IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/smo/raiswp/0479.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Precarious Employment Experiences in Toronto: A Literature-Based Visual Ethnography of South Asian Women (SAW) in the Food Service Industry

Author

Listed:
  • Tahsina Akhter

    (University of Dhaka; Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada)

  • Mashreka Mahmood

    (University of Toronto, Canada)

Abstract

Immigrants are an important part of the global economy as more people leave their birth countries in search of better lives. In the global chain of labor and capitalist market systems, migration and precarious employment have become an inevitable outcome. However, research has shown that the experiences of migration do not always lead to positive outcomes for new immigrants in a new country. The present paper focuses on South Asian women (SAW) in Toronto to explore their experiences as immigrants in a developed country. The study employs literature-based ethnography as its method and a political ecology framework to understand the argument that precarious employment situations create an environment for SAW to become ethnic entrepreneurs, specifically food caterers, in their struggle for survival. The analysis reveals that the desire for freedom and alternative routes for survival after poor experiences in Canada’s labor market is a key factor in SAW’s development as ethnic entrepreneurs. These women weave a network of friends, family, customers, neighbors, emotions, and finances through their domestic skills of food preparation and entrepreneurship. This reveals the facts of an unequal system of aggregation in the city ecology of Toronto. Inspired by Andrew Causey’s (2016) Drawn to See: Drawing as an Ethnographic Method, this paper aims to capture the experience of a day in the life of a new immigrant family.

Suggested Citation

  • Tahsina Akhter & Mashreka Mahmood, 2024. "Precarious Employment Experiences in Toronto: A Literature-Based Visual Ethnography of South Asian Women (SAW) in the Food Service Industry," RAIS Conference Proceedings 2022-2024 0479, Research Association for Interdisciplinary Studies.
  • Handle: RePEc:smo:raiswp:0479
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://rais.education/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/0479.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Tamar Diana Wilson, 2020. "Precarization, Informalization, and Marx," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 52(3), pages 470-486, September.
    2. Ronaldo Munck, 2020. "Work and Capitalist Globalization: Beyond Dualist Reason," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 52(3), pages 371-386, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Surbhi Kesar & Snehashish Bhattacharya & Lopamudra Banerjee, 2020. "Contradictions and crisis in the world of work in the present conjuncture: Informality, precarity and the pandemic," Working Papers 253, Department of Economics, SOAS University of London, UK, revised Oct 2022.
    2. Surbhi Kesar & Snehashish Bhattacharya & Lopamudra Banerjee, 2022. "Contradictions and Crisis in the World of Work: Informality, Precarity and the Pandemic," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 53(6), pages 1254-1282, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    South Asian Immigrant Women; Toronto; Food Entrepreneurship; Political Ecology; Ethnography;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:smo:raiswp:0479. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Eduard David (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://rais.education/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.