion-dollar migration industry only benefits a few but never the migrants, their families and the people of the underdeveloped countries.

Canada is one of the countries that peddles the idea of “temporary labour migration” as a “flexible way of meeting labour surplus and shortage across the country”. In Canada this is the Temporary Foreign Workers program.

The Temporary Foreign Worker Program is a guest worker program that recruits workers from the global south to fill the labour needs in Canada. However, Canada's immigration policy continue to shift away from recruiting immigrants and permanent residents, in favour of recruiting masses of temporary foreign workers.

This shift towards temporary migrants accentuates the elitist nature of immigration policy and continue to create a more blatant two-tier population, one of citizens with rights, and the other of temporary and non-status, generally low-wage, workers.

The conference is gathering of academes, students, migrant workers.

It will held on March 20 and 21

March 20 Plenary presentation by Dr. Robyn Rodriguez
Edmonton Clinic Health Health Academy (ECHA) 2-490
5:00PM

March 21 Conference
Edmonton Clinic Health Health Academy (ECHA) L1-490
9:00AM

The guest keynote speaker is Dr. Robyn Rodriguez. Dr. Rodriguez is the Associate Professor of Asian American Studies at UC Davis, California. She authored the book, Migrants for Export: How the Philippines Brokers Labor to the World (University of Minnesota Press, 2010), It won an Honorable Mention for Best Book in Social Science by the Association for Asian American Studies.

Other Speakers Include
Yessy Byl - Lawyer and Migrant advocate, Alberta Civil Liberties Research Centre
Jason Foster - Academic Coordinator, Industrial Relations, Athabasca University
Maria Victoria Venancio - Temporary Foreign Worker

For more information: 780-289-4683 or
migrantealberta@gmail.com