Migrant Dreams Sociological Theory

Introduction
In this essay, I intend to examine the experiences of migrant workers as shown in the documentary Migrant Dreams (2016) through the different epistemological approaches of classical sociological theorists such as Emile Durkheim, Karl Marx and Max Weber. While these theorists employ sociological perspectives in understanding the relationship between the individual and society, their concepts would offer different methodological approaches on how to best study the migrant experiences. I will use three sociological frameworks, Functionalism, Marxism and Interpretivism, to explain the similarities and differences of their concepts by outlining where each of the theorists differ and where they provide a similar approach. While Durkheim

Emile Durkheim
To Durkheim and Marx, the documentary would be incomplete in its investigation in that it examines the issues of migrant workers mainly through their individual perspective and doesn’t offer much detail on the underlying social structures that influence their experiences. Durkheim argues that social issues can only be truly understood by examining social facts which should not be confused with biological or psychological facts as the workings of society cannot be explained entirely through these disciplines (Lukes, 1984, p.51). That is to say, social facts are social structures that exist outside of the individual consciousness which affect the behaviour of individuals as they hold a coercive power over them (p. 51, 52). Within this theory, Durkheim determines the causal nature of social facts where individual behaviour is a response to collective laws and customs thus personal action is taken out of

Hence, social facts place a constraint on individuals where violating these norms provokes a series of negative consequences on individuals (p.51). Durkheim also makes a distinction between individual and collective manifestations of social facts in that the prevalence of individual thought and action within a group or a society is not what constitutes social facts but rather “the beliefs, tendencies and practices” that emerge out of the collective (p.54). Thus, social facts are not only separate from individual thought and action, or as Durkheim describes it phenomena sui generis i.e. a class of its own, but they can also manifest through “social currents” which also hold a certain power over individuals but are more fleeting as they exist within particular times and places. (p.55). In studying the migrant workers experiences Durkheim would be particularly interested in the institutions and policies surrounding the Temporary Foreign Workers Program and how they affected the labor rights of the migrant workers compared to Canadian citizens to formulate the experiences of the migrant workers in terms of their statistical significance. Durkheim’s methodological approach in