Aziz Choudry is associate professor in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education at McGill University and visiting professor at the Centre for Education Rights and Transformation, Faculty of Education, University of Johannesburg. He is author of Learning Activism: The Intellectual Life of Contemporary Social Movements. He serves on the board of the Immigrant Workers Centre, Montreal. Adrian A. Smith is an activist-scholar with interests in the legal regulation of labour migration in historical and contemporary forms. He has published in the Canadian Journal of Law and Society and Socialist Studies and is currently completing a manuscript tentatively entitled Migration, Law and Development. He is a member of Justicia For Migrant Workers.
"The authors of Unfree Labour have done us a great service,
reporting and theorizing from the front lines of migrant and
immigrant worker organizing in Canada. They've produced an
internationally important book. The specific stories resonate with
a global narrative, in which workers in poorer countries are freed
to bring their labour to serve the rich, and are then rendered
permanently vulnerable through the collusion of employers, police
and government agencies. This bitter liberty is, however, being
fought: look for inspiration in the reflections by organizers on
resisting racialized capitalism, and the victories they've
achieved, far from the media's gaze, in fields, factories,
fast-food and homes."
--Raj Patel, author of The Value of Nothing and Stuffed and Starved
"Analyzing the contemporary production of 'unfree' labour in
Canada's immigration and neoliberal economic policies, this book
makes an excellent contribution to the fields of labour and
migration studies. Grounded in the struggles of migrant workers
against racialized bondage, the studies presented by Choudry and
Smith draw much needed attention to one of the most important
movements of our times. A must read for all concerned with labour
rights and economic justice in an increasingly polarized
world."
--Sunera Thobani, author of Exalted Subjects: Studies in the Making
of Race and Nation in Canada "Choudry and Smith have put together
an impressive collection of authors who reveal the ugly truth about
Canadian so-called values: that Canada is a willing participant and
leader in the exploitation, racialization and commodification of
human labour on stolen land. They reveal much about a human dignity
that shines a light on the Canadian hubris and myth of being a
champion of 'human rights' as families and people are torn asunder
in the name of profit and privilege."
--David Bleakney, second national vice-president, Canadian Union of
Postal Workers "Unfree Labour systematically shows how rapacious
capitalists and the state thrive and secure profits through the
systematic subordination of women, nonwhite, and migrant labourers.
The chapters document that exploitation, so reminiscent of
feudalism and early capitalism are ever-present in our modern
capitalist system in the West. The chapters in this book provide
chilling accounts of the constrained lives of domestics,
agricultural labourers, and the growth of temporary foreign
workers, so dependent on removing and denying rights that were
achieved over the past two centuries. Choudry and Smith have
assembled a comprehensive and outstanding book that is essential
for all scholars of the labour movement."
--Immanuel Ness, editor of New Forms of Worker Organization: The
Syndicalist and Autonomist Restoration of Class Struggle Unionism
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