The Dream Team? Immigrants, Multilevel Marketing and Integration

The continuing undervaluing of the credentials and skills that granted new Canadian immigrants with college and university education admission into Canada as skilled immigrants negatively impact their integration into the formal labour market. The result is that many then settle for low skilled precarious employment in the formal labour market, which exposes them to cycles of precarity through unemployment, underemployment, and low income. In order to advance, some turn to the more accessible employment in multilevel marketing (MLM) that operates on the democratic principles of equality, liberty, and empowerment. This study examines whether the lack of integration provides a push into MLM and how such engagement in MLM impacts the integration and overall well-being of immigrants. Expanding the discussion of precarity beyond the formal labour sector, the study also evaluates the precariousness of work in MLM. To this end, political economy serves as the overarching analytical framework. The study also draws upon insights from Boltanski and Chiapello (2006), Boltanski and Thvenot (1999), Weber (1905/2002), Barth (1981) and Tocqueville (1835/2004) to supplement the political economy perspective. While Barth and Tocqueville provide a basic understanding of attitudes and predispositions that regulate actions and interactions in advanced democracies, including the imperative to network, Boltanski and his respective works with Chiapello and Thvenot outline the rationalities for understanding action within a system of coexisting values. In addition, Webers writing provides the means to connect these various strands. Drawing from in-depth qualitative interviews with current and former MLM participants, findings from the study show that immigrants who opt for MLM work are encased in a cycle of precarity and double jeopardy, by which the supposed solution to the precarity in the formal labour market complicates and, indeed, becomes the problem. This is because instead of fostering a pathway for immigrant integration, MLM serves as an impediment as it exhibits enhanced characteristics of the precarious employment that thrives in the formal sector.