Immigrant Labour Markets for Personal Care Work

This comparative analysis documents the experiences of personal care workers – those who are paid to help people with physical limitations (due to disabilities, illness, or ageing) function in their day-to-day lives.

Why and how did personal care workers come to do this work? What do they like and dislike about it? How do they think things could be improved and what efforts are being made to do so?

The project builds on an earlier Toronto-Los Angeles study. In this phase, we interview women from China, Korea, and the Philippines working in different locations in California.

In California, care recipients hire and fire care workers, but state entities determine the hours and pay, and bargain with unions over wages and benefits. In Ontario, immigrants are hired and paid by both for-profit and not-for-profit agencies – some unionized – contracted by the state. In both places, most workers are permanent residents or naturalized citizens but may have entered under different statuses. Ethnic economies – where the workers and service users are of the same race or ethnicity and work and live in the same neighbourhoods, are present, especially in California.

We ask how different structures of employment and different migrant statuses, along with ethnic and racial difference, shape workers’ lives. And how do all these factors shape organizing to improve work conditions?

Refereed publications

Chun, Jennifer and Cynthia Cranford. 2018. “Becoming Homecare Workers: Chinese Immigrant Women and the Changing Worlds of Work, Care and Unionism.” Critical Sociology, published online in Jan. DOI: 10.1177/0896920517748499

Cranford, Cynthia Angela Hick and Louise Birdsell Bauer. 2018. “Lived Experiences of Social Unionism: Toronto Homecare Workers in the late 2000s.” Labor Studies Journal 43(1): 74-96.

Kim, Yang-Sook. 2018. “Care Work and Ethnic Boundary Making in South Korea.” Critical Sociology. DOI: 10.1177/0896920518766397.

Kim, Yang-Sook and Jennifer Chun. Forthcoming. “Feminist Entanglements with the Neoliberal Welfare State: NGOs and Domestic Worker Organizing in South Korea.” Political Power and Social Theory, Special Issue: Gender and Informal and Precarious Worker Organizing.

• Birdsell-Bauer, Louise and Cynthia Cranford. “The Community Dimensions of Union Renewal: Racialized and Caring Relations in Social Services.” Work, Employment and Society 31(2): 1-17.
• Chun, Jennifer Jihye. (2016). “Organizing across Racial Divides: Union Challenges to Precarious Work in Vancouver’s Health Care Sector” Progress in Development Studies 16(2): 1- 16.
• Chun, Jennifer Jihye and Rina Agarwala. (2016). “Global Labour Organizing in the Twenty First Century,” pp. 634-650. In Handbook of the Sociology of Work and Employment, eds. Steve Edgell, Heidi Gottfried and Edward Granter. London: SAGE.
• Engman Athena and Cynthia Cranford. (2016). “Habit and the body: Lessons for social theories of habit from the experiences of people with physical disabilities.” Sociological Theory (March 2016; 34 (1)).
• Cranford, Cynthia. (2014). “Towards Flexibility with Security for (Im)migrant Care Workers: A Comparative Analysis of Personal Home Care in Ontario and California.” Pp. 173- 191 in Migration and Care Labour: Theory, Policy and Politics, edited by Bridget Anderson and Isabel Shutes. Palgrave.
• Cranford, Cynthia. (2014). “Toward Particularism with Security: Immigration, Race and the Organization of Personal Support Services in Los Angeles.” Pp. 203-226 in When Care Work Goes Global: Locating the Social Relations of Domestic Work, edited by Mary Romero, Valerie Preston and Wenona Giles. Ashgate.
• Non- Refereed publications

5 clear language summaries of findings from the first stage of the Toronto and Los Angeles case studies organized around the theme “Flexibility or Security”:

• Flexibility and Insecurity in Los Angeles Private Sector
• Flexibility and Limited Security in Toronto Direct Funding
• Uneven Flexibility and Limited Security in Toronto Home Care
• Security with Limited Flexibility in Toronto Attendant Services
• Toward Flexibility with Security, Los Angeles Public Sector

• Cranford, Cynthia. (2013). “Towards Flexibility with Security: A Comparative Analysis of Personal Home Care Services.” Presentation at the Service Employees International Union, Local 1 Leadership Conference. Toronto, Ontario. Winter.
• Cranford, Cynthia. 2014. “Toward Particularism with Security: Immigration, Race and the Organization of Personal Support Services in Los Angeles.” Pp 203-225 in When Care Work Goes Global: Locating the Social Relations of Domestic Work, edited by Mary Romero, Valerie Preston and Wenona Giles. Ashgate.
• Cranford, Cynthia and Jennifer Chun. 2017. “Immigration Women and Home-based Elder Care in Oakland, California’s Chinatown.” Pp. 41-66 in Gender, Migration and the Work of Care: A Multi-Scalar Approach to the Pacific Rim, edited by Sonya Michel and Ito Peng. New York: Palgrave.

In Progress

• Cranford, Cynthia, Angela Hick and Louise Birdsell-Bauer. “The Dimensions of Social Unionism for Personal Care Workers.” Under Review.
• Cranford, Cynthia. Flexibility Care, Secure Work: Intimate Labor in Los Angeles and Toronto. Book Manuscript.
• Chun, Jennifer Jihye and Cynthia Cranford. Forthcoming. “Becoming Homecare Workers: Chinese Immigrant Women in California’s Oakland Chinatown.” Care in Transition: The Global Migration of Gendered Care Work, edited by Jennifer Chun, Heidi Gottfried and Ito Peng.
• Chun, Jennifer Jihye and Yang-Sook Kim, “Organizing Domestic Workers in South Korea: Feminist and ethnic entanglements with nationalism and neoliberalism”
• Kim, Yang-sook. “The Micro Politics of Care: A Comparative Study of Co-ethnic and Local Women Workers in the Domestic and Long-term Care Market of South Korea. To be presented at the International Sociological Meetings in July.
• The Global Migration of Gendered Care Work, proposed edited book volume with Heidi Gottfried, Ito Peng and Jennifer Chun (in preparation).