Monique Deveaux | Rethinking Structural Exploitation: Temporary Migrant Workers and State-Conditioned Vulnerability | Philosophy Speaker Series

Abstract: Structural accounts of exploitation can explain why employment that is consensual may nevertheless be exploitative. These views focus on the economic relations and distributive inequalities that make workers vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. But structural accounts tend to neglect the role of the state in producing and sustaining systemic conditions of vulnerability. According to migrant justice organizations in Canada, the state plays a central role in creating the structures that keep migrant workers precarious and systematically vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. In this talk, I explore this divergence and ask how philosophers might rethink aspects of structural exploitation by centering the analyses of migrant justice activists.