CLW talk: Decent Work for Displaced People: Organizing in Response to Labour Abuses of Venezuelan Refugees and Migrants in Colombia and Brazil

A talk by Jennifer Gordon (Fordham University School of Law), hosted by the Centre for Law at Work.

How much difference does a work permit make for migrants and refugees? What else do they need to be able to achieve decent wages and working conditions? This talk will explore these questions in the context of the Venezuelan diaspora. Venezuelans have surpassed Ukranians and Syrians as the world’s largest group of displaced people, with almost 8 million having fled to other countries, largely in Latin America and the Caribbean. In a welcome departure from the usual reception of refugees and undocumented migrants, Colombia, Brazil, and a number of other states in the region have offered Venezuelans legal temporary status, including the right to work and rights as workers. Yet many Venezuelans with work permits still labor under substantially worse conditions than their local counterparts (who themselves face widespread labor precarity). The majority have a secondary education or less, and are likely to remain in informal and low-wage formal jobs for the foreseeable future. These migrants and refugees are often described as if they lacked the agency to take on the abuses they face. And yet Venezuelan workers, their associations, and trade unions in Colombia and Brazil are beginning to join in organizing efforts to address labor exploitation in industries from app-based food delivery to construction and beyond. The talk will describe these little-documented campaigns, drawing on them for broader lessons about what is necessary to move from rights on paper toward decent work in reality for refugees, migrants, and the local workers who labor alongside them.

Bio
Jennifer Gordon is the John D. Feerick Professor of Law at Fordham University School of Law in New York City, where she has been on the faculty since 2003, teaching in the areas of immigration, labor rights, and government regulation. Her research and writing on migration, trade, and labor standards in the context of globalization has appeared in top academic journals, and her book, Suburban Sweatshops: The Fight for Immigrant Rights, was published by Harvard University Press. She has also written on these topics for the New York Times, Foreign Policy, The Nation, and numerous other media outlets. Earlier in her career, she founded and directed the Workplace Project, a pioneering immigrant workers’ center in the United States. Gordon has received a MacArthur Prize Fellowship and an Open Society Fellowship, and was named one of the “Outstanding Woman Lawyers in the United States” by the National Law Journal.

This is a hybrid event organised by the Centre for Law at Work, University of Bristol Law School. Please register to attend – you will receive the joining link for the event closer to the time.

Contact Information
If you would like to know any further information regarding this event, please contact the Centre Executive Assistant, Paige Spicer.