ESCP Europe

Langue

French

Publication year

01/05/2025

In Montreal, racialized immigrant workers are disproportionately clustered in precarious employment sectors. This study aims to identify the factors accounting for this overrepresentation by interviewing racialized immigrants working in these sectors for companies hiring a majority of immigrants. It also aims to identify the working conditions that characterize these "ethnic niches" and to situate the experiences of the workers employed there within their overall career trajectory. Due to systemic obstacles in the labour market, participants are channelled into these niches, where they occupy underpaid jobs under degraded working conditions. The formation of these niches can be attributed to, among other factors, the ethnospecific and gendered recruitment networks and channels mobilized by employers and employees, often through placement agencies. In these companies, higher-status, higher-wage salaried positions tend to be filled by native Quebecers, while immigrants are massively hired on a temporary basis to perform the most arduous and devalued tasks. Gender also partly determines the division of labour within some of these companies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]