Temporary migrant labour and Indigenous sovereignty

Aotearoa New Zealand and Canada are taking similar approaches to temporary migrant labour, but both have largely failed to consider how immigration policy intersects with Indigenous struggles for sovereignty over lands, labour and livelihoods.

This was the focus of a recent public lecture at the University of Auckland by Canadian scholar Dr Leah F. Vosko, a Faculty of Arts and Education Hood Fellow.

Vosko, a distinguished research professor of political science, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and former Canada Research Chair at York University, explored the relationship between contemporary migration policy in the Anglosphere (ANZ, Canada, Australia and the US) and settler colonialism.

She noted that both Aotearoa New Zealand and Canada, as well as others across the English-speaking world, have expanded temporary migrant work programmes while also attempting various kinds of reconciliation with Indigenous peoples.

"In recent decades, migration policies in many settler colonies of the Anglosphere have moved away from the post-World War II emphasis on peopling lands through permanent settlement towards temporariness," she said.

"Reconciliation and co-governance have, however, yet to extend to a key zone of sovereignty – national migration policy: the power to determine who is let in to the country and on what terms."

Drawing on research from her recently published book, Migrant Work by Another Name: Differential Inclusion and Precarity under Canada’s International Mobility Program (University of Toronto Press, 2025), and ongoing fieldwork, Vosko compared migrant worker programmes in Canada with New Zealand's Accredited Employer Work Visa, Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme and Working Holiday scheme.

Despite differences in design, she said both countries’ programmes supply workers to industries facing persistent labour shortages, like agriculture and food and accommodation services, while usually offering migrants only temporary status and limited labour market security.

Vosko also examined what she described as "fractured relationships to the land" through two Canadian case studies looking at the experiences of migrant workers in settler-colonial contexts.

Through interviews with Indigenous agricultural workers from Guatemala employed in Canadian greenhouses, Vosko and her colleagues found that many carried generations of farming knowledge but have little opportunity to use it in highly industrialised agriculture.

One worker, Rodrigo, contrasted farming in Guatemala, where he said, "I'm going to prepare my land like this so that it will give me a good yield", with his experience in Canada, saying, "I just do the work."

Vosko said Indigenous migrant workers labour on land historically taken from Indigenous peoples in Canada (First Nations, Inuit, Métis) while becoming disconnected from their own traditional agricultural practices in Guatemala.

Yet she also found examples of workers using wages earned in Canada to support environmental restoration and traditional farming practices in their home communities.
 

One participant, Sergio, talked about using his earnings to plant trees and restore degraded landscapes.

"I would like to go back and live in those times, where there were lots of trees," he said. "Every year I plant trees … because we depend on them."

A second case study, also by Vosko and her team, examined young working holiday visa holders from East Asia employed in the growing Northern Lights tourism industry in Canada's Northwest Territories, focusing on Yellowknife, the territory's capital.

She said many arrive expecting cultural exchange,  but instead experience insecure employment and tough conditions while working on Indigenous land, with little understanding of its history or significance.

Tourists, she said, are often only interested in viewing the spectacular Aurora Borealis rather than learning about the Indigenous communities whose knowledge and traditions are deeply connected to it.

One interview participant, Luke, said, "Yellowknife is more complicated than the Northern Lights", describing how he gradually learned about Indigenous people, wildlife and the land through relationships outside his workplace.

"It’s troubling that many visitors are looking up at the sky to spot the Aurora, without looking down to the land they're standing on, and learning about Yellowknife’s history and peoples," Vosko added later.

While challenges obviously exist, these situations also reveal what Vosko called "openings for relational solidarities".

She emphasised that in the case of Aotearoa, Māori scholarship offers important ideas for rethinking migration policy.

She highlighted the work of University of Waikato social scientists Dr Arama Rata and Dr Tahu Kukutai, whose Treaty-based model of manaakitanga views immigration through principles of mutual care, respect and Indigenous authority – and made analogies to Indigenous feminist scholarship from Turtle Island, the site of the case studies she showcased.

Rather than treating migration simply as an economic issue, Vosko argued that governments should recognise their connection with Indigenous self-determination, land and relationships.

"The effects of governments' embrace of migrant work programs are divisive," she concluded, "yet there is resistance at these very sites."

"As educators, by pursuing studies supporting mutual learning and generative relations, we can contribute to forging such connections."