When: Monday, June 6, 2022, 10:30 AM - 12:00 PMWhere: Online or Room 2.10 (second Floor), School of Law, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS
Watch the (B)OrderS Masterclass: Refugees and Decent Work
Since World War II, refugees have largely been denied the right to work in their host countries, separated from labour migrants by a firewall that runs from the international level to the ground. In the face of multiple refugee crises in the past decade, however, the international community has begun to consider turning refugees into workers. This (B)OrderS Masterclass will discuss the risk that, without sufficient attention to mechanisms to ensure decent work, the resulting refugee employment initiatives may place some of the world’s most vulnerable people in some of its most exploitative jobs. Professor Gordon will illustrate this concern by drawing on her field interviews and observations in Jordan, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, and Mexico, which between 2016-19 were the focus of discussions regarding the employment of refugees in factories in export processing zones, hailed at the time as a paradigm shift although never realized in practice. (In the case of Jordan, efforts to carry out such a plan failed; in the other countries the proposals never left the drawing board). In response, Professor Gordon will argue that it is both necessary and possible to centre decent work in the design and implementation of refugee employment initiatives, offering a set of principles to guide future efforts.
Professor Gordon will also describe the research challenges she has encountered in the design and execution of her Refugees as Workers project and discuss some of the strategies she has used to overcome them. Finally, she will preview the next stage of the project, which will focus on the 5 million displaced Venezuelans in South America. Few host countries have recognized Venezuelans as refugees, but a number nonetheless permit Venezuelans to work and grant them equal rights with local workers. The goal is to consider the labour experiences of Venezuelans within the different legal regimes established to accommodate them, drawing lessons from these settings about the possibilities and challenges of achieving decent work for refugees, whether within or outside the formal refugee regime.
This (B)OrderS Masterclass will be of interest to postgraduate taught and research students (LLM / MA / MSc and PhD) as well as early-career researchers who are developing research projects relating to work with refugees. Attendees will have the opportunity to draw upon Professor Gordon’s long experience in developing and implementing research projects employing different research methodologies.
The event will be chaired by Professor Violeta Moreno-Lax, Professor of Law and Founding Director of (B)OrderS: Centre for the Legal Study of Borders and Migration, Queen Mary University of London.
Jennifer Gordon has been a professor on the faculty at Fordham University School of Law in New York City since 2003, teaching immigration law and labor and employment law, as well as an introductory course on legislation and regulation. Her research and writing on migration, trade, and labor standards in the context of globalization has appeared in top academic journals in the United States, 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, 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. Professor 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.
Founded in 2022, the (B)Orders Centre focuses on the study of bordering, ordering and othering processes through law. It constitutes an excellence hub for intellectual collaboration and evaluation of the role of law in the making and unmaking of borders and their impact on global (im)mobility. It connects scholars within and beyond Queen Mary Law School to harness existing inter- and multi-disciplinary research into law, borders and (im)mobility and shape future research and policy agendas in response to global challenges.