Book Launch: Precarious by Marcello Di Cintio

Join us for an evening celebrating the launch of Precarious: The Lives of Migrant Workers by Calgary-based author Marcello Di Cintio. Hosted by Paul Haavardsrud, this event is presented by Shelf Life Books in partnership with Biblioasis and Calgary Public Library.

Wednesday, October 8 2025

Patricia A. Whelan Performance Hall

Central Library

800 3 St. SE

Doors at 5:45PM | Event at 6PM

Free, RSVP required

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 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 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 more than anyone else’s.

Marcello Di Cintio (website) 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.

​Paul Haavardsrud has been a business reporter with CBC Radio and Digital since 2010. He came to the CBC after stints at the Financial Post, Dow Jones, and the Calgary Herald. He has also ghost written two Canadian non-fiction bestsellers.

Host or Publisher Shelf Life Books