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Making Meaning About Reproductive Work: A Narrative Inquiry Into The Experiences Of Migrant Caregivers In Canada, Crystal Gaudet

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation examines how migrant caregivers ascribe meaning to the (re)productive labour that they provide within Canada’s Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP). Introduced in 1992, the LCP was a temporary foreign worker program that recruited women, primarily from the Philippines, to care for children, elderly people, and people with disabilities in the homes of their employers. Numerous studies have shown how the stipulations of the LCP produce precarious working conditions that render caregivers vulnerable to exploitation and abuse and that result in their deskilling and de-professionalization. The conditions engendered by the LCP reflect and reinforce the devalued status of care and …