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

Tahsina Akhter () and Mashreka Mahmood ()
Additional contact information
Tahsina Akhter: University of Dhaka; Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada
Mashreka Mahmood: University of Toronto, Canada

RAIS Conference Proceedings 2022-2024 from Research Association for Interdisciplinary Studies

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.

Keywords: South Asian Immigrant Women; Toronto; Food Entrepreneurship; Political Ecology; Ethnography (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 11 pages
Date: 2024-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac and nep-mig
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in Proceedings of the 38th International RAIS Conference on Social Sciences and Humanities, November 21-22, 2024, pages 245-255

Downloads: (external link)
https://rais.education/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/0479.pdf Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:smo:raiswp:0479

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in RAIS Conference Proceedings 2022-2024 from Research Association for Interdisciplinary Studies
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Eduard David ().