Labour, Pipelines and Natural Gas:How Canada seeks to Profit from Mexico

The Global Labour Speaker Series is pleased to host

Labour Power, Pipelines and Natural Gas: How Canada seeks to Profit from Mexico's Energy Reform

with

Dr. Anna Zalik, York University

Wednesday, November 14th
Ross S822, York University

2:00pm-3:30pm

The 2013 Mexican energy reform reversed national protections, facilitating foreign production and control of oil and gas for the first time since 1938. It has led to various 'gasolinazos' where sudden hikes of gas prices at the pump reverberated through the local economy, prompting major protests. Canadian firms have benefited considerably from the Mexican energy reform, particularly through the construction of natural gas pipelines. This presentation examines the role of Canadian capital in new Mexican energy infrastructure centering on its implications for labour and ecological protections. Drawing on analyses from pro-sovereignty labour organizations in Mexico, it also considers what the Lopez Obrador/Morena victory in Mexico and the new USMCA (i.e. the ‘old NAFTA’) suggest for the North American pipeline network.

Dr. Anna Zalik is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University where she teaches in the area of global environmental politics and critical development studies. Her research, in conjunction with colleagues and community organizations, examines and critiques the political ecology and political economy of industrial extraction, with a focus on the merging of corporate security and social welfare interventions in strategic exporters, particularly Nigeria, Mexico and Canada. She has received various SSHRC awards for her research on topics related to the political economy of hydrocarbons, substantive industrial transparency, and the contested regulation of extractive industries in oceans beyond national jurisdiction. Emerging from this work and informed by critiques of capitalism and persistent colonialism/imperialism, her current projects centre on Canadian investment in the denationalization of the Mexican energy sector and financial risk in new extractive frontiers in the global oceans/seabed beyond national jurisdiction. She has given invited presentations at various universities internationally, among them the UNAM, Mexico City, the Peace Research Institute – Oslo, and the University of Chicago Human Rights Centre. In 2014, she was the invited keynote speaker to the AAG Energy and Environment specialty group. From 2005-7 she was a Ciriacy-Wantrup Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California at Berkeley. She currently serves as coordinator of the PhD Program in the Faculty of Environmental Studies and is also appointed to the graduate programs in Departments of Geography and Politics at York.

This is a free event, however seats are limited. Please RSVP!

Light refreshments will be served.

All are welcome.


The Global Labour Speaker Series is organized by the Global Labour Research Centre at York University and is co-sponsored by Department of Social Science, Department of Politics, Department of History, School of Social Work, CERLAC, Faculty of Education, Department of Geography, Department of Sociology and School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Study.