Paving Their Way and Earning Their Pay: Economic Survival Experiences of Immigrants in East Toronto

This paper lies at the intersection of precarious labour and immigrant employment experiences. The labour market has evolved over the past few decades such that jobs are increasingly precarious - poorly paid, insecure, and lacking in employee protections. Immigrants are overrepresented among those working precarious jobs and face compounded challenges to achieving socio-economic stability. Immigrants, especially immigrant women, experience heightened exploitation and marginalization in the process of trying to economically and socially integrate into Canadian society. The paper investigates how immigrants living in an east Toronto ethnic enclave navigates the labour market and survive precarious and informal employment realities. It makes use of a unique empirical survey of this community to help shed light on the economic lives of this population.