“You’re Just Stuck in a Hole,Really”: Mechanisms of Structural Racism Through Migrant Agricultural Worker Housing in Canada

Introduction

It is well documented that poor housing often leads to poor health (Raphael, 2016). This relationship is acutely felt by migrant workers, low-wage migrant populations working in high-income countries (Coates et al., 2013). Migrant workers are often housed in substandard, overcrowded conditions that are linked to a variety of health and safety threats, including respiratory illnesses, depression, anxiety, sleep problems, and, in extreme cases, loss of life (Caxaj et al., 2022; Chávez et al., 2024; Keim-Malpass et al., 2015). Low-wage migrant workers are often racialized, and they face significant health inequities as a result of their housing. These health inequities exemplify structural racism. The role of structural racism in shaping health inequities is widely acknowledged (Laster Pirtle, 2020). Yet existing health research has not focused on migrant agricultural workers’ (MAWs) lived experiences of housing in Canada, nor the detailed mechanisms of structural racism that undermine this population’s housing and health. This paper represents our third publication from a 3-year project on migrant farmworkers’ housing, building on a prior scoping review on housing and health challenges faced by MAWs (Caxaj et al., 2024), and an examination of the role of globalized capitalism in contributing to housing inequities (Weiler & Caxaj, 2024).

A growing body of research has underscored poor and inconsistent housing conditions for migrant workers in the agricultural sector specifically (Arcury, Weir, Chen, et al., 2012; Arcury, Weir, Summers, et al., 2012; Anonymized for review; Fiałkowska & Matuszczyk, 2021; Hennebry, 2010; Keim-Malpass et al., 2015; Quandt, Summers, et al., 2013; Quandt, Wiggins, et al., 2013). Challenges include overcrowding, isolation, inadequate cooking facilities, a lack of adequate cooling and ventilation, and a ratio of washrooms and showers that is insufficient to maintain hygienic conditions. Often, employers are responsible for providing housing to migrants, which introduces role conflict when employers are both landlords and bosses. Human rights violations, harassment, and bullying have also been documented in migrant worker living quarters (Caxaj et al., 2024; Coates et al., 2013). Overall, MAWs face a lower quality of life and poorer mental health than other types of workers and have limited access to health and social services. Inadequate and precarious housing is a key factor determining these challenges (Leiler et al., 2019; Xiao et al., 2018).

Drawing from interviews with 151 MAWs, we sought to answer the following research questions: (1) What are migrant agricultural workers’ experiences of employer-provided housing in Canada? (2) How do mechanisms of structural racism shape migrants’ housing and health? Through our findings, we detail the poor housing quality faced by this population as well as the logic of structural racism that enforces these health inequities. Building on prior scholarship, our findings offer several novel contributions. First, they provide broader and more current documentation of MAWs’ housing quality concerns in Canada, which have typically been an incidental finding of a different area of inquiry, with a few exceptions that have focused on specific housing dynamics (e.g., Perry, 2018; Smith, 2015). Second, our analysis contributes to a more explicit analysis of the role of structural racism in determining features of poor housing, including social and neighborhood dimensions (e.g., surveillance and institutionalization). Below, we will first discuss prior scholarship and our conceptual framework (structural racism in housing) before presenting our findings, discussion, and conclusion.

Review of the Literature

Conceptual Framework: Structural Racism in Housing

Structural racism encompasses the inner workings or functions of White privilege and White supremacy across multiple institutions (e.g., government) and domains of society (e.g., culture and history). As a result of these processes, racialized populations are both chronically and cumulatively disadvantaged, and their disadvantaged position is normalized (Lawrence & Keleher, 2004). Structural racism provides an important framework for understanding the unique inequities faced by migrant groups in high-income countries. For example, scholars have documented how racist marginalization faced by MAWs has been normalized by legally relegating their status to “temporary” (Tuyisenge & Goldenberg, 2021). Furthermore, the precarity and discrimination experienced by this group reflect a longstanding legacy of exploitation, slavery, colonialism, and inequitable trade agreements, all of which are indicative of historical and structural racist mechanisms (Cohen, 2019; Perea, 2011). The limited membership in society and (non)citizenship offered to this group have implications not only for how MAWs are understood in society but also for how the nation of Canada is constructed, given that individuals from the Global South, predominantly those who are racialized, are most restricted in their entry into Canada (Lundström, 2017; Sharma, 2001). Our research intends to apply this understanding of structural racism to examine its role in housing and health inequity for MAWs. Under the banner of structural racism, two concepts are useful to our analysis of MAWs’ housing: racial residential segregation and environmental racism, which are discussed below.

The concept of racial residential segregation helps explain how the neighborhood environment reproduces racial health inequities over time. The concentration of racialized populations in specific residential zones has been linked to reduced access to resources including employment, education, healthcare services, and social supports and increased exposure to violence and pollution. Through these hazards, and by creating conditions that maintain poverty, racial residential segregation is a key determinant of poor health (Poulson et al., 2021; Russell et al., 2012). Racial residential segregation has been most documented among Black populations in the United States (Massey, 2016). Yet with the growing migration of Latin Americans and other groups to the United States, more pronounced segregation has been noted among non-Black racialized populations in the United States as well (Charles, 2003; Morello-Frosch & Lopez, 2006; Olayo-Méndez et al., 2021). Researchers have also begun to document residential segregation as experienced by migrants in different regions of the world (Benassi et al., 2020; Boterman et al., 2021; Pelek, 2022). As a concept, racial residential segregation provides a lens to consider the racist and colonial historical legacies of a place, and how these legacies shift and linger differently across regions (e.g., Fung-Loy & Van Rompaey, 2021). Contemporary immigration policy will thus uniquely impact new patterns of racial residential segregation (Benassi et al., 2020). Applying the concept of racial residential segregation to our work allows for an analysis of how MAWs encounter their dwellings and neighborhoods as potentially limiting, marginalizing, and bound up in historical legacies of belonging (e.g., citizenship).

Also falling under the general header of structural racism, environmental racism is concerned with various issues as they intersect with environmentalism and racism and has long been intertwined with social activism (Pulido, 1996). Of particular interest to our work, environmental racism scholars have documented the disproportionate impact of pollution and environmental hazards on racialized populations (Bullard, 1993; Pulido, 1996). Such work has evolved to consider the ideological and systemic nature of racism in policy-making and institutional practices, above and beyond isolated and/or intentional acts of racism (Benz, 2019; Pulido, 1996). Environmental racism is relevant to our study: racialized MAWs may be disproportionately exposed to health hazards through their housing (e.g., Griffith et al., 2019) and as a result, their health needs may be uniquely neglected (Caxaj et al., 2022; Satcher, 2022). Environmental racism provides a framework to consider the design of both homes and neighborhoods, and the proximity of hazards, as potentially racializing processes that produce racial (and health) inequities.

Methodology

Our study employed a qualitative narrative methodology focused on the experiences of migrant farmworkers in two regions: British Columbia and Ontario. In keeping with our methodology, our interview guide included open-ended questions that encouraged participants to narrate their encounters with housing in Canada and situate them in the contexts that relationally informed individuals’ everyday meaning-making (De Fina, 2015; Moen, 2006). These questions included: “Tell me about your housing in Canada. What are the best parts/worst parts about your housing in Canada?” and “What is the biggest change to your housing that you would like to see?” Given our specific interest in mechanisms of structural racism, participants were asked about various social identities, including their nationality, Indigenous heritage, and ethno-cultural background, and, when relevant, probed to consider the extent to which racism was relevant to the experiences they shared. By making the assumption of racism explicit in our approach, we invited participants to share less sanitized accounts of their realities than might otherwise be strategically expressed (Maiter & Joseph, 2017). For instance, participants were explicitly invited to share their experiences of discrimination in Canada and probed to consider how concerns they had raised might be experienced differently depending on their race, gender, nationality, and/or work permit.

Interviews lasted 60 min on average and were conducted individually when possible. Participants who requested group interviews for logistical reasons, or to provide collective testimony, were accommodated. This article also includes data from interviews in which migrants discussed housing concerns as part of a separate project focused on their experiences with service provision in Ontario (George et al., 2024). Including their concerns in this article helps reduce the potential for overburdening underserved groups with research invitations (Sukarieh & Tannock, 2013). All participants provided informed verbal consent for their data to be used for this housing study. Both interviews and the consent process were carried out in individuals’ preferred language by a bilingual research team member.

Participants were recruited through trusted networks of service providers and advocates in close contact with migrant agricultural workers, who were provided with paper and digital flyers for our research. To facilitate trust-building and ensure follow-up support if necessary, recruitment was led by migrant worker advocates who were already known to participants. The lead researcher (Caxaj) provided training and ongoing mentorship to these advocates. In some cases, participants provided contact information to the research team at public-facing events catering to migrant farmworkers. To be eligible to participate in our study, individuals had to be enrolled currently (or over the past 2 years) in temporary migrant agricultural work in either the province of British Columbia (BC) or Ontario, Canada. Our sample reflected some of the dominant traits among the temporary migrant population in the region, with the majority being Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) workers (n = 94), men (n = 98), and from Mexico (n = 107). Yet a broader range of participants—among them, women (n = 33); individuals with differing work permits/status (n = 58); and individuals of different nationalities, including Jamaican (n = 26), other Caribbean (n = 12), and Central American participants (n = 4)—were recruited. Just over 15.8% of participants identified as Indigenous or of Indigenous ancestry. This heterogeneity in our sample in terms of gender, work program status (i.e., Temporary Foreign Worker Program [TFWP], SAWP, and tourist visa), Indigeneity, and country of origin enabled us to consider different social positions in shaping housing conditions for this group.

To analyze our data, we employed a reflexive thematic analysis that, consistent with our narrative approach (De Fina, 2015), orients researchers to develop themes that reflect shared meaning in the context of participants’ lives (Braun & Clarke, 2021b, 2023; Braun et al., 2023). Given our focus on mechanisms of structural racism, we sought to develop not only descriptive accounts but also implicit interpretations of MAWs’ housing encounters that otherwise may go unnamed. This was in keeping with our critical assumptions that knowledge is contingent on power relations (e.g., taken-for-granted ideologies such as racism), and thus, certain types of knowing may be undervalued or dangerous to express (Timor-Shlevin et al., 2022).

Given our large sample size, our team engaged in several rounds of provisional coding to represent a fuller range of participants’ experiences. Once all transcripts had been mapped for descriptive content (e.g., lack of heating and no privacy) and some provisional interpretive observations (e.g., “deservingness” because of labor contributions), our team focused attention on roughly half of the transcripts that our team had labelled as “most rich.” This allowed for a more engaged and practical analytic process, given that although most participants had voiced many housing concerns, only some had engaged in a sustained dialogue about the meaning of these experiences. As all team members are fluent in English and Spanish, transcripts were kept in their original language to sensitize the listener/reviewer to language use that may convey nuanced understandings. Selected quotes were translated by the PI (a bilingual native speaker) while preparing the manuscript for submission. As we engaged further in the analytic process, team leads proposed provisional themes and guiding concepts to structure our findings. At this point, we engaged in a more deductive process by revisiting both transcripts and provisional codes for alignment with these ideas. Through this process, provisional themes were further interrogated, reorganized, and revised toward the development of our current findings. Approaches to analysis that are theory-informed and flexible, involve both deductive and inductive processes, and engage with larger sample sizes are all within the scope of reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2021a, 2021b; Braun et al., 2023). It should be noted that alternative guiding concepts and themes proposed before initiating the deductive phase of this analysis have been developed and refined for publication in a different venue (Weiler & Caxaj, 2024).

To foster rapport with MAWs, we hired and trained individuals who had strong records of building trust and offering support to this population. Each participant was provided with an honorarium in recognition of their time. This cash was provided preceding the interview to minimize a real or perceived sense of coercion to continue with the interview. Following the initial interviews, the research team participated in a series of community events and outreach activities to share the original research findings with the MAW community. Over 300 workers were reached in this manner. These informal conversations suggested widespread agreement with the findings, and migrants provided additional recommendations for how to improve housing conditions, which were incorporated into our analysis. All names used below are pseudonyms to protect the identity of participants. All research activities were approved by Western University’s Non-Medical Research Ethics Board, Project ID: 119116.

Findings

Participants reported various experiences of poor housing quality that impacted their health. Their stories also pointed to the role of structural racism in determining these experiences. Overall, we identified four key processes through which structural racism entrenched housing challenges and consequent health inequities for MAWs. Scarcity encompassed the consistently under-resourced nature of housing quarters. Accounts under this theme were characterized by overcrowding; inadequate kitchen, laundry, and washroom facilities; and, often, substandard bedrooms and living rooms. As a result of living amidst such inadequate housing, participants faced heightened risks of illness, and they struggled to secure basic needs for privacy and dignity while incurring labor-intensive upkeep and financial burdens. Segregation consisted of the many and persistent ways that MAWs were kept apart from family, community, and a variety of services. This isolation was further reinforced and normalized through dependence on employers for basic mobility and overt employer surveillance. Casting MAWs’ housing as a natural extension of the farm further reinforced this marginalization. Sacrifice denoted the various sources of danger inherently linked to the opportunity to work and live in Canada for many workers. Such dangers included exposure to toxic hazards, extreme weather, and physical disrepair in living quarters. Stagnation illustrated the many ways that MAWs’ substandard housing could go unchallenged or unrecognized by authorities and society at large. Facing government authorities that condoned passive acceptance of inadequate regulatory frameworks, or even applied explicit pressure to accept unsafe and inadequate housing, MAWs’ efforts to improve housing conditions were often thwarted or stalled. Together, these themes help explain the coercive climate that MAWs face, where refusing unsafe living conditions and advocating for dignified living conditions are risk-laden and often ineffective.

Discussion

Our research identified four mechanisms of structural racism that determined substandard housing and health consequences for MAWs. First, we identified the theme of scarcity, which described MAWs’ experiences of insufficient and overcrowded living conditions. These conditions posed barriers to workers’ quality of life and physical health. Furthermore, in an attempt to maintain or correct deficiencies in their housing, MAWs often expended finances and energy. Issues such as poor sanitation, water/food insecurity, mold, overcrowding, and a lack of privacy in MAWs’ accommodations have been previously documented in the literature (Arcury, Weir, Chen, et al., 2012; Arcury, Weir, Summers, et al., 2012; Castillo et al., 2021; Caxaj et al., 2024) and linked to poor health outcomes (Kearney et al., 2014; Mora et al., 2016). Prior research among immigrant diasporas resettling in rural/small towns, where MAWs typically live and work, has documented low affordability, lack of knowledge of tenancy rights, and discrimination as factors that may affect housing quality (Patel et al., 2019). Yet the theme of scarcity as faced by MAWs invites greater attention to the poor quality housing made available to migrant populations with limited or partial status in Canada, for whom scarcity also encompasses a lack of personal agency and a lack of resources related to accommodations.

The term resource scarcity has been aptly applied to explain neighborhood-level disparities and to illustrate how structural racism operates to neglect and deprive racialized populations (Satcher, 2022). Our research suggests that for MAWs, who experience reduced mobility and freedom within their neighborhoods (Guzmán & Medeiros, 2020; Reid-Musson, 2017), scarcity often operates within the tightly bound parameters of living quarters and the worksite. Future research could look to expand the application of resource scarcity to consider not only neighborhood qualities and municipal infrastructure impacting racialized communities but also the localized deprivation often faced by MAWs in their housing (e.g., lack of kitchen/laundry utilities and overcrowding). Noting the energy and financial expenditures required to endure such poor housing conditions, future research could also explore the specific chronic disease burdens that may be associated with such stressors.

MAWs’ segregation compromised their ability to connect with and/or access various supports. Poor living conditions constrained the time available for workers to socialize and pursue activities to maintain their mental health and reproduced a sense of inescapable institutionalism (e.g., hierarchies, waiting in lines, and lack of free time). These constraints on workers’ time and space (Horgan & Liinamaa, 2017; Reid-Musson, 2018) and the institutionalization of MAWs’ living quarters in Canada (Caxaj et al., 2024; Perry, 2018; Weiler & Caxaj, 2024) have been noted elsewhere. The common experiences of isolation, familial separation, unreliable or lacking technology and transportation, a lack of recreation opportunities (Basok & George, 2021; Caxaj & Diaz, 2018; Cohen & Caxaj, 2018), and the deadly impact of this segregation on MAWs’ health have also been documented (Caxaj et al., 2022, 2024). Yet our research makes clear that for MAWs, freedom of movement and opportunities for community connection are central considerations in housing quality, in addition to an important determinant of health and access to resources.

Troublingly, the many ways in which MAWs are separated from family and community life, and made dependent on employers for access to services, are often normalized. Our findings indicated that MAWs’ housing on the farm or in proximity to their worksite served to group MAWs together as natural extensions of the agricultural sector. The more these individuals experienced their realities as solely “workers,” the more difficulty they faced in having their human needs (e.g., relationships and supports) recognized. Using the lens of racial residential segregation, several seemingly disparate sources of isolation can be understood as a unified mechanism of exclusion. For example, limited access to communication technology, being housed on the farm where they work, and camera surveillance of workers’ movements can be described as either passive/logistical oversights (e.g., no phone and no internet) or one-off bad employer behaviors (i.e., “one bad apple”). Yet these various sources of isolation are justified by the agricultural industry’s needs for productivity and reliability wherein MAWs are necessarily less free, more in need of protection or surveillance, perceived as simply visitors, and crowded in under-resourced conditions.

Furthermore, proximity to industrial pollutants and limited access to green space, transportation, and other resources are understood as ways racial residential segregation contributes to health disparities (Chakraborty et al., 2023; Galaskiewicz et al., 2021; Morello-Frosch & Lopez, 2006; Saporito & Casey, 2015). However, our research contributes insights into the unique position of temporary MAWs, who are typically housed on the worksite and often face restricted mobility and surveillance (e.g., employer mediation and lack of transportation). Therefore, the segregation faced by MAWs is especially tightly bound. Scholars describing poor, marginalized, and racialized neighborhoods (Kessler, 2012), including communities who live where they work (Luxardo et al., 2022), have used the term territorial stigma to describe the combined social scrutiny of and underinvestment in certain neighborhoods. Although typically applied to larger-scale urban spaces, such a category may be fitting to describe the racist logic that justifies the simultaneous confinement and under-resourcing of MAWs on farms.

Through sacrifice, MAWs reported dangerous exposure to various hazards and hardships related to substandard housing. Because of migrants’ temporary status and employment precarity, the burden of increased exposure to hazards, waste, and unsanitary conditions was often considered something to endure rather than something to avoid. The relationship between MAWs’ precarity and occupational health risks has been well documented (Adams et al., 2023; Caxaj & Cohen, 2019; Hargreaves et al., 2019; Moyce & Schenker, 2018), whereas the hazards posed by housing have been given less attention with a few exceptions (e.g., Kearney et al., 2014). Given that the distinction between housing and the worksite is not easily made for MAWs (Perry, 2018), a more expansive inquiry into the exposure of hazards that accounts for both the workplace and living quarters is warranted.

The disproportionate burden of exposure to hazards faced by MAWs in their housing mirrors what many environmental justice scholars have documented at a larger scale with racialized and Indigenous populations. Racist ideologies and racial capitalism compound the struggle for racialized populations as these groups are often devalued or cast as expendable, especially in the global context (Gonzalez, 2021). Pulido (2017) argued that environmental racism is largely enacted through industrial endeavors that both produce social difference and devalue non-White bodies, such that capitalism and structural racism are often mutually constitutive. Policies and program requirements that MAWs navigate often dictate their docility and acceptance of bodily hazards in exchange for admission and to be valued as “good workers” (Basok & Bélanger, 2016). Our examination of MAWs’ housing further illustrates how exploitation and bodily sacrifice are prescribed both in the worksite and in the living quarters.

Closely related, the theme of stagnation described participants’ encounters with fixity and/or ineffectiveness of regulations, authorities, and wider community responses to their urgent calls for housing improvements. Inadequate oversight, for instance, enabled poor housing conditions to be commonplace. As a result of lacking enforcement, MAWs often faced threats or punishment should they suggest improvements to their housing, while issues remained unaddressed. Regulatory inadequacies, limits in representation, and employer restrictions, as well as community-wide racism and xenophobia, are well documented in the literature (Binford, 2022; Mooten, 2021; Yearby & Mohapatra, 2020). Yet our research uniquely showcases how MAWs viewed the inadequacies of their housing as an overt act of racist discrimination. Therefore, the assignment of undignified housing is an explicit reminder to many MAWs of their inferior status both as racialized subjects and as temporary-low-wage workers.

Furthermore, workers often expressed that they were forced to accept poor housing to maintain their status and/or livelihood. Consideration of this group’s inability to refuse unsafe or inadequate conditions by virtue of their precarious migratory status points to the need to examine temporary status as a unique factor in determining how structural racism is enacted on MAWs’ housing. In fact, an important feature of employer-provided housing for MAWs is that job loss often simultaneously means a loss of housing (Adams et al., 2023; Weiler & Caxaj, 2024). Furthermore, housing standards for SAWP workers, who constitute the largest proportion of MAWs in Canada, are laid out in a contract that is negotiated annually between employers, migrant-sending countries, and Canadian government officials. However, these standards are low (e.g., bunk beds and highly crowded bedrooms are acceptable), and workers lack independent representation at the negotiations (Basok et al., 2023). In short, prior scholarship has generally pointed to the coercive climate and the limited political status and representation MAWs face in Canada. Our research builds on this prior work by pointing to temporary status as a necessary anchor for structural racism that both normalizes housing and health inequities while stalling necessary reform or change.

Strengths, Limitations, and Unique Study Considerations

To further contextualize our findings, several methodological decisions and ethical considerations should be noted. First, a sample size of 151 is exceptionally large for a narrative study (Vasileiou et al., 2018). To maintain adequate immersion and depth in our analysis, our team carried out several rounds of analysis over several years (2021–2023), much of which occurred as data collection continued. Furthermore, as noted in our Methodology section, we prioritized data in which MAWs were more engaged in the impact and meaning of their housing experiences rather than only descriptively focused on specific concerns. We felt confident in this balancing of attention because we had collated all concerns in prior readings of all transcripts. It is antithetical to evaluate data sufficiency in narrative research based on sample size (Vasileiou et al., 2018). Rather, it may be that the size of our sample creates limited opportunities for more nuanced engagement and elaboration of complex stories of housing and health inequities faced by MAWs. Future research could explore more focused and in-depth intersecting social identities, and how they uniquely inform housing experiences for specific, harder-to-reach populations, such as has been done in health access research with migrant LGBTQIA+ populations (Haghiri-Vijeh & Clark, 2022).

Second, our data consisted of both (1) data collected solely for this housing study and (2) data collected simultaneously for a different study with a focus on service provision needs and access (George et al., 2024). As mentioned previously, we opted for this approach to prevent greater burdening of our population. Nonetheless, a sole focus on housing may have yielded richer accounts among this subset of transcripts. It is notable, however, that while we had intended to screen out transcripts found irrelevant to the topic of housing, housing had been raised as a concern in all transcripts. Importantly, all participants gave informed consent for their accounts to be used for both study purposes. Furthermore, our analysis was significantly complemented by various public-facing and digital outreach events wherein many MAWs expressed alignment with our key impressions.

Third, all participants in our sample faced a degree of precarity (e.g., temporary or undocumented status), and most were currently experiencing substandard housing. Anticipating these vulnerabilities, our team worked closely with community advocates, including volunteers and service providers with strong track records of working with MAWs, both to lead recruitment and carry out interviews. This approach ensured that all participants could be referred and accompanied to necessary resources and support should urgent issues arise during the interview. We also met participants in places where they felt most comfortable, and both encouraged and facilitated interviews outside of the home to protect participants’ privacy. Notably, several participants agreed to participate in the interview with the explicit intention that their housing concerns be documented. Yet because of the various risks in reporting concerns using formal regulatory channels, most participants opted for their testimonies to remain in the study research context to ensure the concerns would be raised to policy-makers in both anonymous and aggregate form. Our intention in future methodological work is to lay out the epistemological and reflexive implications of working with non-academic advocates in the context of MAW scholarship. These reflections can build on methodological debates and dialogue surrounding “embodied” (Sharma et al., 2009) and “insider” (Kinitz, 2022) researchers.

Conclusion and Implications

Our analysis identified four key mechanisms of structural racism that determined MAWs’ housing conditions and subsequent health challenges: (1) scarcity, (2) segregation, (3) sacrifice, and (4) stagnation. Each theme provides a lens through which to identify a constellation of housing inadequacies, their health implications, and the racist logic that serves to justify and normalize such inequities. Scarcity encompassed crowded and inadequate living facilities that left participants burdened with additional health and financial costs. Segregation described various forms of separation from communities and resources that restricted and threatened MAWs’ health, well-being, and access to services. Sacrifice denoted the many hazards and dangers that MAWs felt forced to endure in their living quarters. Stagnation outlined the ways that various social, political, and regulatory channels available to workers to address housing concerns were found to be lacking and ineffective at protecting workers from retaliation. The identification of these mechanisms invites scholars to consider the exceptional circumstances that both limit choice in housing and prescribe inadequacies in housing for MAWs. These findings may also apply to other temporary migrant populations or to the analysis of racist structures in housing at large. For example, looking at how MAWs’ housing is configured raises important questions about how racial supremacy (and temporary status as a vector for structural racism) is enacted in contemporary society.

In a more immediate sense, our findings point to a myriad of health threats and concerns that require intervention. Insufficient washrooms, cooking facilities, and laundry facilities and overall crowding pose serious health threats to MAWs through increased risk of the spread of infections as well as psychological challenges. Increased exposure to extreme weather, hazards, and contaminants as a result of inadequate shelter likewise puts MAWs at greater health risks. Limited access to community resources, a social life separate from work, and employer surveillance and gatekeeping are detrimental to workers’ dignity and quality of life and pose life-threatening barriers to timely medical care. The development of national housing standards, with proactive attention to areas of health risk that inadequate housing poses, is very much needed (Caxaj et al., 2024; Weiler & Caxaj, 2024). Improved housing inspections that are consistently unannounced, and in which MAWs are adequately engaged, can also help address issues of coercion or staging of housing that have been noted here and elsewhere (Caxaj & Cohen, 2021; Migrant Worker Health Expert Working Group, 2020).

Ultimately, policy and infrastructure planning that better protect MAWs’ ability to actively participate in community life and to freely assert their rights are warranted to address the larger determinants of housing and health inequity for this group. Toward this end, governments should develop options that ensure higher quality housing, including easier access to resources. Furthermore, open work permits, the ability to collectively organize, and permanent residence can help to address the precarity that makes it so difficult for MAWs to refuse substandard housing. These larger policy initiatives are necessary to truly address the deeply entrenched machinery of structural racism that has produced and normalized various housing inequities faced by MAWs.