Preface

As the principal author of this volume, the late Katherine Lippel, Distinguished Chair in Occupational Health and Safety Law at the University of Ottawa, conceived and began this project as part of her substantial contributions to the On the Move Partnership. On the Move was a groundbreaking Canadian interdisciplinary research program directed by coauthor Barbara Neis that explored the impact of employment-related geographic mobility on workers, families, employers, and communities across Canada.

Katherine’s role in On the Move was central. As the lead of the policy component, she showed how regulatory frameworks interact with the complex realities of mobile workers’ lives, including how their mobility intersects with occupational safety and health, workers’ compensation, employment standards, and other policies to create regulatory gaps that can put their health and welfare at risk. These workers and the mobility-related hazards they experience are often made invisible by the frameworks and institutions meant to protect them.

Throughout her involvement with On the Move, Katherine oversaw and conducted empirical research and legal analysis to provide a comprehensive, justice-oriented examination of the protections—or lack thereof—afforded to mobile workers within Canada’s regulatory landscape. Her research and that of her team members showed the important challenges faced by mobile workers and the structural barriers to justice they often encounter.

Tragically, Katherine passed away in 2021 before she and Barbara could complete the manuscript. In the wake of her loss, Dalia Gesualdi-Fecteau and Maxine Visotzky-Charlebois, legal scholars and former students of Katherine’s, worked with Barbara to pursue her intent and bring this important work to publication. Drawing on Katherine’s extensive research, notes, drafts, and prior writings, they have sought to remain faithful to her voice and vision while broadening the focus and updating the legal analysis and literature on which it draws.

The coauthors hope that readers—whether scholars, students, practitioners, or policymakers—will find here a book that has retained the depth of Katherine Lippel’s scholarship. May the book contribute to sustaining the insightful conversations she brought to the On the Move Partnership and to all the other conversations and research collaborations she supported and led in Canada and globally. May it also provoke new questions and continue to guide, inspire, and empower generations to come.