Catherine E. Connelly (2023), Enduring Work: Experiences with Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program

In Enduring Work: Experiences with Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program, Catherine E. Connelly provides a carefully researched and analytically grounded examination of Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP). Based on 103 interviews conducted between 2014 and 2019 with temporary foreign workers (TFWs), employers, community advocates, and intermediaries across provinces, the book brings an organizational behaviour and human resources management perspective to a policy area more often examined through legal or macro-policy frameworks. Connelly argues that the experiences of TFWs are more precarious than commonly acknowledged, while employers derive fewer benefits from the program than public discourse often suggests. By centring the employment relationship itself, Enduring Work makes a meaningful contribution to industrial relations scholarship concerned with power, regulation, and non-standard work. One of the book’s most important contributions is its systematic differentiation among the various streams of the TFWP, including the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP), the low-wage and high-wage streams, and the in-home caregiver program. Connelly demonstrates that although all TFWs are structurally vulnerable, the nature and intensity of mistreatment vary significantly across programs. Drawing on both existing literature and interview data, she identifies factors such as language barriers, social isolation, limited formal education, and lack of knowledge of employment standards as conditions that heighten vulnerability. From an industrial relations perspective, the closed work permit emerges as a key institutional mechanism shaping the employment relationship by restricting both worker voice and exit, thereby reinforcing employer power and dependency. Connelly situates the Canadian TFWP within an international context through comparisons with temporary labour programs in other jurisdictions, such as the United States of America, Australia, the European Union, Hong Kong, and the United Arab Emirates. Rather than assuming Canadian exceptionalism, she carefully outlines the regulatory features of each system before integrating insights from her own research. This comparative analysis challenges assumptions that Canada represents a default or superior option for migrant workers and invites critical reflection on regulatory choices in a global labour market. While most employers interviewed reported compliance with program requirements, Connelly explicitly acknowledges the possibility of selection bias as a methodological limitation of qualitative research. Employers willing to participate in interviews may be those more confident in their regulatory practices, potentially limiting the representation of non-compliant or more precarious employment situations. This methodological constraint raises important questions about enforcement, legitimacy, and access that extend beyond the scope of the sample. Connelly further extends existing debates by examining the role of managerial behaviour and leadership attributes in shaping workers’ experiences. Rather than attributing mistreatment solely to structural vulnerability, she incorporates organizational behaviour research suggesting that abusive supervision can be associated with specific leader characteristics and workplace conditions. This analytical move broadens the scope of inquiry beyond worker deficits and contributes to industrial relations discussions on authority, discretion, and power within regulated labour markets. The book also provides a nuanced analysis of recruitment agencies and immigration consultants, highlighting how intermediaries can themselves become sources of harm. Employers interviewed by Connelly frequently reported dissatisfaction with the cost and quality of agency services, yet continued to rely on them due to the growing complexity and uncertainty of the TFWP. Evidence from interviews with workers, employers, and community advocates suggests that these frustrations are less the result of individual misconduct than of institutional complexity. This reliance reflects a displacement of regulatory responsibility from the state to private actors, producing uneven accountability and increasing risks for workers while simultaneously burdening employers seeking compliance. Another distinctive contribution of Enduring Work lies in its treatment of family relationships and social capital. Connelly carefully defines social capital before examining how employment arrangements shape family life …