Haitians facing the Chilean labour market: From categorisation games to classification struggles
Amode, Nassîla
Haitians facing the Chilean labour market: From categorisation games to classification struggles - 2020.
30
Between 2011 and 2018, Chile became one of the most popular destinations for Haitian migrants in South America. This migration flow of almost 200,000 individuals was rapidly labelled as labour migration, since it coincided with the extensive employment of Haitian workers in certain sectors of the Chilean economy that had a shortage of low-level workers. Haitian migrants’ entry into the Chilean labour market is facilitated by migration policies and institutions that organise these migrants’ dependence on these kinds of jobs, and relies on a specific process of racialisation. This process stems from the relations and confrontations taking place within the Chilean labour market, which has become the main site of production and negotiation of the ethno-racial categories used to designate Haitian migrants in Chile. The process is also instrumental in the practical subordination of members of this population, implied by their placement at the bottom of the socio-professional scale. From the analysis of the way in which categories are played out on the labour market, this article aims to consider the racialisation through work of Haitians in Chile as a process in which actors are involved in intense classification struggles, calling on a wide range of symbolic repertoires, discourses, and practices of inferiorisation and resistance.
Haitians facing the Chilean labour market: From categorisation games to classification struggles - 2020.
30
Between 2011 and 2018, Chile became one of the most popular destinations for Haitian migrants in South America. This migration flow of almost 200,000 individuals was rapidly labelled as labour migration, since it coincided with the extensive employment of Haitian workers in certain sectors of the Chilean economy that had a shortage of low-level workers. Haitian migrants’ entry into the Chilean labour market is facilitated by migration policies and institutions that organise these migrants’ dependence on these kinds of jobs, and relies on a specific process of racialisation. This process stems from the relations and confrontations taking place within the Chilean labour market, which has become the main site of production and negotiation of the ethno-racial categories used to designate Haitian migrants in Chile. The process is also instrumental in the practical subordination of members of this population, implied by their placement at the bottom of the socio-professional scale. From the analysis of the way in which categories are played out on the labour market, this article aims to consider the racialisation through work of Haitians in Chile as a process in which actors are involved in intense classification struggles, calling on a wide range of symbolic repertoires, discourses, and practices of inferiorisation and resistance.
Réseaux sociaux