Finalist for the 2026 City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize - Finalist for the 2026 Wilfrid Eggleston Award for Nonfiction - A Globe 100 Best Book of 2025 - One of The Hill Times' Top 100 Best Books in 2025 - Winner of the 2024 Dave Greber Freelance Writers Book Award
A series of profiles of foreign workers illuminates the precarity of global systems of migrant labor and the vulnerability of their most disenfranchised agents.
In 2023, after weeks of investigation, United Nations Special Rapporteur Tomoyo Obokata came to a scathing conclusion: Canada's Temporary Foreign Worker program is "a breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery." Workers complained of excessive hours and unpaid overtime; of being forced to perform dangerous tasks or ones not specified in their contracts; of being physically abused, intimidated, and sexually harassed; and of overcrowded, unsanitary living conditions that deprived them of their privacy and dignity.
In Precarious: The Lives of Migrant Workers, Marcello Di Cintio ranges across the country speaking to those who have come from elsewhere to till our fields, bathe our elderly, and serve us our Double Doubles, uncovering stories of tremendous perseverance, resilience, and humanity, but also of precarity and vulnerability. He shows that vast swathes of our economy depend on the work of people we don't see, while expanding our awareness of what migrant work now entails, and revealing that our mistreatment of the most vulnerable among us diminishes our own dignity.
About the Author :
Marcello Di Cintio is the author of six books, including Walls: Travels Along the Barricades, Pay No Heed to the Rockets: Palestine in the Present Tense, and Driven: The Secret Lives of Taxi Drivers. He has also written for the Globe and Mail, The Walrus, The International New York Times, and Canadian Geographic, among others. He lives in Calgary.
Review :
Praise for Precarious: The Lives of Migrant Workers
"Precarious is both thoroughly researched and deeply nuanced . . . Di Cintio delivers a compassionate portrayal of the migrant workers who invisibly contribute to Canada's economy; and a damning portrait of a seriously flawed, inhumane governmental system that exists out of sight of most Canadian citizens."
--Thalia Stopa, Scout Magazine
"This thorough and damning account from journalist Di Cintio profiles migrant workers who traveled to Canada from Costa Rica, India, and the Philippines under the Temporary Foreign Worker program . . . While offering precise and useful insights into the Canadian system, Di Cintio also provides rich food for thought about the role migration plays in the global order."
--Publishers Weekly
"Engaging and well-documented . . . While many Canadians proudly embrace an 'elbows up' patriotic attitude in response to annexation threats by an unpredictable American president, this deeply personal study shows why many potential citizens may have quietly kept their elbows down."
--Joseph Hnatiuk, Winnipeg Free Press
"I want to say this book is recommended reading for anyone who is concerned about the treatment of migrant workers in Canada. But what I need to say is that this is a must-read for anyone who has never thought much about the migrants living among us. After reading it, hopefully you will finally see the human being pouring your double-double."
--Jason Foster, Alberta Views
"Readers who get to the end of Precarious may very well start to question that unconditional 'Canada the good' image most of us have of our country, at least in how we treat those who come here through our Temporary Foreign Worker program."
--Eric Volmers, Calgary Herald
"[A] coherent look into the complex issues surrounding migrant workers."
--Emily Mernin, LRC Bookworm
"This book unflinchingly presents an inequitable Canadian system that contradicts what we consider Canadian values of kindness and acceptance."
--Anne Logan, I've Read This
"Precarious is a book that's both difficult to sit with and to put down. It's one of the most important Canadian books I've read in a while."
--Jamie Mah, Track & Food
Praise for Driven: the Secret Lives of Taxi Drivers
"An astonishing book about folks from all over, many of whom have been through total hell but have somehow made their way out . . . You never know who's driving you. Each person contains multitudes."
--Margaret Atwood on Twitter
"In these deeply researched and richly--often shockingly--detailed portraits of Canadian taxi drivers from all over the world, Di Cintio reveals, among other things, the heavy price exacted by getting here, and staying here. The funny, savage, and poignant stories in these pages give a fresh urgency to an old saying that all of us should remember the next time we get into a taxi: 'Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.'"
--John Vaillant, author of Fire Weather
"A blend of reportage, social history, and personal profile, Driven is a triumph of curiosity and compassion."
--The Walrus
"Di Cintio takes the time and trouble to engage with a cross-Canada range of people representing a profession too often taken for granted. Most of them are immigrants; all of them are subject to scarcely conceivable challenges and obstacles, often exacerbated by the onset of Uber."
--Montreal Gazette
"A masterpiece of original sociological research, Driven: The Secret Lives of Taxi Drivers is an extraordinary and deftly presented series of perspectives. Unique, engaging, entertaining, inherently fascinating, thoughtful and thought-provoking."
--Midwest Book Review
