Filipino Migrants and the Canadian Dream
Tues, 1 December 2026
2:30 to 4:30 pm | 314 91ÑÇÉ« Lanes
Presentation by:
Geraldina Polanco (Sociology, McMaster University)
With discussant:
Leah Vosko (Distinguished Research Professor of Political Economy in the Department of Politics at 91ÑÇÉ«)
As a celebrated Canadian institution built on precarious labour, Tim Hortons exploits the Canadian Dream to draw qualified migrants to Canada. In her award-winning monograph, , Geraldina Polanco interrogates a Filipino-Canadian fast-food labour chain to examine how culture shapes migration and the global economy.
By centering the social imaginary and its transnational governance structures across a transnational terrain, she documents how a range of social actors and institutions produce cultural narratives of nations, such as the Canadian Dream, that entice skilled Filipino migrants to engage in transnational deskilling.
By unpacking these cultural forces and the moral economies that inform them, she articulates a more comprehensive understanding of how temporary labour programs operate.
Sponsored by the Global Labour and Research Centre, the International Migrants Alliance, Liberating Migrant Labour, the People's Tribunal, and the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies
