ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how processes of urbanization across the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) have been unfolding in part through the production of a labouring workforce differentiated on the basis of ethno-nationality and citizenship. It argues that the several events each reveal how bordering processes have profoundly shaped the nature of construction work and employment for migrant workers in the GTA. As a major gateway region for newcomers to Canada, construction employers in the GTA tend to have access to a large pool of cheap, non-citizen workers, refugee claimants or individuals who were once legally working in the country but whose legal status has lapsed. The chapter highlights how the production and maintenance of forms of legal status, including temporary, insecure and illegal forms of territorial residency, are immanent to material processes of urbanization. The literature documenting the relationships between human migration and the process of urbanization is vast.
