نبذة مختصرة : As part of the Live-in Care Program (LICP), that came into force in 1992, care workers must reside with their Canadian employers and must abide by this residency obligation for a minimum period of two years in order to become eligible for permanent residency. Considering issues of living and working conditions as well as labour relations we contend, in this article, that this residency obligation is part of a “legal arsenal” that is characteristic of, and that (re)organizes a “transitional form of exploitation” exercised through the control of bodies and which can be situated within the continuum of relations of exploitation that include slavery, serfdom and “sexage” as theorized in the works of Colette Guillaumin (1978).We will proceed in three stages in order to develop this working hypothesis. First, we revisit the history of LICPand discuss its current content (I). We then attempt to demonstrate how the rights to private life, understood as the right to freely dispose of one’s time and space outside of work hours, are taken away from these resident workers (II). Third and lastly, using arguments developed by Colette Guillaumin, we emphasize the lack of clear temporal limits that regulate the use of the labour force by employers of these house workers. This article uses the first results collected from a research partnership with PINAY (the Philippina Women’s Organization of Quebec) in the context of UQAM’s community service program. The main arguments presented in this paper follow the analytical work done by activists organized within PINAY.
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