From coal pits to tar sands: examining labour migration between the Athabasca oil sands and an Atlantic Canadian region

In less than two decades, the Oil Sands industries of Northern Alberta have transformed from a costly experiment in oil production hidden in the Canadian hinterlands to a mega-industry employing over 100 000 individuals situated at the centre of the Canadian economy. This rapid growth is due in large part to industries' adoption of certain neoliberal strategies, in particular making use of mobile and flexible temporary migrant workforces drawn from communities from across Canada undergoing processes of deindustrialization, capital flight and high levels of unemployment. One such region is Industrial Cape Breton, a former centre of coal mining and steel milling. The region has become strongly connected to the Oil Sands industries following the demise of its central industries at the turn of the millennium and is now dealing with the impacts that patterns of long-distance labour migration have on local communities and families.

Based on multi-sited fieldwork conducted in Industrial Cape Breton and the Oil Sands region, the present dissertation examines this emerging pattern of labour migration as an aspect of the ongoing neoliberalization of the labour force. Through an examination of the political economies of migration and resource extraction, an exploration of the sending and receiving regions involved in these commutes, and use of work-life narratives as a methodological tool to examine the lived experiences of those involved in these mobile labour arrangements, this dissertation argues for attention to the connection of class and migration. Such labour migrations are both cause and consequence of a shift in classed subjectivities among a mobile working class involved in long-distance commute work. The processes that allow for labour migration fall fundamentally within the scopes of a broader neoliberal project yet rest on the foundations formed through the pre-established Fordist project. The promises of Fordism and the Fordist legacy allow for the establishment and continuation of certain forms of neoliberalism and of certain forms of labour migration as workers attempting to re-create Fordist patterns of stable and secure relations to work instead become implicated in insecure and unstable work relations which highlight the neoliberal era.