Bejan, Raluca
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10222/78552
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Item Open Access Permanent Jobs, Temporary People: Temporary Foreign Workers’ Struggle for Permanent Residency in Prince Edward Island(TFW Maritimes, 2024-06-05) MacLauchlan, Eliza; MacRae, Ryan; Glynn, Tracy; Wheatley, AnnThis report is the fourth in a series of community-based research projects undertaken by the Migrant Workers in the Canadian Maritimes partnership. It draws on desk research and qualitative interviews conducted with 29 people: twelve migrant workers, ten service providers, four government employees and three employers of migrant workers. Interviews took place between October 2022 and July 2023 and inquired about those transitioning from the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) to permanent residency.Item Open Access Falling Short: Troubles with the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program in Nova Scotia(Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, 2024-03-27) Bejan, Raluca; Allain, Kristi; Glynn, Tracy; Soto Flores, PaolaFalling Short: Troubles with the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program in Nova Scotia is the third community report released by the Migrant Workers in the Canadian Maritimes Partnership (tfwmaritimes.ca). The report follows the publication of Safe at Work, Unsafe at Home: COVID-19 and Temporary Foreign Workers in Prince Edward Island in 2021 and Unfree Labour: COVID-19 and Migrant Workers in the Seafood Industry in New Brunswick in 2023. Falling Short is based on desk research and worker interviews. Data was obtained from freedom of information requests to Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) and Nova Scotia’s regulatory bodies responsible for work safety, employment standards, and housing. An additional 15 interviews with migrant workers in Nova Scotia employed under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) were also conducted. Fourteen of these workers were employed under the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) stream of the TFWP, and one worker was employed under the low-wage stream of the TFWP. Falling Short found that in Nova Scotia, migrant workers frequently encounter a lack of regulatory implementation. Rules exist, but governments are failing to adequately enforce them to create a safe and dignified work environment for migrant workers. Falling Short provides recommendations to both the federal and provincial governments aimed at improving the working and living conditions of the temporary migrant workforce in the province.Item Open Access Anglo-American hegemony or else…!(Central European University Press Review of Books, 2024-02) Bejan, RalucaHans Kundnani’s book Eurowhiteness (Hurst, 2023) propositions that white ethnic nationalism is at the basis of European identity. In her Long Read, however, Raluca Bejan unwraps several issues that she argues make Kundnani’s argumentation flawed.Item Open Access A Tale of Two Contexts: The Ukrainian and Afghan Refugee Crises in Canada and the UK(The Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS), University of Oxford., 2023-12-12) Bejan, Raluca; Mallet-Garcia, Marie; Lipinski, Robert; Do, Cindy; Wolf Aviles, VanessaA Tale of Two Contexts is a comparative study that contrasts the approaches of Canada and the UK in accommodating Ukrainian and Afghan refugees. This study scrutinizes the criteria that classify refugees as deserving or undeserving of governmental protection. Drawing on academic and grey literature from May 2021 to May 2023, A Tale of Two Contexts employs an exhaustive keyword methodology to uncover the efficacy of various policies and their situational specificities. Keywords used included: “Asylum and Refugee Policies”, “State Responses for Refugees/Asylum Seekers”, “Canada-Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel”, “Ukraine Family Scheme”, “Ukraine Sponsorship Scheme”, “Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme”, “Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy”; and “Ukraine Extension Scheme”. A Tale of Two Contexts searched the following databases: Sociological Abstracts, Oxford Scholarship Online, PAIS Index; Research Library, CBCA Complete, Google Scholar, Factiva, Google, and Canada Commons. One hundred thirteen articles were reviewed for Canada and eighty for the UK. The insights derived from this comparative study are set to offer substantive recommendations to policymakers in Canada and the UK. The aim is to enhance the design and implementation of international and temporary protection measures for migrants and optimize transit and resettlement procedures for those displaced by turmoil and global emergencies.Item Open Access Unfree Labour: COVID-19 and Migrant Workers in the Seafood Industry in New Brunswick(TFW Maritimes, 2023-03-01) Bejan, Raluca; Allain, Kristi; Glynn, Tracy; Soto Flores, PaolaThis report is the second in a series of community-based research projects undertaken by the Migrant Workers in the Canadian Maritimes partnership. It draws on desk research and qualitative interview data conducted with 15 temporary foreign workers who arrived in New Brunswick after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Interviews took place between October 2020 and December 2021.Item Open Access After the Cold War: Why COVID-19 infection and death rates were so high in Eastern Europe(The Conversation, 2022-12-21) Bejan, RalucaItem Open Access Why social workers should support the CUPE 3912 labour strike(Canadian Dimension, 2022-10-22) Bejan, RalucaItem Open Access University and school strikes across Canada are about workers’ rights — and protecting education as a public good(The Conversation, 2022-11-21) Ross, Nancy Marie; Bejan, Raluca; Zubriski, StephItem Open Access Whiteness in Question: the Anatomy of a Taxonomy Across Transnational Contexts(Springer, 2022-08-16) Bejan, RalucaThe idea of whiteness has been used in the Anglo-American, middle-class, liberal settings to denote an essential group appurtenance on phenotypical and cultural terms and to code such appurtenance as a universal marker of privilege that cuts across any other differentiating axes that allocate societal advantages and disadvantages. The assumption that racialized skin colour and low social status are inferiorizing attributes of racialization, while white skin colour and high social class are privileged attributes of whiteness, has constructed the idea of whiteness as one that encompasses and supersedes the idea of class. Immigrants to Anglo-American multicultural societies have always been relegated to the margins of their host societies, and their economic exclusion, in particular, has been theorized as resulting from their racialization. This paper, however, compares and contrasts the marginalization of two migrant populations—namely, high-skilled immigrants to Canada, and Eastern European low-skilled immigrants to the UK—to problematize the assumption that whiteness has an essential sameness that universally cuts across other stratifying axes in society, and to show that an essentialist understanding of whiteness disregards class-based explanations for the economic exclusion of migrants, explanations which are often bound with the global circulation of capital and the dominant economic position of the rich nations from the Global North.Item Open Access COVID-19 amongst western democracies: A welfare state analysis(Springer, 2022-04-26) Bejan, Raluca; Nikolova, KristinaThe COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in more than 282 million cases and almost 5.5 million deaths (WHO Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Dashboard, 2022). Its impact, however, has not been uniform. This analysis examines differences in COVID-19 cases and mortality rates amongst different welfare states within the first three waves of the pandemic using repeated measures Multivariate Analysis of Covariance (MANCOVA). Liberal states fared much better on the number of COVID-19 cases, deaths, and excess deaths than the Conservative/Corporatist welfare democracies. Social Democratic countries, in turn, did not fare any better than their Conservative/Corporatist counterparts once potential confounding economic and political variables were accounted for: countries’ economic status, healthcare spending, availability of medical personnel, hospital beds, pandemic-related income support and debt relief, electoral events, and left-power mobilization. The pandemic-related welfare responses after the first wave were similar across all three types of western democracies, but the differences in pandemic outcomes remained. The somewhat better outlook of the Liberal states could be attributed to the so-called social democratization of the Anglo-American democracies, but also to the fact that neoliberalism could have flattened the previous differences between the welfare states typologies and could have brought states closer to each other, ideologically speaking, in terms of welfare provision.Item Open Access ‘NGOs are sort of a dirty word here’: Refugee service provision in Greece(Oxford University, 2022-06-04) Bejan, RalucaItem Open Access How Canada Capitalizes on Ukrainian Refugees(Verfassungsblog. On Matters Constitutional., 2022-03-23) Bejan, Raluca; Bryan, CatherineFor those fleeing the war in Ukraine, Canada launched a new temporary residence pathway, the Canada-Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel (CUAET) program on March 17, 2022. Offered in conjunction with a special family reunification program, CUAET is open to an unlimited number of Ukrainians regardless of their existing ties to Canada. While seemingly an open and benevolent gesture, Ukrainians are welcomed inside the Canadian nation not as humanitarian subjects but primarily as workers to potentially contribute to the Canadian economy.Item Open Access Ukraine: How citizenship and race play out in refugees’ movements in Europe(The Conversation, 2022-03-11) Bejan, Raluca; Bogovic, RenéAs millions of refugees flee Ukraine as a result of the Russian invasion, one question that has been raised is: Why have Ukrainians been welcomed into eastern Europe, unlike Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans and Eritreans? Is it because they are white?Item Open Access The EU is the real villain in the Poland-Belarus migrant crisis(The Conversation, 2021-12-01) Bejan, Raluca; Nabi, SalimThe EU is attempting to position itself as a beacon of liberalism and human rights as it exempts itself from political responsibility for migrants desperately seeking better lives — all while condemning their brutal determent at the continent’s periphery. It’s also trying to portray eastern European countries as racist villains infringing upon the human rights of refugees. But it’s the EU itself that’s the real villain in the eastern European migrant crisis.Item Open Access The Integration of Refugees in Romania: A Non-Preferred Choice(COMPAS, University of Oxford, 2021-11-16) Bejan, RalucaRomania is currently experiencing an increase in the number of asylum seekers, but little is known about the care arrangements and state-supported integration programs in the country for people in need of international protection. This paper addresses this gap and adds to the scholarly literature on forced migration by examining how integration processes for asylum seekers are represented in the public service and political discourse. Using interview data (n =14) with Romanian bureaucrats and elected representatives in national, regional, and municipal offices, this paper explores the institutional capacity of the Romanian state to integrate refugees.Item Open Access Seguridad en el Trabajo, Inseguridad en la Casa COVID-19 y Trabajadores Extranjeros Temporales en la Isla del Príncipe Eduardo(TFW Maritimes, 2021-06-01) Bejan, Raluca; Allain, Kristi; Glynn, Tracy; Wheatley, Ann; Soto Flores, PaolaEste reporte es uno de los primeros de una serie de proyectos de investigación basados en la comunidad emprendidos en colaboración con los Trabajadores Migrantes de las Marítimas Canadienses bajo la iniciativa de COVID-19 y la Salud y Seguridad de los Trabajadores Migrantes en las Marítimas de Canadá. Es resultado de la investigación documental y la recopilación de datos cualitativos de 15 entrevistas realizadas a trabajadores extranjeros temporales que llegaron a la Isla del Príncipe Eduardo después el inicio de la pandemia del COVID-19 en el 2020.Item Open Access How Canada compares to welfare states in COVID-19 cases and deaths(The Conversation, 2021-10-05) Bejan, Raluca; Nikolova, KristinaItem Open Access The progressive case against mandatory vaccination(rabble.ca, 2021-08-17) Bejan, RalucaItem Open Access COVID-19 has exacerbated migrant workers’ conditions and enforced distinctions on national lines(The Centre on Migration, Policy, and Society (COMPAS), University of Oxford, 2021-07-02) Bejan, Raluca; Allain, Kristi Anne; Glynn, TracyItem Open Access Safe at Work, Unsafe at Home: COVID-19 and Temporary Foreign Workers in Prince Edward Island(TFW Maritimes, 2021-06-01) Bejan, Raluca; Allain, Kristi Anne; Glynn, Tracy; Wheatley, Ann; Soto Flores, Paola"Safe at Work, Unsafe at Home: COVID-19 and Temporary Foreign Workers in Prince Edward Island" is the first report in a series of research projects by the Migrant Workers in the Canadian Maritimes partnership. Using desk research and 15 interviews with migrant workers to explore how COVID-19 has affected their health and safety, "Safe at Work, Unsafe at Home" reveals: Housing and workplace violations; unscrupulous staffing practices; overcrowded and inadequate housing conditions; lack of health coverage and medical insurance; and increased surveillance related to COVID-19 and decreased personal freedoms.