The third webinar in our series: Just Recovery? Labour, Organizing and the Future We Want

Description:
Mega sporting events such as the World Cup, the Super Bowl and the Olympics, as a few examples, bring in millions of dollars to a region’s hospitality and tourism sectors. Given the global attention that such events attract, cities hosting these mega-events spend a considerable amount of time preparing and scaling up to meet the demand, investing in construction and upgrading the city’s infrastructure. These efforts require additional staff that are largely low-wage workers, immigrant and BIPOC, who are already vulnerable to exploitation. Some even argue that the athletes themselves are exposed to various forms of exploitation perpetuated by systemic policies, politics and practices within the sports complex that govern their lives as athletes.

Panelists will tackle questions around what can be done to address the various forms of exploitation that the labour force behind mega-events encounter as well as models for building collective power and creating responses and programs to support workers. They will speak to how we must use this moment to address systemic inequalities in how work is valued, whose work is valued and how forms of oppression operate in the sectors that support mega sporting events.

Join webinar panelists for a lively, insightful and important discussion about the precarious and often invisible labour that mega-events rely on and more importantly, about what a just way forward might look like for such workers.

Speakers:

Fabien Goa
Fabien Goa is Research Manager at FairSquare Projects. He has over a decade of human rights experience, focusing on corporate accountability, migrant workers rights and the USA.

Fabien came to FairSquare from BSR, where he provided human rights research and guidance for businesses in the construction, food & beverage and technology sectors. Previously, Fabien was special adviser on sports and labour rights at Amnesty International, with a focus on the Qatar 2022 World Cup. He also worked on Guantanamo Bay, torture in the CIA secret detention programme and US criminal justice issues including police use of force, solitary confinement, and sentencing of juveniles.

Fabien has a Masters in Migration & Law from Queen Mary’s, University of London. He speaks English, French and Mauritian creole. He is based in Paris.

Vani Saraswathi
Vani Saraswathi is the Editor-at-Large and Director of Projects at Migrant-Rights.org and the author of Stories of Origin: The Invisible Lives of Migrants in the Gulf. In 1999, she relocated to Qatar, working with several local and regional publications, and launching some of Qatar’s leading periodicals. In her 17 years in Qatar, she mobilised a grassroots community to help migrants in distress.

Since 2014, in her role with Migrant-Rights.org she has reported from the Gulf states and countries of origin. She also organises advocacy projects and human rights training targeting individual employers, embassies, recruitment agents and businesses in Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and UAE. A special emphasis of Vani’s work is on female migrants, including domestic workers and advocacy effort towards mainstreaming issues facing female migrant workers.

She is a member of the Migration Advisory Group (previous Policy Advisory Committee) of ILO ROAS, the Policy Advisory Group of Freedom Fund’s Ethiopia hotspot and Humanity United’s Advisory group on Forced Labour and Human Trafficking.

She also contributes as an expert commentator on issues related to human rights in the GCC for various international publications and at international forums, including various UN forums.

Vani currently divides her time between India, Qatar and other GCC states.

Jules Boykoff
Jules Boykoff is the author of four books on the Olympic Games, most recently NOlympians: Inside the Fight Against Capitalist Mega-Sports in Los Angeles, Tokyo, and Beyond (Fernwood 2020) and Power Games: A Political History of the Olympics (Verso 2016). His work has appeared in academic journals like the International Review for the Sociology of Sport, New Political Science, and the International Journal of the History of Sport and outlets like the New York Times, The Nation, and the Los Angeles Times. He teaches political science at Pacific University, USA.

Moderated by Laya Behbahani, PhD student at SFU’s School of Communication.