The Construction of Gratitude in the workplace: Temporary foreign workers employed in health care

In: International migration: quarterly review, Volume 59, Issue 2, p. 57-71

Abstract

AbstractIn capitalist societies, workers feel, or feel obliged to feel grateful for having a job. In a world marked by global inequality, migrants from the global South to the North are expected to feel gratitude for their opportunity to move to and live in a first world country. In the case of temporary foreign workers, both these sorts of gratitude come together. The political economy regime governing the conditions of work and cross‐border movement for temporary foreign workers employed in health care in Canada engenders feelings of gratefulness from workers towards their employers. Contextualized within a cross‐disciplinary study of gratitude as a social construct, this article uses the case of this particular sort of work and migration gratitude to develop knowledge on the nuanced and complex ways in which structures of feeling lead from and loop back into capitalist political economies.