Tanya Basok
Biographic Data
| ID | 184375 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Tanya Basok |
| GIVEN NAMES | Tanya |
| FAMILY NAME | Basok |
| SIGNATURE | BASOK T |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Windsor |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8361-7716 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 73 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 466 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 73 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1986 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Ethical Dilemmas of Conducting Research Among Precarious Status Migrants
In Canada, research is governed by national ethical guidelines and standards enforced by institutional research ethics boards (REBs) to protect vulnerable populations, such as temporary migrant farmworkers. However, the rigid and inflexible application of these procedures often creates significant barriers for social science researchers striving to promote social justice for this population and may lead to antagonism between researchers and REB c…
Performing, contesting, and resisting internal bordering of refugee rights in Costa Rica
While Costa Rica has witnessed an increase in refugee claimants, its policy responses have not been sufficiently studied. This article begins to fill this gap by documenting and analyzing the treatment of displaced people in search of protection in this country. Based on the fieldwork conducted in 2023 with refugee claimants and representatives from NGOs and international organizations, combined with the analysis of media coverage, reports, and a…
Transgressing Humanitarian Borders in Southern Mexico
Ambivalent Resonance
Drawing on insights from scholarship on contentious action frames, this article examines the framing of demands for social justice for migrant farmworkers in Spain, Italy and Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic. We focus particularly on how activists in each country aligned their action frames with prevalent public discourses on the essential contribution migrants make to agricultural production, the need to guarantee “health for all,” and “incre…
Acts of Citizenship in Time and Space among Agricultural Migrant Workers in Quebec during the Covid-19 Pandemic
Migrant farm workers recruited under Canada’s temporary employment programs work in difficult environments, under poor working conditions, and live in unsafe housing in remote rural communities. Fearful of repatriation or replacement, many accept their working and living conditions as part of a necessary sacrifice to improve their living conditions and those of their families in the countries of origin. At the same time, some migrant farm workers…
Bordering human rights
Contributing to debates in human rights and critical migration and border studies, this article focuses on how certain bordering practices limit displaced people from accessing universally recognised human rights. Specifically, it draws attention to some key bordering practices that restrict the physical mobility of displaced people in Turkey and Mexico. These two countries have become responsible for offering protection to many displaced people …
The ‘contract’ and its discontents
Canada's Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program has often been portrayed as a model for temporary migration programmes. It is largely governed by the Contracts negotiated between Canada and Mexico and Commonwealth Caribbean countries respectively. This article provides a critical analysis of the Contract by examining its structural context and considers the possibilities and limitations for ameliorating it. It outlines formal recommendations that t…
Understanding Migrant Farmworkers’ Health and Well-Being during the Global Covid-19 Pandemic in Canada
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Canada imposed certain international travel bans and work-from-home orders, yet migrant farmworkers, declared essential to national food security, were exempt from such measures. In this context, farm worksites proved to be particularly prone to COVID-19 outbreaks. To apprehend this trend, we engaged an expanded and transnational employment strain framework that identified the employment demands and resources underst…
The Precarious Lives of Syrians
The book The Precarious Lives of Syrians: Migration, Citizenship, and Temporary Protection in Turkey came out in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic when travel restrictions made it all but impossible for people forced to abandon their homes for reasons such as wars, protracted conflicts, political or sexuality-based persecutions, or gender violence, to seek in other countries access to social justice, that is, safety, security, inclusion, and ph…
Intensity and uncertainty
This article draws on border studies that recognise rebordering practices as ongoing performances of conflict between various actors including state authorities, border security agents, migrants, migrant supporters, smugglers, international organisations, lawyers, advocates and others. We draw attention to variable levels of intensity with which these conflicts are performed and the impact they have on migrants' ability to exercise their agency. …
Le droit à la ville ou le droit à la mobilité? Les demandeurs d'asile d'Amérique centrale en attente dans l'espace urbain tijuanense
Des recherches récentes ont montré que les migrant‐e‐s disposent du potentiel pour remettre en question les pratiques qui limitent leur mobilité et compromettent leur sécurité et leur bien‐être. Les chercheur‐e‐s travaillant sur le paradigme du droit à la ville et adoptant une approche critique sur la citoyenneté ont constaté que les migrant‐e‐s revendiquent leur citoyenneté (par exemple, un statut juridique ou des revendications formelles et inf…
We are part of this place, but I do not think I belong.” Temporariness, Social Inclusion and Belonging among Migrant Farmworkers in Southwestern Ontario
The Canadian temporary migration regime has been widely criticised for its failure to provide protections and address migrant needs. This article contributes to these critiques by analysing how temporariness impacts the sense of belonging and perceptions of social inclusion among farmworkers in Canada. The sense of inclusion and belonging is vital for individuals’ sense of well‐being, and therefore, a critique of temporariness is incomplete witho…
Containing mobile citizenship
Questioning the depiction of pro-migrant solidarity as unequivocal and transformative, the article draws attention to two types of ambivalences evident in the solidarity activism in Mexico. The vacillation between two different goals, that is, protecting migrants’ rights to mobile citizenship (i.e. the right to safe and secure mobility through Mexico) and the right to stay and settle in Mexico, constitutes the first type of ambivalence. We call i…
"Legalidad ilegal" y precariedad
En el último cuarto de siglo, en México, se han incrementado de manera notoria las medidas de control y verificación migratorias, enmarcadas en argumentos relacionados con la soberanía y la seguridad nacional. Las políticas migratorias restrictivas derivadas de este tipo de preocupaciones se han enfocado en la gestión de flujos migratorios, lo que ha tenido distintas consecuencias, no sólo en la producción de irregularidad migratoria sino, además…
Precarious legality
Regularization programmes for undocumented migrants are generally viewed as a form of transition from âillegalityâ to a secure legal status. Yet, as we argue in this article, in many countries, such as Mexico, this transition is often incomplete and reversible. This article discusses regularization programmes for undocumented migrants in Mexico before and after the introduction of the 2011 Migration Law and illustrates that the status migrants ob…
Winning a battle, losing the war
Social movement analysts have long recognized that it is not easy to assess outcomes of social activism since direct causality between activism and social, cultural, political, or legal changes is often difficult to trace. This article analyzes the complexities in evaluating the tangled relations between migrant rights activism and migration policy-making by drawing on insights from social movement theories and particularly the concepts of cognit…
Migration Management, Disciplinary Power, and Performances of Subjectivity
Agricultural migrant workers, recruited to work in Canada under the Temporary Foreign Workers Program (TFWP), are disciplined to be compliant and productive. Based on ethnographic data, we draw attention to several ways in which Spanish-speaking migrants, employed in agriculture in a rural community in Southwestern Ontario, respond to this disciplinary power. Most migrants discipline themselves and others to be productive and compliant workers. W…
Rights and Restrictions
Rethinking Transit Migration
Questioning the notion of transit migration, the book examines factors that shape Central American migrants' mobility and immobility in the transnational space, comprised on Central American countries
Reclaiming Democracy and Social Justice
Reproducing Deportability
Deportability, or a threat of deportation, can be viewed as a technique of discipline employed to make migrant workers efficient and compliant. Under the threat of deportation, migrants accept dangerous, dirty, degrading and difficult jobs for low pay. Deportability also prevents them from challenging their working and living conditions either individually or collectively. Most of the literature on deportability applies to unauthorised migrants. …
Claiming Rights to Workplace Safety
Drawing on the studies of citizenship practices and health and safety literature, this paper explores the reporting of workplace injuries and hazards among Latin American immigrants in Southwestern Ontario. The paper examines how (under-)reporting is shaped by three conditions: the knowledge of workers' rights, job (in)security, and ethnic identities. Recognizing knowledge as a significant factor which enables or constrains the capacity to claim …
Management Versus Rights
The global governance of labor migration reflects two major trends: one supports neoliberal migration management priorities and another addresses human rights, with the latter subordinated to the former. This subordination of human rights to other, market-related, priorities parallels global governance priorities in general. While some international organizations address the need for protection of migrant rights, their specific on-the-ground prog…
Opening a Dialogue on Migrant (Rights) Activism
While the number of people on the move throughout the globe continues to increase, Northern countries have erected and fortified barriers to prevent migrants from crossing over their borders. Unable to migrate legally, many migrants seeking jobs, safety, and/or family reunification have been forced to find alternative ways of entering and remaining in a new country. As researchers (Dauvergne, 2005; De Genova, 2002; Inda, 2005; McNevin 2011; Ngai,…
Counter-hegemonic Human Rights Discourses and Migrant Rights Activism in the US and Canada
Scholarship on the dissemination of human rights norms and principles has focused predominantly on the socialization of nation-states into the values which have been widely endorsed. I argue in this article that the socialization mechanisms, discussed by such scholars as Meyer et al. (1997) and Risse and Sikkink (1999), do not capture the complex processes of the negotiation of more controversial rights. Distinguishing between hegemonic and count…
Community government
This paper analyzes the ways in which the Canadian voluntary sector has been created as a 'community of service providers'. Drawing upon a governmentality perspective, we illustrate how governmental interventions have been largely successful in carrying out the voluntary agencies' responsibilization efforts within the sector. We trace this responsibilization project through fiscal policies and programmatic schemes, characteristic of advanced libe…
Counter-hegemonic Human Rights Discourses and Migrant Rights Activism in the US and Canada
Scholarship on the dissemination of human rights norms and principles has focused predominantly on the socialization of nation-states into the values which have been widely endorsed. I argue in this article that the socialization mechanisms, discussed by such scholars as Meyer et al. (1997) and Risse and Sikkink (1999), do not capture the complex processes of the negotiation of more controversial rights. Distinguishing between hegemonic and count…
Reproducing Deportability
Deportability, or a threat of deportation, can be viewed as a technique of discipline employed to make migrant workers efficient and compliant. Under the threat of deportation, migrants accept dangerous, dirty, degrading and difficult jobs for low pay. Deportability also prevents them from challenging their working and living conditions either individually or collectively. Most of the literature on deportability applies to unauthorised migrants. …
Precarious legality
Regularization programmes for undocumented migrants are generally viewed as a form of transition from âillegalityâ to a secure legal status. Yet, as we argue in this article, in many countries, such as Mexico, this transition is often incomplete and reversible. This article discusses regularization programmes for undocumented migrants in Mexico before and after the introduction of the 2011 Migration Law and illustrates that the status migrants ob…
Post-national citizenship, social exclusion and migrants rights
In the past few decades, migrants residing in many European and North American countries have benefited from nation‐states' extension of legal rights to non‐citizens. This development has prompted many scholars to reflect on the shift from a state‐based to a more individual‐based universal conception of rights and to suggest that national citizenship has been replaced by post‐national citizenship. However, in practice migrants are often deprived …
He Came, He Saw, He Stayed. Guest Worker Programmes and the Issue of Non‐Return
Critics of guest worker programmes have pointed out that many temporary workers do not return home when their contracts expire and thus end up swelling the ranks of undocumented workers in a host country. This article argues that this outcome is not inevitable. Whether or not guest workers return home or stay behind depends to a large extent on how the guest worker programme is administered. By comparing the US Bracero Program with the Canadian M…
We are part of this place, but I do not think I belong.” Temporariness, Social Inclusion and Belonging among Migrant Farmworkers in Southwestern Ontario
The Canadian temporary migration regime has been widely criticised for its failure to provide protections and address migrant needs. This article contributes to these critiques by analysing how temporariness impacts the sense of belonging and perceptions of social inclusion among farmworkers in Canada. The sense of inclusion and belonging is vital for individuals’ sense of well‐being, and therefore, a critique of temporariness is incomplete witho…
Containing mobile citizenship
Questioning the depiction of pro-migrant solidarity as unequivocal and transformative, the article draws attention to two types of ambivalences evident in the solidarity activism in Mexico. The vacillation between two different goals, that is, protecting migrants’ rights to mobile citizenship (i.e. the right to safe and secure mobility through Mexico) and the right to stay and settle in Mexico, constitutes the first type of ambivalence. We call i…
Mexican Seasonal Migration to Canada and Development
The article explores development and migration. Based on a comparison of investment‐related behaviour of participants of the Canadian Mexican Seasonal Workers Programme from eleven Mexican villages, the article explores the impact of the nature of the migrants' community of origin on development. Contrary to the findings reported by the “new economics of labour migration” theorists, it was found that migrants from the least endowed communities, n…
Management Versus Rights
The global governance of labor migration reflects two major trends: one supports neoliberal migration management priorities and another addresses human rights, with the latter subordinated to the former. This subordination of human rights to other, market-related, priorities parallels global governance priorities in general. While some international organizations address the need for protection of migrant rights, their specific on-the-ground prog…
Tortillas and Tomatoes
A timely analysis of why the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program is needed. Basok argues while Mexican workers do not necessarily constitute cheap labour for Canadian growers, they are vital for the survival of some agricultural sectors as they are always available for work, even on holidays and weekends, or when exhausted, sick, or injured.
Taking Stands
Migration Management, Disciplinary Power, and Performances of Subjectivity
Agricultural migrant workers, recruited to work in Canada under the Temporary Foreign Workers Program (TFWP), are disciplined to be compliant and productive. Based on ethnographic data, we draw attention to several ways in which Spanish-speaking migrants, employed in agriculture in a rural community in Southwestern Ontario, respond to this disciplinary power. Most migrants discipline themselves and others to be productive and compliant workers. W…
Threatening Others
Threatening Others: Nicaraguans and the Formation of National Identities in Costa Rica. Carlos Sandoval-García. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2004. 263 pp
Citizenship, Human Rights, and Social Justice
Despite continuous struggles on the part of disenfranchised and marginalized peoples throughout the world, and various initiatives undertaken by national states and international organizations, soc
Migration of Mexican Seasonal Farm Workers to Canada and Development
This article explores the impact of international labor migration on development in communities of origin. It outlines three theoretical positions corresponding to specific theoretical trends in th
In the Name of Human Rights
As a contribution to the growing literature on citizenship and advanced liberal governance, this paper focuses on how citizens—especially the poor—are brought into new policy platforms and new social relationships of responsibility, accountability, and participation. In making specific empirical reference to a range of global organizations and their poverty reduction initiatives, the analysis emphasizes the diverse ways in which individuals are g…
Fragmented Identities
This article relates multiplicity and flexibility of ethnic identities to the following three aspects of postmodernity: (a) perpetual redefinition of self by reflexive individuals who constantly receive and evaluate new knowledge; (b) increased global interaction, which expands the number of alternatives for reflexive individuals to chose from; and (c) acceptance of ambivalence in the cultural field, which makes it possible for diverse cultural e…
Migration of Mexican Seasonal Farm Workers to Canada and Development
This article explores the impact of international labor migration on development in communities of origin. It outlines three theoretical positions corresponding to specific theoretical trends in the field of development. The first position is represented by those who postulate that remittances and acquired skills and knowledge contribute to local development (the optimistic perspective). The second position is represented by those who regard the …
Welcome Some and Reject Others
This article compares policies toward Salvadorean and Nicaraguan refugees adopted by the Costa Rican government between 1980 and 1989. It examines the differences in treatment of the two groups in the light of four explanatory factors: 1) economic conditions in the host country; 2) the Costa Rican foreign policy interests; 3) national security concerns; and 4) attitudes expressed by the Costa Rican public toward the two refugee groups. It is argu…
"Legalidad ilegal" y precariedad
En el último cuarto de siglo, en México, se han incrementado de manera notoria las medidas de control y verificación migratorias, enmarcadas en argumentos relacionados con la soberanía y la seguridad nacional. Las políticas migratorias restrictivas derivadas de este tipo de preocupaciones se han enfocado en la gestión de flujos migratorios, lo que ha tenido distintas consecuencias, no sólo en la producción de irregularidad migratoria sino, además…
Winning a battle, losing the war
Social movement analysts have long recognized that it is not easy to assess outcomes of social activism since direct causality between activism and social, cultural, political, or legal changes is often difficult to trace. This article analyzes the complexities in evaluating the tangled relations between migrant rights activism and migration policy-making by drawing on insights from social movement theories and particularly the concepts of cognit…
The ‘contract’ and its discontents
Canada's Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program has often been portrayed as a model for temporary migration programmes. It is largely governed by the Contracts negotiated between Canada and Mexico and Commonwealth Caribbean countries respectively. This article provides a critical analysis of the Contract by examining its structural context and considers the possibilities and limitations for ameliorating it. It outlines formal recommendations that t…
Intensity and uncertainty
This article draws on border studies that recognise rebordering practices as ongoing performances of conflict between various actors including state authorities, border security agents, migrants, migrant supporters, smugglers, international organisations, lawyers, advocates and others. We draw attention to variable levels of intensity with which these conflicts are performed and the impact they have on migrants' ability to exercise their agency. …
Claiming Rights to Workplace Safety
Drawing on the studies of citizenship practices and health and safety literature, this paper explores the reporting of workplace injuries and hazards among Latin American immigrants in Southwestern Ontario. The paper examines how (under-)reporting is shaped by three conditions: the knowledge of workers' rights, job (in)security, and ethnic identities. Recognizing knowledge as a significant factor which enables or constrains the capacity to claim …
Forced to move; Out of the Ashes
book writing style would he well served by an unacademic (dare we say journalistic?)narrative that openly uses the chronology of her time in the Sudan as a framework.And we could use a more visually descriptive sense of people and places.The weaknesses of HarreIl-Bond's study disappear in the awesomeness of her achievement.She has provided a point of beginning to all the players --donors, private and governmental, administrators and, Most of aIl,…
Central American Refugees
In the last decade, more than 1,600,000 Central Americans have become refugees. Most of them are Salvadoreans andGuatemalans fleeing military repression.What is their destination?Most Guatemalans cross the border over tro Mexico.Some of them "make it" to the United States, where they join the army of "illegals".Salvadoreans move in various directions: Nicaragua" Costa Rica, Panama, Belize, Honduras, Mexico and the Uniaed States.Some of these coun…
How Durable Are the "Durable Solutions" Projects for Salvadorean Refugees in Costa Rica
Projects for Salvadorean Refugees in Costa Rica?Resettlement of refugees in developing countries is a complex matter.Can Third V/orld countries provide a viable solution to refugee problems?From the point of view of moral responsibilities, Third World countries' governments face a dilemma.On the one hand, these governments are responsible for their o'wn unemployed and under-employed.Offering eronomic support ùo refugees may mean denying it to nee…
Salvadorean Refugee Women and Employment Creation Programmes in Costa Rica
As decades of political repression had by 1980 culminated in a full-scale civil war in El Salvador, thousands of its victims fled the country in search of haven. Costa Rica was viewed as one of the most politically stable and non-repressive countries of Central America and therefore many Salvadoreans asked this country for asylum. At the end of 1980, there were more than 2,000 refugees in Costa Rica and by March 1981, the figure had risen to over…
Repatriation of Nicaraguan Refugees from Honduras and Costa Rica
This article discusses the process of repatriation of Nicaraguan indigenous and non-indigenous ( ladino ) refugees from Honduras and Costa Rica before 1990. It shows that while indigenous refugees returned en masse from the exile in Honduras, very few ladino refugees responded to the Sandinista government's invitation. This is explained by differences in economic, political and social conditions faced by indigenous and ladino repatriates upon the…
The Growing Refugee Crisis in the Soviet Union- The Plight of Armenians
The process of democratization in the Soviet Union provoked the eruption of regional and ethnic conflicts wNch had hitherto remained dormant. In several Soviet republics nationalist movements emerged demanding regional autonomy. These struggles intendfkd existing ethnic knsjons. The conflict between Azeris and Armenians in Azerbaijan is one such caae
Welcome Some and Reject Others
Welcome Some and Reject Others
This article compares policies toward Salvadorean and Nicaraguan refugees adopted by the Costa Rican government between 1980 and 1989. It examines the differences in treatment of the two groups in the light of four explanatory factors: 1) economic conditions in the host country; 2) the Costa Rican foreign policy interests; 3) national security concerns; and 4) attitudes expressed by the Costa Rican public toward the two refugee groups. It is argu…
Soviet‐jewish emigration and resettlement in the 1990s an overview
Soviet immigration to Canada the end of the refugee program
The Northern Route
By both title and theme The Northern Route identifies itself within a broad and well-established tradition of canadian exploration. The subject itself evokes images of hardy souls who would trade relatively comfortable lives for the romance and possibilities of a new and uncharted land. The explorers of this book, however, are not eighteenth century military men but modern refugees. These latest explorers no longer face the perils of icebergs and…
The Canadian Refugee Policy and Practice Towards Refugees from the Commonwealth of Independent States
In the general climate created by the Cold War, the Canadian government welcomed refugees from the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe with open arms. It offered generous reception to thousands of Hungarians fleeing the 1956 Soviet invasion, to Czechoslovakians escaping the repression following the 1968 "Prague Spring," to Poles fearing persecution for participation in the Solidarity movement, and to Soviet Jews propelled to leave by state ant…
The Birth of the Civil Rights Movement in Russia? Some Reactions to the Rise of Nationalism
In general, it is not easy for a new publication to survive in the former Soviet Union without receiving substantial subsidies. Dozens of new newspapers have gone bankrupt due to the high price of paper, bureaucratic bottlenecks and other problems. Yet newspapers do not seem to have experienced serious problems. They continue to grow. The Russian Society of Cooperation with Compatriots Abroad, for instance, produces 100,000 copies of their weekly…
The Plight of East European Refugees
Nationalism and the Violation of Minority Rights in Latvia
Jews in Moldova, Central Asia, Azerbaijan and Georgia
The rise ofnationalism in Moldova, Central Asia, Azerbaijan and Georgia has had significant repercussions for Jews residing in these regions. Even in those communities where Jews have peacefully coexisted with other ethnic groups for centuries, ethnie resentments and hostilities are beginning to make them extremelyanxious about the present and future. There have been individual incidents of break-ins and attacks reported byword-of-mouth tojoumali…
Benevolent Despotism
Ethnic Purification and Its Three Types of Refugees
Anti-Semitism and Its Effect on Emigration Potential of Ukrainian Jews
Recent Political Developments in Russia and Four Types of Potential Refugees
Once again, an attempt to establish democracy in Russia has been shortlived. Throughout Russia's entire history, democratic forms of government have been sporadic. Most of the time, the country has been ruled either individually or collectively by autocrats; monarchy survived in Russia long after it was abolished in European countries. The rule of the czar was truly dictatorial. Even when the ruling czar allowed for the formation of the State Dum…
Irredentism and New Research Questions
Troubled Settlement of Refugees in Russia
Moldova
Recently there have been numerous violations of political freedom and ethnic minority rights in the former Soviet republic of Moldova. These human rights abuses have resulted from two significant political processes: the rise of Romanian nationalism; and separatist movements in the Transdniester and the Gagauz regions. Political opponents and mqmbers of ethnic minorities are ruthlessly persecuted in all regions; Moldova proper, Gagauzia, and Tran…
Individual, Household and Cooperative Production
The article examines urban employment programmes for Salvadorean refugees in Costa Rica. It compares two types of projects, individual or household workshops on the one hand, and cooperative projects on the others. It is argued that both face tremendous difficulties trying to compete with capitalist enterprises. However, a number of characteristics, including various survival strategies, make individual or household productive units more resilien…
Soviet-Jewish Emigration and Resttlement
Political science (63 works) · Sociology (46 works) · Law (45 works) · Law (42 works) · Economics (29 works) · Politics (29 works) · Migration and Labor Dynamics (25 works) · Geography (23 works) · Refugee (21 works) · Migration, Refugees, and Integration (20 works)